What happened to the fundamental change?

In 2001 political parties were still banned. Museveni had said nominations for all political posts would be done on individual merit under the Movement. This means that any person could stand for any post including the presidency. But when Dr Besigye announced his candidature, Museveni declared him a deserter from the Movement. The Movement Caucus was then formed. Museveni rallied the cabinet and the Caucus to announce him as the Movement’s preferred candidate for the 2001 elections. Indeed on November 25, 2000 the Movement Parliamentary Caucus declared: ‘..we endorse the candidature of Y.K. Museveni as the torch bearer of the Movement in the said presidential elections…’ The resolution was formally signed by Movement Caucus chairman Prof. Gilbert Bukenya on December 9, 2000.

The Movement was an all-inclusive ‘no-party system’ yet it was now nominating an own presidential candidate to stand on its ticket. By this, the author says, no other candidate was eligible to stand on the Movement ticket except Museveni yet the election was supposed to be on ‘individual-merit’ basis.

This amounts to blatant manipulation of the political system which Museveni had castigated shortly after capturing power. In his ‘Political Substance and Political Form; What is Africa’s Problem? Museveni had stated thus: ‘A system can appear to be free, but you find that in essence, it is not so. For instance, you can manipulate the ignorance of the people and make them make decisions that will militate against their interests. Can this be called freedom? Can freedom include manipulation? Should there be freedom to manipulate, misinform, and take advantage of people’s ignorance? Is that democracy? I personally do not think so.’

So when Museveni was seeking to be endorsed as the only candidate for the Movement, wasn’t he in essence manipulating the political system against public interest? According to Museveni’s earlier writing, such cannot be called freedom. Kobusingye doubts Museveni’s sincerity in his earlier writings and suggests he was just covering up his political dishonesty.

This contradiction in the Movement was also captured by the Human Rights Watch in its report Hostile to Democracy: The Movement System and Political Repression in Uganda 1999. ‘Since the NRM is not officially a political party despite having the characteristics of a ruling political party in a single party state, it has sought to create an illusion that Uganda is a no-party state. Such semantics obscure the basic reality of the NRM’s partisan dominance of the political process in Uganda,’ the report reads in part.

During the joint assembly of African Caribbean, Pacific nations and European Economic Community in February 1991 in Kampala, Museveni attempted to distinguish the Movement from a one-party system. ‘There is also another distortion in politics by those who run one-party systems. If I express an opinion that you do not like and you expel me from the party, but do not allow me form another one, then I am effectively disenfranchised. This problem has created a lot of problems in Africa. We don’t expel members from the Movement; if you must expel people, logically, you must allow them form another party.’ However when Besigye announced his candidature in 2000, Museveni declared him a deserter, meaning he was no longer a member of the Movement. That time political parties were still banned and Besigye could not form his own political party. So where did Museveni want him to go?

The Constituent Assembly elections in 1994 were conducted on individual merit under the all-inclusive Movement. But after the elections, NRM officials announced that the Movement had won. If the Movement was all-inclusive as had been claimed, whom had they defeated?

Electoral Commission’s impartiality and competence

Kobusingye’s book says corruption, incompetence and outright manipulation by the state have so compromised the Electoral Commission’s independence that it cannot be trusted to conduct free and fair elections. The book says some EC top officials were representatives or agents of companies which were doing business with the Commission. One example was Lithotec, a South African company, which was contracted to print ballot papers for the EC in 2001. One of the EC top officials, whom the book names, was the company’s business representative and indeed it won the contract. The parliamentary committee which investigated the 2001 election violence in 2002 discovered that more than half of the EC senior staff were not qualified. The book cites several cases of fraud in procurement deals which were carried out even after the government- contracted SWIPCO, a Swiss procurement company, had advised against the transactions. The indictment on the EC incompetence is reinforced by the findings of the Supreme Court in 2001 and 2006  which showed the Electoral Commission could not be trusted to deliver free and fair elections.

In his Mustard Seed, Museveni says that lack of trust is a big impediment to the democratisation process. ‘Not to be trusted is the greatest strategic handicap for any political group,’ Museveni writes. Yet he has rejected the opposition and civil society organisations’ demands to dissolve the EC well knowing that the public has lost faith in it.

