We Have Seen the Images; They Look Obscene From Every Angle

Bernard Tabaire

30 April 2011

column

Dr Kizza Besigye has run for President three times. Quite obviously, he wants the job that bad. He has run all those times against the same man – Yoweri Museveni, the same one who was once Dr Besigye’s patient and boss. The boss aspect is the more important.

When some bosses are challenged, they lash out instead of arguing their case. So it is that when Dr Besigye wrote his famous critique of the Movement and its leadership in 1999, he was answered with threats of a court martial trial.

It appears though that penning a critique of your government as a serving army officer can be forgiven. Not so seeking to take your (former) boss’ job. For having the temerity to repeatedly challenge President Museveni, Dr Besigye committed a cardinal sin for which he will not be forgiven. He will be harassed. He will be brutalised. He will be jailed. He will be humiliated. Paternalism and autocracy make for a lousy mix.

Even after all these years of seeing how horrendously the regime’s opponents, including Dr Besigye, have been treated, Thursday’s images of the arrest of the FDC leader were still hard to take in. Just when you thought you had seen it all – that no security service can treat anyone, let alone the leader of the largest opposition party with such utter contempt in public – things happen and you realise you had not seen it all in the first place. You have to blink again. Just to be sure.

President Museveni has always argued that he ended state-inspired violence. But when the security services of the State that he runs unleash hundreds of armed men, some uniformed some not, unleash dogs, pepper spray, and a sundry other gadgets to arrest one unarmed man, moreover one of whose hands is in a plaster, you have to wonder what happened to the presidential claim.

One night during the September 2009 riots, I watched as Mr Kalundi Serumaga was kidnapped and bundled into a waiting car in front of Spear House in Kampala following a TV talkshow. I looked on helplessly as the coercive yet unlimited power of the State sprung out of the dark street corner to grab its prey. Now, those indefatigable security agents do not even wait for the night. Dr Besigye is receiving his State treatment in daytime, just so the message goes out plainly.

The level of arrogance on display is as impressive as it is sickening. It is ultimately absurd. Besides, the actions of the security services we are seeing debase them. They diminish the country.

Dr Besigye says he is walking to work to protest the rising cost of living. The government, led by President Museveni, argues that walking will not resolve the problem (that maybe suggests that running is better). That Dr Besgye’s main aim is to oust the government through “unconstitutional means” having failed to rally the people to protest the February 18 presidential elections that the retired army Colonel lost.

Let us say the government’s argument is valid.

First, no one disputes the fact that inflation is causing hardship for many. Second, it is legitimate for the government’s opponents to take maximum advantage of the situation for political gain. If the government did not want the inconvenience of protests, it should not have allowed prices to rise irrespective of the causes.

To prevent the opposition from exploiting the situation is to deny the essence of politics. You cannot have political pluralism and behave as if you are the only political player around, moreover an infallible one. That, however, is the attitude the government is showing Ugandans.

Which explains the out-and-out disproportionate use of force against the walk-to-work protesters. The government has decided to use force to answer economic and political questions. The aim is to cow everyone into submission, to kill off this protest thing. The thing, however, may not die. It may go into a coma, but it may live on.

Why? An toddler is killed, a young man gets a bullet lodged into his head, a teenage expectant mother is shot and injured, a leader of the opposition is openly brutalised. These are enough images to begin to create a single contiguous picture, a common memory, a common reference point. That point may just galvanise a people.

Meantime, the beauty of the world today is that the many, many cameras get to capture brutality as it happens, so we get to look at the faces of those doing the brutal acts because some do not even bother with concealment. Someday, Uganda will be thankful for that.

Mr Tabaire is a media trainer and consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence.

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