AntiDemocratically Gifted By Nature

He has confined Dr. Besigye in the prison of his home—all out of fear of what the so-called “walk-to-work” might unleash: the pent-up frustrations of millions. He lectured the diplomatic corps on the history of Uganda of his conjuring. He threatened changing the constitution so that peaceful demonstrators could be denied bail alongside murderers and child molesters. Knowing the power of incumbency with unlimited access to state resources, he purchased changing the constitution for his effective life presidency. Idi Amin was cruder by declaring himself so. The so-called press freedom is but a sham: it is encumbered with thorns of gags. Criticize the Big Man to your peril of disturbing the peace. Mention the fact of the generals (the de facto powers behind the throne) being stacked with his homeboys and you will be slapped with promoting sectarianism.

At the advent of his “liberating” the country, he proclaimed bringing fundamental change. A change indeed! But what kind of change was heralded?

He scoffed at African Big Men who overstayed in power. Now we have voodoo math where twenty five years is equivalent to five years and counting for the transformation of Uganda society—a task that he alone can do.

The Marxist-Socialist has turned into a pernicious wild-wild west free marketer who has seen vast concentrations and controls of wealth by a few who must of necessity stroke his ego and be loyal to his authoritarian rule. He has shifted society’s responsibility to the individual on such cardinal issues as health and road safety.

The blokes that lost to him did “panda gari,” which, while obnoxious, does not compare to the elaborate maintaining of order by fear, intimidations and blind obedience.

The judiciary and parliament have largely wimped out, allowing concentrations of powers in the executive with the attendant coercive instruments of the military and the police. Balance of power, an anti-dote against excesses, is but wishful thinking in the realm.

When all have come to pass, the question to be asked is: What did the revolutionary Museveni mean when he declared a “fundamental change”? Where we listening through different world-views?

Classic social change has always been about the “…material (who controls what wealth), institutional (who runs what powerful institutions) and political (who wins elections [or murders his way to power])”
If politics is about economics, power and social organization, then –for better or worse—Museveni has delivered as promised. How anybody sees or experiences the change depends on how one thinks. So then we could add the mind as a factor in politics. (Lakoff, ’08).

Let us take the case of the Acoli who have been brutalized and humiliated by the NRM under this man. Acoli is now sending more NRM MPs to parliament than the opposition parties combined. The Baganda, whose allegiance to the monarchy, in part, fueled the five-year brutal bush war, are the linchpin to the NRM hegemony even as the monarchy is humiliated in broad daylight.

What is going on here? A fact of populations voting against their supposed self-interests is not unique to Uganda. In the US of A, for example, the Republican Party machines have mesmerized poor whites to a trance of supporting agendas that protect the interests of the rich. As a consequence, in part, the rich get richer while the incomes of the relative poor (that include millions of whites) have stagnated for years even as the capitalist machinery bamboozles them to buy more and more stuff.

To get a clue on this phenomenon we have to understand that human decisions are largely beyond conscious reason. Adept mind assassins know this. So they sneak in messages via the cognitive unconscious, unbeknownst to the people of interest. The unconscious is responsible for ninety plus percent of what we are all about. Those who know it use it to conquer themselves and the world.

Therefore, if Museveni’s “fundamental change” is not what some of us expected and wanted, we have to be creative in gaining access to the population’s mind, hearts and actions through enchantment as Guy Kawasaki would say in his Enchantment book. It is a Herculean task against powerful and motivated dark forces flushed with relatively overwhelming resources. It is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. There is no compromising because the world-view of this regime is self-perpetuation. It is a regime that inherently and fundamentally totalitarian and undemocratic in its sinews. Its expertise is the immoral act of camouflaging true intentions and duping gullible people “…who don’t have the ability to discern the truth or what is best for them…” (Kawasaki, ’11).