THE UNRESTRAINED TYRANT ; Ugandans Welcomed Obote’s Appetite For Absolute Power, Stomached Amin’s Reign Of Terror And Have Now Embraced President Museveni’s Fascism

THE UNRESTRAINED TYRANTs ; Ugandans Welcomed Obote’s Appetite For Absolute Power, Stomached Amin’s Reign Of Terror And Have Now Embraced President Museveni’s Fascism

·        Ugandan opposition conspicuously silent AS President Yoweri Museveni unleashes unjustified lock-DOWN on vulnerable population.

In 1966 the then prime minister Apollo Milton Obote took over absolute powers when he managed to arrest and detain five cabinet ministers and removed president Frederick Mutesa from power. He capped it all by abolishing all kingdoms and traditional leaders in the entire country and declared a Republic.  Obote managed to accomplish this unbelievable feat without incurring a single speck of dust on him.

Apart from the mental resource he invested in this project, Obote never lost a single soldier or any resource to achieve his aims. He managed to dominate the political space without shedding a single sweat by simply, changing the constitution and cajoling the members of the hitherto dominant Democratic Party to cross to his UPC party.

By 1969 Obote was the superstar politician on the African continent who was not worried about a military coup.  Obote felt so indispensable, that even Idi Amin, the man who eventualy toppled him from power was himself not anywhere near the standard criteria expected from the coup plotter that he later became.

In his documentary shot by some French journalists in 1975 president Amin bragged that he knew that he would become army commander and eventually president of Uganda.

But reality shows that Amin was simply talking bullshit because he rose to those high positions by playing the sycophant bootlicker to Obote. His poor academic background offered him no chance at all of attaining any higher position in any worthy organization, army or otherwise.

 All he had as a claim to fame was his big size which he attained by virtue of having one kidney-which made him to grow huge all the time.   

Obote had very low opinion of Amin (his army commander) that he is quoted to have said (when told of a possible plot) that Amin was too foolish to even dream of taking over power.

 So when the improbable became the probable and eventually happened in 1971, Obote simply reasoned that the coup was the brain child of the British, coz Amin was just an illiterate buffoon who lacked the brain power to plan and execute a coup.

Obote had naturally come to view Amin as a simple foot soldier with humor as the only weapon for mobilizing troops around him. 

NOTORIOUS AMIN

But like they say, the rest is history. Amin with the help of some soldiers managed to unexpectedly kick Obote out of power. For once Ugandans had accidentally been saved from Obote’s political schemes by the comical Gen Idi Amin.

It turned out that Gen Amin himself was to be worse than Obote. Once again Ugandans watched on as Idi Amin turned the country upside down by unleashing terror on the docile Ugandans.

Although Obote was invincible, Amin turned out to be more than indomitable as he did things that no world leader has ever done to date.  Where Obote, for instance jailed the five ministers, president Amin released them , appointed them in ministerial positions and later killed them. A case in point is DP leader Ben Kiwanuka who had been jailed by Obote but was released by Amin in 1971 appointed chief justice and later killed by Amin himself IN 1972.

Amin is the only president in the world to have killed the chief justice of his own government, executed the whole archbishop of the protestant church and a host of ministers and other prominent people and remained firmly in power. This assertion can only be challenged with contrary facts and figures.

Obote’s shenanigans were turned into small jokes by Amin’s terror machine.

Once again, the whole period between 1971-79 was a time when no single Ugandan raised a finger to question AmIn’s actions. Instead Ugandans from Kigezi sub region (mbu reportedly led by a young state attorney called Amama Mbabazi) declared him life president of the republic of Uganda!

(We are still investigating this claim though)

Amin managed to silence all political and military opponents to an extent that no rebel group managed to hold a single piece of Ugandan territory from 1971 to 1979.-masqurader rebel groups like Kikosi Maluum and Fronasa can attest to this.

ACCIDENTAL END OF AMIN

Once again Ugandans were ‘accidentally’ saved from Amin’s grip from power when his forces made a reckless incursion into Tanzanian terror and provoked president Nyerere to launch an onslaught that marked the end of Amin’s reign of terror.

