CONFRONTING A WICKED REGIME`S VIOLENCE USING NONVIOLENCE

Facing wicked regimes like the current Ugandan system where human rights violations are ubiquitous requires peaceful voices and contained emotions in campaigns. Borrowing excerpts from Martin Luther King’s revered words, I show that using nonviolent means to rebut the brutal forces, which are purportedly being trained to reign in the masses to vote president Museveni against their consciences, is a more sensitive road to tread. I say you will not vote someone you don’t want. I must say I'm still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and human dignity in Uganda.

The divines of nonviolence is also required to disentangle Ugandans from the shackles of immoral leadership perpetuated with shameless abandon, blasphemous and sacrilegious adoration from compatriot looters. Where leadership has become endlessly luscious to some section of our society while its rendered insipid to the majority of the populace. I’m still convinced that if Ugandans succumb to the temptation of using violence in this struggle, i.e to squarely face the Mutales and the Tumukundes brutal machines and brigades using equally brutal retaliatory mechanisms, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless rain of meaningless chaos. 

This we already had enough. To mention, we had the British extradite Kabaka Mutesa in the 50’s, we had detentions without trial in the 60’s including invasion of Mengo leading to the death of the Kabaka in 1969, we had murders where almost every family in Uganda lost a member to the steel hands of state research bureau. We had the panda garis and the Luwero massacres in the 80s, we had over two decades of dehumanizing treat and near annihilation of the northern Ugandan citizens, we had uninvestigated murders; Barlongo, Abia, Kibwetere, Kichwamba, Kasese etcetera. We had uncountable unexplained disappearances in this regime which brought us “peace” in the last 30 years. No. It is too much. We don’t deserve all these. 

There is another way. This way of nonviolence has a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses. It weakens his morale and at the same time it works on his conscience and he does not know how to handle it. If he doesn’t beat you, wonderful. If he tries to beat you, you develop the quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating. If he doesn’t put you in jail, wonderful. Nobody with any sense loves to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and human dignity. Even if he tries to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for; and if a man has not discovered something that he would die for, he isn’t fit to live. And this is what the nonviolent movement does. For he who beats you will be sentenced by God, he who dehumanizes you will be devoured in final the judgment and he who kills you will never see eternity. This message consoles, for God won’t allow anyone to wipe out the world, it will never happen. An when God finally calls them, their children and great grandchildren shall remain here on earth to live together in harmony and peace which they cheated and failed to bequeath to the nation, together with the children and great grandchildren of the victims of their brutality. I tell you my prophecy now. 

The people being trained by Maj Kakooza Mutale and indeed any militia are scarecrows. They are meant to make you think that there will be terror, and to dupe you into accepting the unpalatable status quo. No, do not yield. It is cowardice. Museveni will never accept to use them and don’t be afraid. Just vote someone else NOT Museveni, his parliament and indeed all the local leaders whom we will demand to hand over power peacefully, and to go and rest. Vote only new people to the presidency, parliament, and local councils including local council. 

The rate at which Museveni and his NRM regime are passing out militia force  is very unprecedented and it should concern us Ugandans why train and arm half baked youth at this time? are we preparing  for war or democracy?Is there a justified reason for this? Under what laws are they functioning in?Are they preparing them in anticipation to unleashing violence on the populace?Ugandans, lets ask ourselves why the drastic increase? Is it because government is realizing  that the people have developed knowledge that  government has been swallowing our  freedoms?

Historically militias read( crime preventors ) in any part of the world are  typically associated with radicalism.They are generally  unleashed by incumbent regimes facing electoral threats ,in this context of weakening regimes turn on to violence to stave off rising electoral challenges. 

Many of these newly-formed militias are being spearheaded by ex-military personnel, like Tumukunde ,Kakooza Mutale etc.This militarization of electoral politics has major implications for democracy. It “turns voters into supplicants .

