A colleague and I were discussing the growing calls for dialogue between the government and the opposition when he asked me something I keep thinking about.
“Have you imagined the day after the negotiations?” Imagine it is all over. President Museveni and your preferred opposition leader have sat across the table. Diplomats have flown in.
The long meetings are over; finally, an agreement. The cameras capture the handshakes. Everyone is smiling. The country is told that a new chapter has begun. Then morning comes.
What would that morning be like for a mother still waiting for her son to return home? The family that lost someone? The people who were detained, tortured, or disappeared? Does the handshake bring them any closer to justice?
I found myself thinking about the story Boniface Mwangi told us about, how he became an activist. After Kenya’s disputed 2007 elections, Mwangi photographed the violence that followed.
He saw people stabbed, mothers and children shot, and communities torn apart. Then came the power-sharing agreement between Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki. Mwangi was among the crowds watching Raila sign the agreement.
He could not understand how, after everything he had witnessed and documented, Raila could agree to work with the same government. He was heartbroken. Shuttered is the correct word. Perhaps Raila was thinking about the lives that could still be saved.
Perhaps stopping the violence required a political settlement. Many people are calling for a national conversation, dialogue, or even power-sharing. I find myself asking whether we have really tried to put ourselves in NUP’s shoes, for example.
Have those asking NUP to come to the table imagined what it would feel like to be on the other side? For the start, what exactly would NUP negotiate for?
If the main concern is ending human rights violations, how do you negotiate with a government that does not acknowledge those violations or accept responsibility for them?
And if it recognises them and is willing to stop them, why should it need a political agreement before doing so? The government has refused to release political prisoners, saying their release is part of what needs to be discussed.
What would it mean for a party that has built much of its public identity around defending human rights to negotiate whether those rights should be respected? Would it not suggest that citizens’ rights are open to bargaining?
Chairman Mao, are we really going to sit at a table to discuss whether citizens should be free? What kind of government makes the liberty of its own people a bargaining chip? And what about the families who lost their loved ones?
The people who witnessed the violence, the Boniface Mwangis, who documented it, and the ordinary citizens still living with its consequences? Can NUP fully represent them? Can an agreement restore the lives lost or give those families the justice they deserve?
Even then, suppose NUP comes to the table, an agreement is signed, and the government fails to honour its commitments. What would NUP tell the people who trusted it? Would they not ask why it entered an agreement without first securing convincing assurances?
There is also the possibility that the government wants the photograph, the handshake and the appearance of reconciliation more than it wants the difficult work of reform.
Because we know that sitting in the same room makes government appear reasonable, even when the underlying problems remain untouched. What assurance does NUP have that dialogue will not become a public relations exercise?
Perhaps the government needs to imagine the situation from the other side. If you were NUP, what would you need to see before agreeing to sit down? Would an invitation and speeches about national unity be enough?
Or would you want to see some evidence that the government was prepared to change? The government is not powerless. It controls the state, public resources, and has a majority in Parliament.
If it recognises that things have gone amiss, it can self-correct. It can release people who are unlawfully detained. It can address corruption, allocate public resources and appointments fairly, and review laws that undermine constitutional freedoms.
If the government first demonstrates a willingness to correct what is within its power, it gives the opposition something meaningful to work with. The country can then discuss the deeper political questions that genuinely require broader consensus.
But also, we must distinguish between historical contradictions and problems created by the actions of the current government. We can discuss our history, but it should not become an excuse for leaving present-day wrongs uncorrected.
Let the government solve what is within its means. And if that which is left is due to the residues of our colonial configurations and historical contradictions, we can dialogue and settle that. We should judge the seriousness of the national dialogue by what the government is prepared to do.
lawelfrayer253@gmail.com
The writer is a researcher with the Agora Center for Research