Take Museveni’s cattle rustling concern seriously

Uganda President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni can be comical, hardline and the very picture of statesman almost at will. But then again, remember that he has lived in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda making him a true East African.

He has also been in power since 1986. At Uhuru Kenyatta’s inauguration Tuesday, he was witnessing Kenya’s third president during his time as Head of State.

He has a sworn duty to defend the Constitution of Uganda and ensure the safety and prosperity of all his subjects. In the course of this mandate, he has rightly dispatched his soldiers to Somalia to decimate Al Shabaab militia and pirates who were disrupting shipping in the Indian Ocean, and raising the cost of imported goods to Uganda.

Mr Museveni waded into the Migingo island controversy as his countrymen’s livelihoods were threatened and had a few choice words to describe the rioters that uprooted railway tracks in Kibera in 2008 and those others that attacked Kampala-bound trucks in Kapsabet after Kenya’s disputed election of 2007.

His army has boots on the ground in northen and north-western Uganda, seeking to apprehend Joseph Kony and his human rights violating Lord’s Resistance Army, that has left the region underdeveloped and citizens living in mortal fear.

Museveni, therefore, takes his job very seriously and his remarks about Pokot cattle rustlers should not have elicited guffaws and kind of snide remarks doing the rounds on social media. We feel they should have been treated with the seriousness they deserve.

Anybody living along the Kenya-Uganda and Kenya-Ethiopia borders will tell you that stock theft is a  violent crime and usually leaves herders dead, maimed, children traumatised, and women molested. Rustlers are steeped in a morass of poverty and have perched illiteracy like a chip on the shoulder.

As they visit death and destruction of property in villages, they are a drain on the economy and must be stopped. Take Mr Museveni seriously and engage with his government how to best tame this anachronistic pastime that is wrongfully attributed to tradition.