COMMENT: Uganda’s state of violence

The killing of Mowzey Radio shows how excessive state violence has alienated Ugandans from good governance

COMMENT | MORRIS KOMAKECH | The extreme violence where President Yoweri Museveni and his NRM enthusiasts have taken Uganda’s politics will alienate many people from meaningful participation in society’s affairs. Already, Ugandans feel helpless – that their votes mean nothing, and their voices, at every level of decision-making, is muzzled by violent repression.

Uganda is no longer for Ugandans and it is high time the mockery constituted in Article 1 of the overly adulterated 1995 Constitution, that power belongs to the people, got amended to state unequivocally that “power belongs to the State managers who own the guns”.

Excessive state violence is alienating citizens from governance. The NRM mindset of violence is constituted horizontally and vertically. This serves to diminish legitimate interests in collective ownership of the State, and dehumanises agents outside the shades of the repressive state.

The taming of the Police, militarising, and criminalising it, serves the symbolic purpose of also militarising the socio-political dimensions of society. This is how power is primarily courted in NRMO and applied to deform society. Ugandan society is now inverted – deformed, instead of being transformed. Uganda is deformed from a peaceful, hopeful, and a united nation, into a criminal, immoral, unconscionable, and violent society.

Public consensus is now by violence; from ridiculous marriage requirements to bar brawls, decisions are coercive and fatal at any slight resistance. People now contend with marrying worthless partners for a fortune under family duress. Everything is overpriced, inflated and that is, on its own, a form of violence on our conscience!

We just lost a young talent, Mowzey Radio – a musician, whose death incidentally bound the nation together in awe of the degree of cruelty, violence, and the propensity to which all of us are culpable to this violence.

When Mathew Kanyumunyu reportedly gunned down that youthful social worker, Keneth Akena, the nation was engulfed in a ball-fire of grief and rage. It seems violence at every level is inescapable in this society.

Today, many violent attackers lurk on the street, waiting to strike again on the next victim. But, the attackers are protected by the state and persons who associate with the violent state. They are at liberty to defend the morally indefensible acts of blatant murder. The big question that remains unanswered to this date is how weapons have permeated civilian realms in an era of terrorism.

Violence in Uganda cannot be divorced from the genesis and corpus of this regime – its formation, survival, and molding of society through decades and counting. Violence as an enterprise definitely is the modus operandi through which NRM has survived for decades.

The Foucaultian governmentality has come to full bearing – policies, constitutionalism, and delivery of social services are all designed on the basis of aggression – repression.

State agency is associated with aggressive and violent acts. Many Ugandans subsisting outside the shade of the state are increasingly being physically deformed as a result of state abuse of power. They are dehydrated, malnourished, sicker, fearful, shorter, and smaller than those protected under the violence of the state. In comparison, those within the nexus of the violent state realms are bulkier, greedy, fierce, armed, egoistical, and crooked.

For the most, social status is borne out of the violence of sectarianism. Ugandans now weigh their life circumstances with each other based on their tribes, not education or enterprises. There are those who work so hard but remain poor, and those that hardly labour but accumulate wealth quickly, or gain promotions faster than they deserve, just on accounts of their tribe. I think the incarcerated former DPC Muhammad Kirumira alluded to this unfortunate reality. However, the UPDF and government ministries offer the best case study of sectarianism under this Museveni regime.

Every Ugandan today is familiar with, or has been violated by sectarianism, whether in the private or public sector. Sectarianism is a form of tribal violence wreaked on others by the groups that hold power. It is the reason some groups might hate others more than has ever been witnessed in this country when this regime falls.

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Morris Komakech is a Ugandan Social Critic and Political Analyst based in Toronto, Canada. Contact via mordust_26@yahoo.ca