Herd instinct not good for our politics

By Opiyo OloyaWHEN decision-makers suffer from the “Group-think Syndrome”, they make bad decisions that often lead to catastrophic results. Political scientist Irving Janis in his book Victims of Group-Think describes how inward-looking groups tend to make distorted decisions. “Group-think” happens when we work in groups and begin to suffer the illusions of righteousness and invincibility. There is evidence to suggest that some Uganda officials are beginning to succumb to the deadly syndrome.For example, there are obvious signs of group-think influencing the manner in which the police acted at the recent botched UPC rally and the killing of journalism student Jimmy Higenyi. By all accounts, the police had effectively neutralized the rally by blocking all the roads leading to Constitutional Square. Why, then, did the police feel the need to confront unarmed civilians with all that fire-power instead of dealing with the crowd as they would any protest march? If, as some have suggested, there were saboteurs in the crowd who fired at the police, why did the police respond indiscriminately without first determining the source of the gunfire? Whatever the answers, the UPC rally fiasco mirrors almost exactly the killing 31 years ago of four students at Ohio Kent State University, and more recently the killing of Dudley George, an unarmed native Indian in Ontario. On May 4, 1970, four days after US President Richard Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia, Ohio National Guardsmen were sent to Kent State University to quell students protesting the war. Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes personally appeared on campus and promised to use “every force possible” to maintain order. Rhodes denounced the protesters as worse than commies and vowed to keep the Guard in Kent “until we get rid of them.” During a noontime demonstration, four students were killed and nine others wounded when a contingent of Guardsmen suddenly opened fire. Many years later, after much delay, the US government compensated the surviving victims and apologized for the actions of the Guardsmen. Many historians and legal experts agree that the Nixon administration had created an atmosphere in which anti-war activists were seen as “the enemy”-this disastrous view shaped the fatal decision that eventually led to the killing of the innocent students. The us-against-them mentality, which characterises group-think, had a similar fatal consequence in Ontario. On September 4, 1995, Dudley George joined about 30 Native Indian men, women and children who occupied Ipperwash Provincial Park to protest the destruction of a sacred burial ground at the park and to urge the government of Ontario to return to the natives traditional lands at nearby Camp Ipperwash. When Premier Mike Harris met with his task force on aboriginal issues, it was decided that “the province will take steps to remove the occupiers ASAP” and “the Ontario Provincial Police have the discretion as to how to proceed with removing the Stoney Pointers from the park.”At approximately 11:00 PM, on September 6, 1995, 200 OPP officers descended on the park. In the ensuing skirmish, Dudley George was shot. As they took the wounded man to the hospital, George’s brother and sister were stopped by OPP and arrested for attempted murder. Dudley George, meanwhile, bled to death in the back of the car. One year later, OPP Sgt. Kenneth Deane was charged with “criminal negligence causing death” in the shooting of George. On April 28, 1997, despite his defense that police were fired on first, he was convicted of criminal negligence causing death. The judge concluded that Deane knowingly shot an unarmed man. Interestingly, though the government of Premier Mike Harris has not ordered a public inquiry into the death of Dudley George, enough evidence has leaked to show that Harris and his men were more concerned with the welfare of cottagers than with the issues raised by native Indians. In other words, Harris and his men had become captives of classic group-think who viewed the Indians as the enemy rather than simple law-breakers. The same group-think process of demonising the opponent has characterized the events before and after the fateful UPC gathering two Saturdays ago. One only has to look at the official spin-doctoring going on in the Uganda media, to understand that the police were operating in a poisoned atmosphere in which anyone in the UPC crowd was deemed “the enemy”. One columnist, instead of asking why the police needed to respond with deadly force, blamed the UPC for putting its supporters in harm’s way. Another writer goes as far as suggesting that the Killing of Higenyi is nothing compared to the atrocities committed by the UPC during Obote l and Obote ll. To both officials, the UPC gathering ceased to be about a peaceful group of Ugandans breaking the law, but about a threatening enemy to be dealt with ruthlessly. These extreme views, unfortunately, only confirm the perception that the police was not out to enforce the law on that fateful Saturday, but to “teach the UPC a lasting lesson”.