Northern Uganda Messenger Post

Last Monday, 21 December 2009, former UN Undersecretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, survived a spectacularly “unusual” road “accident” that only a Hollywood action flick could conjure. Everything about the accident, as Otunnu characterised it in a press conference later that afternoon, was “unusual.” At the press conference, Otunnu and the team traveling with him narrated that about 0930 hours or thereabout, they came upon a convoy of military vehicles at Minakulu. A couple or so civilian vehicles ahead of them signaled and were given the go-ahead to overtake the stationary or slow moving Phalanx of military wares. As they approached, Otunnu’s party too signaled to be let by, and they were accordingly given the sign to drive past. No sooner had they gone by two of the seven vehicles, when the third military truck suddenly pulled out of the formation to block their way. Otunnu’s driver attempted a manoeuvre to avoid high impact collision, but was-as if on cue-

I have been wondering what in military parlance and war tradition, it would mean for a private to single-handedly slay a general on the battlefield. Would one be promoted from private, to say Captain; Major; Lieutenant Colonel; or a Brigadier? Surely, those in the know of military customs and practices would know. I confess complete ignorance. Even more puzzling for me, and I am sure, for military historians and scholars alike, is the decoration that an untrained civilian, and a woman who looks as fit as a sack of potato, deserves, when she outmanoeuvres a Major General and former commander of a national army. It is intriguing what people on the streets are saying. Some have already promoted Lydia Draru to the rank of a Field Marshal for her improbable feat of felling with a fly-swat, an experienced, well trained, war-hardened and heftily built General in a “domestic” squabble. The death of Gen. Kazini last week in a Kampala suburb was shocking, bizarre, and a tragic spectacle that ca

The press in Uganda this week is awash with homophobic hysteria against Gays, Lesbians, Bi-Sexual and Transgender (GLBT) Ugandans. This overt and shameless discrimination against a minority population of our citizens flows from the fact homosexuality is criminalised in Uganda. As if this was not enough suppression of personal freedom and civil rights, Ndorwa West Member of Parliament (MP), David Bahatia, has tabled a private member’s bill proposing a series of measures to control and punish GLBT activities in the country, including the death penalty for gays and lesbians caught living and expressing their sexuality. This is not only cavalier violations of human rights, but a dangerous hate campaign and incitement to harm or kill members of the GLBT in Uganda. The people of Uganda, and all people of good will, must not sit and watch while this happens. The sponsors of the bill, their supporters and political leaders- inside and outside parliament- must be identified, isolated and ostrac

Sometime last year, President Yoweri Museveni reprised the ethnographic genealogies of Uganda’s ruling monarchies. In his adversarial stand-off with the Buganda monarchy, he derisively dismissed the Tooro, Bunyoro, and Buganda ruling houses as “Luo”. Gen. Museveni sounded to use “Luo”, derogatorily. As if anticipating spirited Ganda denials, the president pre-emptively challenged them to contradict him on whether “Wang Kac”, a clearly Lwo phrase, imprinted at the entrance to ancient Buganda palace gate, was in Luganda. Apparently, unlike the Christian God, and the Chosen Galilean Son, who has been “blind”, “deaf,” and has “absconded” for two thousand and nine years, the Luo Gods were not asleep when President Museveni spoke. Suddenly, a national, regional and international constellation of “Luo Stars”, which would include Kabaka Mutebi of Buganda, began to align in ways that has thrown a gauntlet to President Museveni’s 23 years of unbroken autocracy. Even moderate, perennially neutral

In the wake of the Kabaka riots, the Banyoro-Bafuriki controversy, and the perception that our country has been splintered a thousand folds along ethnic crevices since the NRM came to power, I would like to identify and discuss three broad political tendencies and their contributions to the national debate on a post-museveni society. These are the democratic centrist reformers; the federalist right; and the democratic left. Each of these groups draws its membership from across a wide spectrum of organised Ugandan political, civic, professional and religious organisations. They are as ideologically eclectic as their political characteristics, boundaries and strategies are diffused. Since the Kabaka Riots over Kayunga, their respective leading ideologues have been soul-searching for some magic-glue like national habits, which could be used to firmly sew up and keep fast, the seams on the patchworks of our multi-nationality state. For the democratic reformers, which include opposition p

