The man at whose behest this feared criminal gang has been operating, General Kale Kayihura, maintained a straight face that many unsuspecting members of the public might find impressive.
Speaking with a dint of mischief wrapped under artificial sincerity, he has time and again brushed off criticism, instead presenting the militia and its head as invaluable in police’s fight against crime.
The real fight, though, has been to defeat real and imagined political opposition and to demobilize legitimate challenges against the current occupant of State House.
There is a sense in which one is tempted to conclude that Mr Kayihura operates with a cynical agenda of engendering lawlessness and criminality so he can maintain unmatched relevancy in the scheme of power calculations.
He has singularly and spiritedly fought against efforts to bar passenger motorcycles, otherwise known as boda bodas, from the centre of Kampala. That Kayihura cannot appreciate the necessity of such a measure speaks volumes about his crass calculations and the instrumental value he attaches to Boda Bodas in the city.
Getting Boda Bodas out of the city-centre is acutely necessary not only to push back against the sheer physical chaos wrought by armies of riders but also to better manage crime and enforce order in the city.
From commandeering whole streets and distorting free movement of traffic to the total disregard of the very basic rules of the road, Boda Boda riders have enjoyed a free ride in Kampala.
The chief law enforcement agency, the Uganda Police Force, has been stripped of its independent mandate and made to play to the tunes of militias, notably those drawn from boda boda riders.
Last year, they descended on the Magistrate’s court in Makindye. They disrupted the business of court and attempted to rough up lawyers appearing in a suit filed against the IGP.
In a sad yet true irony of the times of Uganda today, members of the militia were under the full cover of the very law enforcement agency supposed to apprehend them, the police.
Some Ugandans may want to applaud the events of last weekend, reportedly involving the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) conducting a string of operations leading to the arrest of members of the militia in question.
Not too long ago, the same CMI, working with the Internal Security Organization (ISO), went after individuals in police and civilians drafted into illegal policing work.
Unfortunately, it would be a little naïve to see in these operations much substance beyond power struggles within intelligence and security agencies. Arresting Kitatta may be of little consequence because there are many of his ilk out there already engaged in similar activities or readily on hand to be enlisted.
The issue here is that propping up militias and allowing criminal gangs to reign in Kampala is part of a broader strategy of rule that relies on criminal methods in the service of regime survival.
Kitatta is only an accessory available for hire; in turn, he gets access to some trappings of raw power including owning guns and having armed guards, a licence to do wrong without sanction, and opportunities for primitive enrichment including through robbery.
The imperative for services of a militia like Boda Boda 2010 and a ruthlessly committed operative like Kitatta emerges from the loss of legitimacy by the rulers. The longer they stay on and develop an insular feeling against life outside State House, the more it becomes necessary to revert to any workable measure for regime continuity.
For as long as General Museveni continues to feel insecure and lacks the popular consent of Ugandans, he needs a partisan head of police whose primary duty is to fight to secure his stay in power. This invariably entails criminalizing the state and seeking the services of militias that are the antidote of the very essence of a state.
It is difficult to see how this state of affairs can change when the same structure of politics obtains and the same holders of power remain steadfastly focused on clinging onto power. Yet it is a perilous path.
A full-fledged rogue state can quickly disintegrate under the stress of internal factional struggles, it can attenuate to the point of being thinly present in society or, worse still, it can coalesce into a predatory monster from which citizens have to run. Uganda has all the prospects of going in any one of these directions.
The author is an assistant professor of political science at North Carolina State University.
