Kampala riots supply excuse to suppress monarchs

Bunyoro has found its tongue and voiced tough demands for a share of the oil revenues; Busoga and Toro are also on the edge, ready to jump in should the government yield. But with a law to regulate what the monarchs can and cannot do, it is unlikely that Museveni will give in to the kingdoms’ claims.

“We are going to expeditiously bring a law that will operationalise Article 246 in great detail so that demarcation of roles is clear,” Museveni said.

Backed by his majority in parliament, it is not hard to see where this is going.

The monarchs will lose even the little liberty they had before. They will tour their kingdoms, for instance, only at Museveni’s behest.

The latest reports indicate 23 dead, hundreds hospitalised and many more arrested and charged in the biggest riots in the Kampala area since the demonstrations against the Mabira Forest giveaway two years ago.

But they also leave Museveni with a trump card to neutralise Buganda’s increasingly isolationist ethnic stance.

Mabira, for instance, brought politicians, business people, academia and civil society together, but the Buganda riots were a Ganda issue.

Rioters taunted people in the streets, telling them to sing Buganda’s national anthem to show they were “one of us.”

Museveni’s other quarrel seems to be the snub by Kabaka Ronald Mutebi, who has not taken any of his phone calls for two years now.

The head of state, who is in part responsible for the restoration of the kingdom, has also seen Mengo lately flirt with the oil rich Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

Because of this, he would want to turn off such money taps, in which case Mengo would be the loser in this face-off.

With many of its properties yet to be returned by the central government, the coming law could financially cripple the kingdom by limiting its funding from foreign sources.