{UAH} The NRM is a cheat, and a wife beater

The NRM is a cheat, and a wife beater

Sunday August 30 2020

 

In Summary

• If, as the newspaper columnist puts it, corruption is like cheating on a spouse and is a lesser evil than intolerance, which he likens to wife-beating (forgetting that cheating can bring Aids and death as agonising as wife-beating), clearly, the NRM carries both afflictions in its very veins.

By Alan Tacca

On August 2, I read something in this newspaper that showed how the ruling NRM is close to becoming indefensible. The writer, Kaboggoza Kibudde, was not attacking the party, but he could only plead for Museveni's NRM by guiding readers/voters to choose between two deadly evils: gross corruption and gross intolerance.

To appear 'balanced', Kibudde tactfully admitted that Mr Museveni's NRM rule would remain incurably corrupt. Then he allocated the second evil, intolerance, to Bobi Wine, citing the aggressive behaviour of People Power supporters, and their tendency to insult critics and "innocent people like Zari, who are merely asking for clarification".

Well, I don't know Zari, or his/her motives. One can ask for 'clarification' in a variety of tones, with different aims. Some tones seek plain understanding. Others may send rhetorically offensive signals.

I have said "allocated". Why, because the sin of intolerance and insulting political opponents by Museveni's people is documented on acres of newsprint and miles of broadcast recordings. At the more refined intellectual level, Museveni had (has?) the illustrious John Nagenda; at the gutter level, he has (had?) the tireless warrior, Tamale Mirundi. None of Bobi Wine's recruits – definitely not spokesman Joel Senyonyi – even qualifies to tie the shoelaces of those champions.

As for the principals themselves, I cannot see Bobi Wine touching the record of the creator of images like 'swine' for past leaders, 'rats', 'pigs', 'idiots' and 'weevils' for people who do things President Museveni does not like.

When it comes to raw intolerance, you have to ask people like Dr Besigye, Nambooze, Zaake, Lukwago, Bobi Wine, the people of Arua and the ghosts of many dead, including Bobi Wine's driver and other People Power supporters, how deep the wounds of NRM savagery can be.

Also Readp

people Power crowds behave like most human political crowds behave: with restricted rationality and generalised unidirectional emotional energy; not like a newspaper columnist or broadcast studio propagandist who weighs his words carefully, ensuring that the intended gloss – or damage – will be delivered.

In Paris, New York, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, London, Khartoum or Mbarara, a political crowd that is nominally peaceful, and pursuing a noble cause, can suddenly become unruly and explode into destructive violence, burning cars and buildings indiscriminately, injuring people who may include its sympathisers.

Way back in 1995/6, after fighting a destructive guerrilla war (ostensibly to restore true democracy) and ruling for 10 years, and heading to the very first post-Bush War general election, President Museveni did not restrain his campaign crowds from insulting and hounding presidential candidate Paul Ssemogerere out of western Uganda.

Today, putting crowds aside, senior functionaries and enforcers of NRM authoritarianism systematically disrupt and block Opposition political activities. Opposition parties sometimes find their branch offices closed and their landlords intimidated.

If, as the newspaper columnist puts it, corruption is like cheating on a spouse and is a lesser evil than intolerance, which he likens to wife-beating (forgetting that cheating can bring Aids and death as agonising as wife-beating), clearly, the NRM carries both afflictions in its very veins.

As we head into 2021, the NRM may decide to criminalise Bobi Wine as an 'insurgent' the way Obote's UPC described Museveni as a 'bandit', but it would be horrendously dishonest to ignore the fact that the People Power struggle does not yet have an NRM scalp lying in a graveyard, while Museveni's armed resistance despatched many UPC functionaries, State security personnel and thousands of unknown innocent 'Zaris' to their ash-and-dust destinations before the NRA seized power in 1986.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
altaccaone@gmail.com

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