Thread by @JKabuleta

THE RETURN OF THE RANT
(Joseph Kabuleta’s Weekly Rant)

His name was Beera. How could I forget it, or the last time I ever saw him?

He was our neighbor in the staff quarters of Kinyara Sugar Works in Masindi, and it was the first day of 1984...

The previous night’s festivities had started around 9:00pm but gathered momentum like a medieval steam train as numbers swelled and music got louder. I drifted off to sleep to the sounds of Super Mazembe’s Kasongo Yeye and woke up to shouts of “ten, nine, eight……

Happy New Year” then went back to sleep only to wake up a couple of hours later when inebriated revelers were shouting ‘Everybody UPC’. That went on for a while before something entirely unexpected happened. The host, drunk and merry by this time, shouted “DP, DP….”

Suddenly the place was engulfed in an eerie silence. From my bedroom I could tell that guests weren’t so much walking as dashing away. In a matter of minutes, the party had ended...

The consequences of such indiscretions were never far away in those gristly days. The following morning Beera was picked up from his home and accused of hosting ‘bandits’. It was the last his family ever heard of him...

Even as an 11-year-old I felt it was cruel in the extreme for anyone to pay the ultimate price for something so trivial. But most adults around me thought he had been reckless with his tongue and had it coming...

That was also the year when Museveni’s ‘bandits’ raided Masindi barracks and made off with plenty of ammunition. Nothing was ever the same thereafter...

The tension in that part of the country was encapsulated in a remarkable story told to me by my brother who was a student at Kabalega Secondary School...

One Saturday night the headmaster, a stern disciplinarian, walked across the dormitories taking note of all missing students, all of whom were either in some pub in the Kijjura suburb or in a dancehall in town...

Coincidentally, on that night there was an attempt on the life of the district security boss, a tyrant called Tomblobayi (or something like that). He took a bullet or two but emerged alive. Many people silently wished that the assassin had been a better marksman...

On Monday morning all escapees were lined up outside the headmaster’s office. The lucky ones made off with serious kiboko, many were suspended or expelled...

One cantankerous student, a repeat offender who was definitely headed for expulsion, seemed to be in good humor as he waited in line. He told his colleagues that he had a plan...

When his turn came he walked into the head teacher’s office with a menacing look.
“Where were you on Saturday night?”
“I was at work.”
“Work?”
“Yes work. Didn’t you hear what happened? Bandits tried to kill our boss and you dare ask me where I was… you must be one of them…”

Suddenly the headmaster was the one contritely explaining himself and apologizing, almost on his knees, for not realizing that the lad had important work to do. Dude came out of the office laughing his heart out...

He wasn’t a security operative, all students knew that and the headmaster probably suspected as much, but he couldn’t take any chances. People who had been labeled bandits, even in jest, often found themselves on the one-way trek to the barracks...

The headmaster chose to err on the side of caution lest he joined that growing list…and his peers accuse him of being reckless.That was also the year I saw Tomblobayi, the man whose name struck fear in very mortal. His appearance was a stark contrast to his infamy...

A short man in a light blue Kaunda suit, his lack of stature made more pronounced by the towering soldiers that strode either side of him, immaculately dressed in dark green trousers and a lighter shade of tops,...

with loose belts holding their pistols in neat leather covers which bounced off their hips and gave them the flattering look of gunslingers in the Wild Wild West...

That was also the year I witnessed my first abduction. We were walking on the streets of Masindi with my sisters and one of their friends, a lady called Reste. Suddenly a cross-country Mercedes screeched to a halt right beside us...

The doors were flung open and plain clothes men with menacing looks jumped out, picked up Reste, spanked her, threw her into the boot, and sped off in the direction of the barracks. It happened so fast I thought I was dreaming...

When I came to myself, I could see the car disappearing around the corner. Her ‘crime’ was that a man she was dating (or had once dated) had vanished and, presumably, joined the ‘bandits’...

