On Besigye’s hunger strike

Why Besigye and his supporters are cowardly and dishonest about their political aims and means to achieve them

THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | I had restrained myself from speaking or writing about Dr. Kizza Besigye’s hunger strike and the campaign to present him as a victim of a mean and cruel dictator. I am compelled to break my silence in large part because I think Besigye’s sympathisers are hypocrites and delusional. I just saw them in court chanting that President Yoweri Museveni will die and his son, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, will cry. Clearly, they know what Besigye was/is plotting. Yet they are cowards not willing to stand for their beliefs even if it means going to jail or being killed for them.

For instance, they have been using Besigye’s emaciated pictures to claim Museveni as trying to kill him. Yet Besigye’s current state of health is a self-inflicted wound caused by his personal decision to go on hunger strike. Government cannot force him to eat. Therefore, if he died from hunger, he would have committed suicide. I do not agree that Besigye has been treated unjustly or unfairly. On the contrary, I think Museveni has exhibited extraordinary restraint during this entire process. Sadly, Museveni’s spokespersons and handlers have been unable to represent their boss well on a matter where I think he stands on a higher moral pedestal.

Besigye was arrested and abducted from Nairobi when he was in the middle of a meeting discussing how to bring down the government of Uganda violently. In the same meeting, he was discussing shooting down Museveni’s plane to kill the president in cold blood. This is the elephant in the room that should be debated. Yet Besigye supporters present this debate as a purely legal matter. This is a political issue. Uganda has legal procedures for removing the government. Besigye does not believe in them. That is why he was plotting violent change of government and the cold-blooded murder of Museveni. If Besigye and his supporters were courageous and honest, they would focus on the justification for his decisions.

If Besigye believes Museveni has committed crimes as president, he cannot take the law into his own hands and become judge, jury and the executioner of a death sentence. Museveni is also entitled to due process. Instead, Besigye, who wants and demands due process, did not think Museveni was also entitled to the same. Now he is blackmailing the state with a hunger strike. Why do Besigye supporters and sympathizers insist that Museveni should respect the law in handling Besigye when Besigye did not think he should give Museveni a similar chance? Besigye clearly understood that his struggle is political, not legal. He should therefore not use legal gymnastics to hide his political motives and their consequences.

If Besigye was a courageous politician, he would have done what people like Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castrol and Nelson Mandela did when they tried a violent overthrow of a government and were caught. For instance, during the Rivonia Trial, Mandela said: “I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I had any love of violence. I planned it after a sober and calm assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.” He went on: “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Now that is political courage – the ability to stand for one’s beliefs no matter the consequences. But Besigye is a coward who is not willing to stick his neck out for his beliefs. Instead, he wants to hide behind legal procedures to obscure his conspiracy. If Museveni was the devil Besigye sympathisers claim he is, he would not have abducted Besigye from Kenya and brought him before the courts. Instead, he would have done to Besigye what Besigye was plotting to do to him: kill him in Kenya. Besigye supporters know, intuitively, that Museveni is humane, respects peoples’ rights and follows due process. That is why they have been using courts to shield their man from the political consequences of his decisions.

The opposition claim that courts in Uganda are controlled by Museveni. Yet the Supreme Court has ruled against Museveni and taken power to prosecute Besigye from the military court martial (where Museveni has control) to civilian courts. That is judicial independence. Opposition activists believe courts are only independent when they rule in their favor. If Besigye was in Museveni’s shoes, he would not have subjected his rival to due process of the law, even of a kangaroo military court. That Museveni saw it important to abduct Besigye from Kenya, drive him all the way to Uganda so that they can present him before courts of law for trial tells a lot about Museveni’s respect for the law and for due process.

Besigye went on hunger strike as a propaganda stunt to win public sympathy. That is why the discussion has shifted from the substantive issues of his conspiracy to his state of health. This is obscurantism. Ugandans need to debate the substantive issues in this case and if I were Besigye, I would stand by the audio recordings and make my case for a violent change of government before the courts. Besigye was recorded planning a violent overthrow of the government and the cold-blooded murder of the president. Why? Because he believes elections won’t lead to change of government because Museveni rigs them. Therefore, only violence and political assassination can. Instead of hiding behind these legal gymnastics, he should come out openly and argue this point.

And here is my response to Besigye on this matter. He went to the bush with Museveni claiming that Milton Obote had rigged an election. They unleashed unprecedented violence, robbing banks for money, hospitals for drugs and cooperative stores for food. They came to power. Now Besigye says Museveni has not lived up to the ideas of the struggle and is promising Uganda another round of violence. If violence was the solution to democratic progress in Uganda, why haven’t all previous violent changes of government brought us to democracy? That is the issue I present to Besigye.

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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug