Museveni who was used to accolades of success story, star performer and darling of the west has not yet adjusted to the new reality of humiliating failures in Uganda. The country’s focus has shifted from the glory of taming inflation, boosting economic growth and reversing HIV & AIDS to diseases of poverty underpinned by jiggers and malnutrition, environmental crisis led by Kampala City floods, alcoholism and associated traffic accidents, rampant corruption in high places and blatant sectarianism, allegations of genocide against Hutus in DRC, witchcraft and associated human sacrifice. Organizations that praised Uganda and its leader Museveni sky high in international conferences have gone silent or are blaming Museveni for the messy situation.
In order to reverse this disquiet and return to a normal development path, Museveni should accept full responsibility for what has gone wrong, distance himself from ‘yes men and women’ and pay more attention to critical and constructive advice.
Museveni used a combination of rewards and punishments or carrots and sticks to create an environment that allowed him to do what he wanted regardless of long term consequences. Juicy and strategic jobs went to those who fought the guerrilla war, provided financial support and other essential services during the war. Most of these cadres were young and inexperienced. They took some actions that demonstrated lack of knowledge or sensitivity. For instance, cartographers inserted Mpororo kingdom on Uganda maps without indicating its boundaries and the reasons behind it. All the people of Rujumbura in Rukungiri district were classified as Bahororo in the electoral commission report.
Experienced civil servants were seen as Obote people and Protestants who voted UPC in 1980 elections. They were disqualified and shown the exit or marginalized. Those in the diaspora were carefully screened. The majority that did not go through the sieve were encouraged to stay abroad, earn foreign currency and send it home as contribution to their mother country.
Makerere University had a collection of critical and independent minds. Museveni dangled a pack of carrots before these ‘intellectuals’, blindfolded and dragged them into the administration with high sounding titles and little else. He trapped them and waited for them to make the slightest mistake. When that happened Museveni castigated and humiliated them often in public. They quietly fell into oblivion.
As time passed and governing Uganda became tough, voices of dissent were heard in the cabinet, civil service and the public in general. Some ex-guerrillas complained that Museveni had digressed from what sent them to the bush. They had fought a brutal guerrilla war to remove a ‘corrupt and sectarian dictator’ that had retained colonial economic structures and prolonged the suffering of Uganda people. Before coming to power in 1986, NRM cadre complained inter alia that Ugandans did not eat enough because production focused on exports and many Ugandans did not wear shoes because the money was wasted on travelling in executive jets to attend international conferences including at the United Nations and to buy expensive imported furniture for their homes.
So, when Museveni began to behave the same or worse than the government he helped to topple, there was resistance. Museveni fought back. Using the stick strategy, he dismissed dissenting ministers from cabinet and other positions in government. He made sure they did not succeed outside government. Some got exhausted and frustrated and returned to government where they have kept a low profile. Total obedience in the cabinet (as during the guerrilla war) forced Museveni to hire vulnerable people (with no other options if they left government) who represented nobody or had a bad record. Those who had been defeated in elections or censured by parliament were selected over people’s representative or MPs as cabinet ministers.
In this environment, Ugandans in power chose to lie low and refrain from making public statements leaving that honor to the Appointing Authority – the president of Uganda who has made some major decisions that required consultations and approval.
It was against this background that structural adjustment was implemented. The IMF and World Bank demanded and got what they wanted. They demanded cuts in budgets for health and education. They demanded export diversification and liberalization and privatization of Uganda’s economy. The commanding heights of the country were placed in private hands with profit maximization as the principal goal. To minimize costs Uganda labor was employed on the cheap as trade unions were silenced.
Controlling inflation meant reducing the volume of money in the economy which drove interest rates through the ceiling and prevented borrowing and investment in labor-intensive enterprises. Jobless economic growth was driven more by excess capacity inherited in 1986, not by macroeconomic policies. The exhaustion of excess capacity has been accompanied by a drastic drop in economic growth rate from 10 percent in mid-1990s to an average figure that is difficult to determine definitively. Museveni was forced to abandon structural adjustment in 2009 because it had failed to deliver as presented by its sponsors who dismissed a gradual and sequenced approach in preference for a shock therapy version.
Museveni has harvested a whirlwind – spreading and deepening poverty, a country of unemployed, functionally illiterate, hungry and sick people, a capital city under constant threat from floods because of unplanned construction and a country that has become a target of terrorists. Museveni should accept full responsibility. Those who are blaming Museveni’s advisers need to justify that position.
The temporary solution that Museveni has put in place namely rap music whose message has become controversial and free yellow shirts to unemployed youth and cash to desperate and greedy Ugandans may help him get re-elected to another five year term. Unless he mends his ways of governing Uganda and hires Ugandans with experience and substance and he hears what they are telling him, the next five years might be hell on earth for President Museveni.