Besigye: Sometimes, I feel I should migrate from this country; there’s apartheid in Uganda

Veteran opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye has said he at times thinks of leaving Uganda because of the way the Yoweri Kaguta Tibuhaburwa Museveni administration disrespects people and runs a regime akin to South Africa’s apartheid.

Besigye has challenged Museveni in four presidential elections since 2001.

But he opted out of the 2021 election to focus on ‘Plan B’ as his main opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party president Patrick Oboi Amuriat (POA) takes on Museveni in the January 14 poll.

He accuses Museveni and security forces of double standards and selective enforcement of Covid19 prevention standard operating procedures (SOPs).

“I don’t know whether he takes Ugandans for what! He should have some light respect that Ugandans have something in their heads. That he sits with people 100 meters away from people in tents, that therefore he is respecting these [Covid19 Standard Operating Procedures],” Besigye told NTV Uganda December 14 morning.

“He has mobilized Bebe Cool, who comes, mobilizes people, throngs of people to his music and what, and he [Museveni] pretends he doesn’t know about that he doesn’t support it and the police doesn’t see it.”

A former personal physician to Museveni during the bush war that propelled the now 76-year-old into power in 1986, Besigye says Museveni takes Uganda’s for granted, thinking they are so ‘foolish.”

Besigye believes people should live in a country where they are treated with respect, and equally.

“It’s so sad that sometimes I feel like migrating because we are living in a country where you are so disrespected, so abused that somebody must be thinking you are so foolish, that he can tell you any nonsense, that you can live with anything.”

“Just like in South Africa, there’s apartheid in Uganda. Those with power in Uganda don’t take their children to schools like the other people, they don’t go to the same hospitals as the other people.”