By Julius Odeke
The manner Capt. Mike Mukula making the loudest noise makes me remember the time when the LRA invaded Teso in 2003, as young men, we were confronted with unique scenarios where masculine adults would be seen running but nobody asks a question but joins the suit. It helped!
The lamentations of Capt. Mukula, an incumbent vice chairperson for the NRM party’s Central Executive Committee speaks volumes of words on what is happening in our politics-it’s transactional politics.
For it’s a cautionary saying that advises someone in a subordinate or less powerful position to not question or investigate threats that even large and powerful beings are fleeing from.
However, my simple concern with Mr. Mukula is that what did you do as the vice chairperson of NRM in the region at the time when there were equally loud cries from some of the party leaders.
There were cries from the incumbent MP for Amuria County Musa Ecweru, the LCV boss for Kalaki district and Esther Lucy Achom from Serere district among others in the region, let alone the whole country, that there were malpractices in the NRM primaries?
The Mukulas of Uganda kept silent about the silent issues that are threatening to tear the party apart where those without money cannot meaningfully participate in the current elections. Today, it has become prominent to even poor people that Mr. Mukula, too, is equally a poor man. Yet a few years ago this was not the case.
This brings to the fore about the 1946 poetic form of the post-war confessional piece of the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller where he indirectly condemned the complicity of the German intellectual and clergy following the Nazis’ rise to power and subsequent increment purging of their chosen targets.
Pastor Niemöller’s poem to-date, still warns against the dangers of silence and indifference in the face of oppression in all walks of life. Pastor Niemöller who was born in 1892 and died in 1984 was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany.
In a space of 10 years, he sympathized with many Nazi ideas and supported radically right-wing political movements. But after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Niemöller became an outspoken critic of Hitler’s interference in the Protestant Church.
He spent the last eight years of Nazi rule, from 1937 to 1945, in Nazi prisons and concentration camps. Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for his postwar statement, which begins First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Now they have come for Mukula and I want to believe that there is no one in the NRM party who can authoritatively speak for him to cause those in high echelons of the party leadership to listen to him. True, it’s bad! Because it highlights the universal danger of inaction and lack of empathy when others are oppressed.
What the Mukulas ought to have done was to ensure that they have set regional tribunals. For example, one would have been established in Soroti City for Teso sub-region, Mbale City for Bugisu and Sebei sub-regions, Tororo Municipality for Bukedi sub-region and Jinja City for Busoga sub-region.
This would have helped them, especially the NRM party to keenly listen to the cries, rumours and allegations of malpractices that rotated around voter bribery, intimidations, tribalistic sentiments from certain leaders in a bid to come up with a clean system of operations.
It would have worked but instead they chose to keep quiet while asking the losers to rally behind the moneyed leaders who took the flags. Now when the same vice affects you, that is when you begin making the loudest noise and demanding to be listened to by the general public and the top echelons of the party trying to court sympathies.
It’s wrong. It’s you, our leaders, who ushered in transactional politics, so be it. My humble advise to you is: “Cry while seated.” For what do you expect us the down people to do? You would have discussed all these in the CEC if it’s true that you hold a say in the very position you are craving for but if not let the young leaders also try. But also stand informed that there is a seismic shift from the old leaders to young blood that can mobilise for the party.
The take home in what is happening in Uganda’s politics, particularly in the NRM party elections has a purpose that serves as a warning about the collective consequences of indifference and highlights the importance of speaking out against injustice, even when you are not the target.
This article, therefore, deliberately intends to inform the public on how silence in the face of initial acts of oppression allows a situation to escalate, leaving no one to defend you when your own group is eventually targeted.
And it therefore calls for universal attention and it should be adapted and applied in various contexts to protest against different forms of injustice, demonstrating its enduring power.
Julius Odeke is a freelance journalist based in Mbale City and can be reached on Email: jodeke@gmail.com. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
