A week is a long time. Many political pundits, and probably even Kizza Besigye, despite his public rattling had written himself off as no longer of any serious significance in Uganda’s future political equation. Then, he ‘disappears’ from a Nairobi hotel in Nairobi, only a few days later to be arraigned before Uganda’s military Court Martial in Makindye on charges of possessing two pistols.
From the grapevines, he was also an errand contriving a plot to buy arms including war-grade drones from underworld dealers, so he could bring down the presidential plane and military helicopters. His main objective is to change the government of Uganda by force of arms, accusations he faced before in the courts of law, but was acquitted for lack of credible evidence. But even if the courts acquit him again, Besigye must face the harshest public rebuke if these accusations bear any merit.
His people, led by wife, the high-flying Winnie Karangwa Byanyima, in a dejected, but calculated low tone, breaks the news, designedly calling it a kidnap to invoke public sympathy. His surrogates fall in line to drum up the narrative dousing flame in an increasing media crescendo which will be short-lived. Yet by own public confession, Byanyima says Besigye was lured into a hotel away from the official engagements at Martha Karua’s book launch, akin to dodging a high-level conference only to get mugged in a brothel! Byanyima, falsely praised as a rule of law, and Human Rights advocate, rather than let the rules play out in the courts, has instead, launched political appeals to President Yoweri Museveni to save Besigye.
It would be very foolish of Besigye 68, tried and defeated many times on multiple fronts to engage in armed rebellion. With his politics and popularity in the twilight, many doubt he can succeed, let alone find a foothold on Ugandan soil. But as a known commercial political entrepreneur, who has solicited, and heavily relied on foreign money, he could be hoodwinking gullible audiences to continue dolling to his lost causes.
Fighting for political space, Besigye has publicly questioned Robert Kyagulanyi’s authenticity as an opposition leader in a futile effort to win back the anti-Museveni coalition. Both are a feather of greedy political entrepreneurs who thrive in misleading Ugandans into criminal schemes, for selfish benefits, the reason Besigye cannot give up even after many defeats.
It’s isn’t Besigye’s first in subversion. There was a trail of him, after he lost the 2001 presidential election, when he formed the PRA, which domiciled in DRC’s restive Ituri region, but was promptly smashed in Pandora by the UPDF under Gen. Kale Kayihura’s command. Many got killed or captured injured but alive, returned to Uganda, prosecuted, pleaded guilty, but later pardoned under a general amnesty. Among these were my three friends Dennis Mulindwa (RIP), and lawyers Sam Okiring (RIP), and Lt. Col. Vincent Tumwesigye Bakarweha still in the UPDF.
A medical doctor who survived, later fled to Sweden where he lives to-date, but occasionally returns to Uganda still carrying shrapnel in his body. The link of UPDF renegades Lt. Col. Anthony Kyakabale, Col. Samson Mande, and Col. Edison Muzoora is well documented. Besigye fled to exile in South Africa but returned in December 2005, and has refused to rule out armed rebellion to change government. In 2001, he sent his political aide James Opoka to join Joseph Kony’s LRA where he died in a power struggle. But Besigye and Byanyima denied that Opoka had joined rebellion, and on one public radio talk-show insisted they knew his whereabouts but to-date haven’t disclosed.
And Ugandans don’t even have to stretch their minds over the so-called walk-to-work violent protests that rocked Kampala between 2011-2015 as Besigye and FDC received funding from foreign countries including Omar Bashir’s Sudan to topple President Museveni.
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