To shoot or not to shoot...?

A recent road accident along the Kampala-Gulu highway, which I was lucky to emerge from unscathed in the first place, has turned me into a frequent traveller to Bombo Police Station in the last fortnight. While returning from one such journey last Thursday, I ended up in the midst of rioting gangs who had blocked off the road right from Kawanda trading centre.

Before I left Bombo, a radio message had come through from the Central Police Station that spontaneous riots had broken out in the city and caught the force off-guard because most of the anti-riot police officers had been ferried to Kayunga district in anticipation of riots in the run up to the Kabaka’s planned visit. CPS officers were, in their radio message, calling for back-up from all police stations in the vicinity.

The problem for the force is that the very police stations that CPS expected to provide them with back were battling similar riots in their own localities. In some cases, like at the Nateete Police Post, the police officers on duty were actually overrun by the rioters who set everything in sight ablaze.

At Kawanda, where we were holed up, there was not a single policeman in sight. This left travellers from Gulu, Lira and areas alongside that highway at the mercy of the rioters, who by then were burning tyres along the road and threatening to widen the scope of their mayhem.

Sensing that the situation was getting out of hand, the police perhaps sent an SOS to the army in a bid to contain the riotous crowds.

For the travellers at Kawanda, the sight of army trucks driving into the city was a source of both relief and fear. We all knew that since the army lining up troops on the road from Kawanda to Wandegeya, the road would be opened up and we would be able to drive into the city centre.

However, one could sense right from the time they started shooting to disperse the crowds at Kawanda that some of the soldiers had not got an opportunity to refresh their shooting skills and were taking this one with both hands, literally.

Because of this, there were as many culprits that bore the brunt of the military style of law enforcement as innocent victims who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. Like the fellows walking back home from the city centre, who were compelled – by the sound of batons and wood cracking against their backs – to carry hot ash from the dying embers of the fires on the road with their bare hands.

It was a situation that left me in a dilemma, in the same way that President Museveni’s assertion that the army should shoot riotous to main has. Without the intervention of the military, we could have been left at the mercy of the riotous – some of who were clearly acting in self-interest than that of their Kingdom or its head. However, no innocent person deserves to fall victim to the army’s style of law enforcement.

Anyone who got caught up in the violence and feared – however remotely – that they could fall victim to the rioters will have felt immense relief that the army was sent to the streets to disperse them. Yet, at the same time, one can’t help but feel for victims of the army’s heavy handed approach. It’s a tough cal to make.

Kampala is burning

With at least 10 people dead by Friday evening, several cars and a police station torched, as well as prisoners released, six radio stations closed, Kampala has not witnessed such a spontaneous outburst of emotion in the recent past.

Kampala has seen large crowds riot due to the 2005 incarceration of FDC President Col. Kizza Besigye upon his return from South Africa to take on Mr Museveni for the presidency, the demonstrations to block the giveaway of parts of Mabira to investors and other recent events, but none happened so spontaneously as the one that took place late this week.

The government’s intelligence organs were clearly caught off-guard and the desperate attempts by the security organs to martial back-up from outside Kampala indicated the extent to which they were unaware that riots of this nature could break out, and ill-prepared to handle them.

Other post-mortems of this week’s riots will of course be done in different circles when the dust has settled, but some of the early lessons are already apparent. First, although many Ugandans seem indifferent to the destruction of their country, each individual has certain things that they deeply care about. What the country has lacked are politicians and political groups that can aggregate these individual concerns and show the different groups of Ugandans that their concerns will be addressed.

Of course the need to address individual concerns would never have been the case in the first place had Uganda not been so systematically fragmented. But that is an issue for another day.

Secondly, for all Buganda’s posturing as the most powerful and influential ethnic group in the country, there is little that it can achieve without involving other Ugandan communities in its struggle for whatever concessions they want from any government. Had Buganda been able to win over the other communities, yesterday’s riots would have at least brought the government to its knees if they had spread throughout the country.

For Ugandans, the lesson is very clear. Nothing is going to come on a silver platter and the sooner that sinks in, the better for the nation.