Author: Moses Khisa. PHOTO/FILE
It’s a fairly standard trope to blame others, especially foreigners, for one’s flaws and failings. In Uganda, President Museveni has made it a pet subject to deflect attention away from internal crises by cavalierly evoking the spectre of foreign forces working through local actors to cause mischief and mayhem.
Predictably, the President recently attributed the latest street protest marches against government corruption to external dark forces out to undermine Uganda’s supposed march to the promised land of progress.
Many of us Ugandans would be happy to believe that our nation is on the right course and that significant strides are underway for a better country.
Yet, quite to the contrary, the hordes of young Ugandans trapped in hopelessness and who are humiliated by runaway impoverishment are speaking to the realities we face when they venture out to voice their grievances through civic protests. They do not need any foreign forces to fuel their anger or provide the tools and repertoires for protest.
If you have been around long enough, there is a very fixed and never changing script used to justify denying Ugandans the right to assemble and protest – it is often a laughable argument that ‘security’ has intelligence showing that those intending to protest have nefarious plans of causing insecurity and chaos.
But precisely because some individuals or groups with evil plans could hijack an otherwise well-intentioned civic activity of protest is the reason of existence for police and other security agencies; it is their duty to maintain the peace and assure the security of protesters and the wider public. This is such a scripted argument, one that has be rehashed and repeated as to sound empty, thus using the security claim is as dubious and unconvincing as anything.
Equally predictable and hollow is the argument about foreign actors that are intent on using protesters to either cause instability or ultimately bring about regime change. It is predictable because it has become a standard line in the script, hollow because the very regime and group of rulers, primarily the chief at the top, hoisting the scarecrow of foreign forces are themselves the leading agents of foreign, imperial interests not just in Uganda but Africa as a whole.
No African ruler of our times has excellently worked in the service of foreign commercial and profit interests more than President Museveni, just as he has been the foremost agent of Euromerican security and geostrategic pursuits in the region.
In denouncing otherwise legitimate and totally warranted citizens’ protests against the blatant corruption of his rulership, President Museveni promised that the State will adduce evidence in court to pin protestors as foreign agents. We wait for that though highly unlikely. This is also a government with a proven track-record of fabricating court evidence and making empty pronouncements that are never backed up.
It is also a government whose state intelligence is notorious for making up stories that can’t stand the slightest scrutiny in a court of law.
Dear reader, not too long ago I was blown away by a supposed ‘intelligence report’ that made the rounds via email and was the subject of a radio talk-show involving a prominent regime operative who masquerades as a journalist.
When I read the so called ‘intelligence report’, I laughed hard! Listen to this. It had your columnist, along with a group of other Ugandan scholars and some civil society actors ostensibly working with the US government through its ambassador in Kampala with the ultimate goal of destabilising the country and causing regime change.
It was such an amateurish piece of crap, and the fact that it was discussed on a radio show was enough evidence of its bogusness! But such reports come from the same intelligence apparatus the president relies on to form his public utterances scoffing at foreign forces supposedly meddling in the affairs of Uganda.
At any rate, the rulers can conjure up some imaginary foreign forces and throw the shiny objects that deflect from the concrete problems we face, unfortunately though, it is only a matter of time. The desperation we see today will inevitably build up into a crescendo of the type that empty rhetoric about foreign meddling will do little to stop.
While the rulers can hide their proverbial heads in the sand, the objective material conditions are hard to sweep aside or whitewash. Political change is necessarily an internal socioeconomic dynamic. Even overt foreign intervention can only succeed where there is enough internal grievance and discontent. Where internal conditions make possible outright rejection of foreign intervention, it doesn’t matter how much might and muscle is brought to bear: it spectacularly fails.
The simply message for Mr Museveni and his government is to just run an efficient and corrupt-free public sector that serves the needs and the good of the public. Don’t operate a nepotistic and neopatrimonial regime that disregards merit and fairness, where the economy works for a tiny minority while the majority can’t get along in any meaningful way; to do so is to inevitably invite civil discontent that fuels protest marches.
