Victimising KCCA, police

What we are seeing in the Agaba-Komakech case in relation to the Walk-to-Work example are clear attempts by Kayihura to reduce police into a political instrument of defending the presidency of Yoweri Museveni only. I have consistently argued that before arresting any police officer, the matter should be investigated and case established. Opposition leader Kizza Besigye often has no control over the unemployed angry youths he leads in protests. They destroy people’s property. Many in Uganda’s chattering class want to ignore the rights of ordinary women selling mandazi, roasted ground nuts and chapatti by the roadside whose property gets looted by Besigye’s riotous mobs. Many others ignore the threats imposed by these mobs to the police. Indeed, without sufficient protection, police officers trying to quell riots can easily get killed.

The same Kayihura took only hours to investigate the case of Komakech and recommend to the DPP to charge him with murder. This shows that Kayihura is fair to police officers who kill Besigye supporters (i.e. for threatening Museveni’s political power) but does not care about those who defend public land against encroachers. This use of public institutions in a partisan way is the basis of my disagreement with the NRM, the wider opposition and a significant section of Uganda’s chattering classes.

This country needs basic principles around which public decisions can be taken regardless of the actors involved. Police should have rules of engagement that must be applied whether they are cracking down on Walk-to-Work or dealing with a case of encroachers on public land. There is a video showing this mob lynching KCCA officers – 15 of them were injured and their medical reports have been given to the police. Some members of this mob were arrested but police has since released them without any charges. This means that police is promoting impunity.

To make matters worse, the police officers who went to the scene sided with the riotous mob. They made speeches condemning KCCA thereby undermining its authority. The RDC did the same. Kayihura went further and gave the mob labour and police construction materials to resettle on the road reserve and offered to protect their illegal act. The police and the mob claim they were not given sufficient notice, which is not true. The notice was given first for 28 days. It expired and KCCA gave another of 28 days which also expired. Then it gave a third notice of 30 days – making it a total of 86 days but the encroachers refused to vacate the land. What did anyone expect KCCA to do: Go and kiss them?

The institutional integrity of the state has been significantly compromised by private interests inside of the state and outside of it. Government employees routinely divert public funds to serve their private interests. Equally powerful individuals and ordinary people outside the state appropriate public assets like land to private use. Both are defended and protected by President Museveni. Uganda’s chattering class looks at only one side where those inside the state and their powerful allies outside of it, like Hassan Basajabalaba, indulge in this form of corruption. But they ignore the other insidious part of the problem: Museveni’s continuous defence of the corruption of the masses (voters) who appropriate public land.

As I write this article, masses of ordinary people have occupied many square miles of forest reserves, protected wetlands and game reserves. The National Forestry Authority (NFA) and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) have tried to evict them. But these ordinary people petition the president. In pandering to the whims of these voters, Museveni has written letters telling encroachers to stay on reserves. Whenever NFA or UWA officials show up, peasants pull out the president’s letters. Kayihura provides police protection to the encroachers against lawful eviction by NFA and UWA. The claim that only the rich are protected is not true.

This private use of public assets is corruption that Uganda’s chattering classes ignore.  The principle of self defence has to be applied to a police officer whether he is evicting encroachers or breaking up a demonstration by Besigye.

That is why during the oil debate, I argued that the principle of not accusing anyone without substantiating one’s claims must be applied. This must be irrespective of whether it is Gerald Karuhanga against Sam Kutesa or Noble Mayombo against Kizza Besigye. I defended Besigye in 2005 against being charged with rape. In fact the state had a much superior case against Besigye than Karuhanga had against Kutesa and Hillary Onek. They had a victim, she had lived with Besigye and there was an old woman in the house who claimed to have been told by the victim about this rape.

In Karuhanga’s case, he presented to parliament documents whose validity he cannot demonstrate. He had not investigated and established some minimum validity about them.

In 2009, someone got a court order to evict people who were occupying his land in Natete. He went with auctioneers to Natete Police Post where he got police officers – as required by law – to witness the eviction. They accepted. After the eviction, the evicted group petitioned the president. Museveni and Kayihura went to the scene, arrested the police officers, frog-matched them and humiliated them in front of the mob and the mass media. Why punish the police for obeying the law? Everyone remained silent in the face of this abuse of police officers.

Is it surprising, therefore, that when the 2009 Kayunga riots broke out, the police in Natete, given their experience, were too terrified to defend the station from an angry mob? They ran away. The mob burnt down the police station – the only police station that was burnt done during that riot. The lesson is simple: police should not be punished for defending the rights of others against angry and violent mobs.

The action police and Kayihura have taken since the Agaba-Komakech incident has significantly undermined the ability of KCCA to conduct meaningful work in improving our chaotic city. As soon as people heard that Agaba had been sent to jail, vendors returned unto the streets. When a KCCA official tried to chase one of them and the vendor fell into a ditch, police arrested the KCCA official involved instead. He is still in jail.

Slowly but steadily, the authority of the state in Uganda has been weakened by a naive pursuit of “democracy.” The institutional independence of most state institutions has been undermined by this misconceived belief that democracy means pandering to every whim of every group that is able to organise political pressure. Rather than public institutions working on the basis of laws, they are often made to merely respond to pressure from mobilised demand-groups.

Mobs and popular pressure cannot organise and defend collective interests consistently because of their ad hoc nature. Only entrenched laws and the rule of such laws will do that. Kampala is a city in a mess – one sprawling garbage heap and slum. Everyone – rich or poor, powerful or weak – has occupied a road reserve or public land. Government needs to send a signal to everyone that it will not tolerate this impunity. However, if there was any chance that Jennifer Musisi would clean-up Kampala and re-establish order in the city, that hope has suffered a significant dent by the of charging Agaba and Komakech with murder.