The PLU number is a badge of risk, not honour

Muhoozi supporters

We sometimes forget that the NRA war was a real war.

It involved real sacrifice, real danger, and people overcoming almost impossible odds. The numbers given to its fighters meant something. They carried seniority, sacrifice, and history.

They were badges of honour. This is why the attempt by the Patriotic League of Uganda to reproduce the symbolism of those numbers is interesting. The problem is that it is being reproduced without half the sacrifice that gave the original numbers their meaning.

I have even heard some PLU leaders speak of being in their own “bush”. But what bush? Organising political events? Mobilising resources? Building a political network around Muhoozi?

Whatever PLU becomes, surely we would never pretend that this is the same sacrifice as that made by people who actually went to war in the 1980s. Many of those getting them do not appear to be ideological people.

They are political schemers, positioning themselves around where they believe power is going. They want to be at the table when the food is served; better still, they want to be at the table serving themselves.

It is fair to recognise that this is not a PLU problem alone. The schemers are everywhere in Ugandan politics, including in the opposition. We saw people flock to People Power and later NUP because they believed Bobi Wine could win.

Some of them had never respected Bobi Wine as a politician. Some did not believe in his ideas. But they recognised momentum and saw a vehicle for power, so they joined. For them, it is not whether they believe in the ideals of these political projects.

It is, “Where is this going, and where will I be when it gets there?”

When the political weather changes, they change with it. This is not simply a problem of individual morality. It is also structural. We live in a peripheral capitalist economy where accumulation is a central preoccupation.

Politics has become a route to wealth, access and security. In many ways ‘our democracy’ is a competition over access to the state. Everyone wants to be close to whoever controls the resources.

Museveni understands this. That is why he has warned Muhoozi about the schemers around him. Even Thomas Tayebwa once observed that supporting the opposition is risky and difficult.

Muhoozi, however, is unlikely to be surprised by any of this. As Chief of Defence Forces, he comes from an institution that spends considerable time studying power, organisation and threats.

We often reduce the role of the military to protecting our borders. But in Uganda, the military is deeply involved in the country’s political life. Soldiers are exposed to political education and political economy.

There is even a joke that our political science lecturers at Makerere spend more time teaching soldiers at Kimaka than writing books for the rest of us. Back to our PLU people.

So far, Muhoozi has shown us more tactics than a clearly articulated political philosophy: anti-corruption campaigns, arrests of opposition figures and critics, promises to take over KCCA contracts, and an increasingly aggressive political posture.

So what ideology are they following, and what is the actual project? Yet people are lining up. Of course we all know the answer; for most of these politicians, it’s simply power.

They believe they can see where power is going and want to position themselves accordingly. But Uganda is entering a period of uncertainty. We do not know how the next transition will happen.

Our history gives us little reason to assume that it will be orderly. For much of our post-independence history, changes of power have involved guns, violence or the threat of violence.

That uncertainty should make anyone think twice before publicly attaching themselves too tightly. Suppose the transition becomes violent. Who are the people most easily identified with the ruling project?

Suppose, instead, an opposition movement somehow overwhelms the regime, as happened in parts of the Arab Spring. Who would be easiest to identify as having belonged to the villain?

I am not saying either scenario will happen; in fact, that is my biggest point. The people closest to the power source may know exactly what is happening, but for everyone else, it is speculation.

First of all, you don’t control the moving parts; you don’t know what the people above you know. You don’t know what happens when the plan changes. You don’t know when you become useful and when you are disposable, and who suddenly becomes a threat.

But who am I, after all? Just a broke Ugandan who may remain broke while people with numbers are demarcating their acres of land after the next political settlement, as they often do when governments change.

When my children ask where I was, I will simply show them this article, that there I was trying to be clever.

lawelfrayer253@gmail.com

The writer is a researcher with Agora Center for Research.

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