Military dictator Gen. Museveni. Photo: Facebook.
[My Free Thoughts]
Kakwenza Rukirabashaija
Gen. Yoweri Museveni’s outright deception has begun to stress some of us so much that it is traumatizing to reconcile the fact that he is still the “president” even after failing flatly to fulfill his innumerable promises since he installed himself in 1986.
As though Ugandans had sent him to fight, he used machinations to cajole both proletariat and lumpenproletariat to fall for his jigger-pockery joining him in the guerrilla war in 1980. Some of the Ugandans who fell for his monkeyshines and left their jobs to join him must be the most traumatized. Of course the likes of Dr. Kizza Besigye has already said it and apologized to Ugandans for being arm-twisted or wheedled into Museveni’s sham “liberation” scheme.
Gen. Museveni would pledge to: combat corruption; eliminate vote rigging; and shock the wastrels and end extrajudicial murders. The lies helped him seize power and initially sustain the regime.
In retrospect it seems when Museveni went to the bush, he did so out of biting poverty, joblessness, greed, and the fact that his political party had suffered crushing electoral defeat. He himself lost his bid for Parliament in the 1980 election when Sam Kutesa, who he recently dumped as foreign minister, defeated him.
Little did Ugandans know that Museveni would catapult a democide government in Uganda.
Whoever thinks that Yoweri Museveni went to the bush to liberate Uganda should look at what has been going on in the country since 1986 and relate it to the country he claims to have extricated us from. What did he liberate Uganda from when what he claims led him to fight in the bush is still choking us today?
Undoubtedly, Museveni built on the foundations of impunity left by the deposed former heads of state such as Gen. Idi Amin. Here we are, stuck with the proliferation of oppression he inherited from them. What exactly did Amin do that Museveni hasn’t yet done? Since he blamed all the evils on the past presidents what gives him authority to rule now that the empower is naked and all his failures visible to the whole world?
He believes patronage, guns, and braggadocio will keep him in power forever.
The unresolved murders of Ugandans have continued for decades and are ongoing today. Yet, when he first took oath of office 35 years ago, he claimed he would never preside over a country where a Ugandan is murdered and the security agents do not know who the killers are. He now presides over a Uganda where murder is the order of the day. No one knows whether they will live to see sunset or sunrise.
These murders have swelled into such a national conundrum that Gen. Museveni has decided to name call the murderers “pigs” as if that will stop the killings. On the other hand, he praised his security forces for butchering people in Kampala during the elections as covered by several media including BBC.
Now machete-wielding thugs continue to wreak murderous havoc in Masaka region; in Karamoja and Kasese the same gun-wielding security agents kill unarmed citizens.
It is quite discombobulating when regime apologists and officials appointed by Museveni condemn machete-wielding killers in Masaka. Yet, some of these apologists have stolen public money meant to buy medicines in the hospitals, meaning patients have died from their greed. Not all murders are committed with machetes.
Everyone is living in fear. It is traumatizing that we have to walk on the streets while looking over our shoulders in fear of lurking would-be assassins. This is the “liberation” Museveni promised?
I would hate to see how tyranny looks like if this is Museveni’s vision of a free Uganda.
Columnist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija is a victim of Museveni’s barbarism having been arrested and tortured twice. He can be reached via [email protected]
