UGANDA: Could we even report regime’s impunity to God?

IMPUNITY 

In recent weeks, a special group of so-called powerful people have emerged in Uganda who appear intoxicated with power that they no longer fear God. A regime where its leaders do not fear God is surely a scary one because the Constitution which should constrain them is far below God!

 "Impunity" implies unequal treatment of certain individuals in society, who become exempted from punishment, and/or free of the injurious consequences of their actions.

Recently, we saw Deputy Attorney General, Rukutana, in broad day light, running his mouth against the authority of the Chairperson of the Lands Commission. Rukutana even dared God in his verbal utterances. Few days later, we saw the chilling video of Gen Matayo Kyaligonza, nearly strangling a female traffic police officer on duty. Not long from these events, Gen Kasirye Gwanga shot a car tire belonging to a celebrity aligned to Museveni.

We have Police officers, who, out of over zealousness while on duty, have tortured, maimed, killed, humiliated and abused their power and code of conduct. The video of armed men in civilian clothes clobbering a DP/People power activist on the streets of Kampala, and recently in Jinja remains fresh in our minds. The impunity arises from the fact that the culprits, far from facing punishment, are treated as heroes and recycled within ranks. These culprits have overtime, obtained a power status far beyond that of law enforcement and even of God! They are the judge, the jury and the executioner.

Just think about how many horrendous things happen to Ugandans. Have you ever imagined who are held accountable for these atrocities? Who are behind these acts of torture, killing, land grabs, demolishing buildings, vicious attacks on our domestic and game animals, rape of our women and sacrificing our children, neglect of hospitals, corruption, et cetra?

Impunity of this magnitude is usually the mid-section signal of failing regimes. The pervasive impunity also exists within every department and branch of government, such as Parliament.

Take for instance, the recently released COSASE report and the hype about the committee’s irreplaceable “star” performers! COSASE report became an everyday heartbreaking outcome of Parliament, itself an incubator of impunity.

During the COSASE probe of Bank of Uganda officials to establish circumstances of closures (liquidation) of several commercial banks spanning over two decades, few patterns emerged.

The first clear one was that certain privileged individuals, acting as power brokers with the state, conspired to rob these banks of major assets and shares. Second, traces of hidden hands – politics and informal practices – flaunted banking rules as major decisions were made in bars and bedrooms instead of the boardroom. Third, key managers within Bank of Uganda colluded with third parties to subvert laws and due processes, including compromising evidence during the probe.

COSASE seemed blinded to these criminalities to recommend punitive and cost-recovery actions against these individuals. By ignoring these culprits, Parliament as government, has created an environment for impunity to fetter.

The COSASE report itself is a revelation of impunity, and the Committee as a institutional legitimating mechanism of impunity!

That dastardly report affirms that whatever happens within this regime is designed to reinforce our collective sense of powerlessness - as a subdued people. Parliament thus, situated itself as a legitimizing institution of hegemonic impunity.

The COSASE authors dishonored themselves with their insensitivity to the fate of people who lost their livelihoods through the impunity of commercial bank closures. Those whose fortunes grew from the rot in the banking sector, will uphold Hon. Kantuntu-led COSASE as their gods!

On their part, COSASE can defend their report as bounded by term of reference.

Damn right! For all that the taxpayers spend financing Probe Committees and Commission of inquiries, so little concrete outcomes materialize.

So, who gives a damn if not Parliament? We couldn’t report these fellows even to God. Some may strangle or shoot God. Right?

Mr. Komakech is a Ugandan Social Critic. Can contact via mordust_26@yahoo.ca

Kiwanda’s trial-and-error tourism promotion demeans women.

DEMEANING TOURISM

Tourism Minister, Godfrey Kiwanda is in the media not for tourism that he should promote, rather, for his demeaning style of promoting tourism which commodifies and objectifies women – or, to be specific, curvy women.

There is a gross miscalculation in this whole tourism promotion project. The NRM regime seems to have adopted a trial-and-error modus operandi in doing business.  This partly explains the high frequency of botched up business deals with contractors and investors. Trial-and-error seem to be the standard operating procedure of this regime for transacting business.

However, we must also note that the general attitude of any government official in doing business is driven by the desire to exploit - strike fake deals, fake interventions, and make fake decisions to secure kickbacks, bribes, and political favours for personal aggrandizement.

Hon. Kiwanda’s dilemma, therefore, cannot be delinked from the general social and political environment in which he operates. The Museveni regime survives on an elaborate structure of exploitation entrenched through a mesh of greedy, well situated and protected cadreship. Hon. Godfrey Kiwanda may not be an ignorant person to fail to understand basic concepts of commodification and objectification of women that have ignited public outrage. 

When you commercialize women’s bodies, in a country where Ethics Minister has outlawed tight clothing including miniskirts, then you are being contradictory, and least, condescending – borderline lawbreaking. To expose curves, women must wear tight dresses, which could land them in jail for erotic-raising body manifestation, as per Lokodo’s Law.

Hon. Kiwanda’s belligerence and outlandish mannerism may not reflect an innate inability to comprehend the complexities of modern tourism. His dilemma comes from his rational function within the elaborate structure of regime’s exploitation machinery – to create avenues for further exploitation. This time, the avenue happens to be the curvy bodies of our women, most of whom appeared to have motherhood fats.

While the curvy pageantry serves another purpose, its fails miserably to promote tourism.  The obsession with women’s bodies is one such late infatuation that the corrupted NRM officials wish to cash in on.  The danger in a tourism promotion triggered by perversion on one end and greed for exploitation on the other, may extend to the display of curvaceous trunk-like limbs of certain breed of privileged women, justified that they appear below the rims of the decency skirt; the gluteal endowments of our women and, the display of small and largely neglected Albino, Batwa or nodding disease children of Northern Uganda for tourism attraction. Tourism is the source object for exploitation, and anything they can land on. 

I read Mr. Museveni’s defence of Hon. Kiwanda’s inexcusably lascivious curvy pageantry. It reveals the source of this perversion driven greed, and a sense that Museveni has lost control in this industry. The perils of leaders who over stay in power is that they need to be replenished with modern logic, theories and emerging trends in modern tourism – what motivates and attracts tourism world-over, and how do successful tourism destinations constantly reinvent, sustainably?

Museveni should have known that beauty pageantry is an industrial complex sustainable on its own and independent of tourism. Those skinny women serve particular interests in a complex sex and perversion industry well entrenched in the European and North American capitalism.

In sum, tourism in Uganda should focus on valuing what we have and can create or produce. For instance, our investment in tourism has not expanded beyond the source of the Nile, few national parks and the Equator. We are not investing and modernizing our natural and national endowments – our cultures, history, institutions, environment, peoples, and creative imaginations. 

The beauty and value of our women matters in as far as their achievements as equals in society, in their role of promoting those elements for a vibrant tourism industry - not their curvy bodies. This trial-and-error modus operandi demeans women and cheats society of decency.

END