Uganda’s kleptocratic dictator Gen. Museveni
[My Free Thoughts]
The Immigration authorities had been arm-twisted by General Yoweri Museveni’s dictatorship to deny my children passports until I made a public outcry which they had to account for.
The people who are manning the Passport Office in Kampala have an idiosyncratic belief that everyone is a chump. That is why when they were ordered to delay issuing my children passports, and were caught right in the labyrinth—in flagrante delicto—they thought it easy to call a press conference in an attempt to sanitize themselves with more ruses. Here is what actually happened.
Sometime in March this year, my wife and I provided all the necessary documentation to the passport office in Kampala including paying for the express fees, interviews and what have you, pursuant to the rules, so that our three children could acquire passports in a day or two as the procedure requires.
I remember when I was renewing mine back in October 2020, I paid an express fee and indeed in 24 hours I had been called to go and pick up the passport. Several months later Buganda Road Court errant Magistrate, Dr. Douglas Singiza, would arbitrarily confiscate it to deny me the right of flying out of the country for medical treatment for my broken limbs and mutilated body as a result of the torture I endured courtesy of the Museveni regime. I would tell him to eat it or put it in the dock—who wouldn’t say the same—and I fled to Germany on a witch’s broom, like Harry Potter.
After I slipped from my tormentors they decided to attack my family by using my children as hostages—perhaps thinking they could use them as bait to lure me back. That strategy didn’t work; sending several emissaries to inveigle me into their whims also failed. I continued blowing off my steam.
I personally contacted people I know inside the Passport Office in April who confirmed to me that my children’s files were put aside on orders from people whose names they were not willing to expose to me. Obviously my enemies are known by everyone and it did not surprise me that they had decided to involve my small children, ages eight, four, and two in their cruel campaign.
When I threatened to expose them in the media, they started to sign a different tune; suddenly malfunctioning machines in the passport office were to blame and no passports were being printed. On the other hand, I was advised, if I stopped blowing off steam on social media and let the dust settle, then my kids would get passports. I rejected such advice.
I instructed my lawyer, Eron Kiiza, to handle the matter, since the authorities were violating the constitution, which guarantees the right of every Ugandan Citizen to a passport—Article 29(2)(c) of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda 1995 as amended and Section 39 of the Uganda Citizenship and Immigration Control Act, Cap 66.
My lawyer addressed the media, European Union, Uganda Human Rights Commission, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and several other concerned parties. Feeling undressed and ashamed, the Internal Affairs spokesperson, Simon Peter Mundeyi, when asked for an explanation also lied to media that my children’s passports had been delayed because the machine malfunction. That was total hogwash.
During the period that the machine was supposedly broken, I know a few people who actually got their express passports and in a day. In one case, I had sponsored a friend’s passport. He paid for express processing at 8AM; by 3PM he had his passport.
My public outcry won the day—just as when I came out and denounced and exposed the torture they inflicted on me. We must shine light on their hellholes of impunity. Expose them as incompetent and subservient to orders like automatons. With no reasonable defense they blame a machine that can’t talk back.
The best thing the immigration authorities should have done was to apologize and return the express fee paid for the three children. I would have forgiven them and moved on but their big heads and lies fathered my anger to expose them.
No one, I repeat no one will subject me to injustice and expect me to kowtow.
Kakwenza Rukirabashaija is a Ugandan columnist, commentator, and novelist. He is the author of The Greedy Barbarian a novel that explores themes of high level corruption in a fictional country and Banana Republic: Where Writing is Treasonous, an account of the torture he endured in 2020 under the Gen. Museveni. In 2021 he was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize for International Writer of Courage, after which he was again tortured by the regime. He is currently in the Scholar on Writers in Exile Program of PEN-Zentrum Deutschland.
