Prime
Of bars, brewing of a revolution
Philip Matogo
As history reveals, Germany’s wartime leader Adolf Hitler staged an insurrection in Munich, Germany, 1923. It happened in a beer hall and is known as the “beer hall putsch”.
Not that I agree with Hitler’s racist politics, but I do recognise that his group of followers grew from a nonentities to dominate Europe.
This domination began in a bar. Bars are hothouses of divergent thinking, perhaps that’s another reason President Museveni dislikes them.
Before the lockdown, political discourse was brewing in our bars.
As drunken heads spun with the merry-go-round of a round of drinks, bars were awash with an intoxicating eloquence. In whisky-amber sunsets, I often pulled up a barstool only to find myself within hearing of loud political denunciations.
As beery revellers failed to metabolise ethanol, they talked about Amin and Museveni. In these seemingly orphaned times, the dark past was aglow with their praise of it.
These mouthing ideologues would convince you, from their bar stools, that Amin was an innocent compared to Museveni.
Largely because Museveni’s rule is a short-leash on a potentially trigger-happy army. And so, without him, chaos could prevail.
It is this reliance on a single mortal for our national wellbeing that disturbed these beer holders. For peace in Uganda could do without Amin, but could peace survive without Museveni?
The President has jerry-built political systems around his person. So without him, they would crumble and Uganda might be buried beneath post-Museveni rubble.
As a foil to such doomsayers, bars also had a minority of rich fellows upholding the ‘status quo’. Many of them were in the government’s employ, so one might say that they uphold a ‘quid pro quo’ too. To them, everything seems fine as viewed through a rose-coloured lens.
This group extols gradualism as opposed to radicalism. They always ask, “What are your alternative policies to this regime?”
As if they don’t know that IMF and World Bank have got enough policies to go around for everyone: government and its Opposition inclusive.
So alternative policies are not necessary in a neo-colonial state such as Uganda.
This second group is filled with fake idealists.
One could say that their idealism is directly proportional to their distance from the problem. And because they are so far away from the deprivation most of us endure, there’s a chasmal disconnect between their rationality and the country’s reality.
One good thing about this group, however, is that they have hope in Museveni’s government. This, to me, is positive thinking.
I am an optimist, so I tend to lean towards this minority’s affirmative orthodoxy. For I believe that a nation cannot rise to its low expectations.
So I support this group’s high expectations.
Then, still in the bar, there’s another group which is perched on the fence.
They see the other two groups arguing and think that democracy is at play. To them, democracy is some kind of secular religion hallowed by free expression.
Certainly, Uganda has a degree of free expression. That’s how I’m able to write this column. But this free expression is illusory as it is limited to what Prof Noam Chomsky called, “the spectrum of acceptable opinion.”
By and large political debate in Uganda is limited within that spectrum. Step outside of it and you might find yourself in jail or worse.
Granted, such limits sometimes keep liberty from becoming licence. But they also ensure the tree of liberty wilts to a fig-leaf of respectability barely concealing a naked lie.
This lie states Uganda will not survive Museveni. Yet Museveni may not survive the growing dissent in Uganda. Especially, in our bars.
Mr Matogo is the managing editor of Fasihi Magazine.
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