Last weekend President Yoweri Museveni relieved long serving
Inspector General of Police General Kale Kayihura of his position and replaced
him with deputy Inspector General of Police Okot Ochola.
In the same announcement Museveni also replaced security
minister Lieutenant General Henry Tumukunde with another bush veteran General
Elly Tumwine.
Since the announcement few people have given Kayihura the
benefit of doubt. They blame him for the worsening security situation, the
side-lining of competent police officers to be replaced by his favourites and
all that is wrong with the police today.
By the time some sympathy came through it was late in the
week and brushed off as public relations for the fallen General.
Kayihura came to the helm of the police force replacing
another military man General Katumba Wamala. Kayihura had previously distinguished himself
as the head of the anti-smuggling unit, with his pivotal role in pulling out
the UPDF out of Congo at the beginning of the century among other achievements.
All reports point to the fact that he is an intelligent man,
a diligent worker.
But clearly something went horribly wrong during his tenure
as police chief.
"To begin with Kayihura was at a disadvantage being appointed police chief given his military background...
The mentality of the police and the military are different,
if only because they are trained to handle different threats to security. The
army is expected to be fighting external enemies while the police are charged
with promoting and maintaining law and order among a civilian population. To
make the psychological shift will always be difficult for even the best minds.
The argument can be made though, that our police force, a
relic of a bygone era, was not designed to collaborate with the people, but as
an instrument of repression on behalf of the colonial state. So even the
policemen who have come through the ranks cannot be expected to make the mental
shift to a more civil force. Which is a good point.
However a police officer who has undergone training specific
to the force and risen through the ranks would be at a decided advantage over
Kayihura, who was parachuted into the top slot.
Of course the Commission of Inquiry into the police force
headed by Justice Julia Sebutinde in the late nineties unmasked the police
force as having lost its way and only short of being a criminal organisation.
The commission found that policemen were not only collaborating with thugs
against the population but in many instances actually initiating and leading
criminal activity.
It was a desperate time that called for desperate measures.
In tripling the size of the police force, winning it a
bigger budget over the years and better equipping it, Kayihura may have broken
the back of the original organisation but the widespread feeling is that a new
one slid in to take its place.
"Kayihura did not inherit an ideal situation. It is conceivable that his elevation was not welcomed by those he found in the force. There may even have been cause for him to be suspicious of everyone around him, not to mention the tea served to him. And the urgency to show quick results may have forced him into initial errors which only snowballed out of control as time went by...
In hindsight Kayihura was really meant to be a change agent,
who goes in for a short time, shakes up the old networks, sets the stage for a
realignment of the police back to its original mandate and leaves. Something
like what happened to his predecessor Wamala, whose famous order to put violent
criminals “out of action” caused a stir in polite society.
His attempt to break up the old police force and recreate it,
could have been done more delicately. He could have focused on building the
institution and taken a back seat, rather than hogging the limelight. In the
same vein he might have looked to salvage and leverage the positives form the
old police rather than tear it all up.
Kayihura did a lot for the police. They now have a purpose
built home in Naguru. They are a much larger, better equipped force, with
specialised units ready to respond to any number of situations. Facilitated
community policing.
Kayihura is just as fallible as the next man. On the one
hand it might be that the challenges of the police were too great to address in
the time he was given, that his was a work in progress. On the other hand it
might just be that he was a man out of his depth and that he was bound to end
his tenure reviled and scorned anyway
It’s easy to criticise when looking from the inside in.
Hopefully history will be kinder to him and give him more
credit than the public is willing to currently.
