Letter to President Museveni on Choosing Bugisu Leaders

Sir,

You, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of the Republic, were quoted by your government’s media, throwing the great people of Bugisu a rather harsh backhanded compliment. You said we are hardworking but have no leaders to guide us.

This has touched off angry responses in Bugisu circles. As a proud member of the community, I too took umbrage at this mischaracterization of a very proud people by a leader who should know better.

In the nascent stages of your liberation struggle, Mr President, Bugisu was a major player in your journey; providing scholarship, logistical support, young hands to join the struggle and refuge for you and your fighters.

It served as a major backdrop for a civic movement that helped propel you to the highest levels of national and regional leadership. Your stories about your near death experience in Malukhu Housing Estate as well as your longtime intellectual back and forths with celebrated sons of Bugisu like Dani Nabudere, James Wapakhabulo etc buttress this.

All to say, Mr President, that Bugisu didn’t suddenly shift from having leaders like Stephen Gidale Muluku, George Masika, Timothy Wangusa, Masete Kuuya, Wadada Nabudere etc to Agnes Nandutu, Mary Goretti Kitutu, Lydia Wanyoto and the like, overnight.

Your system has enabled this. You choose these leaders; and given the method you use, it surprises no one that you end up with bad ones. The method you use to select national leaders from among our community betrays a lack of understanding of Bugisu society. You try to fit square yellow pegs in round holes.

I’ll explain.

Like colonial masters before you, you seem to view our society with monolithic lenses, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Ours is a decentralized society built on the strength of individual family units that forge together through common interests and heritage, into a collective.

But at the core of this is a fierce individualism that recognizes honest hard work, mutual respect and the need to be your brother’s keeper. We do not have kings, queens or overlords but we recognize the power of community. Every man who faces the knife becomes an equal leader among men.

Despite the best colonial efforts to aggregate them into a central, cohesive force paying homage to one supreme leader, Bugisu has stuck to its decentralized ethos but continues to embrace a civic republicanism that you actually rode on your way to power. That you still use it as a backdrop to some of your most heroic wartime stories is testament to this.

The Bagisu remain brave, hardworking, organized contributors to the story of this republic. They have just been left on the wayside by your style of government built on the colonial system of centralization, marginalization and the selection of a few among us to enjoy the spoils of nationhood.

Mr President, you have reduced your search for Cabinet members to NRM winners in parliamentary elections. This is a criteria bound to fail, ab initio.

Given the prohibitive cost, violence and mass rigging of elections, it should surprise no one that right thinking, progressive members of our society have steered clear of such dubious exercises. You therefore end up choosing from charlatans and brutes who have no qualms about getting into the gutter.

These are not true leaders. These are self seekers willing to bet the farm for an opportunity of your invite to the soup kitchen of a welfare state. It should surprise no one that they then go ahead to deliver very little for the people while stealing basics like iron sheets. They’re products of a flawed process.

We are a proud people who will try and keep a respectable distance from a system rooted in unquestioning loyalty, patronage and pilferage over merit, broad based community endeavor and mutual respect.

We also believe in individual responsibility for mistakes. The fact that the only two ministers who have faced legal consequences for theft of Karamoja iron sheets are Bagisu isn’t really a sign of lack of leadership. It’s a sign of belief in the state’s accountability systems and the power of consequences in shaping societies.

Where other societies have beat a well trodden path to your court to beg for “forgiveness for their children’s mistakes”, we have chosen to fall back on the civic republicanism that we uphold and instead trusted the courts to try them fairly.

We are of the view that justice should not be at the behest of one individual, even if said individual is head of state. Justice should be rooted in the indiscriminate application of the law. You might call this lack of leadership but we prefer to call it fairness.

Mr President, where you’ve called on our community to embrace a holistic, community centered approach to leadership and development, we have stepped up and delivered.

The Mbale industrial park is testament to this. For this, you deserve a lot of credit. The success of the Parish Development Model is another win for you and our people. Bugisu Corporative Union, despite its well documented missteps, continues to be the only surviving such entity for a reason.

We can build if supported. And it is this support that we don’t see much of. I’ll use the example of coffee. It’s no secret that our part of the country grows the best and most valuable coffee in the entire East African region. But when it came to government seeding investment in coffee value addition and mass processing, you chose your side of the country, Ntungamo. The people see this, note it and continue working hard. No complaints.

We don’t count on you or your government to solve all our problems. We simply expect a hand and a fair chance. If this isn’t forthcoming, we shall not send beggars to you. You know, the ones you call leaders. We shall keep working. This is what you recognize as being “hard working but lacking in leadership”.

Our community hasn’t lost any leadership step, Sir. You have simply left us by the wayside. If you doubt this, look on the other side of the mountain; to the east. A community with which we share everything continues to churn out leaders of Parliament, major cities, government institutions and political organizations in Kenya. These are things we used to do here; until you pulled the proverbial rug from under our collective feet and sacrificed our promising national leadership potential at the altar of political expediency.

Your observation, though perhaps intended to be motivational, sounds a lot like an arsonist complaining about the fire they helped light.

Respectfully, an unhappy Mugisu Man!