Opposition FDC politician DR KIZZA BESIGYE told Baker Batte Lule in an interview at his home in Kasangati last week, that he will continue fighting until the Museveni “dictatorship” is dismantled.
How do you spend your day in this big ‘prison’ of yours?
The main challenge of prison is the thought of freedom. Even if you didn’t want to go anywhere, if somebody said you are not allowed to go anywhere; that is when you feel like you would have wanted to go everywhere. You feel frustrated that you don’t have the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want.
Having said that, I quite obviously use my time as effectively as I can. Fortunately now, one can do a lot of things without having to move, with the kind of communication platforms that are available to us. So, I’m always busy and connected with all the situations I would want to be connected with.
I also try to keep myself fit by exercising because even when I have the freedom, it is not easy or possible to exercise the way other people do by walking around. Even without detention, walking around or running freely outside is not an option, frankly, available to me because of the public attention, that attracts.
I have developed a small gym and also use the space available in my premises to exercise. I also recreate through reading all kinds of things. So, it is not like I’m depressed over my situation and paralyzed, not able to get on with my business. When I undertook what I’m doing, I was aware of the kind of consequences that would result from my actions.
You have sometimes beaten the security at your home. How do you do that?
Well, quite obviously I wouldn’t be free to discuss that because of the practical reasons that even those avenues may become interfered with. But if you put your mind to anything, you will find your way around it. You know people have escaped from some of the most well-protected formal prisons.
So it is a question of focus on what you want to achieve and applying yourself maximally to it; you will find a solution. Additionally, in our situation… of course those who keep us, I don’t think, have the motivation to act with much vigilance as they should because they don’t believe in what they are doing. Most of the policemen also want change so they identify with what we are doing as a positive thing.
Is that the same as what we have been hearing that sometimes you receive inside assistance to escape?
As I have said, I’m not free to divulge how I get out because I wouldn’t want to jeopardize the means through which I get out. I will still need to get out.
Even if there was any kind of assistance, you wouldn’t expect me to expose those who assist me. I think these are some of the things, God willing, we will talk about when it’s over.
There is also talk that this kind of security around you gives a semblance of the kind of security a president should have, and that you like it.
People who entertain their minds around such kind of interpretation are people who should be dismissed with contempt. Even those in the maximum prison in Luzira should have the same contentment that there are so many people guarding them.
It’s not that they [police] are there for my protection, but they are there for harassing me, intimidating my visitors, stopping me from subsisting. But there are sadists out there; people whose thinking is simply crippled and I respect all their views.
There is a perception you are a rich man; it is why you can afford to be incarcerated for almost a year now and life goes on normally.
You know, richness is what you think it to be. I definitely consider myself a rich man; I’m not deprived. Just yesterday [Wednesday] we were in Isingiro trying to give some relief to people who can’t have any meal in a day. In the village where I was, six people had died out of lack of what to eat.
I, therefore, consider myself lucky and rich that I have three meals a day in spite of what has been done to me. Wherever I step, ordinary people come up to me and say, ‘continue doing what you are doing’, and they do so in your presence, and you hear what they say when they give me money, chicken, goats, cows.
I have now more than 100 goats that have been given to me. In the last campaign, I was given 11 cows at public rallies; some have since delivered. People know that I can secure food in my home but they identify with the circumstances I continue to struggle [against]. This is not because they don’t hear the propaganda of people who say I own hotels, all kind of things, and that I’m given billions by foreigners.
They hear [it] but ordinary people are far more intelligent than these characters you see putting on suits and driving fantastic vehicles. Ordinary people you see in markets are very intelligent only that they have not had the same kind of opportunity.
There is a lot of detachment in our polity, all these experiences like the Trump victory, the Brexit, the ascendance of extreme positions in many countries is simply because there is a detachment between the elite and the ordinary folks. I happen to be in touch with those ordinary folks and so they understand me and I believe I understand them.
The elites you’re talking about have argued that you have failed to use this understanding of the majority of the people to upset the status quo.
You see, failure only occurs when you stop trying. We were in the bush for five years, many people at different stages said we had failed but we were there. Struggles are not like a switch that you turn on and off and see results.
They have ups and downs and they can sometimes be nasty. Some people will get discouraged and others will run away thinking that this is not possible, and those people, yes, they will have failed once they give up. So, those who think that we have failed yet we are still continuing, I wish them luck.
You talked about people thinking that donors give you billions; don’t they?
If they did, it would be in recognition of what we are doing and it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. They don’t have money to waste on useless people; that I’m sure. So, if they are to give some money, they have to find some attraction in anybody they are giving that money.
