Some otherwise intelligent people in the ruling party, have been convinced that it is ‘sectarian’ for a political party like NUP to have a large following in Buganda.
This twisted thinking is generated by a tiny group of ultra-Musevenists, including the founder himself, who are greatly intimidated by the change in the balance of power in Buganda, following NRMs massive defeat there.
Now I am not a member of NUP but I appeal to our otherwise intelligent brothers and sisters in the ruling party not to swallow this asinine propaganda, but to verify its claims
The falsehood now being peddled by NRM propagandists is that that when the Baganda act together politically, they are by dint of that ‘tribalistic’ and ‘sectarian’.
Nonsense.
Organizing anything around cultural or ethnic lines is not necessarily sectarian, unless the goal is sectarian, that is, the goal is one of ethnic domination.
This can happen.
The Hutu Interahamwe movement aimed at dominating and exterminating the Tutsis in Rwanda, resulted in a terrible genocide.
In Kenya however, where politics are openly ’tribalistic’ there has not been a genocide.
This does not justify tribalistic politics which are indefensible, but neither do we want a fake democracy, because we are repudiating ‘sectarianism’
In Uganda with its ‘non-sectarianism’ and ersatz decentralization, we have something worse than tribalism, we have rule by one man.
Let us learn to make a distinction between tribalism and mobilizing an ethnic group.
Mobilizing an ethnic group for any political purpose is like selling a product to a targeted group or sector.
You identify the sector, learn its habits, language and customs and then market your product according to the group’s understanding.
In the NUPs case during campaigns, the ‘product’ was the message that “the regime must go” “Agende” in luganda.
Other luganda slogans like “twebereremu” and songs in luganda were used by the Muganda founder of the party, Kyagulanyi.
The message struck home with almost everyone in the Central region, whose largest population happens to be Baganda.
During NUP mobilization there were no tribalist references to the interests of the Baganda by Robert Kyagulanyi but only the interests of Ugandans at large.
Where is the ‘mens rea’ for the alleged tribalism?
Although the regime did not go, the result of the NUP moblization was that NRM was obliterated in Central.
The subsequent cries of ‘tribalism, tribalism” by the NRM are crazy, comical and pathetic. It is just scapegoating.
But defeat is painful and the truth is bitter.
Amelia Kyambadde, a high profile Muganda NRM minister, was the only one humble enough to admit:
“Yes, it seems the people are tired of us.”
She meant the NRM party, and she was right.
In all honesty we are not going to change the minds of the ‘divine rulers’ of the regime.
Those in the regime who are pushing this sectarian envelope know that they are treading on very thin ice.
It is not by chance that for several years there has been a negative stereotyping of the Baganda in Uganda’s politics. (They are portrayed as a selfish, two-faced, greedy and a ‘tribalistic’ people.)
This tiresome stereotype has been hyped by the high priests and priestesses of Musevenism.
Its sacred inner core is a small entrenched ethnic group which has become ‘infallible’.
Their belief is that any group which organizes itself without NRMs help, or which can influence opinion against the regime, must be labelled ‘sectarian’.
This also includes the Catholic church, by the way. While this is another lie, how I wish in the circumstances it were true.
So let us leave these impious mumblings of sectarianism to the devotees of the Museveni cult.
I call it a cult because at the centre of it is a false god.
This cult is based on a heretical view of democracy, which like all heresies will disappear into the trash can of history as its errors are exposed, and its increasing evils are plain for all to see.
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