Kayihura Exit : Both sides of the coin

Mable Twegumye Zake - @MableTwegumye

Mable Twegumye Zake

The exit of Gen. Kale Kayihura and Gen. Tumukunde must be a lesson to not only to those in positons of politics but also to those in other positions of authority.

Recently I posted on twitter that, If what you own can be taken from you , then what about that which is just a visitor in your life? It is only with you for the time you have it! Therefore, make it worthwhile. For the two generals, the visitor has left as some had felt that the visitor had actually overstayed and had to be forced out.

Critics are not even concentrating on whether the two outdid themselves in the office of the Inspector General of Police and the Ministry of Security respectively but however, why and what failed their operations in addition to when it all started to go bad and why they failed to handle their offices well.

Many people hold on to positions of power and make them their homesteads which is often a recipe for destruction if the fruits from your homestead are only benefiting them and not the children too.

Every position held, let’s say from even a household level as a father is to serve. Servantry is to a people as the benefits forgone by the servant who in the end is referred to as selfless because selfless is he who places others needs before his.

A father for instance who fails to place food on the table, makes the brothel his home, sends his prostitutes to fight his wife or beats his children and fails to send them to school will not have respected his Servantry role.

So is a Manager who forgets his primary role at a company or a judge whose backdoor is a transaction for money exchange to send the innocent victims to prison and the real offenders back home.

It becomes even worse if that position you hold to serve cuts across the entire nation and beyond.

When there are allegations of conspiracy involving criminal cartels tearing up a force rooted from the police head and the security heads, it's bound to erupt negatively onto a country whose top headlines are painted with the unsolved murders and Kidnapping such that even the good deeds can be forgotten.

But what also happened to power that can’t be questioned or by the time its questioned by those above it, many mistakes have been made and irreparable damage caused?

This goes back to oneself; as much as we will question the institutions in place to check and double check those who lead us or those we vote into power, the biggest threat to our leaders is forgetting who they are as human beings and forgetting the core that placed them in those offices.

Just before the surveillance eyes start to check what you’re doing, have you checked yourself? Is that how you would run your own household and are you content with the person you have become comparing to yourself to before you were placed in that position of power?

Just like selflessness is to Servantry, letting go before you’re let go is a virtue best known not to cowards but to servants of honour.

Those who are excited to enter a new position of power and also leave excited for not because they wanted to but because it is better to leave another take on the mantle before even what you made good is forgotten.

So if selflessness is to Servantry and letting go before you’re let go is a virtue best known not to cowards but to servants of honour, that’s where I will ask; is Uganda left of any brave servants out there?

Dalton Kaweesa - @DaltonKaweesa

Dalton Kaweesa

Voltaire famously said that the holy Roman empire is neither royal nor Roman; nor an empire and I think the same can be said of Uganda Police Force because over the years it has turned into neither a police nor a force Ugandans can rely on.

While there was excitement among Ugandans on the long-awaited sacking of then Inspector General of Police Gen. Kale Kayihura, the excitement after it undermines the core responsibility of police.

I am tempted to think that Kayihura’s sacking can only pass as a cock and bull story, totally divorced from the fundamental issues that have failed police to be a force to reckon with.

Let me remind Ugandans of a statement by then powerful coordinator of intelligence services, Gen, David Tinyefuza, aka Sejusa.

When Tinyefuza was accused of unleashing the ‘Black Mambas’ to the High Court in Kampala, he retorted, and in my opinion rightly so, that ‘There are decisions like the invading of courts of laws, brutally arresting Ugandans, beating up Members of Parliament that cannot be taken without the knowledge of the commander in chief.’

This is where I beg Ugandans that as the infatuation over the sacking of Kayihura dies out like the last bit of pressure leaving a punctured tyre, they need to ask critical questions; what sort of force do we want?

The security bubble hovers on our head and when it bursts it will affect us all.

It is only natural that many peopled are tempted to blame Kayihura for the crime that has punctuated the country, but forget that the personnel that he was charged with are busy guarding ‘the very important persons’ of this country.

I challenge someone to convince me that the decision to give NRM Party leadership at Kyadondo Road, plots 10 and 13 patrol cars to escort them was Kayihura’s personal decision. Perhaps the right thing to do at this particular time is to demand from government to let the police do their role and divorce them from political machinations. If there was a statement that excited Ugandans was when the president said ‘The police were infiltrated by criminals.’

Good as it may, the president was only being economical with the truth, and this is why. While everyone complained about crime preventers and the lack of a policy guiding them, the president welcomed them at Kololo airstrip when they were unveiled by Gen. Kayihura. Why wasn’t The President interested in knowingly the kind of command they were going to follow, was there any reporting line, what was their link with the Local Council systems that were working in the villages? When Senior Police officers including those that defended the recruitment started working under the influence and supervision of crime preventers, many of us who poked holes in the whole project were absolved.

Ugandans should make no mistake, asking the force to renew their vows on the mandate to the people is not like asking pigs to fly. To the incoming leadership led by experienced police officer Okoth Ochola and Sabiiti Muzeeyi, returning the force to the appreciation of the people is rather a bridge too far unless, you learn to tell the commander in chief what people want, if at all you know.