Ugandans are so used to violent election campaigns that we are struggling to come to terms with what, thus far, has been a relatively benign affair. You’d be cruel to hold it against us. By this time at the last election, more than 50 people had been shot dead by state security actors during political violence over two days in November 2020, triggered by reports of the arrest of Opposition candidate Robert ‘Bobi Wine’ Kyagulanyi.
That was easily the highest election-related death toll since the return to electoral politics in 1996. It easily out-bled the 2001 election held with the northern third of the country still roiled by civil war, and the 2006 contest which had so many legal sideshows, it can only be called an election due to economy of vocabulary.
We thought we had survived a bullet with the relatively boring election in 2011. So boring was it, in fact, that political commentators, your columnist included, made the resigned, half-full observation that it was, in the grand scheme of things, better to persuade voters with bribes than with bullets.
Yet there are enough warning signs at present not to take any of it for granted, and even more lessons from history for us not to repeat our mistakes. First, as we saw during National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate Kyagulanyi’s campaign in Kawempe this week, it does not take much for a peaceful campaign rally to turn into a stampede and a cauldron of political mayhem. One overzealous supporter or trigger-happy security officer is all it takes. That we haven’t seen worse this far down in the campaign says a lot about the restraint that both Opposition supporters and security agencies have demonstrated, despite provocations from and against both sides.
Security and law enforcement officials have demonstrated that they can let slights slide, especially if the operational and overall command is for restraint. Power has always been inherently accountable and subservient to the political objectives it seeks to honour. Yet the absence of violence does not necessarily reflect political consensus. With Opposition doyen Kizza Besigye and his associate Obeid Kamulegeya still in pre-trial detention a year after they were kidnapped in Nairobi, and with many Opposition supporters still missing or in custody since before the last election, one can argue that this is the calm after the storm.
The merits in that view need not stop us from acknowledging the relative restraint shown so far, especially with the backdrop of the smouldering ruins of the recent electoral contest just next door. The process matters, but the underlying material conditions matter even more. Within weeks of the end of the electoral season in 2011, Walk-to-Work protests over the rising cost of living had torn away the veneer of normalcy and unleashed legal and illegal strictures on civil liberties that continue to hold us in a chokehold today. Even the relatively calm election that followed in 2016 was quickly undone in the smoke, blood and mirrors of 2021.
There are two easy take outs. One, on the evidence so far, it is possible for us to have an electoral process that is relatively peaceful if there is political will for it to be so, and if State power, including that of the military and the police, is exercised judiciously, and if responses to the inevitable provocations are not over the top.
Secondly, a peaceful process does not resolve structural misalignments such as economic inequalities and the cost-of-living crisis. To that end, a peaceful electoral process is needed to ensure these fissures do not deepen, and political and financial resources are not wasted in political violence or its aftermath.
More importantly, however, it is necessary to create the political legitimacy needed to rally around key reforms needed to address the deep-seated social, political and economic challenges of the day. This is a long-winded way of saying a relatively peaceful election should not be seen as a favour extended to citizens. Rather, it should be considered an important first step in building a new national consensus on how a younger generation of Ugandans wants to be governed and the country they want to live in. We need to start seeing peace as a foundation to be defended, not a privilege to be given or taken away at will.