Why the red beret and yellow beret must be interchangeable [Explainer]

This makes sense since the military police was starting to look like a conscript unit of the National Unity Platform (NUP), Uganda’s biggest political party.

So, by gazetting the red beret, there’s absolutely no confusion when it comes to upholding military law.

That said, the timing of this gazetting is suspiciously political or, others would say, pointedly political.

Either way, this is not a good thing.

It presupposes that the beret gives power to NUP.

Yet it’s not in the head-gear but in the ill-timed gazetting of the same that lends power to NUP by giving it yet another talking point with which to declaim the presumed lack of free association in Uganda.

Still, I never liked the red beret.

I found it atavistic in the way it invokes the deeds and misdeeds of Che Guevara and Carlos the Jackal.

The red beret, being fashion-backward in this fashion-forward era, is not the best way to express a future whose time has come.

Further, the gazetting of the beret wipes the slate clean while offering the NUP a chance to originate its own images and symbols.

This means NUP is now even free to wear yellow headgear, even as yellow is the colour of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).

Again, yellow berets worn with red shirts and black trousers would highlight the colors of the Uganda flag and thereby imply the regime should be flagged down on its road to nowhere.

Two, in a sea of yellow berets the law wouldn't be able to differentiate between NRM yellow and NUP yellow.

The law would thus be blinded into dispensing even handed justice by either arresting both or leaving both alone.

I would prefer it arrests both, however. And thereby creates a vacuum in which new politics champions emerge.