By Joel Biyinzika
The Museveni ethos was there at every level of social organization, from familial to leadership levels. He branded himself as someone who could be believed & worthy of every support he could get. Many people lost their lives protecting M7 & his ideas. He had the aura of someone that knew what they were doing. He was convinced of his beliefs & it was very easy to rally people behind his cause. The current crop of opposition today doesn’t even try to market themselves to everyday Ugandans. We seem to look for external help instead of pleading our case to Ugandans & giving them a reason to choose us over their survival. M7 & company knew how to mobilize Ugandans for a common cause, if it required manipulation they also knew how to do it. They would for example dress up as their adversary,& traumatize communities in the night and then show up as freedom fighters in day to asses peoples willingness & commitment to the struggle. These guys knew what they wanted & went at length to achieve it. They understood the art of war, knew Ugandans very well, also had a clear understanding of what had gone wrong and therefore marketed themselves as a better alternative towards towards fixing Uganda. And whether you agree or not, they made some substantial changes & achieved some of the things they set out to accomplish. They were clear headed radical politicians who desired better before the trappings of power made them so complacent & detached from the people they claim to represent. Our generation too has to clearly define what we stand for, we also need to agree on how we are going to achieve that. In my view fighting won’t make the cut but the path of peace, truth & reconciliation through dialogue & shared interests we stand a chance. We clearly now know guns only give us tyrants not leaders, riots give us populists not rational people. We need to rise to the occasion and respond to the hardest questions of our time.
We need to look beyond tribes, parties or ideologies and put our focus on Uganda as a whole and work towards the betterment of our people as a whole. Look at Kenya for example, they have tried to move past tribal politics to real issues, Ruto who was in opposition a decade ago is now the next president of Kenya. Civil disobedience alone did not produce that, reconciliation and compromise did. Kenya moved away from the politics of winner takes all to building bridges & fostering togetherness. It’s obviously a work in progress but there is something to show for their efforts towards building a prosperous Kenya for all. Our opposition needs to stop playing hide and seek with the government, those two need to work together because they represent all of us. There is no reason why Kyagulanyi shouldn’t grab a coffee with the President. We should rise above petty politics of personalities and embrace the politics of ideas. Our generation needs to lead this conversation with humility instead of force & spite. Those who have captured power are masters of violence & they have all the repressive 6ools to win easily, you can’t win when the ground isn’t leveled, systematic change only happens gradually and allows for teachability, recognition of error & adaptability to new information. Let’s look at the bigger picture!!
