Stop harassing us; we’re fighting for you, IPC woman tells Police

INGRID TURINAWE, 36, is the leader of the opposition FDC Women League. The mother of five is also Chairperson of Women for Peace, an association of women drawn from opposition parties—UPC, FDC, JEEMA and CP who were arrested on January 18 by Police for staging a demonstration at the Electoral Commission. MICHAEL MUBANGIZI interviewed her.

Your demonstration took many, including the Police, by surprise. How did you organise it?

That was the beginning because we have just started. We organised it as women leaders in FDC, JEEMA, CP and UPC—the political parties that form the Inter-Party Cooperation.

We launched our campaign on January 14 and we informed the whole country about what we intended to do. We will be organising peaceful demonstrations, sitdown strikes and overnight peace vigils. [The women will also be] camping at residences and offices of corrupt officials. We went to Dr. Kiggundu’s office but they refused us to reach him.

If we can’t find him in the office, we are going to follow him to his home. We have already known where he stays - he has two residences - one in Lugunja and another in Kololo. We hear government has now shifted him to the minister’s village [in Ntinda] to guard him well, but we will get him.
We want to talk to him as mothers and people who care. We want to ask him why he can’t resign because Ugandans have rejected him.

This is what we wanted to do during our recent demonstration. Our main objective was to send a message to the current Electoral Commission that we don’t expect it to give us a free and fair election [because it] is not neutral. They rigged the 2006 elections and we don’t expect them to do any better.

We have been called all sorts of names—village women, others say that we are being used by political parties. But that is not true because they are used to hearing certain voices of women like Miria Matembe and Salaam Musumba, not knowing that there are other women. We are a new generation. All of us are candidates in the next election. We are positioning ourselves in different constituencies.

As mothers, we want change because the NRM government hasn’t given us the services we want. Look at our hospitals; as women when we go to Mulago Hospital or any other hospital to deliver, we are asked to buy gloves, razor blades, polythene paper, syringes, because they are not available in hospitals. Yet they (NRM leaders) fly their daughters to Germany to deliver their babies!

Look at the quality of education of our children. Government says they have given us UPE but these people who say they have given us UPE take their children to other schools. If UPE is good, why don’t they put their children in UPE schools?

Look at the high prices of household items like salt which has multiplied three times in recent times. Who buys salt at home? It’s us women. So, women are suffering most under this regime.

That is the reason we left NRM and joined opposition political parties to bring about change. Our only option is to cause change through the ballot, but we can’t do it because of the [biased] Electoral Commission.

How far are you going to take this campaign, especially after you were arrested and charged?

Our campaign will last 400 days up to the voting day. It’s on the voting day that we will know that we have failed. Before that we will take on the Electoral Commission until we get a neutral one.
The issues that affect us are the ones that give us confidence. We don’t know if we will succeed or not but we have the will and determination.

What is your assessment of the January 18 episode? Was it a success or failure?

Partly, we succeeded. Although we haven’t achieved what we wanted, we are on the way. What we did was a step ahead and we haven’t given up. That demonstration attracted local and international attention. You found me being interviewed by a journalist from Germany about that demonstration. So it was a success.

But how did you organise these women?

The strategy we used will remain secret because our campaign is still on. If we leak it to the press, they will find ways of stopping us. But we have a network all over the country and we used word of mouth to coordinate.

When is the next demonstration?

That is a question I will not answer but it is coming soon.

How big is your membership? It appears you are just a small group of Kampala women?

Sometimes they (NRM) call us Kampala women and another time they call us village women; isn’t that a contradiction?
The members of our group, Women for Peace, come from different districts and constituencies countrywide. When we started we were 10 women and we were each required to recruit 10 women, so we are currently 300 and our numbers are increasing daily.

When we went to the Electoral Commission we expected that number but we suffered a setback because our information leaked. Policemen got to know and they called us, including intimidating us to cancel the demonstration.

Some women received the threats and withdrew. But we are eliminating some who fear—who can run away after seeing a [Police] dog. We are also getting new members we can trust.

You never sought an appointment to meet Kiggundu. Why did you force your way into the EC?

His is a public officer. I am supposed to go, knock and talk to him. And that is what we did. We had a petition in writing to deliver to him. All of us weren’t going to invade the office but we sat somewhere and sent representatives who were going to give him the petition and invite him to talk to us so that we tell him our problem and we hear from him but he refused.

Last word

I call upon all women, mostly those in NRM, to stop sugar-coating the NRM government and President Museveni because he has failed. We need to think about the future of our children.

Police should also stop torturing us the way they did last time because we are fighting for them also. I know most of them are also not happy. The dogs they set upon us eat and sleep better than most of them. The dogs don’t eat posho, which policemen and women eat. Policemen can’t afford schools fees for their children and we are fighting for them. They should stop harassing us.

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