Uganda is about to hold its most unifying General Election since independence 53 years ago. It is indeed wonderful to be alive this second month of 2016!

All previous elections have been so divisive that we have even gone to war over one. In December 1980, elections were disputed and immediately plunged the country into a civil war that lasted five years.

The next election was in 1996, the first after the new Constitution of 1995. Maybe the reason there wasn’t so much bitterness was that the runner-up was the same man of peace, Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, who was cheated in 1980, and this time Yoweri Museveni defeated him convincingly.

In 2001, elections were held in an extremely bitter atmosphere as the broad-based movement that was in power under the no-party arrangement was riven by a split.

Dr Kizza Besigye walked out and challenged Museveni, his erstwhile boss. So acrimonious was the election that after challenging it unsuccessfully in court, Besigye was followed around like a criminal until he sneaked out of the country into exile.

But the defiant Besigye came back to the country in 2005, in readiness to stand in the 2006 elections. He was welcomed with a constitutional amendment removing presidential term limits, meaning that he was to face Museveni again. The 2006 poll was even more bitter than that of 2001, with Besigye being thrown into prison as a suspect on capital charges of treason and rape.

On nomination day, the electoral commissioners physically nominated his photo (which was placed on a chair) in defiance to the Attorney-General who had given his “legal” opinion that although Besigye was not guilty, he enjoyed a lesser degree of innocence than the other candidates. Besigye emerged number two and challenged the results in the Supreme Court, which ruled that well, some bad stuff had gone on but that that did not warrant overturning the results. Besigye declared that he would never again go to a Ugandan court over electoral matters.

Besigye stood again against Museveni in the 2011 election, which was followed by an unprecedented campaign of protest called the Walk-to-Work campaign; riots erupted in different towns, tear gas and live bullets were used. Then Besigye was sprayed with pepper and nearly blinded. On the day Museveni was sworn in, Besigye was returning from hospital in Nairobi and the road from the airport was swarming with his supporters, who even stoned the motorcade of a foreign head of state who had come to attend the inauguration. The Walk-to-Work disturbances continued for nearly two years.

But lucky are those who have lived long enough. We are now facing an election where there is an unprecedented unity of minds between the main camps, because all are talking the same language — and what they are saying is that there must be violence and rigging this time around.

Isn’t that beautiful?

Now, since the two strongest camps are united against rigging and violence, if any small party wants to get up to any hanky panky, they should be able to stop them in their tracks, right? In fact, I wish they would just arrest this person they suspect of plotting violence before election day so we can all enjoy some peace of mind.

Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International Fellow for development journalism. E-mail: [email protected]