Kizza Besigye, Uganda’s longstanding opposition leader yesterday likened the Museveni family to the apartheid regime of South Africa.
“The family of Mr. Museveni has had a stranglehold on every resource in this country and they control the military power. So, they decide who gets what to eat, and who does not. Everyone else who sits in a position of power sits there without power, but to serve the interest of the Museveni family.”
The former Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) president and four-time Museveni challenger for the presidency said this while appearing on the talk show Olutindo, presented by veteran journalist Peter Kibazo, on Radio Simba.
Apartheid was a policy in South Africa enforced by the government of the National Party (NP) from 1948 until democratic majority rule by the black Africans in 1994.
It separated the country on racial lines, and forced people to relocate, thus displacing them from their homes and creating Bantustans. Social amenities were also provided along racial lines. Interracial relationships and marriages were also banned, and political opposition was violently suppressed.
Many contemporary political leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) were jailed for long years without trial.
A call to the youth
Besigye then called onto the youth to get out of their comfort zone and fight for their liberation. “It amuses me when some people say they are tired of poverty, we are not winning, and they join the regime. What makes you tired of struggling for freedom at your age? I have fought for freedom for more than forty years!”
A seemingly vexed Besigye added; “I left a good job that was paying me well to fight for this freedom. You don’t even have the jobs now. But you think you have struggled enough.” “We need to fight until we overwhelm Mr. Museveni and his family, until they negotiate their exit like the apartheid regime.”
At this point the host reminded him that Museveni has offered to talk with the opposition before and Besigye himself scuttled these talks.
On negotiations
At this point, Besigye reminded Kibazo that the latter actually had a wrong version of the story. “It is Mr. Museveni who called for the talks through the Swedish government. I had declared myself as the duly-elected president and wanted an audit of the 2016 election results. He accepted the call for audit and dialogue. But before we could have the audit, he said that we should first have a public meeting to show that we are dialoguing. And that is where we said no!”
“But talks cannot happen when the situation is still as it is. We must create conditions that force Mr. Museveni to accept the talks. For example, the traders just here in the city center, a section of them protested by closing their shops and he came to negotiate. What if it was the whole country that had protested?”
“You remember 2009 when the people of Kampala decided to take charge of this city for three days. … if we could organise ourselves, the dictator can come crawling to negotiate!”
