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I did not plan this at all but I realised while reaching the gates of Luzira Maximum Prison that I was going to meet Col. Dr Kizza Besigye in the week of a general election.
I have walked past him before, but this would be the very first time I would be saying hello and having a direct conversation with him. I have said and written so much about this eminent Uganda.
The Observer newspaper has given me the opportunity to make so much noise about many things, and a bit of me felt Dr Besigye had read some of my angry ramblings. Then NUP’s Eddie Mutwe allayed my fears when he told me about a discussion, he had overheard where Dr Kizza Besigye and his comrade, Hajji Obed Lutale discussed my media appearance.
Before meeting Dr Kizza Besigye and Hajj Lutale, I had asked to say hello to brother Alex Waiswa Mufumbiro. You cannot be a fan of Hon. Francis Zaake without appreciating Waiswa Mufumbiro’s energy and activism.
It was surreal. Besigye came to the booth slightly frail, but resolute. He was first to speak telling me it was “a pleasant surprise,” I had checked on them, and they had thought I was out of the country before they watched me on TV a couple of nights before.
It was all beautiful knowing this worthy Ugandan followed this scrawny columnist. When I said to Dr Besigye that I was meeting him for the first time, he gave that trademark Besigye mirthless laughter, clutched the iron bars separating us, and noted, “and look at the circumstances of our first meeting, with these bars between us.”
He then later added, “but it is all one big prison, inside or outside, it is just the circumstances that are different.”
It was Kizza Besigye being Kizza Besigye reminding us over our collective capture. As I have argued plenty of times, this man, without holding a single office in the country, he has held Uganda together.
He had the option to try the violent course when he enjoyed a genuine cult following in the period between 2001-2016 when he last stood for president. Then, he was younger and more ebullient.
But he didn’t choose violence. I still think he would have lost had he chosen the direction of armed rebellion. But here is the catch: Uganda would never be the same. Violent rebellion does not leave the country the way it found it.
I should admit, dear reader, I was among those who endlessly wondered why Col. Besigye, and Gen. Mugisha Muntu – men with military background – never considered the direction of armed rebellion.
Perhaps it was because of their military background that they had sworn not to return to violence. Anyways, with hindsight, it makes more sense now that the ruins we have painfully endured under Gen. Museveni, pale in comparison of what war can bring.
Sadly, it will not be Dr Kizza Besigye nor will it be Bobi Wine (even if he called for protests, which are protected within the constitution) to dismantle the bubble that Museveni and co- conspirators appear to enjoy.
To his credit, Gen. Museveni has successfully emasculated the opposition to the point that it presents no credible challenge to his hold onto power. But unbeknownst to him and co., Yoweri Museveni is his own opposition.
He is his own enemy. The devil is inside the state palace. Allowing his most selfish instincts to win and hold onto power when he is so exhausted and tired has instead created space for cartels of thieves working inside his own house to exploit the vacuum he has ironically created by his hold onto power.
To this end, we are looking at an explosion from the inside when internal wrangling and pushing and shoving reaches its peak. Dear reader our prisons are full. Foucault readers know that prisons are a form of government.
The claim that prisons were built to deal with crime has been exposed in a great deal of scholarship. Prisons are an extension of the protections that capitalism enjoys, but also a tool of power – a technology of government from the colonial period to the present.
For its inmates and their loved ones, prison is exhausting and humiliating on either side. Talking to your wife, your sister, you child through a telephone and a glass is unimaginably painful.
Despite being clearly tired from being locked up, Dr Besigye looked upbeat, and sharp as usual. He asked me about my wranglings with Makerere University (he’s been following), and we both laughed at how this once glorious university as an occupied space like everything else in Uganda.
We laughed so hard about Justice Baguma, the man presiding over their case, and the airs this Justice exudes like he actually owned Uganda. We spoke about Justice Owiny-Dollo retirement and laughed out loud when we mutually agreed that Uganda might go for a long time without a substantive Chief Justice as happened with Bank of Uganda, which went for over two years without a governor.
“Do they even care that his retirement is this week?” Like his co-accused, Hajji Obed Lutale was in equally stronger spirits. He told me about the prison warder of the 1979 who were conspiring to kill his father, Sheikh Obed Kamulegeya, and the plot failed because the Tanzanian forces reached Kampala the day it had to be executed.
Years later, he met his father’s then all-powerful prison warder later in Sudan living homeless. Power is transient. We spoke about our constituency as Muslims, and reminded ourselves about the words of Sheikh Nuhu Muzaata Batte, about how rudderless and almost orphaned the Muslim community seems to have become.
The interesting bit is that today’s prison warders are fans of their prisoners. But find themselves as part of the larger prison called Uganda.
yusufkajura@gmail.com
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.
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