Once again the docile Ugandans had failed to find their way around Amin like they had failed against Obote. Specific history shows that Amin’s fall from power was more of an accident than a deliberate effort by Ugandans.

Like Mao Tsetung once said, ‘the cemetery is full of men who thought they were indispensable’, Obote and Amin are some of those men still grounded in the cemetery at the moment.

 This Obote-Amin dominance without challenge  simply projects the true image typical of Ugandans. They are docile, gullible, amiable, vulnerable and unable to resist injustice unless an accidental incident sets in to move events in their favor.

The best they can do is to either pray or curse their oppressors.

 Ugandans can be scavengers but only if the prey has been neutralized completely by an anonymous force. They can stomach Obote’s appetite for absolute power, tolerate and even entertain Amin’s reign of terror and embrace Museveni’s fascism.  

SEVOS FASCISM SETS IN

With the intolerable crimes committed by Obote and Amin on his mind, Museveni came to power in 1986 with a different strategy. He was not foolish enough to unleash a direct reign of terror in the face of Ugandans, but has managed a sustained fascist government that has left Ugandans craving for another liberation.

His 34 year reign has been characterized by clear malice, glaring tribalism, oppression, abrogation of the constitution, suppression of the fundamental rights of the masses and clear exploitation end even plunder of the national resources.

 As things stand, Uganda has quietly descended into a police state with more investment in security agencies to oversee the total suppression of dissenting voices. A lot of things have happened that have exposed Museveni’s fascist tendencies, but have gone unnoticed.

While Museveni has not killed the chief justice or the archbishop of the church of Uganda like Amin, Museveni has attacked bombed the palace of the Omusinga in Kasesse and killed more people than Obote did when he attacked Mengo palace in 1966.

Museveni has abused the constitution that was promulgated during his time in 1995, in the same way Obote abrogated the independence constitution.

Museveni brutality has been more exposed during the covid19 period when he determinedly unleashed harsh restrictions on the population even when there was no single Ugandan death to covid19.  

As most of the world is lifting restrictions imposed to contain the corona virus, the Ugandan leadership has instead extended the lock-down period to another 21 days.

There are no pretensions here as to what Museveni intends in all this. His counterpart president of Tanzania john Pombe Magufuli refused to lock-down his country by reasoning that his country cannot afford a lock-down because he has no infrastructure to hold people in self confinement without work.

And indeed in a third world country like Uganda where people are still in subsistence farming and survive day by day, instituting a lock-down is similar to or even worse than what Pol Pot did in Cambodia where an estimated two million people died of starvation , execution or disease in an attempt to impose a communism in his country..

While the western countries enjoy the luxury of a very good welfare state structure that can feed the confined people in their homes, Uganda doesn’t have that super structure.

Even the food which president Museveni promised to be supplied to just two district of Kampala and Wakiso has failed t percolate to every needy person in those respective districts.

While countries like Nigeria have been observant enough to understand their shortcomings and confined the lockdown to three states of Abuja , Lagos and Ogun state , Museveni has unleashed the lock-down to the whole country!

Meanwhile all able bodied Ugandans are holed up in their houses totally subdued with tails behind their legs as Museveni roars like a lion every fortnight wih continuous lock-down extensions.

While Wuhan, where the covid19 started and claimed thousands was opened up in April and allowed business to flow as usual, Museveni has extended the lock-down until June 2020!.

While Germany, Italy, America, Spain which has LOST thousands of people to the corona virus has opened up , Museveni whose Uganda has lost NOT single person is still insisting on the lockdown until June.

THE WAY FORWARD

Since it’s the tradition of this blogger to always propagate the way forward, the current circumstances simply dictate president Museven still has a chance to redeem himself since he still holds the reign of power.

He might be invincible, untouchable or indomitable now, but he should remember great Chinese leader’s Mao s saying that the ‘’cemetery is full of men who thought that they were indispensable’’.

The Ugandan opposition has failed to come up and raise these issues leaving the common Ugandan in absolute despair.  As stated earlier Ugandans will not rise up to remove Museveni because they don’t have those guts. Only an accidental occurrence or fate will take care of that.

The Author Fred Daka Kamwada Is A Social Activist, A Blogger , Political Analyst  And Anti-Lock-down activist

kamwadafred@gmail.com