5^th–11^th July 2010

By Stephen Ssengoba

Kiboko Squad Gangs

Two weeks ago, I wrote a short letter in the Uganda Correspondent reacting to the news “Opposition Warned on Planned Demo” that the Daily Monitor published on Monday 14^th June 2010.  In it, I wondered what was really going on in this terminally ill country called Uganda.  I also asked if what we are seeing in Uganda today is indeed the democracy that Museveni promised us in 1986.  I also predicted that if nothing changed, Uganda could be heading for some very turbulent political times.  How, I wondered, was the so-called “Kiboko Squad” allowed to beat up FDC President Dr. Kizza Besigye in full view of police officers?I also wondered why the Inspector General of Police Maj. Gen. Kayihura hadn’t ordered the immediate arrest of the “Kiboko Squad” thugs if they were indeed on the streets without a nod and wink from the state.  My conclusion then, as it still is now, is that let Kiboko be met with Kiboko.  Ugandans have nothing to lose now.  After all, Uganda is already a failed state under Museveni’s dictatorship.  So let’s destroy it and rebuild a much better one thereafter.  Enough is enough, I said.

This week, the news about DP forming its own militia [DP forms militia to counter Kiboko Squad, Daily Monitor of 2^nd July] to counter the “Kiboko Squad” shows that I was not alone in concluding that state violence needs to be met with violence. “We have resolved to set up our own defensive group to protect our people.  We shall use signals to identify our enemies. This should be a balance of terror,” DP’s Deputy National Youth Leader Moses Bigirwa is reported to have told journalists in Kampala.  He added that “they were not ready to look on as police continue to work with hooligans to torment innocent Ugandans”.

DP’s new Democratic Defence Force [DDF], the party said, has offered to “help” the police identify and arrest the Kiboko Squad members “because police claims it does not know them”. Apart from DP, FDC has also threatened to form its own youth group to take on the infamous “Kiboko Squad”.  So the clear writing [in red moreover] on the wall is this: Blood will flow like River Nile in the 2011 general elections if the government does not outlaw the “Kiboko Squad” that most people now believe was the government’s own creation to visit terror on people seeking to exercise their constitutional right to demonstrate, protest, and dissent.

Museveni must not be allowed to monopolise the use of violence.  After all, it is the same Museveni who once said that he had “democratised the gun”.  Does he now want us to pick up those “democratised guns” and take off to the bush [like he did] because the “Kiboko Squad” can’t allow us to protest peacefully on the streets?  Just like he managed to mobilise many young men to join him in the bush in the early eighties to fight the lawlessness of the Obote regime, there is no reason why a sufficiently aggrieved Ugandan can’t do that today.  In fact, there are many angry, dejected, and unemployed young men today than there were in the early eighties when Museveni launched his bush war.  These young men are not stupid.  They know, and if don’t, then they should know that most of the problems they face today like unemployment, poor healthcare, poor roads, poor UPE education, police harassment, and so forth can all be directly linked to Museveni’s 24yr misrule.

They know too that unlike them, Museveni’s relatives and tribesmen are wallowing in luxury and unending opportunities to better their personal lives at the expense of the entire country; our country; and at your personal expense as a citizen and taxpayer!  Wake up my countrymen.  Uganda is your country.  We must not allow this to continue even for a second beyond 2011.  We have a right and in fact constitutional duty under article 3[4] to defend our motherland in whatever way possible from this kind of pillage, harassment, and servitude that Museveni is slowing driving us into.

I totally agree with DP’s Legal Adviser Fred Mukasa Mbidde when he said, “…what our youth are doing is the real definition of patriotism; a patriot must be in position to defend his country.  The party has no problem with the young people coming up with such ideas”. So let’s do it!

The writer is a strong DP and IPC supporter based in Kampala-Uganda whose views do not in any way represent the views of Uganda Correspondent.