Philip Matogo
During the week, Monitor reported that the Internal Affairs minister, Maj Gen Kahinda Otafiire, without referring to any government official, took a swipe at those in Uganda using public offices to enrich themselves, saying they didn’t go to the bush to come and steal public resources. He then challenged the youth in Uganda to “support those of us who stand up and say ‘no’”.
Gen Otafiire’s utterance recalls the animal fable of The Scorpion and the Frog, which teaches that vicious people cannot resist hurting others even when it is not in their own interests.
This fable, which seemingly emerged in Russia in the early 20th Century, goes like this:
A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river.
The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both.
The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: “I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s my character.”
Wikipedia might as well double as WikiLeaks in the way it reveals what is going on in our country.
To be clear, not a single senior National Resistance Movement (NRM) member, I think, has it in them to support any change in how corruption runs this country.
Any of them who claim to want to stand up and say no are just playing the scorpion to the long suffering Ugandan’s frog.
This time, however, they will not sting us. Instead, they plan to come with a sting in their own tail to end any Opposition to their corrupt ways.
Of course, like the scorpion, they appear contrite and genuine. But the character of any revolutionary comes with subterfuge and sabotage.
Thus, they will use the Leninist dictum which states: “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.”
Clearly, then, Otafiire’s call to arms is just another “NRM Project” to subvert the forces of change.
Lenin, by the way, learnt from the best.
In Robert Service’s brilliant book on Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov “Lenin”, he writes how the Russian government of Tsar Nicholas II Romanov secretly facilitated Lenin.
The Romanovs, through their secret police The Okhrana, thought Lenin would never ascend to power.
Along with that, they realised he was a “splitter”, someone who nobody in the opposition could work with.
Therefore, secretly helping him, they believed, would ultimately destroy the opposition to the Tsarist monarchy. How wrong they were.
In January 1917, Tsar Nicholas II seemed firmly in the saddle. He largely ignored the festering call for change in the country. At this time, Lenin lived in exile.
By October, revolution had reversed their roles, leaving the former tsar a prisoner and Lenin holding all the power.
In the end, Lenin’s Bolsheviks snuffed out the whole royal family…including the royal dog.
So even if the NRM battles corruption while floating like a butterfly and stinging like a scorpion, the clamour for change has grown far too big for NRM to contain.
Indeed, this clamorous uproar is far bigger than any of us perceive, in the same way the revolution in Russia was never about Lenin per se.
So NRM must take into consideration societal forces born of sheer fatigue with their overstaying in power.
Mr Philip Matogo is a professional copywriter
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