Another Ugandan murdered in cold blood. His name, Ronald Ssebulime. At 39, still very young, with dreams and expectations that he will witness his grandchildren’s graduation from college. 

A widow, Ssebulime is said to have been a very devoted father, working very hard to support his very young children. In short, a normal citizen, like you and me. I take that back. Not a citizen really, but a subject, with the same frightening conditions that governed the lives of ancient monarchs’ subjects. 

Ssebulime’s life was expendable, as we found out nine days ago when he was killed in the coldest blood by police, allegedly because they thought he had  “deadly intentions to kill” Aida Erios Nantaba, Minister of State for Information and Communication Technology. 

The stories that followed the killing of a man who had already been apprehended, complete with handcuffs, were a salad of lies that was not surprising at all. Mercifully the police quickly abandoned the lies and admitted that their own had murdered the harmless man. 

No, I am not commenting on his alleged intentions. I am simply observing that even if he had been a member of the deadliest terrorist organization, a handcuffed man in the custody of heavily armed policemen was harmless. Which leaves the curious with many questions, though I am not one of them. 

To me Ssebulime joins a very long list of citizens who have been killed by officers of the state since 1962. Numerous people killed by bullets discharged by men (and a few women) using guns that belong to the citizens of Uganda. Their deaths a cause for national distress, but their names soon forgotten by most except their families and close friends. 

Just the other day, a man called Yassin Kawuma was executed by state agents in Arua. The tears and condemnation that greeted the news of Kawuma’s murder created a false hope that his blood would not be forgotten. Predictably, we quickly returned to regular programming. Only his widow, orphans and friends endure the permanent pain of loss. But our collective tears never dry, even when we camouflage our chronic trauma with festive living. Our smiles do not dry our tears. They just hide them.

It is supreme foolishness to forget the deaths of people like Kawuma and Ssebulime. Yesterday it was a harmless, unarmed politician’s driver. Today it is a harmless young man struggling to survive on the edges  of an economically hostile land. Tomorrow it may be you or me, our lives cut down by men and women with a licence to kill. 

We live at the pleasure of armed state “security” agents and their political masters. A politician’s  fear of his or her fellow citizens is enough to midwife your sudden death. The people who are ostensibly hired and paid to serve and protect us are, in fact, potential vectors of a premature death that can come upon any Ugandan in the twinkle of an eye. 

Do not forget, Tingasiga, that Ugandan police officers  received a greenlight from the ruler of the land in 2017 when he directed them to shoot motorcycle riders who “trailed” them. I think the official directive was to “sort yourselves out.” So, the murders, though illegal, are legitimized by the presidential edict. Scary stuff!

We do not know the exact details of what happened before Ssebulime was murdered. At first, the police tell lies about the dead man’s alleged “deadly intentions to kill” Nantaba. Then people, including Nantaba, speak  in tongues. Mercifully, our friend Fred Enanga, the police spokesperson, bandages the Police Force’s self-inflicted wounds by a most welcome acknowledgement that an innocent man was murdered by his colleagues. 

Strange that we are thankful for such tiny mercies, but it is because truth-telling is a highly endangered engagement in the land. By the way, those who blame Ndugu Enanga or Emilian Kayima, his predecessor as Omwogezi wa Polisi (police spokesperson), for the floods of lies that pass for police statements and explanations do the two men an injustice. 

I believe that they are likely to be good men simply acting as Nipper-the-Dog that, older folks will recall, was HMV (His Master’s Voice), the trademark of the Gramophone Company whose successors produced some of the finest recorded music of the last century. They speak on behalf of a police force that has had one overriding brief in the last two decades, namely, to protect the ruler and his courtiers from the citizens, especially the opposition – real and imagined.

It seems that Ssebulime was part of an imaginary enemy force. A citizen on a motorbike is to be feared – and  killed - if a politician is afraid. Fear, a subjective emotion empowering armed state agents to subjectively decide who dies and who lives! That’s where things stand today.

However, when politicians become afraid of their shadows, it is a sign of things falling apart. I do not suggest that Nantaba should not have been afraid. After all I do not know what things she knows or has seen in the corridors that she traverses in the darkness that Ugandan political life inhabits. 

Fourteen years ago, former Vice-President Gilbert Balibasekka Bukenya warned us about the Mafia in the government in which he served. People laughed. 

One who is not laughing is Nantaba. She has been asking questions and saying things that suggest that she suspects that someone in the regime that she serves may be after her life. It is a dark moment, her burden only lightened by the protection she enjoys from the elite security forces in the land. The president is her shepherd.

Were it that Ssebulime, another child of God, enjoyed the right to life and protection like Nantaba and all the other titled mortals! 

My heart goes out to Ssebulime’s children, his relatives and his friends. The depth of their pain cannot be healed except by the Grace of God. However, Ssebulime’s children can be rescued from the certainty of poverty and lifelong misery to which they are now condemned. 

President Yoweri K. Museveni has an opportunity to decree that Ssebulime’s children are now the responsibility of the State. (Of course, legal proceedings for substantial damages should be a given.) The children need full professional psychological counselling, free education in the very best schools and all the supports that the children of the ruling class take for granted.

Life will never be the same for Ssebulime’s little kids. But it can be made somewhat tolerable for them.