The Party That Handed Over Its Own

Hon. Muwanga Kivumbi follows me on social media. So I know he likely read a post I once wrote — Hon. Kyagulanyi vs. Hon. Basalirwa — The Great Ugandan Sellout Show — where I warned that the opposition was not being destroyed by the government alone. No. The real executioner was standing inside the house already.

In that post, I wrote how HE Bobi Wine had started turning on the very people who built the struggle with him. One by one, he cut them down. His sword was simple: call someone a government snitch, and their political career died on the spot. No trial. No evidence. Just a whisper, and the head rolled.

Others, like Kivumbi, stayed close to him, standing bravely in front, their necks bare, while the government sharpened its knives behind them.

In the end, it didn’t matter who was close or who was distant. All of them were beheaded politically. Clean. Quiet. Complete.

In that post, I warned the remaining honest opposition members still standing near HE Bobi Wine. I told them the movement was already rotten. That the leader they believed in was not the same man from five years ago. I warned them that staying close to him meant gambling with their own safety.

HE Bobi Wine can get secret warnings when security is coming. He can disappear before the boots hit the ground. He can beat surveillance and vanish into hiding like smoke. But Hon. Muwanga Kivumbi and others cannot. They don’t get leaks. They don’t get safe hiding. They get arrests. Courts. Coffins.

Now they wake up to a nightmare. They wake up and realize the party they sacrificed for handed them over to the government like meat. They wake up counting dead supporters, dead relatives. They wake up in court and are told to defend themselves—alone.

The party offers excuses for missing court dates. Weak excuses. If anyone is still foolish enough to believe them, that belief will finish the job. Or maybe—too late—they will wake up and rush to find an independent lawyer to save what little is left.

This is the legacy being written now. A quiet parliament. A broken opposition. And the final achievement of HE Bobi Wine’s political career: silence.

Yasin Kakande

Author & TED Global Fellow