For more than a month of Dr Kizza Besigye’s house arrest in his farmhouse in Kasangati, Wakiso district 16km north of Kampala, his neighbours too have had to live with the endless and unnerving surveillance occasioned by the presence of heavily armed military and police personnel.
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| Security personnel at a roadblock leading to Uganda opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye’s home. Besigye has been under house arrest in his farmhouse in Kasangati, Wakiso district 16km north of Kampala for more than a month. PHOTO | MORGAN MBABAZI |
The security men have blocked roads with several anti-riot trucks denying the residents their right to freedom of movement.
Although Dr Besigye’s house arrest started on February 18, his neighbours have lived with the heavy presence of security for longer as they occasionally camped at his farmhouse in 2011 to enforce preventive measures stopping the opposition leader and his supporters from engaging in civil protests.
Every waking moment is a nightmare for Dr Besigye’s neighbour Mama Nampijja, who has to closely monitor her bubbly one-year-old daughter and hyperactive two-year-old son. She lives less than 100 metres from Dr Besigye’s farmhouse. Mama Nampijja says that often, when the police unexpectedly fire teargas to disperse the public, she has to run around looking for her children in the melee.
“I cannot be at peace once the children leave the house and move closer to the roadside to play. So, I restrict their movement to where I can monitor them. I am always afraid that teargas will be fired any moment, which could hurt them,” she said.
Ten years ago, Kasangati was a typical sleepy village on the outskirts of the city. Over time, it started attracting the moneyed working class who acquired land from real estate firms and built gated homes.
Today Kasangati is a developed suburb with petrol stations, supermarkets, pharmacies, recreation facilities and a model health centre for teaching community health.
But the neighbourhood also has its share of the not so well-off — smallholder farmers who supply fresh fruits and vegetables to markets in Kampala, boda bodas and small-scale traders in the mini-markets and retail shops.
Most of these changes came around 2006 when Dr Besigye, who previously lived in the Luzira suburb of the city, relocated to Kasangati after returning from exile in South Africa, and run for the presidency that year, his second shot at the country’s highest office. The community was buzzing with excitement of being neighbours with a presidential candidate.
Dr Besigye first contested the presidency in 2001, made a second attempt in 2006 and had a third stab at the high office in 2011 whose loss prompted his walk-to-work protests.
This always resulted in his arrest, mostly violently as he resisted, and he would be detained at the Kasangati police station less than half a kilometre away from his house, get charged at the Kasangati Magistrates Court, and then detained at the Kasangati prison.
But it is clear that the country’s security machinery was not content that just because Dr Besigye’s home is close to a police station is a guarantee that he will not cause trouble, so they mounted a roadblock at the turn-off to his home.
The driveway to Dr Besigye’s home has been permanently blocked since February 18 with what has come to be known as “Besigye’s van,” parked across the road.
Sometimes, police use a pickup to block the entrance. A few metres away, the road is blocked with spikes. On either side of the road are squads of police officers doing nothing in particular; some just lying on the grass while others watch passers-by.
With every passing vehicle, a thick cloud of dust engulfs everything around and just like Dr Besigye’s neighbours, the police know that government could have done well to tarmac the road.
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The East African
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