Prime
Ending impunity: Between reform and revolution
Author: Moses Khisa. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- Rather than pursue peaceful reform, they press on thereby adding more gasoline into the ground for a bigger explosive environment.
There is an old line attributed to John F Kennedy that those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. I argued last week that Uganda is in the throes of hopelessness. A rule-based system where laws, rules and standards apply to all citizens has been eviscerated at the behest of our 1986 rulers. Impunity reigns.
Individuals with political connections and social networks linked to the powerful, especially in the military can break the law without accountability. This is most ironic because our current rulers claimed that their guerrilla rebellion that started in 1981 was to liberate Uganda, end impunity, restore the rule of law, guarantee rights for all citizens and deepen democratic accountability. All these lofty ideals for which many paid the ultimate price now sound so hollow in the face of sheer disregard of a rule-based system of public management. The egregious assault on the basic tenets of a democratic society we witness in today’s Uganda make a mockery of any claim to have brought about liberation in 1986.
The criminality that pervades today’s governmental apparatus, the privatisation of public authority, the inability of state agencies to enforce something as basic as following traffic rules, the nepotism of the ruling clique, all add up to a regime of rule that is both unsettling and untenable.
If you read Ugandan newspapers or listen to radio and TV or if you directly experience the daily decay and dysfunction, one can’t help having a deep feeling of anguish. Yet the whole edifice of today’s misrule sits precariously and will unravel anytime. It can’t go on forever. Can the decay and dysfunction be remedied through some concerted reform programme or peaceful revolution? Possibly.
But we appear to have reached a point of no return making meaningful reform highly unlikely. It now sounds like ages ago when in 1999 Dr Kizza Besigye made an impassioned case for reform of the governing system for which he had been a prominent player. It wasn’t long before Besigye practically abandoned the notion of reform and spent the next two decades spearheading everything but peaceful reform! By the mid-2000, Besigye had essentially come to the conclusion that there was nothing left to reform about Museveni’s rulership. Now, that was 20 years ago! If things were that bad circa 2005, how about today when the stakes of retaining power have become higher and complicated. The ruling party and president are up against a main opposition group that is so steeped in militancy as to entertain any idea of political compromise.
The ruling group, on its part, responds to the hardliner and militant thrust of the opposition with brutality, repression and financial largesse, two sets of resources drawn from the state – force and finance. Even for optimistic Ugandans who genuinely root for dialogue and a negotiated way out of the current predicament, it would be naïve to not concede that the odds are stacked against a viable peaceful solution that can make serious reform possible. A great part of the problem is in the attitude of the ruling class.
Sloshed with power and doused in illusions of economic firewalls, the rulers are firmly convinced of their invincibility and permanent hold on power. The apparent lessons of history don’t quite mean much to these individuals in command of the full force of the state and all the material war chest that comes with exercising power without accountability.
But the march of history has no regard for money, guns or other trappings of state power however big and sophisticated. The course of nature is so random. Even the most seemingly impregnable ruling regimes or individual rulers who thought they were firmly in charge nevertheless came down in the most unforeseen of circumstances.
The spark to light up a violent revolution can be as mundane as you can find, and once set in motion, particularly in conditions where critical institutions have been eroded and a dearth of credible leaders or voices of reason, any direction is possible and the path taken can be thoroughly destructive. The masses of Ugandans who will likely drive a violent revolutionary moment as and when it is set in motion will have utterly nothing to lose burning down everything. One of the puzzles of power is how ruling groups become so arrogant as to be aloof to seeing obvious warning signals. It is not just that power corrupts, it especially blinds. The social conditions of Uganda today are patently charged and potentially explosive.
Strangely, the rulers can’t see that their long hold on state power is ripe for a potentially violent end. Rather than pursue peaceful reform, they press on thereby adding more gasoline into the ground for a bigger explosive environment. The continued glaring abuses of people’s freedoms under biting economic conditions, the blatant impunity and rule-by-the-gun, the shameless display of official corruption, nepotism and abuse of authority. All done without any sense of regret or contrition. The pile up in anger and grievance means a mere small spark will light up a firestorm.
