Tell Bobi Wine: Liberation Is Self-sacrifice, Not Rallies, Photoshop, or Launching Films

By Godwin Muwanguzi

We are in critical times as a dwindling nation. Our democracy slumps down the unjust roads as the Uganda government perpetually crunches us by the gun. Sadly, our redeemers are now assailable; all they do is play with our conscience as though it were a game of chess.

Uganda boils from political nonentity—the father and the son’s eternal birthday sagas accompanied by trivial speeches from the regime’s fawners; the Speaker’s proclamation of the country’s infinite dictatorial trinity of the father, the son and the Chwezi dynasty; the political prisoners who might not know justice; hosting the 2027 CAF that citizens are against since it is but only an opportunity for our national wolves (the unpatriotic idiots we call leaders) to steal taxpayers’ money, and raise mansions while our economy shrinks; the stumbling education—illiterates are in charge as ministers, tribalism; the ailing health system that none of our politicians trusts, among other despicable shortcomings.

On top of our many problems, we have to deal with pseudo-revolutionists, who present themselves as political messiahs and after they have eaten enough in the name of the struggle and at the expense of the ignorant populace, look us in the eye and deceptively say that they are removing the same dictator with whom they feast in the dead of night. How cunning!

But unlike a coin, the truth has one side: only the truth—you are either with the oppressed or the oppressor. However, in Uganda, our liberators are neutral; today they are obsessed with ousting the reprehensible Museveni, and tomorrow, they secretly source funds from him—we have seen these crooks eventually aligning with the adversary in the name of dialogue. And whatever they have achieved has been for their own good.

Dismally, the dictator laughs at us. He knows opposition is ineffective and people are cowards. We wouldn’t demonstrate even if he taxed us for the air we breathe. He rules the nation with iron fists while he cripples every political system with incompetence.   And whereas he impairs the nation, the youths who would have been at the frontline of the scramble fighting for their intransigent future, are busy betting, praying all day, recording sex videos, twerking and circulating naked photos on social media—I for once concur with Dr Kizza Besigye: we are indeed a foolish lot.

Agreeably, we are change-thirsty, and for weeks we have seen the National Unity Platform induce inestimable crowds all over the country on their national tour—these are weary Ugandans who think the party is the only transformational wave that can sweep tyranny out of this raped country. We have listened to Mr. Bobi Wine and other NUP leaders speak, but for how long shall we do the talking? Candidly, there is nothing the National Unity Platform is doing that has not been done before by the now-stumbling FDC: rallies, speeches, dehumanizing Museveni—but none of these has yielded any results except losing our comrades as a result of the regime’s barbarism.

We can escape reality, but the fundamental change we yearn for has never come to those who fold their hands in the eyes of totalitarianism and somehow, expect to liberate themselves.

Nations that have emancipated themselves from either imperialism or dictatorship, altogether, have fought for it either by a coup or an uprising, which is hardly an alternative in Uganda.

Revolutionists, throughout history, have been the center of the oppressor’s wrath. As they ceaselessly fight for freedom, regimes have sent them to jail without trial, to kill their spirit; some have lost their families and all they ever held intimate; these people have stood in the jaws of death and some lived a miserable life, and so, it was easy to win public trust, but here, it is the opposite.

Our liberators are intact while their followers die on streets like flies and rot in prisons for treason-related charges; liberators drive porch cars and have guards, sleep in flat houses, send their children to Europe for studies and on vacations, and wear bulletproof jackets, making it hard for a common Ugandan to believe in such a liberation—after all, since when do the bourgeois fight for the proletariat? It is illogical for the rich to fathom the misery of the poor.

So, for Mr. Bobi Wine to completely win our trust, he should learn from other freedom fighters. For instance, Dedani Kimathi, who, later became the sacrificial lamb for Kenya’s freedom. When he wanted to liberate his country from imperialism in the 1950s, he didn’t organize rallies, or pause for photos with different influential people around the world nor did he launch films to scorn his tormentors, for he knew all these wouldn’t bring about change—instead, he founded the Mau-Mau resistance, which would become a force against the White brutality. Sadly, Dedani was captured in 1956 and later executed by hanging in 1957.

For our country’s freedom, we need to put differences aside and speak the truth to struggle—whatever we have done is far from liberating Uganda; liberation is a sacrifice—foregoing everything you hold dearly and putting the country first.

Mr. Bobi Wine, you can’t loosen the country from dictatorship when a clique of your ideologically bankrupt vloggers barely tolerate the truth; you can’t liberate us when some of your supporters’ children languish in prisons while your own are in Europe, perhaps for safety and better services; you can barely liberate Uganda when the only seed you have sown is one of racial segregation, as you portrayed it grimly in Luwero. How should we believe you are different from any pseudo-liberator who has lied in our face?

Honourable, we need to be more pragmatic—spewing emptiness before the weary Ugandans makes you a replica of hooliganism not change; sell the right idea to the people, and put yourself in their dilapidated yet miserable place, and then they shall blindly follow you, even when it means walking to the statehouse. We don’t need your endless voyages to Europe, your nice cars, Photoshop pausing with influential people or acting films to topple Mr Museveni, all we need is walking the talk.

By Godwin Muwanguzi

Poet & Novelist

godwinemuwanguzi2007@gmail.com