Kayihura's Police was a captive force

CROOKED POLICE

Now that tables are turning on Gen Kale Kayihura, I  see social media posts praising the notorious Kayihura's Police as professional. Such considerations are for the deluded, and perhaps those strange to professionalism, them being crooks or duplicitous. 

The circumstances under which Gen. Kale Kayihura operates are understandably crafty and murky – a crooked political and legal environment. The laws of a country are the laws enacted by the ruling class, to secure their social, economic and political interests; and to maintain status quo - dominance.

The Police's performance under such a regime is defined by the nature of the political actors in power, and their inherent interests. When the regime is crooked and repressive, the Police will also enforce their crooked and repressive laws.

The Police is an instrument of power.

To evaluate the performance of the Kayihura's Police as professional or unprofessional, one needs to analyse the crookedness of political actors in power. In these lights, the Police has been quite predictable, and a reflection of the dishonesty of the dominant political actors.

This force was effective in assuming the political responsibility of protecting the Museveni regime in power. The Police even revised the purpose of its founding under the advent of colonialism. That is, to protect the colonial establishment and its imperial agenda.

This Police is exceptional in its' mission of protecting the Museveni establishment and Museveni's "imperial" agenda.

Gen. Kale Kayihura is member of the political and ruling class. He has to share the spoils of their time by serving a function, however diabolical it is to the people's aspirations. In that line, the Police, as political tool is overly militarised, politicised, and effectively repressive.

Since the regime in power is also crooked, it enacts laws that undermines fundamental liberties - the enjoyment of unalienable rights. The Police must act to constrain Ugandans that way, by controlling all avenues of mobility – freezing Ugandans into their throats and spots. Duct-taped and immobilised.

Ugandans cannot talk, associate or move freely without Police sanctions.

Our phones are tapped, private conversations are recorded, media outlets are switched off air the moment its panellists disagree with status quo, persons are jailed for airing anti-establishment views.

When your rights to associate must be permitted by Police, then you are in police custody – jail. The Police is an effective instrument of repression in this manner.

In essence, any semblance of a civil force withered with the departure of Gen. Wamala. Gen Kayihura brooded a militant political police in the realms of Nazi's Gestapo.

It is a little wonder that the Inspector General of the Police acts as the de facto Political Commissar of the ruling Party. This Police is a captive force, serving a rogue regime.

Few proposals for immediate revamp, post-Musevenism.

First, I propose that the Police recruitment and administration be decentralised such that each district administers its own Police department, suitable to its size and local purposes.

Second, the functionality of continued quality assurance, integrity and training be left to a small highly specialised National Police at a Directorate, or the National Police Bureau, under a suitable Ministry. In addition, this crème de la crème force should handle intelligence and superintends over investigations of complex cases as well as coordination or regional and international policing matters.

Third, each district or amalgamated policing region should be mandated to promote its exemplary officers to the highest possible ranking of IGP, so that there shall be National Conferences of IGPs that discusses, examines, and harmonises crime reduction and other policing matters.

Under this Museveni regime, the political circumstances that the Police and other security organs must operate, discourages professionalism. There is nothing professional in undermining the constitution, extorting,exploiting or torturing Ugandans.

To set the police free, we must first remove this regime.

End.

Mwenda, reading too much junk does not make one intelligent

A Post Card to a Fool

Many right thinking Ugandans will agree that Andrew Mwenda’s condescending and patronising attitude towards Ugandans should end, henceforth.

Mr. Mwenda must not be left to his own vices; else his intoxicating self-deception will most likely inflict upon him an irreparable damage, and also may corrupt the minds of the gullible.  

For years, we have allowed Mwenda to lurk in his foolishness unchallenged. That free public space Mwenda enjoys, accustomed the person of Mwenda to his noises.  The Mwenda we have now is close to a fraudster or a desperado- lunatic.

