In early January 2019, Ugandan activist, and University of Cornell doctoral student Bwesigye Mwesigire was violently attacked on a bus in Uganda and sent into a three-day coma because of his political work. Four years later, he explains what led to the attack and makes some observations on the role of the intellectual in the Ugandan situation. Through this piece, he informs us about the importance of international solidarity, the challenges facing opposition to dictatorship in Uganda, and how radical intellectuals can potentially relate to the masses.
Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire
The Beginnings
In autumn 2017, during the first semester of my PhD at Cornell, I began to seriously think about the role of the intellectual in revolutionary times while partaking in the Post-colonial Studies and the Black Radical Imagination course. My comrade Zeyad and I were assigned with preparing a presentation on that topic for that class. We read C.L.R James’ wonderful Montreal Lectures, You Don’t Play With Revolution and secondary material about him. At the same time, we looked at how Gramsci’s concept of Organic intellectual or Grant’s Vernacular intellectual could help us better understand the life and work of black revolutionaries like CLR James. More importantly, as a PhD student committed to “making revolution”, the course led me to ask myself what does it mean to not play with revolution, today?
A year later, this line of questioning drew me to the practice of left-wing international solidarity. On one occasion, Zeyad, who had become my friend, asked me to give a talk at the Geneva (New York) Branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation after I told him about the arrest of my friend and comrade Dr Stella Nyanzi. The purpose of the conversation would be to raise international awareness about Dr Stella Nyanzi’s incarceration and persecution. The party held a monthly “Peace Talk” series. After he had consulted with his comrades, it was confirmed that I would address the Geneva branch of the party about “United States Imperialism and Uganda”. I would weave Stella Nyanzi’s incarceration into the larger narrative of the US exploitation of Uganda through the puppet presidency of Yoweri Museveni. In the talk, I mentioned the mass-based formations of the People’s Government then led by Kizza Besigye, and the then new People Power movement led by Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine. I sought to put Stella Nyanzi’s persecution and these movements in conversation but more importantly, to frame them as Left-leaning, or worthy of the ideological solidarity of the Western Left and the Black International Left.
I understood my role, as a PhD student located in the United States, as that of mobilizing solidarity with the mass movements of the Ugandan people. Stella Nyanzi, as an incarcerated intellectual and writer-activist figure, was an entry point to dissecting how contemporary tyranny in Uganda is still primarily about United States Imperialism. One could say that the Marxist anti-imperialist analysis of the Uganda situation was an entry point for seeking solidarity with the cause to free Stella Nyanzi, from the International Black and Western Left. That peace talk was delivered on November 30, 2018. I went home to Uganda, about a week after that.
The Attack in Uganda
The attack came as I travelled by bus from home in the southwestern part of the country, to the capital, to arrange my return to the United States for the Spring 2019 semester. Over a hundred people from all walks of life who knew about me and my anti-dictatorial work in Uganda and abroad mobilised a support fund to cater for my medical costs. Some people who have never met me in person, but knew of my political work, of the conditions in which the attack happened were very essential in drumming up support for my treatment. I emphasise this because we started with the role of the intellectual in a situation ripe for revolution. Correct or incorrect, I had seen my role as a PhD student in the United States as seeking solidarity with the struggle in Uganda, from that location. I believe the attacks I suffered on January 19, 2019, were because of this work.
After I physically recovered, on a visit to Stella Nyanzi in jail, she was so convinced that the reason I was attacked was because of my cultural and intellectual work. She particularly noted that my work bringing together artists, academics, writers, and other intellectual and cultural workers was a threat to the Museveni tyranny. As I further recuperated, I stayed in Uganda and coordinated an online and offline solidarity movement around Stella Nyanzi’s persecution and incarceration. With many comrades, I will list as many as I can, elsewhere, we continued to talk about her imprisonment. We wrote we petitioned, and we agitated. We spread her words, including releasing poems she had written while in jail. First to celebrate her birthday, and second in a collection that came out ahead of her eventual acquittal and release.
The question of the role of the intellectual in a situation ripe for revolution didn’t go away when Stella Nyanzi was released. I was already in the United States, and it was the early days of the Covid19 pandemic when Stella Nyanzi was released. After a brief hesitation, it was announced that the 2021 periodic Ugandan national elections would happen despite the pandemic. It was obvious to every eye, ear, nose, skin and tongue that Museveni would lose if the election were fair, even if his main opponent was a cow or even a rock. The point of periodic elections in Uganda is to satisfy the nominal requirements of liberal democracy. They are a staged spectacle and not a measure of the people’s will or the majority’s choice of who to lead them.
