{UAH} The legend of Francis Zaake

The 2000-2010 decade saw a surge of poor people into politics: unemployed and sometimes unemployable university graduates, endangered advocates, broke merchants, events clowns, etc.

With very few exceptions, all of these fellows have turned out as dishonorable. This is because they came to politics poor, and politics was seen as their escape from poverty.

I locate them in the 2000-2010 decade because this period was the height of structural adjustment, and general collapse of African economies. Then came Museveni who gave these loafers a chance when he locked those with jobs out of politics with the 2005 constitutional amendments.Before I turn to Francis Zaake, one of few youngsters who joined politics with stable means of sustenance, let me spend a bit more time on the danger of poor people joining politics.

Yes, I am arguing that only those with rich legacies should govern – until large populations are lifted out of poverty. The next two paragraphs that follow are quite theoretical.

The Islamic tradition almost equated poverty to disbelief. Something like, poor people are incapable of faith. The pangs of poverty – a permanent condition of precarity – of insufficient material resources exposes the poor to indescribable stress, making religion a luxury.

So, the poor are more prone to theft, deceit, murder, and promiscuity – in pursuit of survival – in degrees that their rich counterparts may not. To this end, only the rich can afford  discipline, ethics, good behaviour, truthfulness, poetry, empathy and other values espoused by religion. [Quite diametrically opposite to Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the masses].

I can hear a reader jeering and tsk tsk that the rich are often arrogant and boisterous. Those are also poor people masquerading. Also worth noting is that the poverty discussed here is not simply a condition, which one can overcome overnight.

The type of poverty is cultures-cultivated through generations of penury; a poverty that becomes a mode of existence. This type of is extremely dangerous since even when a person improves their material conditions, they remain poor in their worldview. So, they maintain a deceptive, crude, thieving identity.

They are never straight with the truth, and are meek, and perpetually insecure. They are easily corruptible and can never stand up for what is right, simply because their lives are bereft of any ideals beyond materiality. When these poor land in things, they accumulate rather primitively.

Francis Zaake: In 2018, The Observer's Baker Batte Lule sat down this youthful MP for an interview. Among other things, a youthful exuberance bordering on recklessness had brought Zaake plenty of fame. Especially during the Togikwatako campaign, Zaake put up a spirited fight in parliament, heckling and pushing as Museveni's surrogates pushed through this blighted amendment on day one.

On day two, Zaake's name was among those MPs suspended. We recall that soon after the names of the suspended MPs had been read, Museveni's elite protection unit (SFC) entered parliament, beating many of them to pulp as they shoved and pushed them out of the house.

But as soon as they entered, Baker Batte narrates, "Zaake and friends threw chairs, microphones, jumped onto tables with their attackers in hot pursuit. When nothing was left, Zaake removed his belt and shoes, throwing them at his attackers." Like his gango, Bobi Wine, Zaake's fame grew by leaps and bounds.

Not all young men act like this. Even at Makerere University, it is common to find children from poor homes curled up in their dormitories during protests while those of rich parents run the streets. Zaake was not simply acting out of youthful recklessness but, rather, pedigree.

Like Kiiza Besigye, Stella Nyanzi and Mugisha Muntu, children from rich parents have an acute sense of justice, which easily translates into fierce action. Simply because they have rich pedigrees. Baker Batte tells us that the young Zaake was "director in all his family's businesses, his savings account, [by senior two]...already had Shs 105m."

He would go on to open a thriving business, "a general merchandise wholesale shop in Mityana." The story continues that "by the time he was in S4, he had bought his first car, a Toyota Landcruiser Prado."

Now we know that some of our poverty-stricken politicians have bought their first cars from parliament monies, and have terribly weak souls – or no souls at all.

This young legislator while being hosted on one celebrity prayer show on one of Uganda's TVs, openly pleaded to God to help Uganda by killing Museveni.

I learnt that during the deftly hushed passing of the Shs 304bn Covid-19 supplement in parliament, Zaake almost went to blows with some gluttonous NRM legislator.

This boldness is not typical of kids from poor backgrounds. Wealth has a way of instilling a straightforwardness which borders on recklessness. Like Stella Nyanzi, a boldness born of rich pedigree is Zaake's crime.

If there is anything we can learn from the targeted arrest and torture of this youthful legislator during this Covid-19 period, it is that the pandemic has, ironically, offered a unique moment for incumbents to harness new powers. They will not only use it to settle old scores, but also open new frontiers of staying in power.

The author is a PhD fellow at Makerere Institute of Social Research.

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"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"

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