Tunisian style revolution can’t happen in Uganda
By Abbey K. Semuwemba
24th January 2011
What happened in Tunisia will not happen in Uganda sooner. The elite and the youth in our country who could have championed a Tunisian style revolution are what I call “background noise”. They make noise in the background but are never interested in any form of action. Even simple things like raising funds for a political cause or participating in political debates fail at their inception because there is total lack of commitment from our Uganda elite; both home and abroad.
Secondly, we have allowed the government to brainwash the kids born under NRM into thinking and believing that they don’t have to change leaders. To them, Museveni is a great leader, a hero! They believe they can go on living the same way they have been living as if the NRM has a Godly mandate to lead Uganda.
President Museveni has recruited a lot of these young people into his NRM. They are willing to die for him. They have been posted into banks, businesses, State House, and other state apparatuses. And the real purpose of all this is to support the government’s massive political oppression of the Ugandan people.
One of President Museveni’s prime targets has always been the young; just as it was the case with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Youth Movement. I know a few young men I studied with at Kibuli S.S who have a lot of potential. Sadly, most of them are now singing ‘Long Live Museveni’ and they look at guys like us as ‘people who don’t know what we want’. Few young people can see through this humdrum ruse and it is likely to continue for some years.
We have reached a point whereby changing a government in Uganda, in the same way as it happened in Tunisia, will only destroy everything that we hold dear. A revolution in Uganda would likely create another dictatorship if it happens now. For instance, Napoleon was lived in the enlightenment age of the French Revolution.
But he took a good thing [a people’s revolution] and corrupted it for the Neo-Conservatives of his time. I can see a similar thing happening in Uganda again as it happened with the coming of NRM in 1986 after dictator Milton Obote was kicked out.
Uganda’s problems are so deep now that I think it would take a miracle from God to solve them. Religion and tribe, for instance, have divided us more under the NRM regime than under any other regime since independence. We don’t even have a national language. Everybody prefers to speak their own.
Tunisia, on the other hand, is a typical Islamic state – the constitution mandates Islam as the official religion and no other religious parties are allowed. That is effectively banning other religions. 98.9% of the population are Sunni Muslims, not even Sufis are welcome. So religion is a big factor that can easily unite them around any cause.
Nevertheless, the ouster of Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali is the clearest indication that change is coming to most of the Arab and Africa. What happened in Tunisia started in December when a 26-year-old fruit seller set himself on fire as a way of protesting against mistreatment by Tunisian police officers.
Nobody thought that it will lead to the overthrow of the government. We have already seen demonstrations and riots in Egypt, Algeria, Uganda and Jordan in the last couple of years. So something is happening but nobody knows how it will end in Uganda if we are to have riots or demonstrations again.
I think a sudden revolutionary spasm will be triggered by a spark. It will be one incident, seemingly trivial and lost in a sea of abuses and injustices. And chances are that it is likely to start from Buganda before spreading to other parts of the country. Please log into www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.
The writer is Ugandan living in the United Kingdom
