Dear reader, denying political prisoner, brother Waiswa Mufumbiro the chance to go say goodbye to his deceased wife, Edith Mufumbiro was not only personally painful, but also a missed political opportunity.
Mufumbiro’s moment of pain would have been our Emitt-Louise-Till moment. It was a window to harness this pain of one family; a make good on a national cause.
In a nutshell, that is the story of Emitt Till, a 14-year-old African American boy who was ghastly murdered by a white mob, but his mother, in this moment of loss and pain, chose to use it and bring the civil rights issues to the fore.
In being callous and cruel against Mufumbiro – definitely without realising it – hurt the entire country. This bitterness has been loaned forward. As a man who lost a spouse in my early adult life, saying goodbye to a deceased loved one, is not just the last act of love we do for our spouses, but a memory we carry in our bones for our own healing.
This memory quickly becomes a core part of the stories we tell our children – about our own lives, and their mothers. Just the thought that you ensured your spouse received a decent send off – that their bodies were rested in a place you chose for them – is timelessly emotionally cushioning.
I can imagine Mufumbiro’s multiple layers of pain: the failure to be present as his wife struggled through a terminal illness; the regret that your absence possibly accelerated her death, but that also that you never participated in lowering her in the grave.
While she could have understood the choices Mufumbiro made – as sacrifices for a bigger cause – the guilty feeling and pain is inescapable. I can imagine Mufumbiro struggling to shade off that crippling feeling that he possibly made the wrong choices!
I’m not sure if folks in the deep state calling the shots understand this pain, and the possibility that tables might turn just as day follows light. It is undeniable, many inmates lose loved ones and never get the privilege to go bury them.
“Why Mufumbiro?” someone has asked. Truth is, had the deceased not been wife to Waiswa Mufumbiro, this matter would never have received any column inches. The point is this: at some point in their lives, men and women, free or imprisoned, might acquire a stature larger than their ordinary lives.
They become persons of immense public interest. Their pain or pleasure reflects on entire constituencies. It could be an entire country. This is the stature that Mufumbiro has come to embody and thus the actions of his jailers needed to beware of the public interest behind this man.
FEAR OF PRECEDENT?
If the fear was setting a difficult precedent, surely Uganda Prison Services will never have a hundred individuals of the stature of Waiswa Mufumbiro all at the same time. This could be a privilege accorded to this category of prisoners for their political and social weight, and the constituencies – they carry on their backs.
Prison authorities and visitors understand this really well – that not all prisoners are the same even for similar crimes: some carry immense public interest. But if carceral punishment – Mufumbiro is yet to be sentenced – is meant to be retributive, compensatory, a lesson for others, and the entire idea is making the incarcerated a better person, why cultivate bitterness?
Why turn prison into a battlefield? If the fear was setting this type of precedent, what is the problem with this type of precedent? Money and men? Why not channel resources to this otherwise forgotten but worthy aspect of the prison architecture?
Readers of Michel Foucault – especially, The Birth of the Prison – understand that the prison was never meant to rid the public of criminals. Because, the more prisons, the more numbers of criminals have multiplied.
Foucault tells us prison was actually designed to serve a different function: to govern. In a loose application of Foucault, is it not so evident that Uganda’s courts – and by extension, prisons – have so blatantly become an absolute extension of the autocratic power? (Is this what Prof. Oloka- Onyango called Juristocracy?)
It is apparent nowadays that court judgments, especially those involving political prisoners – including bail – are negotiated settlements. “Negotiated settlements” is not even the right terminology but of political considerations of the deep state.
To this end, the deep state ought to beware of a difficult future ahead of them, and be more wholesome, humane and fair in their allocation of political court decisions. There is a political transition staring at an entire country and cultivating more ire is surely recipe for disaster.
CULTIVATING A TRANSITION
There has been talk of mending hearts and reconciliation. If the future is going to belong to all of us, then there are things that those in power have to do. In Mufumbiro’s difficult moment, the deep state needed to beware of the constituency the man carries and exploit it with mercy and kindness.
His constituency would be pleased, and perhaps this would reduce the bitterness many Ugandans carry against the Museveni regime.
If we are jolted by social media users celebrating the death of kindred and friends of those in power, then we need to have a good understanding of where this celebratory anger comes from.
Presently, all they can do is celebrate their death, but in moments of uncertainty, this bitterness can end in genocide or internecine killings. This awareness ought to translate into tangible actions to mend hearts, and cultivate avenues for reconciliation. Rest in Peace, Edith Katende Mufumbiro.
yusufkajura@gmail.com
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.
