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I will never forget that incident when I bounced into a boda boda rider watching a livestream of the recent NUP arrests in Mbarara.
He was talking angrily to himself, like a football commentator: “kino ekisajja ki mbega kya gavumenti, kikwasabukwasa baana babandi in the name of campaigns. Kati laba … kati laba… mscheww.”
That “Bobi Wine was a government detective, hoodwinking active young people into arrests in the name of campaigns.”
To be fair, Bobi Wine is no state detective, otherwise there would be no attempts on his life as happened in 2021. But the boda boda rider’s anger also ought to be understood, especially that many have been arrested.
And the NUP leadership, beside some performative displays, are terribly lukewarm in the fight for political prisoners. With Col. Kizza Besigye and Sheikh Obeid Lutale making one year of political incarceration, it still bothers me that we have failed to build a movement that prioritizes political prisoners over everything else – including presidential campaigns.
It is my sobering position that building a campaign around political prisoners will not only force Museveni’s government from arresting more, but will also deliver more tangible political results than a smooth presidential campaign.
While it might not end in the collapse of Yoweri Museveni, but it stands a chance of rattling his cage than anything else.
TREATED LIKE A FOOTNOTE
In an exchange with the NUP secretary general, comrade brother David Lewis Rubongoya during the Capital Gang show last weekend, Rubongoya said to me that halting elections to focus on prisoners is to “lose valuable [campaign] time.”
To this, I quickly chipped in asking him: “valuable time to where – to victory? Does Yoweri Museveni win because of his superior campaigns?!” I raged on.
Rubongoya further explained that even if Museveni arrested the entire entourage around the NUP presidential candidate, Robert Kyagulanyi, the candidate will not halt his presidential campaigns.
In their understanding, Rubongoya explained, Museveni’s intention is to make sure they stop campaigning – and they are determined to prove him wrong – even if he arrested everybody around their candidate.
Will they continue campaigning if he also arrested the candidate himself? I am not specifically sure why the NUP camp is convinced that superb and exhaustive campaigns will end in the defeat of Yoweri Museveni – and thus they have to out- campaign the man.
Neither do I understand their contention that Museveni is afraid of them smoothly campaigning all the way! I will say one more time, Museveni isn’t necessarily afraid of their campaigns – especially if their eyes are focused on the votes – but rather worried they might have bigger dreams beyond simply seeking victory at the polls.
To this end, he has to make sure it does not even cross their minds to be more ambitious than just focus on the small matter of looking for votes. Indeed, the arrests, especially in the manner in which they are conducted, have nothing to do with the campaigns themselves, but the electoral season. It is a season of political excitement and ambition.
Museveni’s worst fear is being put in a position where he has to massacre many young people on a mass scale so as to protect the presidency.
So, he has to endlessly intimidate them, by violently arresting them and throwing them in jail for extended periods. It is a fear machinery, not an electoral one. By last week, NUP reported that the number of fresh arrests – from folks around Bobi Wine’s team – had reached 150 persons.
Strangely, the arrested individuals are charged with offences supposedly committed many months ago, ranging from “illegal drilling” (no one really understands what this means) to flimsy traffic offences.
In all fairness, Museveni is terrorizing them as a way of sending them a message not to imagine anything outside the election
A PROPOSAL FOR STRATEGIC BOYCOTTS
Consider this: Now that the nominations were concluded – no more fake candidates could be nominated – folks in the opposition have a window to use their statuses as the only officially nominated candidates to stop their campaigns and demand that they continue their campaigns if all political prisoners were not tried and released or sentenced.
Consider this also: If Robert Kyagulanyi, Gen Mugisha Muntu, and Nandala Mafabi, and former FDC politician, Mubarak Munyagwa decided to halt their campaigns – and decide to abandon the election entirely – for their political prisoners, this would be a card Museveni never anticipated.
Even if he did, this would send the entire system into absolute pandemonium. Museveni does not want to win a contest where he is the only candidate. Then, they would turn up every single day to the courts of judicature waiting for their prisoners.
Or the central police station. Among others, they would pitch camp at the Electoral Commission and demand that the commission pronounced itself on these arrests. Demand to meet the police chief; demand to meet the Chief Justice Owiny-Dollo.
Hold daily press conferences, together, and speak with one voice. Without a doubt, the system might decide to put them under house arrest, or imprison them as well. In truth, imprisoning Kyagulanyi, Mugisha Muntu and Nandala Mafabi together is definitely more impactful than these statesmen wasting their time on the campaign trail.
Indeed, focusing on the prisoners with this level of urgency would turn the hunter into the hunted. The tough-talking president would be forced to make major concessions. But as I write this, I am fully aware this is just a dream.
I do not see folks in the opposition uniting in tactical boycott for our prisoners. Our opposition politicians – especially folks lucky to have a cult following – not only treat political prisoners as a footnote, but they have also turned their guns against each other.
It is in this context that that boda boda rider ought to be understood.
yusufkajura@gmail.com
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.
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