Besigye is dancing on the graves of the dead Kenyans

Karooro Okurut

THE call by opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye for Ugandans to ‘emulate Kenyans’ in is quite easily one of the most deadly statements that have been made this year around East Africa.

Besigye was quoted by The New Vision as telling people at public rallies in Bushenyi last Friday as saying: “Do not be intimidated. Stand up and fight for your country. The Kenyans are not fighting for Raila Odinga. They are fighting for their rights.”

He is further quoted as having urged the youth: “A leader who is a dictator cannot leave power like that. You have to push him. That is why you see in Kenya two groups fighting, because of politics of segregation.”

Officially, close to 700 people have been killed in three weeks of unprecedented violence in Kenya, a rather bloody aftermath of the controversial election, which saw President Mwai Kibaki retain power.

Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, with many of them fleeing to Uganda, itself an earlier beneficiary of Kenyan hospitality in the 1970s and 80s when bad leadership forced many into exile.

While it is perfectly okay in principle for people to fight for their rights, it is a different kettle of fish when the example being floated for emulation is the Kenyan bloodbath.

A seemingly stable society has been ripped apart in a matter of weeks by ethnic conflict, as chiefly the Luo and the Kikuyu systematically butcher each other, the latter apparently the hunted. Innocent people have been rounded up and callously chopped to pieces. Many more have escaped with ghastly machete wounds.

Women have been gang-raped with no one to come to their aid. Bows and arrows, machetes and hoes and guns of course, have been put to deadly use with incredible passion that surely has little to do with a disputed election. In possibly the most ghastly incident, a predominantly Kikuyu church in western Kenya was burned down, with scores of people who had run into it for refuge, burned to cinders.

Those who took refuge in Uganda were actually followed and their food poisoned in an attempt to wipe them out!

A booming economy, especially the tourism sector has been brought onto its knees; but the damage is nothing compared to the social fabric that has been torn to shreds. So is Dr. Besigye now saying we should emulate sections of Kenyan society by carrying out a mini-genocide?

Should we come out with all the grisly instruments of violence—machetes, bows and arrows, spears and guns and decimate each other in the name of fighting for rights?

What rights have been violated to such an extent that they warrant ethnically-driven bloodshed? Could it be that after twice failing to access power by civil means, Besigye is now clearly advocating the use of havoc, mayhem and wide-ranging bloodshed to do so? And that he seems so inclined to getting power that he no longer cares what means he employs? Would he be happy to see Ugandans kill each other free style, as long as his objectives are achieved?

The answer to all these questions, in the context of his call, seems positive; and suggests that he is all out for power-at-any-price in a means-justifies-the-end kind of way.

This bizarre and bloody call by Besigye should serve to bring into focus once again the role of the opposition in Uganda which has been accused of merely wanting power and having no credible alternative panacea for the country’s development conundrum.

Analysts have argued that this, in addition to President Yoweri Museveni’s excellent performance are possibly the two main reasons he is still in power. In the unlikely event that Besigye took over power, what kind of society would he have?

Instead of romanticising and glamourising the Kenyan bloodshed, in effect dancing on the graves of dead Kenyans, a true leader would be condemning the violence and calling upon the belligerents to keep ethnic sentiments and electoral emotions in check and give dialogue a chance in a peaceful surrounding.

Ethnic violence is primitive and deadly in more ways than one. Quite often, societies that suffer ethnic violence never recover and suffer balkanisation – a geopolitical term that refers to the fragmentation of a country into small, hostile states that are usually uncooperative with each other to the extent that sometimes it seems each exists for the sole purpose of extinguishing the other.

Anybody remember a country called Yugoslavia that is now extinct just because of ethnic conflict? Well, the Yugoslav wars (1991-2001), a series of violent conflicts between the six former Yugoslav republics should be a perfect example that ethnic conflict cannot only decimate a society, but that its repercussions last and last.

We hope and pray that the situation in Kenya be resolved, so that this great country can resume from where it left off.

If those aspiring to be the next leaders of Uganda are the types that have no qualms calling for ethnic violence as a tool of achieving their goals, then I can only say: “Cry the beloved country!”