By Norbert Mao
March 14 - 20, 2004
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Jinja was a baptism and PAFO must now be born again as a solid opposition group or at any rate a shadow political party rather than a single-issue parliamentary caucus The honorable members of PAFO boarded their vehicles and armed only with files and pens headed to Jinja. On arrival far from the usual heated political exchange, they were greeted by a drunken pro-Museveni mob armed not with arguments but sticks, stones and bottles. The next day's papers pictured PAFO boss, Mr Augustine Ruzindana and PAFO core members Mr Nandala Mafabi, Ms Salaam Musumba and Mr Abdu Katuntu beating a retreat.
Nandala sounded militant insisting that the attackers were cowardly. Musumba was militant in the picture appearing to be spewing the kind of words that normally precede blows. The mob succeeded in disrupting the meeting and humiliating PAFO. Thus PAFO became the latest organization to face the state inspired violence that Museveni has been serving to the opposition over the years. Whoever organized the mob most likely did not have an ambitious agenda beyond humiliating otherwise respected political leaders. A close look at the incident will reveal President Yoweri Museveni's fingerprints all over the ground of the Jinja Crested Crane Hotel where the fracas was orchestrated. This must have been a carefully choreographed event for which Jinja was merely a stage. First, Museveni's political system is based on an addiction to violence. Secondly he believes that he is the greatest and best Ugandan ever and that he solely embodies the national vision. All this would be fine if Museveni was a private farmer in Rwakitura. But he happens to be the president and commander-in-chief of the Uganda armed forces. So while the government and Movement operatives distance themselves from the violence and to discount the political significance of PAFO and the Movement dissidents therein, the language of intolerance that the president has adopted lately appears to be the source of inspiration by such violent mobs. Indeed as was the case with Bishop Beckett in the Murder in the Cathedral, King Henry VIII did not issue a direct order that the bishop be killed but loudly complained in the hearing of his knights about the lack of someone in his kingdom to get rid of the bishop. The knights did not need to hear more. They knew the king would approve. The bishop was slain. In the same way, the seeds of intolerance being sown by Museveni and his attempt to gag everyone in his government are an indirect invitation to mobs of the Jinja type to emerge. So far I have not heard him say anything about the incident. The incident brings to mind the series of humiliating confrontations that Dr Besigye had with state agents and Museveni's goons in 2001. In more than one way Dr Besigye had shown that he could stand up to Museveni. A soldier himself, a former NPC and accomplished intellectual, he was ready to give Museveni a thorough beating in a fair political fight. So Museveni decided to unleash the state machinery in order to rapture the veneer of respect and political halo around Besigye. The incidents are too many to recount here. The most memorable is the scuffle at Entebbe Airport when armed soldiers violently stopped Okwir Rabwoni from boarding a plane bound for a campaign trip to West Nile. I heard soldiers of the UPDF calling Besigye, a colonel who served the army with distinction and a man to whom Museveni owes his eyesight, being called an adui. This was a big disappointment to those who had reasoned that "only a soldier can manage Museveni". It showed that as far as Museveni was concerned, everything in the Movement is through him, with him and in him. To challenge him is therefore equivalent to treason. All Museveni loyalists sang a united chorus whose sole purpose was to demonize Besigye. The climax came in Rukungiri in Besigye's home district. The PPU literally occupied the town claiming that they were there to offer protection to Museveni's supporters. Many meetings organized by Besigye's supported were violently broken. Blood was spilled. The next morning the scattered leaves and blood clots on the streets bore witness to a new era in Museveni's relations with his internal opponents. The consensus crafted in the bushes of Luwero was dead. Museveni now adopted a "pay as you go" political plan co-opting whoever was willing to serve for the moment and dumping whoever was a liability. The Movement core of historical shrank to a single dot with Museveni as the one and only core. Perhaps more than anything else, this strategy of violent humiliation was intended to warn any one in the ranks of the historicals that the cost of dissent would be very high. We can trace some running thread through all this. The state became partisan. In the case of Besigye it was by commission. The state actively showed its violent hand. In the case of PAFO it was by omission. The state simply withheld its coercive hand and let anarchy reign knowing well who would be the target. I had a short discussion with a member of the Reform Agenda about the Jinja fracas. What I heard was highly telling. "This may sound callous but I wish Kategaya himself was there and had been walloped", I was told. "These are the people who in 2001 would be with us in the night purporting to support Besigye and then in the day turn against us in order to please Museveni". I don't know the truth of this but it reveals a bitterness which is not addressed will undermine efforts at political alliances. This thinking shows the anger that successive generations of groups that seek to oust Museveni have towards fence sitters. Many people in the Reform Agenda believe that if the Mushegas, Kategayas and Ruzindanas had broken ranks with Museveni in 2001 the political crisis would have deepened leading to an outright defeat of Museveni or at least forcing him to make concessions which would advance the cause of democracy. There is a saying in Luo that when you hit a snake you don't do so to teach it a lesson but to finish it off. The point is that it is in the nature of snakes to show no mercy or remorse. They never learn any lesson about decency and therefore to spare them is to offer them another chance to indulge their cruel nature. Museveni is now more dangerous than ever, so brace yourselves my countrymen. In 1996 those of us who supported the IPFC blamed the "progressives" in the Movement for not joining us. In 2001 the Reform Agenda blamed the "progressives" among the Movement historicals for not supporting Besigye. Either way, the swords have been unsheathed. Museveni has declared war and PAFO must now oblige. Jinja was a baptism and PAFO must now be born again as a solid opposition group or at any rate a shadow political party rather than a single-issue parliamentary caucus. PAFO has now lost its political virginity, albeit in a most undignified manner. It is like losing virginity to a rapist. But lamentations will not help. Underneath the scars of Jinja, PAFO will heal. PAFO now joins the ranks of those who have been in the trenches all these years. Many in PAFO have been Museveni adherents. They now say Museveni was a wolf in a sheep's skin. I say that is not true. Museveni has always been a wolf in a wolf's skin. Those who saw a sheep's skin merely allowed themselves to be deceived. To quote Museveni, those who ride tigers end up in the tiger's stomach. That was in 2002. How prophetic. And to PAFO. Welcome to the club of Movement victims. You are now of age. The author is a member of parliament for Gulu municipality |
© 2004 The Monitor Publications
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