By Otim Nape

Motor-mouthed Andrew Mwenda yesterday came up with the facebook rant blasting Kyaddondo MP Bobi Wine Kyagulanyi Sentamu. Mwenda’s facebook message went as this;

So Bobi Wine issued a “letter to Young Ugandans” in which he claims that colonialism marked Uganda’s golden age. This is the problem with President Yoweri Museveni’s critics – always ignorant and emotional and their arguments always lack substance in both matter and manner. I really don’t want to defend Museveni because I personally disagree with him on many issues. For example his alliance with multinational capital has led him to a blind and naive embrace of foreign investors, a keenness to control inflation at 5% and an obsession with international competitive bidding. This may have given Uganda allocative efficiency (good for the short term) but it has undermined structural transformation that lies at the heart of development. I will address Museveni’s deficiencies another day – how his policies have benefited international capital and displaced or stifled the growth of local (Ugandan) capital. As a result they have kept our country as an agricultural nation with little manufacturing.

Bobi Wine with other MP’s at a tokikwatako Rally recently

The real danger to Uganda today is not Museveni but an extremist and fanatical wing of the opposition led by FDC cult leader and opposition presidential candidate for life, Kizza Besigye, and lately joined by Bobi Wine. These are emotional desperadoes without any clue of where Uganda has come from, where it is and where it should go. Let us address Bobi Wine’s hare brained uninformed assertions. He claims that colonialism left behind a well functioning education. In 1961, only 343 students were unrolled in S5 and S6 in a country of 7m people. If such a rate was maintained Uganda today would have 2,225 students in A Level. We have 235,000. And he claims colonialism was the golden age of Uganda.

Bobi Wine also claims colonialism left behind great infrastructure. In 1960, Uganda had only 268km of tarmac after 72 years of colonial rule. The short lived DP government led by Kiwanuka added 210km in one year. Obote added 1,000km in eight years 1962-71. In spite of his government incompetence and corruption, Museveni has in the last 8 years added 4,000km of tarmac. So what is this Bobi Wine really talking about? This “leader” of the youth of Uganda even claims that under colonial rule a child in a rural primary school would fairly compete with one in the city. But there were no schools in rural areas under colonial rule. If he meant in towns outside of kampala, he should check the 2016 PLE results.

The ten best performing districts or towns in order of their performance were: Fort Portal, Entebbe, Ntungamo, Rukungiri, Jinja, Kabale, Masaka, Mbarara, Lira and Masindi. Many of these are far away from Kampala, a city that is not one of them. Many Ugandan elites are lazy. They don’t want to read and know about their country. They prefer to sit in their homes and imagine things and then hope that such imagination is reality. In the modern age of science, it is sad that those who want to replace Museveni think that they can rely on hallucinations to inform public policy. Our country deserves better. Bobi Wine may be a good singer and dancer. But his “letter to young Ugandans” shows that he lacks the basic competences to even manage a village.”

OUR TAKE

There are three main points we like to make about this facebook rant by Andrew Mwenda. The reason he is suddenly against Bobi Wine isn’t very hard to understand. Being a Kaguta Museveni supporter, Mwenda expected Bobi Wine to be antagonistic to Kizza Besigye and Erias Lukwago and other established Museveni opponents. This is the reason he originally praised Bobi Wine adding he was a very good grass root mobilizer unlike Besigye. Mwenda kept saying Bobi Wine won because he had proper structures in the villages of Kyaddondo unlike Besigye who concentrates on defiance without proper planning. Mwenda and his protégés like Simon Kasyate posted many things on fb all clearly aiming at creating a rift between Besigye and Bobi Wine.

Mwenda must be disappointed that hasn’t happened and instead Bobi Wine has gone ahead to show loyalty, respect and comradeship for Besigye, Lukwago and other strong Kaguta M7 opponents.  This is the reason he is angry and out to destroy Kyagulanyi. But will Mwenda succeed? We think no and the reason is simple-Kyaddondo residents didn’t vote Kyagulanyi because they were thinking he was very good at analyzing with figures and facts.

In his fb rant, Mwenda blames Kyagulanyi for writing articles devoid of historical facts and figures. Mwenda also says Kyagulanyi (the man he previously praised as an emerging leader) is therefore so incompetent and incapable of leading a village. There is one thing the likes of Mwenda forget. In places like Kyaddondo, the angry voters don’t elect MPs because they are very articulate with figures or anything like that. These are protest voters out seeking someone who will stand up to Kaguta M7 regardless of whether he makes good points or not. Simply put-one doesn’t have to be very good for them to elect him. You only have to consistently say no to Kaguta M7 without ever contradicting yourself. If at all Bobi Wine’s countrywide popularity, that has clearly become evident to Kaguta M7, will only wane the moment people feel he is compromising on opposing the Kaguta M7 regime. It won’t have anything to do with the poorly written articles and social media posts (as Mwenda called them) because that is not what draws crowds to him. We had Nasser Sebaggala who was much worse in both form and substance but people stuck to him. He only lost the crowd the moment they felt he had been politically compromised. Sebaggala never lost his appeal because he was a poor public speaker or posted stuff on social media that was devoid of substance as Mwenda wants us to believe. It was because voters felt he had abandoned views he previously espoused. So it’s very unlikely that Mwenda’s facebook rants (purporting to expose inconsistencies) will in any way diminish Bobi Wine’s support and appeal to the public. This is something we believe must be well known to Mwenda and his ilk. At a personal level, Mwenda must also be envious seeing Kaguta M7 publicly responding to Bobi Wine’s utterances, something he rarely did to Mwenda when he used to criticize him while still an active journalist at Daily Monitor.