(Parental warning – some passages within this blog may appear distressing at first, don't worry it's all perfectly safe)
Even for Africa the news of the last month or so has it appeared made it to the front page of the BBC website. Well the African section at least, it would be hard to knock Wills and Kate off the top spot even with the ceremony well and truly over. For those of you that haven't made it past the addictive tales of dresses and theorems on potential honeymoon destinations there has been some political unheaval that you might have missed down here in Kampala, between two old friends; the incumbent President Museveni (M7) and his old physician Besigwe. After winning his fourth election, by 'lending' a large part of the Ugandan economy to the voters, Besigwe has been spearheading the protests against the government and the high fuel prices by walking to work and finding himself on the wrong side of water cannons filled with pink water and people the police administering large doses of liquid tear gas/pepper spray. Not surprising that he had to head to Nairobi for some treatment and possible R&R!
While he was away M7 took the opportunity to go shopping for some new toys to celebrate his fourth inauguration. With he remainder of the budget he decided it would be prudent to spend on six new, well 40 year old, Russian fighter jets. Before you ask of course this wasn't for the ceremony, no, according to the Minister of State for Defence “we don't live in an enemy free neighborhood.” As I watched the pilots – Russians too – practicing on the day before I couldn't help cast my mind back to the last few shopping trips the Ugandan government went on. In short, Uganda doesn't have the strongest history in this area. In the 90's the army procured four helicopters, spares and ammunition at a snip for $12 Million. On delivery it was found they couldn't fly. Early, a consignment of guns and uniforms were ordered from South Korea along with 90 tanks from Bulgaria – ten of the tanks were operational, the guns malfunctioned and the khakis...they were undersized...no surprise there though they were from Asia. But my personal favourite has to be the other MiG fighter jets previously bought from the Red Army as they arrived on the lovely red earth with one wing, no spare parts and no bomb loading capacity.
So with Museveni organising a large party in the city and Besigwe set to return returning from Kenya to a hero's welcome, I decided the best course of action would be to get out of the city and play golf. 18 holes later, on a pleasantly surprising golf course that was completed abandoned, aside from the caddies that practically lynched us in the car park as we arrived, we headed back up the Entebbe road for the usual 40min drive back to Kampala...only we didn't expect the defeated and downtrodden opposition leader to be holding up traffic taking six hours to drive and wave the 40km. With him travelling in one direction and the returning diplomatic guests from friendly African nations travelling in the other – including Zimbabwe's Mugabe who was no doubt here to hand over a neck tie to the '25 Year Club' to M7 – the plan of getting back in daylight slowly dissolved...not unlike the stability of the crowd as we neared the infamous clock tower roundabout.
The first of the tear gas rolled into the open window without much reaction but well before I had chance to close it. In a manoeuvre McGuiver would have been proud of, I snatched off a sock and used it to cover my nose and mouth sacrificing my eyes to the slight peppery burning sensation. Aside from the unpleasantness this was pretty exciting; my first tear gassing experience. From the safety of the car I had a pretty good view of the scenes just a few hundreds meters down the road in the heart of the riot. The traffic police, military police, general police and anti-terrorist police, all in their distinctive and varied combat colours were moving in with the usual excessive force launching more tear gas, spraying plenty of strange coloured liquid and firing rubber bullets into the crowd. Had it been a little earlier in the afternoon I would have been more worried. Despite the large number of people running past the windows, shouting in fairly jovial spirits, about how this was 'the start of another Egypt,' how 'the loyal Ugandan was going to rise up against the government as they had hundreds of miles north.' Don't get me wrong there is definitely a change in the air, especially in M7 goes about this the wrong way, but part of me I can't help but see the slightly funny side of the rioting. Over the last month or so, the riots seem to have followed a similar patten; they don't start till late morning, they die down for a period at lunchtime, stop when it rains and finish as the light gets bad. If we were in any other commonwealth country this could be mistaken for a good old game of cricket...with tear gas canisters and switch sticks replacing the more traditional equipment.