Not that anyone is bothered with Mwenda's slurs and condescension towards the opposition. What is more pressing is that Mwenda needs an urgent rescuing from himself, from his delirium to re-orienting to Uganda's common man realities. We would hope that if Mwenda becomes acquainted with such common  truths, he may shut the dink up!

Interestingly, intelligent people are measured, sensitive, self-assured, toned-in, and never starved of public attention to announce themselves like Mwenda. Their deeds and dispositions speak aloud.  

Intelligentsia do not permit shouting when making a point in a civil conversation, nor do they hide in cooked-up statistics to score cheap points. Intelligent people stand out as genuinely interested in public discourses – and they appear gathered and intelligent from the onset.

In that light, Mwenda appears as an intellectual fraud, imbued simply with traits of intellectual obesity - someone over fed on a monotone of fake news, textbooks, and statehouse revisions. This "super-intelligence" posturing without common sense affirms that reading too much does not translate into intelligence.

In reality, Mr.Tamale Mirundi - his humanly limitations notwithstanding - deserves larger public space that Mwenda. Personally, I would rather suffer listening to Nadduli or Kasirye Ggwanga than tolerate Mwenda’s condescension and utter posturing that lacks depth, character, and style.

 Uganda is not short of intelligentsia, who, when given the right space and time, would expose Mwenda’s mediocrity, consigning him to the ranks of carpetbaggers or head boy of court jesters.  

Ultimately, insulting the intelligence of the entire nation is more than we should permit. People who read books written in western capitals do not give up their homegrown mannerism and wisdom. No matter how read one is, if you cannot relate that knowledge with wisdom and common sense, then you become a mere effigy - symbol of extant enlightenment, an alien obscurantist. It leaves you erudite but unrefined, aloof and foolish all the way.

When colonialists came to Africa, they rode on the backs of Christian missionaries to lay claim to vast lands of Africa; upon their capture of territories, these colonialists abused and exploited Africans in all manners possible. When Museveni came to power, he reproduced the same colonial modes of operations complete with colonial laws and a steady rise of the born-again Christian.

The sum effect of these religious organizations served to soften the cruelty of the repressive regimes.

However, the use of rogue scholars enabled stereotyping of Africans that lessened their human value as uncivilized, savages, unbaptized etc, in light of European civilization at the time. That kind of rogue intellectualism gave relevance, and justified colonial rule. In modern parlance, Mwenda is the equivalent of those rogue colonial scholars. His paid mission is to shape the structures that would regenerate relevance, and justify Museveni’s life presidency project.

However, quasi-professional obscurantist like Mwenda aggravates the dichotomy that already exists between a Uganda molded in the realms of “NRM truths” or untruths, and that organic truth, which emerges out of every day struggles of the common man.

The NRM’s duplicitous narratives of having restored peace in Uganda, championed democracy, restored economy stability leading to a middle income status; that corruption is good for the economy, and so forth, falls flat on its face when carefully scrutinized from the common man's standpoint -hogwash! The NRM’s truth exists in the shadows of every day truth of trials and tribulation of profoundly exploited, disempowered, and impoverished Ugandans.

When Mwenda tries to stupefy the nation, that a continued Museveni dictatorship is enviable and inevitable after three decades, you frown given their agenda to grab our land. Certainly, reading too much does not equate to being intelligent, does it?

 The deception that power belongs to Ugandans, and that these disempowered people can use their power as they so wish, appeals mainly to deluded minds. How would one console themselves with such nuisances, given the overly militarised, policed, and constrained socio-political spaces?

In sum, the conservatives who have ignored Mwenda, have done him a disservice. Mwenda needs constant reminding that his voice has reached a saturation point far beyond a threshold. No one takes him seriously anymore - not even himself.  Mwenda also exemplifies a fact that reading too much anecdotal materials does not make anyone intelligent. Instead, it stupefies. Mwenda is such a captive, and a man deeply ensconced in a vicious midlife crisis. Let Mwenda deal with his personal inadequacies without projecting it on others – let him suffer alone with his stupefying intellectual obesity.

The End.