Why Ruto, Museveni and Suluhu must listen to dissenting voices

Civilised regimes do not abduct people. Persons deemed to offend the law are arrested lawfully. They are arraigned before the courts. If found guilty, they are sentenced, in line with the penal code.

To abduct or detain anyone is abuse of power. It has no place in the civilised world. The three East African regimes of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are handling alternative thought with intolerance that borders on dictatorship. Dissenters are subjects of increased abductions, legal harassment and enforced disappearances. Worse still is the cross-border character of this repression, and a visibly shrinking civil society.  

The abduction of Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oloo in Uganda, a few days ago, is only the latest instance in an emerging culture of cross-border interstate repression. The two were in Uganda to support the presidential campaign of Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, aka Bob Wine. Born in 1982, Wine was four years old when President Yoweri Museveni took Uganda through the barrel of the gun in 1986.  The jarring details of the siege of Kampala can be gleaned in Museveni’s book titled ‘Sowing the Mustard Seed (1997)’. In another volume titled ‘What is Africa’s Problem (?) (2000)’, Museveni places rulers who don’t respect the will of the governed at the core of the social and economic miasma on the content. They variously steal elections, gain and retain office by force, or extend terms and rule through electoral fiction. In Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania; and indeed elsewhere in Africa, the legitimacy of those in State House is increasingly becoming vexed. Incumbents want to stay on by hook or crook. President Ruto’s inner core occasionally lets the cat out of the bag. He must serve for two terms, even if it means getting in through the window.

In Uganda and Tanzania there is not the slightest pretext at political common decency. It is raw and naked political bestiality in Kenya’s sister states. Uganda is trying civilians through military courts. And they are arrested by soldiers. Where did you hear of this, in civilised society? Tanzania expunges dissenters from existence, in the infamous style of South Africa, under the defunct Apartheid regime. They are only a step away from Orwellian “vaporisation of people.”  

By this, people are secretly murdered. All records of their existence are destroyed. Their names should not even be mentioned in public discourse. Soon enough, even their friends and families should forget that they ever lived. Tanzania is already here; Kenya and Uganda are walking steadily in that direction. Dissent must not only be repressed, it must be destroyed, completely with social memory about its advocates. 

The big irony is that civil society and dissent are only social safety valves. They provide political pressure release mechanisms that allow society to breathe. Political tensions are eased when citizens question those in power, or criticise the government. This role falls squarely into the lap of journalists, civil society, artists, opposition politicians, and even politicians within ruling parties. Open ventilation of grievances helps the State correct itself. A State that tolerates dissent will gain significant credibility. Tanzania under Samia Suluhu Hassan is not such a State. Nor is Uganda under Museveni. Kenya under Ruto is going the same way. Uganda is teaching her how it is done. Consider that Kenya’s CS for Interior, Kipchumba Murkomen, freely mounts – among his Sebei cousins in Uganda – a tribal election campaign for Museveni. But, Njagi and Oloo are detained for supporting Ssentamu.  

In Tanzania, Boniface Mwangi of Kenya and Agather Atuhaire of Uganda are abducted. They are tortured just for observing legal proceedings in court. Kenya’s Foreign and Diaspora Affairs CS, Musalia Mudavadi, appears to celebrate. He warns Kenyans against breaking the laws of other countries.

Governments that silence dissent actually destroy their own early-warning systems and mechanisms. They no longer know where the pulse of the nation is. Jesus Christ used to ask, “What are the people saying?” 

Silence and fear reign. Pressure hibernates. It goes into volatile informal spaces. Public ventilation of grief and grievance is now through whispered rumours, and underground movements. The State no longer knows who is happy, and who is not. The State becomes unstable, but the Big Man thinks all is now well.  Someday the pent-up frustration erupts in a manner that rocks and shocks the State. Public office is not a matter of life and death. Presidents Museveni, Ruto and Samia should let their nations breathe.

-Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser