This is familiar territory. Opposition strongman Kizza Besigye is back in the news headlines, with yet another court case hanging over him; feels like a homecoming.
There was a time when the media would breathlessly report about state security forces arresting and manhandling Besigye. The slightest whiff of Besigye unleashed the breathtaking efficiency of the state's brute force. Thanks to Besigye, we beheld the glory of pink teargas and the awe of powerful water cannons. We feared!
Over the years, the constant 'breaking news' of Besigye's countless brutal arrests, court cases and preventive arrests/house arrests, stopped breaking us. We became weary and numb. Our WhatsApp groups muted 'those things of politics'- Besigye and his trysts with the state had grown as monotonous as our nagging helplessness.
We began to yawn whenever Besigye was arrested. Others blamed Besigye for provoking the heavily-armed security services, for being too angry and constantly wearing that blasted blue checkered hoodie. On several occasions, President Yoweri Museveni, who makes no secret of his loathing of the opposition, gleefully praised security agencies for 'managing' Besigye.
Security officers built successful careers around the containment of Besigye. Some people collect trophies. Some collect stomach fat. Besigye? Besigye collects arrests and court cases, frivolous and serious - since that momentous day in November 1999 when Besigye broke ranks with the National Resistance Movement regime citing it for abandoning the Bush War ideals.
In 'An ode to Besigye, the frustrated opposer of our sleep' (see The Observer, 25 May 2022), I wrote about the tenacious struggle that is Besigye, the patron saint of the longsuffering disembowelled opposition. I asked, "What is this itch that will not let him sleep the sleep we pretend to sleep?"
Hate him, love him, disregard him, accuse him of raping his housemaid (whatever became of Joanita Kyakuwa?) or degenerate plans to squash juicy red tomatoes sold by women in Kampala markets or nefarious plans to burn down Kampala or even better, kill himself and blame it on the regime; Besigye has doggedly stood for his cause.
The cause of Uganda maturing to peaceful political transitions, the stuff of good governance and strong public institutions. Today, Besigye, alongside his co-accused, faces a fresh slew of charges - unlawful possession of firearms. As day follows night, the state has unflappably dragged Besigye to the military tribunal.
The Constitutional court has several times declared the trial of civilians in military courts illegal. Again, we are in familiar territory; frivolities like constitutionalism are for quislings.
Veteran journalist and columnist Daniel Kalinaki is a gifted and captivating storyteller. His book, Kizza Besigye and Uganda's Unfinished Revolution is an engrossing deep dive into why/how Besigye is besieged with the struggle of Uganda's governance. In weaving Besigye's original story, his plunge into the murk of Uganda's politics, Kalinaki also skilfully tells the story of Museveni's steady divergence from the ideals of the bush war.
By the end of the book, you will want to arrest Besigye and interrogate him, "Kiki kyo? Ofaaki n'ensi?"
Kalinaki writes that Besigye's first arrest was in February 1981. A budding doctor and entrepreneur then, Besigye was hauled to the dreaded Nile Mansions where he was brutally tortured. State operatives had arrested him on suspicion of colluding with anti-Obote elements; elements like Museveni. Cough cough.
Besigye at that time had not joined the Museveni-led bush war. The irony is grim and unsmiling. According to Kalinaki, Besigye, like many, did not believe Museveni was serious about taking up arms against the Obote regime. Even when Museveni's rebel force, the National Resistance Army (NRA), launched the first attack on February 6, 1981 against Kabamba Military Barracks, Besigye didn't think much of it.
In the context of the violent political upheavals of the time and, therefore, a conflict-weary Uganda, it would have taken colossal faith to believe Museveni's plans for armed rebellion. Six weeks into his illegal detention, Besigye escaped the noose when a Tanzanian soldier whom Besigye had treated at Mulago hospital, recognised him and orchestrated his release.
His close shave with state impunity, the realisation of how easily he could have been 'unalived', rebirthed Besigye. On his release, he fled the country to Kenya. Yes, Kenya. Then a safe haven for Ugandan dissidents, Besigye soon linked up with Museveni's comrades in Kenya.
In 1982, blazing with strong revulsion against state tyranny, he slipped back into Uganda to join the bush war. The rest is history, the history of the 'historicals' and the sun-kissed 1986.
Dear reader, is it serendipity that today Kenya collaborated with Uganda to abduct and whisk Besigye into military detention? Or should we return to the calculating sneer of mockery that Besigye was not fleeing to exile as he did in 1981 but visiting Kenya as a free man enjoying the freedom of movement?
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What a spot of bother 68-year-old Besigye finds himself in today - facing charges insinuating armed rebellion against the regime. He who fought alongside Museveni, foras, is still fighting, fighting to reset the 'fundamental change' he ushered in. Let us not even delve into the dubiously leaked audios about Besigye's alleged plans to overthrow the government - that wouldn't be his first time anyway.
Does the regime finally have Besigye in its resistant tentacles?
Dear Besigye, the frustrated opposer of our sleep, "Kiki kyo? Ofaaki n'ensi?"
In the book, Kalinaki discloses an incident in 2012; a close friend of Besigye was quite disturbed - Besigye had become a prisoner of his cause, constantly corralled, brutally teargassed, and arrested due to the 'Walk to Work' protests. Yet Besigye continued to be Besigye.
Why? This friend had to know.
"Why do you do it?" ...Besigye pondered the question for a few moments. "You mean you don't know all this time? My role is to delegitimize Museveni's regime and to expose the illegalities upon which his regime is built. That's why we do this...."