Few people went into that barracks and came out alive. Thankfully, Reste was one of them. I suspect her outstanding looks had a part to play in that. Apparently, in the eyes of some people, she also had it coming...

When I was also abducted and bundled into the back seat of a car with tinted glasses full of guns about seven weeks ago, many people said; ‘he had it coming.’ ..

When the prison doors opened and I was let in, one of the inmates facetiously said that he had been expecting me. “I read one of your rants and I knew it wouldn’t be long before you joined us.”...

The hallmark of an oppressed society is when the public starts blaming victims. It’s like a woman gets raped and people accuse her of dressing indecently. It’s typical of a people that have lost their soul, their fight, and have gone into survival mode...

When I realize how non-violent opposition to this regime has slowly but steadily been criminalized, I wonder how different these days are from the unrest of pre-NRM years...

When someone like me ---- who can only speak and write --- is accused of being ‘reckless’ against a regime that captured power through the barrel of the gun, ...

then you realize that we have gone full circle back to the mid-1980s when all victims were somehow culpable in their own suffering. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Oppressed people meekly surrender justice for the sake of survival. They don’t stop at that. They despise justice warriors who remind them of what they should be doing but are too scared to do...

They mistake their timidity for wisdom and think that if they tread ever so carefully and ruffle no feathers they will be permitted to live in peace. That’s a fallacy...

Oppressors always go for something extra. If they get you to your knees, they will want you lying on your belly, then they step on your torso, then on your head and God knows what else. Oppression is addictive. It’s never enough...

A majority of Uganda’s schooled middle-class think they are too sophisticated and have too much to lose to get their hands dirty with politics. They hide in a bubble and hope that politics doesn’t burst it. But it always does...

When the regime apparatchiks took over all profitable businesses --- labour export, gaming or betting, minerals, produce and them all --- through licensing and regulation, our portentous ‘Corporate Class’ limited the discussions to pubs and saunas...

Then parliament passed a controversial landlord-tenant bill that is guaranteed to undercut what was a booming Real Estate sector and the middle-class, who understand the far-reaching ramifications of such a law, kept their cool, preferring to stay safe...

Then came an even more contentious National Coffee Bill which proposes the registration of farmers capturing details of size of land, number of coffee trees and particulars of farmers, coffee buyers and sellers among others...

The bill also stipulates that land where coffee is to be grown shall be ‘evaluated’ by the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) to ‘determine its suitability’ for the purpose. What a load of horse manure!..

The Buganda Premier Charles Peter Mayiga, to his eternal credit, came out blazing.
“I guess from the coffee farmers the government will now legislate herdsmen and how they should or shouldn’t handle their cattle…” he said...

Uganda produces 288,000 metric tons of coffee every year, making it the 8th largest producer in the world, and coffee is still our top earner, an estimated $700m industry...

Under Mayiga’s able leadership the kingdom has been encouraging famers to grow coffee under an initiative called ‘Emwanyi Telimba’. But the prevailing conditions could easily suffocate the drive...

According to the UCDA, the proposed registration of farmers is meant to eliminate middlemen. Hurrah!!! They stumbled on the truth. That’s exactly what it is going to do; ensure that the lucrative coffee trade, once spread-out among citizens, is now dominated by a few...

Farmers will be required to sell their coffee to regime-approved middlemen in an out-growers kind of arrangement. So the law isn’t eliminating middlemen but narrowing that field. And just like that another industry goes down the drain...

Next was churches and some people even cheered the oppressor. But when they moved to tax NSSF benefits, there was finally some movement among our Corporate elite. Their bubble had been invaded...

Now they have come for social media influencers and who knows what’s next. These people will stop at absolutely nothing. They aren’t making any truces. It’s not give-and-take...

It’s take and take some more. If you choose not to ruffle their feathers they will ruffle yours. As it stands, survival is a much riskier venture than fighting back through open discussion about things that really matter to this country...

Full Rant available at: facebook.com/14074001028434…