Opinion: "We told you not to wear red berets"

Heartbreaking news: There is a real fashion police. There is an agency in government that decides what we should not wear.

They just told us that we can’t wear any more red berets.

https://nilepost.co.ug/2019/09/30/government-gazettes-red-beret-as-official-military-attire-civilians-caught-wearing-it-face-life-imprisonment/

If a red beret is found atop your pawpaw, you had better be in the army otherwise the State will adopt responsibility for your upkeep, feeding and residence for the rest of your life.

It’s bad enough that Lokodo won’t let us wear miniskirts, but now this? What’s next? Are you going to ban my barkcloth socks?

But Gava presented a valid point. Red berets are gazetted military attire and if we let civilians waddle around the nation in military attire the confusion could be insurmountable. I will find myself fleeing from, attempting to bribe, or surrendering my rights to random civilians who just happen to be wearing a red hat because I have read too many stories of UPDF soldiers going beserk and I don’t want to take chances.

https://nilepost.co.ug/2019/10/01/people-power-more-than-red-berets-bobi-wine/

I might even end up driving my car into a ditch if I saw a red beret on a boda passenger because it has been instilled in me that when you see the army on the road you get your worthless, cheap, plebian, commoner kikwangala backside as extremely out of their way as possible.

Although some of you are going to allege that this gazetting was triggered by the People Power movement and NRM’s jealousy of Joel Ssenyonyi because he looks so much cooler in his beret than Evelyn Anite did in her dowdy outsized T-shirt when she knelt away term limits, but to these haters I say… Maybe.

But I told you guys. I told you guys. You didn’t listen to me.

Here is a transcript of the whatsapp I sent Bobi a while ago:

“Wagwan bredrin. Mi hear you gwan stand fi di parliament and make a movement for di people who are having dem rights eroded under disya regime, allegedly.

Mi hear you say dat NRM is intolerant of opposition and NRM dem no respeck freedom of expression.

Bomboclart! NRM not intolerant of opposition. NRM only exists because of opposition. NRM dem were only formed in the first place to oppose the previous government. NRM is all about opposition. NRM is the child of opposition. How can you say we are intolerant? In fact, we are so into opposition, that we oppose your opposition to us, yannastan (Oh however they spell the patois version of “You understand?”)

So of course we are going to let you gwan make your Parliamentary bid and win and have your People Power. In fact, mi even gwan give you advice pon di attire.

Don’t use di red beret. Mi know you think it has a strong pedigree as a symbol of resistance to tyranny from Sankara to Guevara to the character Kylie Minogue played in that Jean Claude Van Damme movie, Street Fighter. Remember that movie? Membadat movie?

But you affi know, it’s kind of too militant a symbol for what supposed fi be a movement to achieve peaceful and democratic change in the way our nation is run. You said it yourself, you don’t have a problem with Museveni, you just want the people to be better served. Maybe ya affi try something different like, red traditional wear, or dyeing one eyebrow red or red ribbons inna di locks. Something that di army don’t already have.

Besides, red beret not only a symbol fi militant opposition fi government. It also have a pretty sketchy legacy among dictators and tyrants and monsters, from the Soviet Union to Mao’s China to this most recent news from the DR Congo:

Bosco Ntaganda, the rebel commander from the Congo who was on trial for war crimes was convicted on all 18 counts brought against him including murder, rape, sexual slavery and using child soldiers.

And there he is, wearing a red beret.