Kayihura defends Police militarization
Sep 16, 2014
THE Inspector General of Police, Gen. Kale Kayihura has said that there is nothing wrong with the concept of militarization of police
By David Lumu
THE Inspector General of Police, Gen. Kale Kayihura has said that there is nothing wrong with the concept of militarization of police, urging Ugandans to be cognizant of the fact that the society is getting more militarized and the police cannot fold its hands amidst this emerging new phenomena.
“There is nothing wrong with the militarization of the police. People are talking about the militarization of the police; what of the militarization of the society? This city is awash with veterans of kinds, rebel groups of all sorts. So, if there is militarization of crime; what sort of capability should we use?” Kayihura asked the crowd that had gathered at Makerere University for the inaugural memorial lecture of the first indigenous Police Inspector General of Police, Lt. Col. Wilson Oryema, who was murdered during the regime of President Idi Amin Dada in 1977 together with Archbishop Janan Luwum and internal affairs minister Oboth-Ofumbi.
Arguing that Oryema was a police officer with a military background, Kayihura said that those against his re-appointment as Inspector General of Government should re-think their views because even the Police Act states that: “The minister of internal affairs can call on the police to act as the military because the police can’t run away just like the civilians in case of a problem.”
“Those hitting at me that the police is militarized should know that the first native Ugandan police IGP (Oryema) was a military man, who served in the African King Riffles. Stop crucifying me and there is nothing wrong with militarizing the police,” he said, citing Frantz Fanon’s words in his 1961 book the Wretched of the Earth (1961) that “every generation has got a historical mission.”
Kayihura was responding to remarks by Kitgum Woman MP, Beatrice Anywar, who described the police as a “tear gas force” that doesn’t reward those who do professional work but rather disregard merit in awarding promotions.
During the lecture, which was moderated by Vision Group CEO Robert Kabushenga, German-based scholar, Dr. Jude Kagolo, took the audience through the need for a police-citizen relationship, arguing that “no police force can produce order without the direct participation of the citizens,” and that the community policing initiative by Kayihura is a microcosm of the NRM ideology of training ordinary citizens to become part and parcel of security—giving the example of the Local Council System that dispensed power to the local people.
Kagolo also drew the attention of the audience to major challenges affecting the police such as the poor housing, policing Ugandans without IDs [Government has since embarked on mass enrolment of Ugandans in order to issue Identity Cards], lack of the address system of homesteads and the overwhelming numbers of people that are policed by only 46,000 policemen and women.
The main discussant of the topic, “from colonial to community policing, challenges, achievements and transformation,” Andrew Mwenda, the CEO of the Independent Magazine advised the opposition to learn the power of organized demonstration, as a tool to deal with a modern police that seeks to keep law and order.
Renowned social anthropologist and minister for general duties, Prof. Tarsis Kabwegyere said that for Ugandans to understand how police works, there is a need to understand the new phenomena—of “the relationship between the citizen and the police as a qualitative improvement of society, which is a revolutionary change.”
State minister for internal affairs James Baba said that President Yoweri Museveni will on September 18 preside over the re-burial of Oryema with full honours as a hero who contributed a great deal to the democratic dispensation of Uganda.
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