A rather disturbing video has been making round online since Friday morning.
It involves two generals, Gen Elly Tumwine and Lt Gen Charles Angina. Tumwine is a security minister of Uganda, a former army commander, current army MP, historical member of the National Resistance Movement, etc.
Words are said. How they are said is another thing. However, one can say, One senior general was publicly calling another army General to order.
As expected, people have interpreted the video differently.
Some have seen humiliation of one general by another.
Others seem to agree with Gen. Tumwine, saying he was right because, I mean why, would a Three Star General put his reputation on the line, working outside the law to enforce his will?
In the midst of all this discussion is Lt Gen Charles Angina, the current deputy commander of Operation Wealth Creation. OWC is a socialist leaning development experiment sponsored by President Museveni and his brother Gen Salim Saleh, where soldiers are involved in agriculture extensions services across the country to uplift the poor out of poverty.
It is these same poor people who are being evicted across the country, by the moneyed class, particularly politicians and army chiefs, who have access to money whose sources cannot be explained.
Before Angina got this job at OWC, he was the deputy chief of defense forces. In other words, he is equally a very senior officer of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces, whose body language on Friday morning was of a beaten cock, featherless and ready to be eaten.
Land disputes are a common place in Uganda today. The wealthy, whose wealth cannot be explained anyway, buy villages, and evict poor people. Houses that cost the poor their lifetime savings are brought down in minutes by graders and told to and hang.
The courts rarely help since the justice system in Uganda is rotten and hotbed for corruption.
The poor never get justice.
It is either delayed until they die or lose hope or, they are dismissed with contempt or with costs that they are unable to pay before they are thrown in jails.
It is sad situation.
However, when two elephants meet in a land dispute, there is a new twist to the story.
The subject of the video showing the security minister dressing down a fellow general is only a tip of the iceberg.
However, it is fodder for the curious and increasingly cynical population.
Clearly this matter will reach the Commander in Chief, who will not be amused, first by the conduct of the two officers, but also, Angina will find it hard to explain the questions Gen Tumwine raised to him, particularly his using his aides, and police to transact private business in the middle of the night! Angina knows he is in trouble.
Gen. Angina and businessman Godfrey Kirumira are both wealthy and they could settle their dispute amicably. Actually, both can afford to exhaust the process in the highest court in the land. However, it seems, they too don’t trust the justice system, and that is why they resort to crude and primitive ways of settling their dispute.
A few weeks ago, tycoon Kirumira, always seen dressed in fancy attires and expensive chains, having a good time, was seen in a video behaving like slum dog pauper. He walked to a site he says belongs to him near his Hotel International in Muyenga, an upscale suburb for old money, where he started throwing stones like a mad man.
Observers wondered what had befallenl the rich man with several shopping malls to his name! He had decided to flex muscles and try win the battle with fists. Kirumira could have had reasons that the video could not give us. The men working on the road had a fist day, beating the pulp out of Kirumira who left the site without shoes, and with soiled, torn clothes.
Surprisingly, Kirumira didn’t go to court over assault. Until Friday morning, he turned up with Gen Elly Tumwine only to find Gen Angina, in his full military uniform, supervising the demolition of structures that Kirumira claims are his.
Gen Tumwine raised important points to Gen Angina; particularly, the conflict of interests where he is using his soldiers and police connections to forcefully get his way on the land, the time he started the exercise which was 3am in the wee hours of the morning and the fact that he didn’t have official documents that give him permission to carry out the exercise.
Total impunity.
Tumwine concluded with the punchline which is subject to discussion on several social media for a.
“Don’t abuse our forces. You and the police, don’t abuse our forces”.
The wisdom in Tumwine’s warning come in the words after, “We all have wrangles, we all have disagreements but we don’t use the force like that. Why do you do it at night if it’s okay? We have worked so hard for protect the image of our forces. This is a small matter; it could have been sorted out amicably.”
However, in Uganda, those who should be administering justice are the one abusing it with impunity. And that is why the dispute between two powerful people, who ignore the law, and go native, is a preamble to something catastrophic that is going to befall dear motherland, Uganda.
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