[If they trust me back, we ride. I have been turned down plenty of times]. Well, yes, sometimes, I stop just for a beautiful maiden. Yeah, I get that. Shut up.
It had heavily poured that morning when I left my dingy in Kazo-Bwaise. Along that bad road connecting Muganzirwaza to Bwaise via Chez Johnson, I found an elderly gentleman jumping through the mud.
He was in a white kanzu, and had a Muslim cap. Tall, and slightly frail, I stopped my Suzuki Escudo (UAH), said salaam and asked him to ride with me to town. He jumped in and we were soon seated in the slow-moving messy Bwaise traffic. This was way before traffic lights came.
He was a loquacious conversationist, and we quickly entangled. Full of stories and wisdom, I do not recall how we started talking about Arab racism, when he announced to me that he had just returned from Saudi Arabia.
Forgive my judgmental self, dear reader, but he didn’t look a guy who had been living in Saudi Arabia. [I have no idea how they should look like, either. But you know what I am talking about].
I quickly asked what he had been doing in Saudi Arabia.
“Ahh, the former chairperson of the Electoral Commission Hajji Aziz Kasujja is my elder brother, and he has been serving as ambassador in Saudi Arabia,” he answered.
“Anha, I thought Museveni had simply dropped him,” returned my ignorant self.
“No! They are great friends, there is no way he could drop him. You know my brother helped him a lot in these elections. Kizza Besigye actually won two elections, but my brother had to make sure Museveni was the winner. They worked very closely and my brother was very trusted.”
“Are you sure, Besigye won these elections?” I prodded on, having awakened the scholar (and politician) in me. Besigye had so alleged many times.
“I am telling you this from my brother’s own mouth,” he then went on to tell me his names if I thought he was making up things. He also suggested I could visit the Aziz Kasujja family and confirm if I wanted.
We laughed it off and the conversation rolled on to other things. But the scholar-politician in me had picked mana from a good source.
***
Sometime in late 2015, we were in Butambala for a burial of an elder in the Muslim community when I eavesdropped a curious piece of lore. The chairman of the electoral commission then, Hajji Badru Kiggundu was in attendance.
Muslims, despite being respectfully of hierarchy and status, tend to be more informal and cordial with each other. Kiggundu would quickly catch up with contemporaries and they started chatting lightly, but sneaking serious matters into their banter.
At one point, when the laughter subsided, a contemporary of his lowered his voice for a sombre question:
“But Hajji Kiggundu, tell me as your friend, don’t tell me politics; if Kizza Besigye won this election, would you declare him winner?” the question landed.
Kiggundu was not taken aback at all. Looking his friend straight in the eye, and casting a sombre smile, asked rhetorically: “If I declared him [Besigye] winner, where would I turn? These things aren’t as easy as that, my friend,” he said as his contemporary nodded in understanding.
“And what do I then tell the man who appointed me? No way. They cannot even allow me,” he added, now seriously than before confiding in a friend with whom they must have eaten mangoes with as little children. I was there with cocked ears. It was another beautiful moment.
***
My friend, the pleasantly proud Imam Kasozi was once asked if he would ever take a ministerial or senior public service job if Mr Museveni offered one.
This farmer and local imam answered negative. But quickly made exception of one position, the chairmanship of the Electoral Commission.
“I would take this position confident that I will only announce the winner of the actual election, not what Museveni wants. I would show Museveni that there are men who do not fear him, or fear anything, except the Almighty. If Museveni insisted too much, I would resign in the middle of an election and publicly announce to the world that Museveni wanted me to steal the election for him,” the imam said.
Since Imam Kasozi is not known for empty speech, I am confident Museveni believes him. And Museveni does not take gambles.
He has never called on Imam Kasozi even when the country would be more confident of the EC if this cleric and professor of development anthropology was in charge.
Under our modern technocratic autocracies, EC chairpersons are never helpless. They are simply complicit. They have choices they could make for the good of the country.
How beautiful would it be if Simon Byabakama threw in the towel – complaining of excessive police interference with the process to the point of reducing him to an idiot? No, he is fine. He is not imam Kasozi.
yusufkajura@gmail.com
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.