The Correct Line?

Olive Kobusingye

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Sujets

• Political Science

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse UK
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781728375946
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE CORRECT LINE?

Uganda under Museveni












Olive Kobusingye








AuthorHouse™ UK
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© 2010 Olive Kobusingye. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/20/2022

ISBN: 978-1-4520-3962-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-7594-6 (e)






Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Cover photograph by James Akena: March 2010, General President Yoweri Museveni visiting Bududa, Eastern Uganda, the site of massive landslides that buried three villages, leaving close to four hundred people dead and more than five thousand others homeless.



Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

















In memory of my younger brother, Saasi, and in honour of those Ugandans who died while fighting for fundamental change.




Acknowledgements
I express my sincere gratitude to the men and women who shared the stories of their lives with me, some at the risk of attracting unfavorable attention from the state. I am grateful to the many people who shared their views and thoughts with me through interviews and who, in so doing, helped me to crystallise my own thoughts about Uganda. I thank Sam Mugumya for research assistance, Wycliff Bakandonda for help with locating information, and Mohammed Mbabazi for access to the Uganda On-line Law Library. I am deeply indebted to Frederick Golooba-Mutebi and David Sseppuuya, whose help with the preparation of the manuscript was truly invaluable. In a very special way I acknowledge the infinite support of my family. In addition to keeping me focused on the story, my husband has been the wind beneath my wings, and he and our girls have put up with my long absences even when I was in the house.



Abbreviations
CA
Constituent Assembly
CBS
Central Broadcasting Services
CMI
Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence
COS
Chief of Staff
CPS
Central Police Station
DISO
District Internal Security Officer
DP
Democratic Party
EC
Electoral Commission
ESO
External Security Organisation
FDC
Forum for Democratic Change
IDP(s)
Internally Displaced Person(s)
ISO
Internal Security Organisation
LDU
Local Defence Unit
LRA
Lord’s Resistance Army
MP
Member of Parliament
NRA
National Resistance Army
NRM
National Resistance Movement
PGB
Presidential Guard Brigade
PPU
Presidential Protection Unit
RA
Reform Agenda
RDC
Resident District Commissioner
UPC
Uganda People’s Congress
UPDF
Uganda People’s Defence Forces
USh
Uganda shillings
UTV
Uganda Television
WBS
Wavah Broadcasting Services



Contents
Abbreviations
Foreword
Chapter 1: Picking a Leader of Somebody Else’s Choice
Chapter 2: A Troubled Past
Chapter 3: Rocking the Boat
Chapter 4: All Ugandans Are in the Movement
Chapter 5: Crisis of Identity, Crisis of Conscience
Chapter 6: Your Brother’s Keeper, Your Brother’s Captor
Chapter 7: The Referee Is a Player on One of the Teams
Chapter 8: We Have Culprits, Now Let’s Find the Crime
Chapter 9: No Safety in a Safe House
Chapter 10: Change the President, Not the Constitution
Chapter 11: Trials on the Trail
Chapter 12: How Much Does Your Vote Cost?
Chapter 13: You Are Freed in Order to Stay in Jail
Chapter 14: The Law of the Ruler
Chapter 15: The System, the System
Chapter 16: The Storyteller Is Dead
Chapter 17: No Mystery about the Gun: It Kills People
Chapter 18: We Want Our People to Afford Shoes
Chapter 19: How Did a Straight Line Become a Circle?
Annex. The Evolution and Character of the National Resistance Movement
About the Author



Preface
One afternoon in 1981, when I had been at Makerere University for only a couple of weeks, my niece Annette burst into my room at Africa Hall wailing. Her mother, Beatrice Kemigisha, had just been taken by Obote’s security operatives. A lecturer at the university, Beatrice had been picked up from her office, driven home, and roughed up while her captors ransacked the house. She was then driven away. We never saw her again. This event marked my personal introduction to the politics of struggle and terror in Uganda.
In 1986 when I was preparing to write my final exams in medicine, the National Resistance Army (NRA) stormed Kampala and took over power. The five years between those two events were characterized by terror, both distant and up close. At the height of the Luwero bush war, we often arrived at the hospital in the morning to find Red Cross trucks offloading their cargo of the injured and dying from the war zone. In the night we went to sleep to the sound of screaming from Old Mulago village, where residents were regularly robbed, raped, and harassed. I can remember very distinctly the feeling of terror that gripped us whenever we met soldiers in the valley between Makerere Hill and Mulago on our way back from the medical school. One never knew how that encounter might end. The pounding heart, the dry mouth, the sickening feeling as the stomach bottomed out and your legs nearly gave way under you. And the sense of immense relief once you walked through the gate into the campus, having survived. These are experiences that I will never forget.
Towards the end of the war, it seemed that each time we ventured out we were taking our lives into our hands – simply to do things that should have been routine, like going to school or to the shops. Any time the alarm might be sounded: ‘ Bazze! Bazze !’ ‘They’ve come! They’ve come!’ We all knew the rebel army was coming, but we also knew that they would not take over the city without the government forces putting up a fight, so everyone dreaded being caught in the wrong place in that final showdown. That day in 1986, after a long and dreadful night, morning had come. The sun was shining. The shadows vanished. Things looked very rosy indeed.
On that day over twenty years ago, Ugandans were like George Orwell’s characters in Animal Farm on the morning after they liberated themselves from the tyranny of Mr. Jones:
remembering the glorious thing that had happened they all raced out into the pasture together.… The animals rushed to the top of it and gazed round them in the clear morning light. Yes, it was theirs – everything that they could see was theirs! In the ecstasy of that thought they gambolled round and round, they hurled themselves in the air in great leaps of excitement. 1
In January 1986 there was every reason for most Ugandans to believe that the bad times were gone forever. Everyone’s aspirations were right there, well articulated in the new government’s ten-point programme. Now a quarter century later, the near unanimity of euphoria with which Ugandans celebrated the arrival of the National Resistance Army has turned to disillusionment.
This book tells the stories of some of those Ugandans whose experiences over the last two and a half decades contrast sharply with what was expected in that ‘new’ Uganda. It tells some of the stories that are unlikely to be told by the government’s salaried writers, whose only perspective of Uganda seems to be that of peace, prosperity, and galloping development. The book has its roots in the many conversations that I have had with people all over the country in markets, hospital corridors, offices, outside police stations and court rooms – people whose lives were being lived out in circumstances radically different from those depicted by the regime’s enthus