Extrajudicial killings of political opponents

Before cataloguing the number of extrajudicial murders and arbitrary arrests and torture of political opponents by the state, Dr Kobusingye reminds Museveni of his own speech: Colonial versus Modern Law, at a seminar in Kampala on January 12, 1987, one year after he had taken over power. ‘Let me take this opportunity to reiterate what I have said many times before, that the NRM government is fully committed to the rule of law, the protection of individual human rights, and the independence of the judiciary. Our country has gone through a traumatic experience for the last twenty or so years, mainly because Obote and Amin had no respect for the rule of law. Their soldiers and security agents had become the rule of law unto themselves because they could murder, rape, and rob with impunity. The liberation war was fought to restore the dignity and inviolability of the person of every Ugandan and to protect his property.  Nobody has the right to take away a person’s life, freedom or property except within the due process of the law,’ Museveni said passionately at the seminar.

However this contrasts sharply with the Museveni who ordered the re-arrest of Besigye and his 21 co-accused who had been duly released on bail by the High Court in Kampala on November 16, 2005. His soldiers, like Obote’s and Amin’s armies, deprived the suspects of their liberty contrary to his promise at the law seminar in 1987.

In February 2002 two opposition supporters Peter Oloya Yumbe and Steven Olanya were arrested on charges of murdering Alfred Bongomin, the Movement chairman for Pabbo in Gulu. Others David Penytoo and Tony Kitara were arrested for treason. But in September 2002 UPDF soldiers raided Gulu Prison and shot Yumbe dead in the process of whisking him to the military barracks, which was not a gazetted government prison. Article 23 (2) of the Uganda constitution states: ‘A person arrested, restricted or detained shall be kept in a place authorised by law.’

A military barracks is not a place authorised by law to detain suspects.

In his ‘Ours is a Fundamental Change‘ Museveni had stated: ‘No regime has a right to kill or beat any citizen of this country….  We make it clear to our soldiers that if they abuse any citizen, the punishment they will receive will teach them a lesson. As for killing people, if you kill a citizen, you yourself will be killed.’

However, for Yumbe’s murder by Museveni’s soldiers, the government did not even investigate the case. Instead the army officer who ordered Yumbe’s killing was promoted.

Olanya and Penytoo were released but later re-arrested on March 9, 2005. When the police were about to release them, the UPDF grabbed them again and took them to the military barracks where they were joined by another opposition supporter Ochan Laryang.

The suspects were transferred to Kampala and charged with murder of Ochaya, Kitgum RDC, who police said was killed in 2002. He had died in 1999.

One month later the police said the suspects had killed Alfred Bongomin in Gulu, not Ochaya.  They were released upon pressure by MPs from the north. Then the state arrested MPs Michael Ocula and Reagan Okumu and charged them with killing Bongomin. Court later ruled that the MPs were maliciously prosecuted.

How can one person (Bongomin) be killed by different people at different times? Wasn’t this the state persecution Museveni had assured people on January 29, 1986 will never take place under his leadership? What happened to the Fundamental Change and that assurance?

A woman in Kabale supported Besigye during the 2001 elections. After the elections she and her husband were arrested by soldiers as the couple returned from a village to buy waragi (local crude gin) for their pub. They were brutally beaten and accused of treason. Two weeks later they were transferred to Mbarara district for further detention. The woman was discharging pus from her private parts due to the beating.

The couple were blindfolded and separately transferred to the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) in Kampala. There were many other suspects. One night she was blindfolded and taken away to a place in Butabika, east of Kampala. There were several graves, some of them freshly dug. They asked her to tell them the truth or else her grave would be among those before her. They started shooting in the air. They suggested to ‘work on her nails’ but they later abandoned that option. They drove her back to CMI. Throughout the detention, she was subjected to electric shocks using a metal connected to electric current. The pain, she says, was more severe than the one by beating. She was ordered to remove all her clothes. The soldiers pierced her nipples using a needle. She still carries black scars on her nipples. The soldiers gang-raped her on several occasions.

