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Here’s why Gen Kayihura needs to buy Gen Wamala a cup of tea
A few years ago, an army general was appointed to head the Uganda Police Force. He found a Force that was corrupt, impoverished and in disarray. Corrupt officers worked hand-in-glove with criminals, including renting them guns, and actively protected them.
The general did a few radical things. First, he went about repairing relations with communities and getting them to contribute, in cash or kind, to the police budget. Then he set up a multi-agency paramilitary outfit and went after the bad guys. It was messy, even extra-judicial, but almost overnight the robberies stopped and violent crime fell.
The officer in question was, of course, Gen Edward Katumba Wamala, who is now the Chief of Defence Forces, and who was the Inspector General of Police between 2001 and 2005.
Yesterday, his successor, Gen Edward Kalekezi Kayihura, was due to appear before Makindye Chief Magistrate’s Court as a defendant in a private prosecution brought by victims of police brutality allegedly carried out under his watch.
Gen Kayihura did not appear but a large crowd of unwashed, down-at-heel stone throwers, some allegedly ferried to the court by senior police officers, violently protested against the IGP’s scheduled appearance, and tried to lynch the applicants’ lawyers as police officers mostly looked on.
The events leading up to, and at Makindye Court yesterday, represent a significant shifting of the sands. It is quite possible that families of some of the people shot dead by security operatives in ‘Operation Wembley’ during Gen Wamala’s tenure would have had a strong case to make for what were essentially extra-judicial killings.
Yet I suspect that anyone who would have tried to bring Gen Wamala to court for killing robbers in Kampala would have required police protection against ordinary civilians who had suffered at the hands of the violent criminals.
So why is it that Gen Kayihura, whose overall principle as IGP has been “community policing” and closer relations between the police and citizens, now finds himself in the dock, charged by the very people he is supposed to protect?
The answer is as complex as it is obvious. Under Gen Wamala, the police worked with ordinary people and turned their guns against hard-core criminals. Under Gen Kayihura, elements in the police are working with hard-core criminals and have turned their guns against ordinary people.
Police officers accused of complicity in murder are protected and promoted. Public crimes committed by police officers are defended and ignored. Incidents are not seen. Footage showing police brutality is “doctored by enemies of the police”. See no evil, afande, hear no evil.
There was a time when you needed the police to rescue you from the hands of criminals. These days the media are full of stories of well-known criminals, from Kiboko Squad to Kifeesi, capable of rescuing you from police custody. We have gone from police officers protecting criminals from the law, to criminals protecting police officers from the law.
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, this is the exact outcome of our actions of politicising law enforcement. Once the police shifts its core focus away from preventing crime to preventing political activity, it always loses the support and confidence of many ordinary citizens, and relies, instead, on the support of nefarious characters.
Makindye is thus important in at least two ways. The events outside the courtroom represent the falling away of what was left of pretence and dignity, as citizens clash against citizens, with the police unwilling or unable to intervene because they are not sufficiently non-partisan to enforce the law. Every citizen has rights, but they will be defended or enforced depending on their political persuasion, reads the writing on the wall.
The events inside the court, on the other hand, are both as a cause and effect of those that happened outside it, with ordinary citizens beginning to fight back, by capturing evidence and through legal means, against those who break the law. Normally, the defendants in such cases would be criminals but as the line between law breakers and law enforcers gets increasingly blurred, we should get used to more and more police officers standing in the dock as criminal defendants.
Gen Kayihura, please buy Gen Wamala a cup of tea and ask him to help you tell the difference between a citizen and a criminal.
Mr Kalinaki is a Ugandan journalist based in Nairobi. [email protected]
Twitter: @Kalinaki