What would be problematic is, if the agenda was not our agenda. The reason we are struggling is to end a dictatorship. This means controlling power by a few people without any accountability to the majority and using means that oppress the majority and deprive them.
Anybody who wants to change that is our ally, however you describe them. Having said that, I can say with very categorical assertion that we have not received any support from outside. But if it is there, we wouldn’t mind if it comes to help what we’re doing. We don’t have any ideological reason against it at all.
Recently you were on a tour of the US, UK and other countries; what was the aim of these tours?
To advance our cause here or abroad takes the same course; once people understand the cause, identify with it and then support it. Support takes different forms; moral support, with ideas on how to progress with what you are doing, support in taking positions that restrict the ability of those we are challenging, like diplomatic decisions that are taken to oppose what the dictator is doing.
How has been the reception?
Mostly very positive but sometimes you meet with indifference, especially outside, where Uganda is not a priority to very many people.
Certainly domestically the energy among ordinary people is extremely exciting because the whole regime machinery since February has been to tell people the elections are over it’s now time for development, time for work; forget about politics. But quite obviously wherever we go or even where Museveni goes, people tell him no; you didn’t win.
Your detractors say you have used your trips to paint a picture of a collapsed Uganda.
Regardless of how the foreigners view us, why would people be starving with a regime that has been in power for 30 years? Is Museveni still blaming [Idi] Amin or [Milton] Obote when his regime has been there for much longer than all previous governments combined?
But under his watch, citizens even from his village are dying of hunger. Everywhere else in the country people have been saying that Museveni is taking everything to Ankole but one needs to go to Ankole and see Banyankore dying of hunger under Museveni’s regime.
So, if anybody thinks that I have that kind of power that I can move out of the country and I cause such a colossal failure of the state, then the state is not worth being there. Again, this is why I say that our elites are really disgraceful in many ways, especially in the way they are analyzing things. Sometimes you see what they write and wonder how these people managed even to go from class to class, some with very high sounding qualifications.
You talked about identifying with the local people; elites have called you a populist.
I don’t care for labels; you can call me anything, I don’t mind. What I mind about is what I do and care for. I have no control over how people think. Our ideologies depend on what we think is important.
We have failed to raise Shs 28 billion to pay our lecturers; that’s why our children are at home, but we could rescue a private bank with Shs 200bn. I have always told our people that if Museveni was to be a student in these times, he could definitely never have accessed university education. He would be in the village wearing tyre shoes (lugabire).
You talk about the Shs 200 billion bailout to Crane bank. There is talk that you knew about the troubles of this bank and that you removed your money before its takeover by Bank of Uganda.
If I was, I would be proud. Why would I leave my money in a bank if I knew it was going to be in trouble? But fortunately the bank is not closed, it is there.
I don’t even have a personal account in that bank but a small account for my Nsambya business, which is available for anybody to check. I don’t think it has ever had anything more than Shs 30 million on it. But it is not a bad thing for people to believe that I have a lot of money.
Do you take some personal responsibility when some of your actions result in death or torture of participants or those caught in the middle?
First of all, people must understand that I don’t own the struggle, I don’t control people, I’m not the cause. We are all united by a cause which, as I have told you, is to return power to our people. So we are all activists in the cause and each one comes on their own volition.
We don’t go and recruit or hire people. We don’t pay anybody to do anything. You come on your own, take the risk yourself and suffer the consequences yourself, not on behalf of anybody else. So, it is ridiculous for anybody to think that if anybody suffers in the struggle, another one takes responsibility, and especially in this particular kind of struggle.
Unlike say in the war where you take somebody without knowing where they are going; I understand some people are being recruited after being told they are going to get jobs and then taken to war. Now, we are saying if Makerere is not reopened we are going to protest. So reopening Makerere is the cause; whoever wants to fight for Makerere it’s up to you. I have never set out to ask anybody to struggle on my behalf.
I don’t need anybody to struggle on my behalf and I don’t struggle for anybody at all. I have never put blame on anybody for my suffering. And I have not suffered the least. My brother died while struggling for his own rights; we were together in Luzira in the same cell and would not say I’m here suffering because of you.
Maybe he didn’t just tell you, but inside he knew he was there because of you.
I was charged with 22 others. He was my only brother. What about the others? Even when they took them to Bushenyi and charged them with murder, he was charged with others. Of course it may be being close to me in that family sense that he could have easily associated with causes which I was struggling for, but his association was his; I didn’t persuade him.
Quite a number of people within your FDC party don’t believe defiance will achieve much.