A New Vision article by Edward Mulindwa attacked Olara Otunnu for serving the 1985 Military Council government. According to Mr. Mulindwa, it is unacceptable to serve your country under military regimes. It is clear Mr. Mulindwa and others view realities from the same frame and stock of divide and rule, and exclusionary politics that has been perfected for the last 23 years by Yoweri Museveni. Divisions along regional, ethnic, historical , and who served what government; who fled and who remained in the country; who fought and did not fight what regime, which have been used too long, as a basis to exclude, marginalise and legitimise injustices. In the rush to label, condemn and exclude, such proponents confuse the conceptual distinctions between a state and government. The NRM, UPC, FDC, DP and any other party or clique of army generals may form a government; through elections or military putsch. Such regimes or governments, will come and go, but the Ugandan state remains. Civ

When it serves his purposes, President Museveni will do anything. Having come to power on a narrow, ethnic, regional and personal ambition alone, the NRM has reached the natural zenith of power that such a non-national agenda can sustain. As seen from the recent riots in Buganda over the Kabaka and Kayunga, the Museveni has to heavily and openly rely on the army and a militarised police, to retain power and maintain grip on the state and government. But what lessons can we learn from this recent brinkmanship with the Kabaka of Buganda? The first lesson of the riots is that Ugandans need to reflect on what kind of a post- Museveni society they want to build. They can choose to build a just and fair society based on universal standards of equality, democratic rights of civic citizenship, or one based on inequalities ascribed by particularities of ethnicity, accidents of birth, wealth, and access to power and influence. The other lesson is that ruling party and opposition leaders ought

In " Gambling on Otunnu ", in The Uganda Independent , Ms. Melina Platas takes the political pulse of the country on the homecoming of Olara Otunnu. She sounded out a number of prominent Ugandans on what role if any, Olara Otunnu can play. In their responses, Hon. Professor Ogenga Latigo, Hon. Abdu Katuntu, and Dr. Jean Barya, highlighted a number of issues concerning who Olara Otunnu is, what contribution he can make to the democratic struggle in Uganda, and how the struggle can be organised and led. Not only were some of their comments contentious, but also specious and contradictory. First, that Olara Otunnu is out of touch with the country, the people, and issues. But Olara Otunnu has written and spoken extensively about the NRM dictatorship, corruption, poverty, national fragmentation on ethnic lines, land-grabbing, rights abuses and possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Uganda generally and northern Uganda specifically. It is doubtful that there are esot

I have been wondering whether god / gods did not create different people with different languages and different spiritual practices, symbols and rites for a reason. It occurred to me that, perhaps different races with peculiar languages and spiritual beliefs systems and rites were purposefully to serve as different but distinct routes of accessing god/gods. And each ethnic group or race, like road networks with bridges and over and underpasses, had markers and identifiers not unlike highways and expressways that lead from our metropolises to the different suburbs and countryside from where people pour into the cities for work and other cultural activities everyday. Come to think of it. Like roads and airline routes, you gotta take the one that takes you to your destination, if you hope to get there. Excepting Christopher Columbus, how many of us would rather head west, when we meant to go east? And see what happened to Columbus; poor Chris! I believe that Africans and other colonised a

“Nationalists” and “constitutionalists” have criticised President Yoweri Museveni for injecting justice entitlement considerations over land conflicts and compounded historical injustices in Bunyoro Kitara Kingdom ( See Museveni’s original letter on land issues in Bunyoro, DM, 04 Aug 2009 ). The president’s critics evade the fundamental question of justice and historical injustice, by latching on the incidental, secondary claims of civic citizenship rights, rather than the compelling need for justice for Bunyoro Kitara (see Anger over Museveni tribal talk, DM, 02 Aug 2009 ; Bunyoro belongs to all Ugandans, DM editorial, 01 Aug 2009 ). Bunyoro Kitara, like Buganda Kingdom’s quest to repossess their “things,” deserves sympathies and serious considerations. But sympathies alone are not enough; we must provide the correct and just national solution to this problem. We agree with the president in his understanding of what the problems are. There are three grounds upon which Bunyoro deser

President Yoweri Museveni’s once bright star- visible throughout Africa and the West-is dimmed. How could someone, once revered by the West, be suddenly down on his luck? The answer to this question is long and complicated. For Museveni, it is a combination of indictable misadventures in Rwanda, Congo, and northern Uganda ; corruption , electoral theft, and heavy-handedness in dealing with political opponents at home . Simply put, 23 years in power is a long time. One is bound to make as many enemies as friends- at home and abroad -along the way. Consequently, incumbency reaches deleterious point of diminishing return ; when it has nothing more to offer but personal insecurities and corresponding obsession with retaining power, defending ill-gotten wealth, and protecting cronies. Despite his dwindling political, diplomatic fortunes, Museveni could yet rescue himself from being discarded-like all utility men before him-for becoming a liability, rather than continued asset to his Weste