Can Uganda extricate itself from echoes of its history?

Historians watching Uganda from afar would simply remark, “been there, done that”. One of my favourite high-school teachers often punctuated his economics lessons with anecdotes of what the country was like before President Museveni’s ascension to power in 1986.

Although he was a teacher of Economics, he spent half the time talking history and politics.

Little wonder that a few years later, he was to change professions, leaving teaching to join politics as a Member of Parliament. State-inspired violence, torture, kidnaps, murders, sexual violence, corruption and censorship always iced the pre-1986 stories.

Cryptic accidents often claimed vocal figures that spoke strongly about the politics of the day.

Again, prior to 1986, the country’s lingua didn’t have words like boda boda or rolex chapatti, but rather things like ‘torture chambers’, (popularly associated with Amin’s regime) and state of emergency or call them curfews.

Infringement of individual liberties was a normalised phenomenon; in fact, it was a culture.

Impunity reigned unabated in all fashions and styles. Even during that dark era, there was still a class of citizens that remained nested in their comfort zone.

You would find these first-class citizens in the high-end Kampala nightclubs such as Lanquinta and Suzana. They wined and dined as the country inched to the cliff edge.

The country’s ‘custodians’ were always paranoid, reacted with fury and fire whenever they were challenged. While they feared intellectual dexterity and popular movements, they believed so much in the power of the gun. They extracted loyalty and allegiance through intimidation, torture and persecution.

Only those arguably ‘aligned to the curators of the State’ had a sense of identity and ‘privilege’. The plight of those at the lowest of the ladder could not be hidden.

Our teacher always narrated of how government organs such as the State Research Bureau (SRB) were too powerful and often got away with any form of impunity. Their agents maimed and killed, but still walked away scot-free.

They committed all manner of crimes, but were not held to account. Part of that period constituted a time when a one Brig Isaac Maliyamungu was like a bad guy in a psychological thriller that ends with the villain winning. Brig Maliyamungu did all the rogue things, but always received praises from his boss.

Those with firepower had unchecked licence to do anything and everything under, on and above the law; they attacked those who did not agree with how government was run.

Alternative engines of organising such as cultural, religious and academic institutions were often countered by intimidation, direct attack or elimination.

The media were always under attack. That was the State of affairs then. To us the students, our teacher’s narrations always came off as though we were watching a fusion of a horror and thriller movie.

Rather than take the stories as important accounts to shape our outlook of the future, we always giggled them away for fear of courting hallucinations and nightmares when nighttime came.

On many occasions, we often found it difficult to tell if the teacher merely wanted to be fictional or if what he narrated had happened in real life.

Fast forward; living in Uganda lately, I pinch myself, just to be sure that I am not hallucinating over the past high-school anecdotal stories as told by my teacher. The echoes of past Uganda are being beaconed. History isn’t a perfect fit, but ignoring it, may look reckless.

As I write this, there is an unconcealed rare current flowing through the national circuit. Emerging from the ghettoes, shantytowns, and peasant villages, it now haunts the streets, the legislature, the judiciary and the executive.

Even a ten-year-old can feel it; the scalpels of the currents are well pointed to higher places. Time immemorial, contestation about history has been around if it actually repeats itself.

Many agree that history does repeat itself; however, others contend that only fools repeat ugly history. Thank God for the vicious cycle of history that humans have to go through.
With the political drama happening in Uganda, I see history repeating itself; I see fools repeating ugly history; but I also see history in the making.

Mr Kaheru is the coordinator, Citizens Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU)