Benjamin Rukwengye
A couple of months ago, a 27-year-old TikToker, Ibrahim Musana, (Pressure 24/7) was arrested for insulting the Kabaka and several other Kingdom and government officials. There was a lot of ire online – justifiably – both because of the abusive language used and also because it was directed at the Kabaka.
This week, another young man, Edward Awebwa, was sentenced to 6 years in jail for insulting President Museveni and members of his family. The two cases are similar but different too. Similar because we are seeing an increase in online activism – of all kinds – without the gatekeeping that previously made it difficult for the aggrieved to fire salvos. For a long time, there was a template to activism. You needed to be able to speak (good) English, have the patronage of donors, belong to some registered organization that went by an unintelligible acronym, appear on Kampala’s talk show circuit and as often as was possible, have run-ins with the police. If you were out of this clique then your activism wouldn’t quite register.
Many things have changed in the last 2 decades. As Uganda has grown younger, traditional power centers have been neutralized. The increase in population without a commensurate growth in fortunes for young people has meant that there are, now, more angrier people than there were 20 years ago. This is mostly because the government has, in the same period, gotten even more inefficient, lethargic and bulky.
Ergo, the face of today’s activists is in their 20s, speaks English without the finesse of Missionary schools, doesn’t seek or wait for permission and picks their cause. There are, of course, exceptions – because the old powers and their agents still run things and can compromise or inconvenience your life – but the terrain has largely changed.
In that regard, Musana and Awebwa, are a legion. From whence they come, many others will. Because, like a conveyor belt, the political and economic forces that are churning them are powered by the gross inefficiencies that have become characteristic of the day’s government. Many will have gone through an education system that did everything but educate them. Without access to jobs or doing survivalist work from which they are paid a pittance, they realize how short the tether of their dreams is. They can barely meet their needs or those of the people who are supposed to rely on them. The value of their lives is paper-thin and they know it because their friends get shot for fun when they protest the state of affairs. Because their wives and mothers go for days without adequate care when they show up in hospitals and eventually die, leaving them with the burden of care.
Because when they start businesses, it is with such laughably little capital that the only guaranteed outcome is that the business will collapse. Because they have no protection from banks and loan sharks who impose gross interest rates and take whatever collateral and heirloom they might have staked.
Because they see taxes rising, only paralleled with the myth of value for money. Because they see politicians and the President’s cronies feasting and living large, driving state of the art cars, building humongous but ugly houses, and showing every so often, to tell them that they are not working hard enough and that they are responsible for their poverty.
If all they are doing is recording videos and sending out social media posts in which they send unmountable expletives towards whoever they deem to be responsible for their woes, it is hard to argue against that. Especially with the knowledge that it could be worse. That they could choose to do worse – because they know that they have nothing to lose.
The difference though is that whereas the Kabaka is not a public official who makes policy and lives off a salary drawn from the labors and sweat of taxpayers, President Museveni and a significant number of his family, the Speaker of Parliament and several others might not exactly be exempt. They work for the people who are insulting them. The same people who aren’t happy with their output. Of course, the fact that these are young people, some of whom are throwing vulgarity at their elders, is evidence of social breakdown in House Uganda. But deal with that by responding to their grievances. Arresting and handing down harsh jail sentences doesn’t create jobs, improve schools or stock hospitals.
Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds @Rukwengye