Obviously we don’t have the same views in FDC and we shouldn’t have the same views, anyway. In a political party, there as many views as there are members.
We only align on major things that we work on together. That’s what makes the party. We believe in democracy, the rule of law, observance of human rights, service and accountability to all, equitable distribution of resources. We believe in those tenets; we argue on others.
Even on how to achieve those there is always an argument, that’s why even in a political party there is a spectrum; you find people on the right, others on the left, and others in the center. So, in fact I would be worried if there was no debate on anything. If there is an important issue, we argue and we vote and the majority carries the day.
You have repeatedly said that you won the 2016 election and you have evidence to that effect. People are wondering why you don’t put that evidence on the table for scrutiny.
That’s not true. We have put quite a significant amount of evidence on the table. But we have also been saying that we don’t want it to be an academic exercise in order to persuade you that I won.
We want an exercise that will have effect in changing the situation on the ground; that the person who won becomes the person who has authority and that’s why we have been demanding an audit internationally-supervised. The reason we ask for it is not because there are no provisions within our laws to deal with the contestation of an electoral body like [Badru] Kiggundu’s.
As you all know, I was arrested on the 19th of February, I didn’t become free again until the 11th of May when I escaped from here and was promptly taken to Karamoja. Our headquarters were taken over on the 19th of February for the entre 10 days in which the constitution allows us to file a petition. In other words, this is why we are saying the actions of Museveni and his forces cannot be construed in any other form other than that of committing treason.
So it should be Museveni in courts answering for treason because he used guns to overthrow the will of the people. His guns have been used to detain me here; the person who won the election. His guns were used to stop us from going to court. So in order to resolve that impasse, I think we are being generous in offering that let’s have an audit in order for all of us to place on the table what we have. Let there be an intentional mechanism to authenticate what we are doing so that whoever won is then cleared and accepted by all.
Do you see Museveni agreeing to such an arrangement?
Well, he hasn’t, which means that he has something to hide. Why wouldn’t he, even for purposes of improving his legitimacy? He knows; they have taken me to court because they say I announced myself as a winner.
I have gone to the same court and said yes, I announced myself as a winner because I won. They have not committed me to the High court so that the case is tried. I’m here waiting for them so that we go and show them that we won.
If they had not detained you at your home, were you going to petition the Supreme court over the election?
That is now an academic exercise because I could not have been detained as a result of what I said in the past. I should have been left so that they say I didn’t go although I could have gone [to court]. There is nothing that would stop me from changing my mind if I thought that there was use in doing so.
Do you see Museveni standing again in 2021?
I’m sure he would want to stand until he dies but I don’t think he will be in a position to stand in 2021. His regime would have fallen, I believe. Certainly what we work for is not to wait for him to change the constitution to stand in 2021.
He has stolen an election of 2016 and we are fighting for the true winner of that election to be declared. That is our stance. We are not bothered about what happens in 2021; he shouldn’t be a president now. So, he has no business telling us about 2021. He simply shouldn’t be a president in 2016.
What happens if he manages to hang on up to 2021 like he has done previously?
We will also hang on with the struggle.
Does this mean you will also stand again in 2021 if Museveni is on the ballot?
Again, our struggle is not about changing a leader. Maybe if that was the struggle, we would just ambush Museveni and shoot him or something like that, but we are not about changing the leader.
We are about changing a system to move from a dictatorship to an accountable system. So, our contestation has been within the context of that struggle. Meaning that whatever advances that struggle we shall support, whether it involves my being a candidate or not.
Does it bother you that there are people who have risen on your popularity but immediately turned around when they assumed positions of leadership?
We would like everybody to commit to our struggle as much as possible. Any person who gets outside the struggle weakens it to that extent. It is not something we enjoy seeing; that people pretend to be struggling with you only to get to where they want to go and then abandon the ship. We know human behavior; people struggle for different motives; we have always known that.
I was telling people the other day that when we were in the bush, there were some people who turned out to be very good fighters but had actually joined the bush as refugees being hunted over crime. So, we know that people are not united by the same motives in the struggle.
Quite many join the struggle not because they are opposed to what other people are doing but because they don’t have the opportunity of doing what the other people are doing. Given the opportunity, they would do exactly the same.
Happily, the greatest majority of ordinary people have their hearts in the right place. I don’t know how much Museveni has spent in Kampala since February, trying to buy support. He has tried to buy leaders, ordinary people and indeed some people will be persuaded by money or jobs and will go, but the struggle will continue because the greatest majority of ordinary people cannot be bought.
bakerbatte@gmail.com