Timothy Kalyegira
9 May 2008
column
About two months ago, intelligence officer Charles Rwomushana, of the Political Intelligence Desk at State House, amused me during a phone conversation when he said the Ugandan intelligence now believe I have access to what he called "hard intelligence."
According to Rwomushana, I disguise my access to this hard, sensitive intelligence reports under the claim that these are revelations I get from the seer I so often write about.
The reason for this view was because nearly all the political developments I predict in this column come to pass. Rwomushana was not about to believe my story about a seer and so intelligence is hard at work, opening my email, examining my phone records to trace the source of my accurate intelligence information.
My best wishes to CMI and ISO. They can tap my phone for all it's worth, assign surveillance teams to watch my movements, and check up all my phone records. They will hit a dead end.
When I first wrote about the seer in July 2006, I was roundly criticised by my colleague Andrew Mwenda who recommended I check into a mental clinic, a view shared by Canadian journalist Murray Oliver of Canadian Television News and a fellow panellist on the then Andrew Mwenda Live show on Kfm.
The idea that there are greater powers than President Museveni in the universe over which he has no control is something most well educated people do not take seriously. For example, on March 28, 2007, I was conversing with the seer during a visit to New Zealand by President Museveni and his wife. Museveni was scheduled to make a stopover in Eritrea for talks with President Isayas Afewerki on the security crisis in Somalia.
I asked the seer what to expect of the Museveni-Isayas talks. The seer said Museveni would come out empty-handed. "He [Isayas] keeps his promises but Museveni does not," said the seer.
Sure enough, around April 1, Uganda's daily newspapers published a front-page photograph of Museveni at Massawa International Airport in the Red Sea port town of the same name, walking along a red carpet with Afewerki just before talks that would bear no fruit.
How is that ordinary human being able to predict events so accurately and so consistently, if not for some supernatural powers that she possesses? Having witnessed so many such uncanny predictions by the seer, all the fear I once had has vanished. I used to fear Museveni; these days I fear for him.
Millions of Ugandans are terrified of President Museveni. They somehow see him as this powerful force that can do anything with all the state machinery at his disposal. As this column argued recently, we cannot understand what is taking place in Uganda until we have an intimate understanding of the nature of evil, its deception, stealth, ability to prey on unsuspecting minds.
On December 16, 2007, a friend I had gone with to visit the seer asked what she thought was a troubled question. She asked the seer about me and how safe I was writing and on radio uttering all these sensitive things. Was I not in danger from the state, she asked?
Replied the seer, looking in my direction but avoiding eye contact: "That one? [me] They will not manage him!"
Which then leads me to a question once asked by Mwenda; how come we all write about Museveni, attack him and his policies, as you do, and you do it even more mercilessly, but you never get arrested, summoned to CID or police to record a statement, and in general seem to be immune to Museveni's oppressive state machinery?
Good question. Over the slightest comment or news stories, news reporters, editors, and opposition politicians are whisked off to the police, many of them have been arrested and spent time in jail. But there is one person who somehow escapes all this. Why indeed?
The reasons are plain, as narrated above. When one glances through the newspapers, listens to the radio stations and the various websites and blogs, the impression one gets is that Ugandans are finally waking up to the puzzling climate around them. But they seem to lack the coordinates by which to put it into perspective.
Is this what was before 1986? Are we better off than under the previous governments? Worse off? Getting worse but not yet as bad as it was under Amin, worse than under Amin? Worse off than the second Obote administration, but not yet as bad as Amin? Or worse off than at any time since independence?
That is the perspective lacking in the Ugandan media to explain these puzzling stories of runaway corruption and cruelty by the Ugandan military and state intelligence services. I'll explain all this in stages over the coming weeks.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
