Today, prices are racing towards the sky, showing our wallets dust. Fuel prices are as unforgiving as our government’s uncompromising cluelessness, as if to torment us for not walking alongside Besigye in 2011. Perhaps if more of us had imbibed teargas alongside Besigye, then maybe our government would be too shy to tell us to ‘tighten your belts’, ‘you want us to do what?’ ‘eat cassava’ if bread is expensive, ‘use pawpaw leaves’ for soap. Olemwa!
They have no fear of us. With their majje, teargas, flesh-eating pliers, unsafe ‘safe houses’ – we, immunized quislings in whose stead they hold the coercive instruments of power, cower and sleep our agitated sleep. We behold Besigye and wonder: does he not have enough problems already?
Surely it is hard enough being the patron saint of the longsuffering disembowelled opposition. What is this itch that will not let him sleep the sleep we pretend to sleep? The last time there was a tally of Besigye’s arrests, it no longer mattered! Will the government catch feelings because of human rights?
On May 12, the police arrested Besigye and hardly a feather ruffled. It no longer matters; they do not even bother to drag him to jail or hurl Gilbert Arinaitwe to knock him about. Now, they just drag Besigye by his trousers to his home and detain him there.
It is cheaper – they do not have to feed him or pay rent, water and electricity bills. If the international community complains too loudly above our resentful quivering, our government can always pull out their favourite line: Besigye is highly flammable, can self-combust near fuel stations and Kampala is one big fuel station.
Besigye also has sprawling feet of fury, which hanker for the succulent red tomatoes of market women. I watch Besigye’s latest tryst with the police who wield authority on our behalf and wonder again, what is in Besigye’s water and how might we mass-produce it?
Opposing those he once fought alongside foras to sleep, he resists the sleep of deception as our rickety boat totters drunkenly. Demanding we wake up, Besigye shouts, ‘Togikwato’, ‘Tubalemese’, ‘Plan B’, ‘Red Card.’ Increasingly, he seems robustly frustrated, frustration that is tired of being frustrated but unfortunately only knows how to stay frustrated.
For this Heroes’ day, on June 9, dear Office of the President, award Besigye a medal for his commitment to frustration. Disagree with him all you like, teargas him, whisk him away to the remotest prison in Uganda, throw rape charges at him, malign him as the best mole you planted in the opposition, – but please, give the man a medal. Ba dia, give him the highest medal in the land – the one you give to yourselves.
Imagine being a tired, overworked and underpaid police officer assigned to containing Besigye – you cannot win; it is like the onslaught of the Covid-19 and its vexing variants. Eventually, you learn to live with them. Yet Besigye beseeches the police officers who besiege him – he is fighting for them too.
Fighting for them in their rotting shelters that miserably pass for homes. All dressed up in imposing riot gear to disperse dissent only to receive cassava-coated peanuts in pay.
Do you remember the former Assistant Commissioner of Police Sam Omala, the tall dark lean machine that relentlessly mowed down Besigye’s efforts during the W2W protests? Smiling for the cameras, Omala was the opposition to the opposition like stubborn belly fat besieging the opposition’s waistline.
Omala, a decade ago was the most wonderful cadre. So wonderful that Omala now says if it were not for him, the NRM government would have collapsed during the W2W protests. On May 5, a frustrated and now retired Omala, having faithfully served the police for over 30 years, told the media he was contemplating exile if the police chief did not help him because “corruption is threatening his life.”
“In this country fighting corruption is very difficult, and if you do, you become the target. I am now the target. I am scared for my life. I have written to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) but nothing has been done.”
Omala, come hither with your frustration. Let us contemplate our collective fate. Let us frustrate the frustration of Besigye with our laments. Let us be deceived some more, we who do not need the bread of colonisers for we have cassava of the colonised.
Omala, welcome to the other side of frustration where the sleep is gone and the cassava is toxic. Welcome to the republic of Kasangati where we cannot sleep as our government pigs out on supplementary budgets that do not concern us quislings.
Welcome to Besigye’s frustration; resistance is futile.
smugmountain@gmail.com
The writer is a tayaad muzzukulu.
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