A REPLY LETTER TO MR PRESIDENT.
Dear Dad, first I send my condolences to you for losing a friend, comrade in arms, and a fellow pan africanist, Comrade Robert Mugabe Rip.
I read your letter to Ugandans especially your Bazukulu with much interest and keen mind. I rarely want responding to you because it may appear as if, “NKULABA MUKAMWA” you my dad.
This is indiscipline of the highest nature in African culture. But the way most of the Bazukulu (my children) reacted to your letter was so embarrassing prompting me to respond. You know these Bazukulu have grown in your HANDS as their jjaja for the last 33yrs. They have “EKYEJO”. They don’t fear you as we your sons and daughters.
Having said that Mr President, your letter was too embarrassing to believe that you wrote it. Yes it was your idea but the manager, is green about your language on security. The arrangement of the wording appeared to be yours.
But the content was as if, the police wanted to explain themselves using you as a cover. Otherwise I don’t remember you explaining yourself on matters of security. The many times I’ve seen you on black boards, you explain economics but not security. With insecurity you just work to solve the problem. You well know it that the “wanainchi” don’t understand those explanations about security. What they want is to be secure. This has been your main card of victory for years.
I remember the times of bomb explosions in Kampala, when you appointed General Tumukunde to handle the problem.
Mr President you didn’t explain yourself. We only saw these bombs no more. Lakwena, Kony, and ADF all disappeared without press conferences nor letters to “wanainchi”, why now?. I don’t want to insinuate but, have you lost control, “OBA TAATA WANGE OKOOYE?”. You are the only one with the right answer.
Mr President, when I started using fountain pens in my primary school, and made mistakes, I would try hard to erase them before submitting to my teacher.
Sometimes, I used a rubber to clean my mistake but it later reappeared.
So I began to use saliva, it worked, but only to leave holes in my books.
My teachers then used to punish me for being outrageously untidy. But I was trying to cover my mistakes.
One day, a kind hearted teacher called me aside and advised me that; “Ashraf anytime you make a mistake, just cross it and move on. Trying to erase your mistakes would only damage your book “.
First I protested reasoning that, teachers should not see my mistakes. The kind loving teacher laughed and calmly replied that; “Trying to erase your mistake will make more people know about your mess and the stigma is for life”.
Mr President you must have made some mistakes with security. Humbly cross them over and move on. Don’t expose yourself as a result of trying to cover your mistakes.
Today you are trying to erase your mistakes and in the process exposing the weaknesses in security the more. We are witnessing a military state for real since you came into power.
The brutal arrests of suspects by civilian dressed commandos in broad day light has done no good but to cause more terror and fear among the “wanainchi”. Something you avoided even during the bush war.
Some commandos go to the extent of imitating your physical character to scare the wanainchi. For us elders who lived in the times of Amin and Obote 2, the memories of such arrests make us loose hope. The daily murders also make us remember the times of Binaisa when people were killed on a daily basis.
The eye for an eye policy would be good, but not in this very corrupt society. You may end up executing the innocent. That would be like using saliva to rub a mistake. You will be digging “holes” in the state.
As you go around the country fighting poverty the unexplained murders are everywhere in the country.
I first heard the sentence “state inspired insecurity” from you when standing on the steps of parliament in 1986.
I’m sure your Bazukulu will understand it practically. I remember in 1977 my Jjaja Zakaria a tax driver was picked around Kawanda never to appear again. Amin may not have killed jjaja himself but because the situation was state inspired our clan blame Amin for the Killing. Obote and Binaisa may not have killed ppl themselves, but bcs it was their time the blame is on their heads.
How will you avoid the blame.
I think it is high time Mr President to cross the mistakes other than erasing them.
You call it an end and we move on.
Hajj Ashraf Simwogerere.
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