One day the soldiers asked her whether she knew where her husband was. She said he was at home. A few minutes later they brought him. She was shell-shocked. A few days later they were transferred back to Mbarara. Her husband was taken away. She was too ill and unconscious. At night she was dumped in a trench where a passersby picked her in the morning and took her unconscious to Mbarara Hospital. She was treated for several weeks and was able to go home in Kabale. One day a man came to her home and told her that the state had heard that she was planning to report to the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC). He warned that the day she would report to UHRC was the day she would die. She has never reported to UHRC. At that time a senior journalist at Daily Monitor sought to interview her but she feared for her life and called off the appointment.

Frank Atukunda was arrested for subversion and taken to a garage at Arua Presidential Lodge. There were about 20 people. They stayed there for several days. At night they would be tied with ropes and beaten. One day a frail old man was dying. He could no longer breath. The old man called out one of the soldiers in Swahili: mtoto yangu, nemekufa (my son, I am dying). The soldier loosened the rope a little. Nobody knows what happened to the man later.

On November 25, 2005 they were taken out of the building. There lay a heap of guns and a crowd of journalists outside in the barracks compound. They were told to sit behind the guns as journalists took photographs. They were introduced as having been captured with the guns.

They were transferred to a safe house (torture house) in Kololo Summit View in Kampala. The beatings resumed. A military intelligence officer called Drani led the beatings and told the suspects they did not deserve to live. Sometimes Drani used scissors to cut into the skin of the suspects as they yelled in agony pleading for mercy. He would tell them Museveni is ‘a good parent and whoever opposes him deserves to die.’ Drani is still in CMI, The Independent has established.

Another intelligence officer Arnold Kajjo, a relative of Security Minister Amama Mbabazi, would use big sticks to hit the suspects. He would never stop until the sticks were in pieces. The detainees fed on water the soldiers used to wash their plates after eating.

Testimonies about torture in CMI’s safe houses are appalling. Patrick Mamenero was arrested from Kabale for alleged subversion. He died in CMI detention on July 23, 2002. Soldiers beat him to death. The then Chief of Military Intelligence Brig. Noble Mayombo told the press that Mamenero had died of malaria. But a post-mortem from Mulago Hospital stated that he died from a head injury inflicted by a blunt object (like a stick, iron bar or hammer). Nobody has ever been prosecuted for the murder. Mamenero had been detained with his father. The father did not know that his son had been killed next door until after the burial. He was later released from detention without any charge.

From Museveni’s early days of the struggle, he was resolute that sorting out the governance problem was prerequisite for every development in the country. In his Selected Articles on the Uganda Resistance War  1985, Museveni said: ‘There is quite a lot of misconception not only on the question of Uganda but also on many African issues. For example you hear people say that the problem of Uganda is economic disruption… So what is the sine qua non of rehabilitating Uganda?… It is the solution of the political question. Once the political question is solved, it will be a basis for solving other problems, economic questions, social questions and others….’

However in 2005 after the constitution had been controversially amended amidst accusations that he had bribed parliament to pass the amendment removing presidential term limits, Museveni changed his previous statement and told the press: ‘You wasted a lot of time and power discussing kisanja (presidential tenure). You get into trouble because you involve yourselves in very small and petty things….’

From then onwards Museveni started saying that Uganda’s fundamental problem was in fact economic development and serious people should talk about things like poverty alleviation and industrialisation. He said politics was a petty issue and an idle subject for unserious people like the opposition.

Before Musasizi Kifefe was arrested in November 2004, there had been an assassination attempt on his life. Saasi, as he was commonly known among relatives and friends, had gone to his home village in Rukungiri. He borrowed a friend’s car to drive around Rukungiri. Before he left Rukungiri he returned the car to the owner. His friend left for Kampala. Saasi left later in another car. The friend never reached Kampala. Shortly after Lyantonde town, he was killed when armed men shot his car several times. Other occupants were severely injured. The assailants did not take anything, implying their mission was only to kill.

When Saasi was arrested, his sister Margaret was returning from abroad. She was informed by a friend that Saasi had been arrested and the state was also looking for her. Margaret had vowed never to go back into exile. She and her husband fled into exile after Idi Amin killed her father-in-law, Erinayo Oryema in 1977. She came back after Museveni captured power in 1986. Now she is in the second exile because of Museveni’s government.