A Tyrant’s Massacre
Even by their own macabre standards, Museveni’s tyranny outdid itself in cracking down on the masses during the election. When Bobi Wine was arrested on allegations that he had flouted COVID-19 guidelines, protests erupted and to contain them, Museveni ordered (overtly or by omission) a massacre of protesting and non-protesting civilians. The actual number of the dead and injured in the massacre is unknown. Museveni says they killed about 50 people. The numbers are much higher. This massacre happened in November 2020. A lot of violations had taken place before the massacre. Slightly over a year before the massacre, Makerere university students staged a strike protesting tuition fee increment. They called the protest #FeesMustFall. It was led by women students. The leader was not only brutalized into a coma but also expelled from the university. Male-only student halls of residence were raided by the military and hundreds of residents were beaten, to the point most were hospitalized.
Beyond question, the winner of the 2021 election was Bobi Wine just as Kizza Besigye won 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 elections and Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere could have won the 1996 election. The choice of the masses, the majority of Ugandans, has never been Museveni. It doesn’t matter the qualities and attributes of the alternative. Even a cow or a rock can poll better than Museveni. The masses can’t forget about decades of murder and brutalisation, not to mention enabling the economic exploitation of the country, even the continent when it comes to polling day. If we consider the use of Museveni family-owned security companies in Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States, the geographical scale of the complicity becomes transcontinental. The masses know of this reach of his brigandage. He can never win over the masses. He can never get earnest domestic favour. The masses are not stupid. The masses are wise. The collective is always right. The masses know that Museveni is not good for them. They have suffered the direct brunt of his tyranny.
But the question remains, what is the role of the intellectual in this situation? A situation where there’s extreme suppression of the masses, and extreme exploitation of their resources, is a situation ripe for revolution. What is the intellectual’s role in this situation?
The role of the intellectual
Does the intellectual, on paper draw out the plan for the perfect revolution? Does the intellectual counter the efforts of those seeking to end tyranny by pointing out how imperfect they are? Does the intellectual agonise over the ideological correctness or incorrectness of the rock or cow that the masses vote for?
Bobi Wine has shown himself to be allied with US imperialism through his “ill” or arguably well-calculated gestures on the international scene. The first note of this ideological leaning was obvious after he endorsed Juan Guaidó, US puppet-in-chief in Venezuela. The second of these loud declarations was his endorsement of the NATO and Ukrainian side in the current conflict with Russia. It takes no rocket scientist to see that Bobi Wine’s strategy for ending Museveni’s tyranny is a US-backed revolution.
A US-backed revolution was earlier attempted during and after the 2011 election by Besigye who directly used Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy as a key text for political education among activists of the age. It didn’t work. The radical intellectual in the C.L.R James model discerns an ideological crisis with US-backed revolutions. No change that directly involves the masses or that works to their benefit could occur through such a revolution. Exploitation is bound to persist. They do not resolve the primary contradiction. It would only be a matter of time before the direct military brutalisation returns or worse. Some may say that a US-backed revolution would give them a minute to catch their breath as superficial reforms would happen to prove the liberalism of the US-supported revolution.
However, the idea that a US-Backed revolution provides short-term relief is a dangerous one. I think that there’s a need for mass political education at all layers of society so that connections between the Museveni tyranny and the United States Imperialism it serves are made and contended with. The intellectual, therefore, needs to create study groups, to popularise radical ideology, and other such activities that can constitute what Gramsci called a counter-hegemony.
The difficulty for the radical intellectuals operating in the current circumstances concerns relating to Ugandans oppressed by Museveni’s regime, incarcerated, disappeared, brutalised, and murdered. Far too often political mobilisation by intellectuals has slipped into a shallow political contest of who has the best buzzwords, slogans and ideological line. But this contest fails to address that people bear physical scars. People are still suffering symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We have lost friends, comrades, colleagues, and relatives. The ideological analysis is important as it enables us to understand the nature of our problem and guides us towards action. However, opposition to Museveni has too often slipped into sloganeering by those who pose as the real representative of the masses while failing to take the question of imperialist intervention in the country seriously. The intellectual who engages in phrase-mongering in the face of the mourning masses further gets alienated from them. The masses know when intellectual criticisms serve no revolutionary purpose.
Before radical intellectuals proselytise, they should engage in concrete action to relate to the masses. Can they first get life-saving medicines and treatment for their suffering? Can those under direct threat from the regime first get out of the country? Can the traumatised get therapy to deal with their PTSD? And then perhaps get into a program of political education and consciousness-raising. Finally, can radical intellectuals pause and listen to what the masses are demanding?
Does it take an intellectual to know that someone who was fired from a job because they are a threat to tyranny has no source of income and needs actual financial support? I do not think so. It takes a human being. Che Guevara said everyone who trembles at injustice is his comrade. Let us first be humane comrades, and then intellectuals later. We must remain informed about the stage of the struggle from those most impacted and react accordingly. The wounds are still bleeding. Let us do what is necessary. The struggle continues.
Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire was born in Uganda. He is an instructor in the Institute of African Studies at Emory University, while working towards defending his PhD (English) dissertation titled “Afro-Nationalism: The Transcontinental Poetics of New African Diaspora Fiction” at Cornell University. He is a member of the Ubuntu Reading Group publishing collective.
