Kakwenza Rukirabashaija is an exiled Ugandan novelist and lawyer. He is the author of The Greedy Barbarian, Banana Republic: Where Writing is Treasonous, and The Savage Avenger. He was named winner of the English PEN 2021 Pinter International Writer of Courage Award. He has now authored his fourth book, Uganda vs Kizza Besigye.
Have you ever read The Trial of Dedan Kimathi by Ngugi wa Thiong’o? The 1976 play uses Kimathi’s trial as a platform for defiance. Is this what your play is about?
Yes, I read it during my Senior Two literature class and admired it for many years. But my courtroom play Uganda vs Besigye doesn’t imitate Ngugi’s defiance; it rather converses with it. Ngugi used the colonial courtroom to expose the moral emptiness of the British Empire and for me, I have used the post-colonial courtroom of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government to expose what happens when yesterday’s liberators become today’s oppressors.
Where Prof Ngugi dramatised courage in chains. For me, I wanted to dramatise the cowardice of a ruler who used and still uses the Judiciary as a citadel of impunity, the judge as a reluctant actor, the prosecutor as chief priest and enforcer, the accused as a mirror of our country. My play is an X-ray of how power manipulates the law, which is meant to heal but is turned into a weapon against patriotic people like Besigye.
Are you using composite characters like you did in your first book, The Greedy Barbarian? Will Bobi Wine feature as a character?
No. Every character in this play is drawn directly from the historical record. Justice [John Bosco] Katutsi, David Mpanga, [Simon Mugenyi] Byabakama, [Joanita] Kyakuwa, [Sam] Kutesa, even the maid, they appear as they were, though I’ve given them inner lives and voices that ordinary transcripts never allow. This is reality given the dignity of art, and I think this is where I shine. Bobi Wine will not appear as he was busy putting together his music career in 2005 when this happened. But I applaud him for his ability to use art to speak for the oppressed.
In your telling of this story, how do you characterise President Museveni? We know he’s cast as a villain, but does his character have any nuances or redeeming defects?
Villain is too simple, I respectfully submit. I see Mr Yoweri Museveni as Shakespeare would have seen him-part Macbeth, part King Lear, part Iago. A man once aflame with a live purpose who now fears his own shadow and denies what he once stood for. He’s a tragic figure because he betrayed his better self, now a simulacrum of his former self, though I didn’t write him into the script as a speaking character, I wrote his presence as the invisible god of this theatre–the hand pulling strings from behind curtains. Every arrest, every line of bureaucratic obedience, carries his indubitable scent.
Do you believe this book will help in creating consciousness and possibly action regarding Dr Besigye’s incarceration?
Mere art can’t free a prisoner, but it can free the public mind from its obedience because I’m not naïve enough to think that a mere play like this will topple a rogue regime, but it can disturb its peace. We are in exile because our art is so powerful in resuscitating the soul of the nation. If it was not, we would never be harassed.
I wrote this play to make readers feel the shame of watching justice performed like comedy so if it helps people see that the law is no longer neutral, that it has been weaponised against conscience, then yes, that is action. Consciousness is the beginning of rebellion, and you know Uganda doesn’t lack courage, but memory and this play is an act of remembering and a warning that every false trial of political prisoners leaves a scar on the nation’s soul and legacy of the people in power.
Could you share an excerpt?
Judge Katusi: ‘Rape is a grave offence, yes, but to wield it falsely, to fabricate it, to coach it, to purchase it, is to commit another crime–a crime against justice itself, and a crime against every genuine victim who comes forward seeking to be believed. To use rape as a political trick is to cheapen the suffering of women and to mock the very law that should shield them.’ That line cuts through the entire play like a scalpel because it’s the moment when the judge, my mentor and also Rukungiri mate, by the way, ceases being an official and becomes a human being-weary, ironic and brave. I put it together that way because I wanted the verdict to sound like both justice and mourning.
How would you characterise life in exile?
Exile is not a privilege. If I had my passport returned to me by the court that confiscated it, I would come back to Uganda and participate in the quick removal of this government from power (not through elections though). I would return tomorrow, though not through those porous borders that I used to escape without a passport, but through Entebbe airport, just like Kizza Besigye returned from exile openly. Exile also gives clarity because I see Uganda from afar and understand its absurdities better by comparing how other systems work.
What’s the inspiration behind your latest artistic creation?
My greatest inspiration in conceiving Uganda vs Besigye courtroom play is Shakespeare. He wrote both as a dramatist and a social reporter. The man visited Venice and gave us The Merchant of Venice and Othello; he travelled through Italy, and birthed Romeo and Juliet; he studied Roman history, and sculpted Julius Caesar and Coriolanus; England’s royal court became Hamlet and Macbeth-his way of turning political corruption into poetry. Even The Tempest came from the stories of shipwrecks and colonial voyages he heard in London’s taverns. I approach my society the same way.