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.
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.
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