By Mulengera Reporters
This weekend, the NUP President Bobi Wine Kyagulanyi Ssentamu is in the diaspora to re-energize and publicize the cause/need for Uganda to become a better-governed country. In one of his engagements with members of the NUP Canada Chapter at a modestly-attended event, Bobi Wine delivered a speech that demonstrated how he has rapidly-evolved into a much better public speaker and deliverer of the relevant political messaging than he had been before.
Unlike on previous occasions where he failed to effectively communicate and resorted to singing, Mr. Wine delivered his speech with extreme clarity and many registered their wish that his subsequent public speaking engagements become synonymous with similar clarity of words as the country counts down to 2026.
One of the great points the political colossus from Magere made was that, whereas the NUP leadership in Kampala is grateful for the financial contributions the Diaspora Ugandans are making towards the struggle, there is much more they can do than is currently being done.
As the gathering cheered, Mr. Wine reminded Diaspora Ugandans of the unlimited and unrestricted freedom they have to do anything to hurt and demonize the regime in Kampala, which privilege isn’t available to millions of disgruntled Ugandans back home.
He rightly pointed out that there is a lot ordinary Ugandans and investigative journalists know back home in Kampala but which they can’t say or make available to the public because of clear risks hovering over their heads-including death, torture and being locked up in Gen Museveni’s prisons. The diaspora Ugandans can hold a demonstration anywhere, to show displeasure and publicise the problem of misrule back home, a privilege which their peers back home in Kampala have been deprived of for decades.
Mr. Wine explained that there a lot of Ugandan youths, in their millions, who are energetic, change-hungry, deprived, starving, hungry and poverty-stricken but can’t freely demonstrate their grievances on the streets against the regime without getting their skulls cracked or getting locked up in Gen Museveni’s torturous prisons.
Speaking to members of NUP Canada Chapter, Mr. Wine challenged them to leverage the abundant freedoms available to them to relentlessly take to social media and speak out more, besides holding frequent demonstrations aimed at globally publicizing the Museveni misrule and the regime’s human rights violations. He appreciated the dollars being donated but hastened to add that the change-desiring Ugandans in the diaspora can and ought to do more.
He assured them the regime will surely collapse and that one day he will return to interact with them in Canada as the President of the Republic of Uganda. He also controversially claimed he has the capacity to acquire guns and commandeer millions of his youthful supporters into successful armed struggle which can end in victory and ouster of the regime.
He said there is a lot of pressure on him from amongst his ghetto supporters to declare armed struggle but quickly clarified that the NUP top leadership has deliberately chosen peaceful resistance and struggle so that once Museveni is gone, no one claims to have liberated Uganda as citizens will have liberated themselves through peaceful inclusive struggle.
The other right thing the NUP big man told his audience was that much as the struggle to remove Museveni has been hard, rebuilding & running Uganda and governing it effectively will be even harder. This point demonstrates the extent to which Mr. Wine has grown to realize the dangers of popularism, raising people’s expectations by promising impossible things and mere sloganeering. The truth is that the country has become broken and a lot has gone wrong under Museveni’s rule of 40 years and yet all this will require fixing. There is no way anyone can be expected or required to mend things and fix a country that has endured 40 years of destruction.
It will be much harder than a lot of foot soldiers think and it’s encouraging that Mr. Wine realizes that beyond the liberation euphoria, there will be a lot of real hard work to do effective from the morning after Museveni has fallen. And it’s important that he goes on to realize that fixing the country will require every Ugandans’ effort, and not just his fellow youths, fellow Catholics or even fellow Baganda.
Building a country requires good engineers, good medics, good scientists, good professors, good plumbers, good economists, good tax collectors, good communicators, good astronomists, good IT persons, good diplomats, effective business leaders etc -and it’s refreshing to realize that Mr. Wine (whose supporters as of 2017-2020 concentrated on we are tired of westerners, old people etc) now rightly realizes that these have to be sourced from different communities and tribes comprising Uganda as no one single community or tribe can have monopoly on good people.
It’s simply not possible for all good people with the relevant skills to be exclusively from Buganda. Indeed, he called for unity, warned against obscurantism, rumour-mongering, fake news and rejected the judging of people in terms of their tribe or in terms of their age or where they come from. All this was excellent messaging and, to his credit, the NUP boss seemed to have prepped as any leader ought to. Prepping shows seriousness, respect and signals the fact that the leader doesn’t take his audience(s) for granted.
Kyagulanyi also spoke well about Uganda, nationalistically telling his audience it’s a land of opportunities which each one of them must be prepared to return home and leverage while working towards Uganda’s development the moment the liberation struggle succeeds and Gen Museveni is overcome. He also cracked jokes as opposed to being tensed up. He cut the demeanour of a composed leader, and not one who is angry, repulsive, exhausted and defensive. He made it clear the struggle isn’t his personally but for all Ugandans.
He also addressed the elephant in the room-namely fatigue, exhaustion and apathy. He reminded the audience that liberation of their mother land Uganda is their responsibility and not anyone else’s. He said it’s understandable and he is personally aware of the fatigue whereby many Ugandans, at home and diaspora, are physically & emotionally exhausted and tired of the endless struggle. His solution was to keep pushing as opposed to giving up because quitters don’t win, and winners don’t quit.
Mr. Wine called on those using social not to relent but to continue outing anti-regime videos and posts because those living in Canada have a unique opportunity namely that they can post anything, however sensitive, without landing into any trouble of being arrested and locked up in Gen Museveni’s prisons.
He called on the diaspora to overcome appetite for disunity and work together because what’s facing the country today negatively impacts everyone regardless of tribe, religion and social status or class. “Let’s postpone the quarrelling among ourselves, we shall quarrel, fight and be divided after we have overcome this bigger problem called Museveni which is threatening our existence and all of us equally,” he said.
He claimed to have rejected all regime offers to sell out and surrender and called on his audience to emulate him by equally being resilient and uncompromising however much the regime keeps dangling generous groceries perks in their face. He told them he envisages a day when all the roads, public streets in all Uganda’s towns and cities will be filled with jubilant processions when the dictator has finally fallen the morning after the dictator has fallen.
“One day all flights will head to Entebbe. You will buy air tickets rushing to return home. We shall praise our God once again as a free people. We shall be like dreaming and I will be here to bear witness before you by saying while reminding you that ‘was not here and I told you it was coming.’ You will once again proudly call Uganda home and that will be sweet liberation delivered by the people themselves and not guns,” submitted Mr. Wine who ended his speech with a prayer calling upon God to strengthen all pro-change Ugandans while at the time exhausting the enemy.
The other great thing Mr. Wine appropriately avoided was giving deadlines and ultimatums regarding when and how soon the regime in Kampala would be falling. He simply made it clear the struggle against such entrenched regimes has never been easy but in the end, the truth and the people prevail as tyrants shrink and get obliterated out of power. He also avoided wasting time bashing actors like Mathias Mpuuga, Abed Bwanika etal because there is a much bigger problem at hand than just those who have disagreed with his leadership style.
He gratefully stayed on his message which largely was focussed on re-energizing the diaspora not to become exhausted, fatigued and give up. He also preached against violence as opposed to peaceful means of struggle because, as he aptly put it, violence can only breed violence yet he doesn’t want anyone to lose their life due to struggle-related causes. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