Kakooza Mutale and Militia leaders

In history of the phenomenon of violent radicalization ,these militias have come in handy as death squads for the ruling parties ,why because they operate outside the laws that control the official state securities .These  state-backed non-state groups will at some point claim to be autonomous from the state  therefore creating “deniability from the government. 

In Uganda we are witnessing both direct government repression carried out by men in uniform, agencies within the security apparatus, and members of the ruling party led  by the partisan Uganda police  superintended by  a military general Kale Kayihura , they have with impunity  regularly targeted  opposition candidates,opposition supporters, and other perceived adversaries with threats ,arrests ,kidnaps ,extreme brutality and death . 

The aim is simple, use  violence  to win the election, for example the intimidation of the opposition by state security forces in Ethiopia returned an assembly  which is 100% controlled by the ruling party and they call themselves a democracy. In 2007 Kenya, for instance, the government tried to claim that violence was simply an explosion of local ethnic tensions, but strategically deployed its security forces in ways that facilitated cleansing of opposition supporters. 

These are organised, armed thugs meant to intimidate rivals so that they do not participate in the political process of the country. They help create a climate of fear and thereby silence voices with alternative views. In short, they choke democratic practice.But we do not hear the same loud denunciation of militarization of politics from our self ordained protectors. 

NRM militia force called Crime preventers

BUT if there where to be an outbreak of violence ! these militias  would cause mayhem to the people of Uganda ,we would realize how much worse off we are when we enter into another civil war,countless civilians would be harmed.

The delegation of violence to non-state actors like the crime preventors will lead  to growing armed group power and political influence because they  escape the control of the government and either turn against it or establish their own autonomy, danger is losing control of them: armed political parties are unlikely to be puppets of governments, and local armed groups can pursue their own goals on the ground in the these  armed groups will be sponsored by warlord politicians  and will run out of control and turn on the regime. 

Rwandans suffered most from institutionalized  violence, both as a nation and as individual citizens. The interahamwe, which were the youth wing of the ruling party in 1994, turned into an armed militia and were used to achieve a double purpose: to deny other parties a role in multiparty politics, and more diabolically, to commit the Genocide against the Tutsi.

The world saw the interahamwe transform into an armed militia, but did nothing about it.Now they are seeing Museveni train and arm militia groups and they are silent ,should they wait for this youth to commit genocide before they do nothing about it. 

1. Overhaul the entire autocratic and parasitic system that has milked our country dry and sat over innovation. We shall NOT even seek their advises because they will advise a northerner to hate a southerner, and an easterner to hate one from the central. Ugandans are more than ready to govern themselves without any elders. Those who weren't ashamed recently to accompany Museveni to pick form to rule Uganda for 35 years! My foot. Most of them appeared frail and just came to get freebies stolen from state coffers. Are those the people we can consult? Not at all. If 30 million Ugandans come out and peacefully line the roads from villages to towns and the cities, they will have said no to perpetual misrule and not amount of bullets or kiboko can finish them. 

We should overhaul the system that Odrek Rwabogo likens to members of one family who have sacrificed for the country! On the contrary, the country has bled enough in the hands of those who purportedly sacrificed. The wounds of their sacrifice have already healed but the wounds inflicted on the country are open, bleeding and painful! It is time to turn a new page in national and local leadership alike. And all Ugandans shall sing alleluia together in peace. Peace will rain from Koboko to Kisoro. Peace will rain from Bundibugyo to Kaabong. Peace will rain from Bulisa to Lwakhakha, peace will rain from Nimule to Mutukula peace will rain from lake George to Amudat, from lake albert to Swam border, and from Zombo to Mayuge. And that day Ugandans will have joined the world citizenry. And we shall never call each other by tribe but fellow Ugandans. Our soldiers will be in the barracks to keep state security always and territorial security when called upon as they have always done. The Uganda police will ably take its place as a civilian force to police society and God will laugh in his throne. God bless Uganda. 

These article was written By Atocon Atyekwo in collaboration with Okuk Owera is a civl engineer and a former guild president of Kyambogo university.

You can reach him on Email:okukowera@gmail.com

For God and My Country.