Gen. Museveni. No single person apart from King Leopold II may have been responsible for the deaths of more Africans than the Ugandan dictator. Photo: Facebook.
[View From Uganda]
We have taken our time to commemorate the lives of the more than 100 innocent Ugandans who died when protests broke out on November 18, 2020, following the arrest of the National Unity Platform (NUP) presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, alias Bobi Wine, while on the campaign trail in Luuka District.
We have taken our time because; we must place these deaths into historical context.
Gen. Yoweri Museveni’s illegitimate regime admitted to 54 murders since the massacres were so widespread that they couldn’t be concerned.
“54 people died in this confusion; 32 victims were rioters, some were hit by stray-bullets and two victims were knocked by vehicle registration no. UAW-827N that lost control after the driver was hit by stones and another vehicle with Presidential candidate Museveni pictures where the driver was hit by stones, also lost control and killed another person,” dictator Museveni, the master of deception said, hoping as usual that by admitting to some murders and providing some details he could then control the narrative.
This is Hitlerian and Joseph Goebbels type propaganda. Don’t deny the obvious but guide the story. If we parse through Gen. Museveni’s words, we shall find the subtext of ordinary people using the only weapons available to them: stones.
We have been reduced to throwing stones as symbols of our assumed ineffectuality against a system which has monumentally excluded us from leadership, thanks to a maniac dictator’s grip on power through a medieval cocktail of: a personality cult; dispensing of patronage; nullifying independent civil institutions; and the premeditated extermination opponents.
Bobi Wine, widely regarded as the legitimate winner of Jan. 14, 2020 presidential vote. Photo: Facebook.
At the moment, all we have are stones against a pathological killer who touched off a civil war in which up to 500,000 people, including combatants and civilians, perished in Uganda. Remember, the population of Uganda was 12.44 million in 1980. So 500,000 people was about 24% of the population, which would be over 11 million people dying if the war was conducted today in an era when the population is 46 million.
The only other ruler in history to be responsible for as many deaths on the African continent is King Leopold II, who established Belgium as a colonial power in Africa by killing as many as 10 million people in the so-called Congo Free State. Ironically, Congo once again became a killing field in the 1990s and once again dictator Museveni was involved; the multiple invasions of Congo by Uganda’s army—combined with Rwanda’s—sparked several wars that led to the deaths of millions of Congolese.
By his homicidal tendencies, Gen. Museveni calls to mind a Roman general who brought peace to a rebellious province by killing all its citizens. Even his fellow Romans were shocked. One of them wrote,”Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant, ” which means, ”They create desolation and call it peace.” The man who wrote those words was Publius Cornelius Tacitus, widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians.
He would agree today that Gen. Museveni has been responsible for many deaths, so his rule may live until he dies. Dictator Museveni has never believed Uganda can survive without being under the thumbs of his crushing misrule.
After Apartheid in South Africa, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established by the new South African government in 1995 “to help heal the country and bring about a reconciliation of its people by uncovering the truth about human rights violations that had occurred during the period of apartheid.”
However, the country has not healed. So we recommend that we go further in our search for a livable post-Museveni Uganda by following Gambia’s model of a Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC). Gambians are seeking not just reconciliation but reparations to be given to the victims of decades of human rights violations under President Yahya Jammeh’s regime.
We in Uganda must do likewise after we end the Museveni dictatorship. Uganda will only survive Museveni by seeking restitution for all the wickedness his military junta has wrought; this means people must be punished for not only the death of the 54 innocents who died last November, but all the victims over the decades Gen. Museveni has been in power.
There must be reparations for those who died in Luwero, for those who perished in the North, in the West, Central, and the East.
There must be reparations for the rape of our national institutions and the impoverishment of a proud people who deserve the dignity we must all be accorded as human beings.
Columnist Matogo can be reached via [email protected]
