{UAH} Pojim/Allan/Gook/WBK: Beatings and teargas show that Museveni’s the man - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Beatings-and-teargas-show-that-Museveni-s-the-man-/-/434750/2868420/-/ybtoi5/-/index.html

Beatings and teargas show that Museveni's the man

The election season for next February's vote in Uganda is on. Something strangely Ugandan is also on — the beating and teargassing of President Yoweri Museveni's rivals.

It is actually a rare feature of even the sometimes very retrogressive African politics. In other African countries, incumbents will simply ban rivals, or even throw them in jail.

In Uganda, the electoral commission and police try to tightly control the political schedule of rivals to the president. Thus if an opponent did only that which they permitted, they would not campaign or even get to the nomination.

If they then decide to defy the police, the usual happens. On every day of their campaign, they will be chased around by police, pepper sprayed, hosed with coloured foam. The country becomes one giant arena of police, and sometimes the army, scurrying after opposition politicians and their supporters, and tearing down their campaign posters virtually up to voting day.

The only campaign that gets exemption is the president's, of course.

Right now there is an embarrassing national spectacle as the police hound former Museveni ally and prime minister Amama Mbabazi, who has broken ranks and wants the big job for himself, an act viewed as treasonous.

Happening at a time when Facebook and Twitter have grown exponentially, and WhatsApp is all the rage, the images are spreading fast, and if you live outside Uganda and they keep popping up on your phone, you would think the country is sliding back into the Stone Age.

Museveni has been in power for close to 30 years now, and he is a shrewd politician. Many observers are therefore wondering why a big man who is in his last stretch, doesn't call off the dogs and allow a peaceful campaign so historians will have a more favourable view of his last years.

Because the danger is that something will go wrong in the insanity and a candidate will be killed. That could well take the country back to the bleak years of the 1970s and 1980s.

However, that is not necessarily how all Ugandans see it. The threshold for political violence in Uganda is fairly high, and many locals aren't as horrified by it all as outsiders would be.

Secondly, there is a method to the madness.

As an insightful source put it, Museveni's vote in the urban areas has largely dried up, but he is still quite popular in the rural areas where most of the votes are.

To peasants and other rural folk, power is a demonstrated thing, so seeing people like Mbabazi and other opponents teargassed and run out of their rally venues is a humiliation, one that makes them look powerless against Museveni.

It works. Unlike the elites in urban areas, fellows in the rural areas who live on the edge and don't have much power, keep a close eye on who is holding the big stick.

Thus the political violence of recent days that makes the middle class want to hide in shame, translates into votes for the man who is seen as "the jogoo," the strongman, and in some parts may actually encourage higher turnout.

So Uganda will not change power peacefully for a long time to come.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter@cobbo3

Beatings and teargas show that Museveni's the man - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Beatings-and-teargas-show-that-Museveni-s-the-man-/-/434750/2868420/-/ybtoi5/-/index.html

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