The Besigyesisation of Bobi Wine

Besigye convinced himself that the only road to power is through street protest. From then onwards, he saw elections as an opportunity to organise a mass uprising to topple the government.  

When Bobi Wine came on scene, he seemed to reject this view. In one speech he said, referring to his disagreement with Besigye: “Don’t talk about democracy and stand four times and then on the fifth time you tell people democracy doesn’t work. We believe it works.” He seemed to downplay the effect of electoral unfairness and focused his energies in calling upon young people to register to vote. I felt Bobi Wine was up to something different – breaking despair and resignation that Besigye had inculcated in the opposition and turning them into permanent protestors.

It now seems Bobi Wine did not know the nature of the political waters into which he was treading. In an NBS interview, Besigye had warned that with time Bobi Wine would come full circle to the very point of resignation and despair and retreat from democracy to protest and from elections to insurrection. He has been proven right. But this only shows that Bobi Wine’s political statements were not based on a strategic analysis of the situation, instigating a calculated response. Instead it shows that he was being naïve.

The opposition in Uganda, like very many elites in Africa and their cheerleaders in the Western press, diplomacy, media and academia, seem blind to the realities of democratisation. As former U.S. President Barak Obama never tired of saying, democracy is messy. It takes a lot of time to build, requiring a long-term commitment to upholding it even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Democracy is a journey, not a destination. Perfecting it is a continuous and tedious process. There are myriad challenges. Uganda is going through that protracted process.

But the opposition is bent on power, not democracy. They only see democracy as an opportunity to gain power, not to build their own party organisation, broaden the political participation of the masses, develop an alternative policy agenda and envision a new future for Uganda. Therefore elections only make sense if they win. If they lose then elections are meaningless. The judicial process only makes sense to them if it overturns the election of the president.

Opposition leaders denounce the judiciary in spite of the fact that Uganda’s judges have continually ruled against Museveni and the state in the vast majority of cases they have taken to court. Our judges have protected the rights of opposition politicians, journalists and activists. I am a beneficiary of this, our judicial independence. And so are Besigye, Bobi Wine and so many others. The blindness of the opposition to this reality only shows that they only see judicial independence in how it can help them get power.

It is sad that Bobi Wine has moved full circle to Besigye’s sad and dangerous position of permanent protester. Since he seems to admire America’s democracy, he needs to draw lessons from it. Although the Declaration of Independence stated, in 1776, that all men are born equal, and the constitution of 1789 restated this ideal, black people were counted as two thirds of a human being. Many were slaves, denying them all human rights. Native Americans, other ethnic minorities, women and poor white men did not have a right to vote. Universal white male adult suffrage was achieved in 1832 (56 years later), women got the right to vote in 1920 (144 years later) and African Americans in 1965, (189 years later).

Across its history, America has suffered from various forms of electoral fraud. White supremacist gangs employing violence and chasing black people from polling stations, white dominated state legislatures massively disenfranchising certain minorities, redistricting, etc. But American liberals have never lost faith in democracy because of these myriads unfair practices. Will our opposition listen?

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