Holding regular elections even if free and fair does not constitute democracy. It is just a small part of a bigger package. In Uganda elections are held basically for two reasons: to give NRM legitimacy and to meet the requirement for foreign aid and technical assistance. To many Ugandans true democracy occurs when public opinion helps shape government policies and behavior including accountability. In Uganda what NRM is doing has very little, if at all, to do with public opinion. What Ugandans want is very clear and simple and we have the means to deliver but NRM leadership is not interested. Ugandans want a country and society that is peaceful, stable and free from absolute poverty which Robert McNamara, former World Bank President, described as “a condition of life so degraded by disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, and squalor as to deny its victims basic human necessities” as well as freedom from abuse of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
By and large, Ugandans want to work, live and raise their children in their country. NRM has denied these inalienable rights and freedoms to many Ugandans. NRM whose principal goal is to stay in power indefinitely has been in power since 1986. It believes that suppressing and marginalizing, dispossessing and impoverishing people rather than persuading or accommodating them will ensure its indefinite stay in power. You can deduce the sad evidence of this policy in the condition of Ugandans – what they eat and wear; what work they do and where they live – over 70 percent of Uganda urban population lives in slums that are expanding very rapidly. To deceive the international community, NRM produces statistics about high economic growth that do not make sense. Countries like China, India, South Korea and Brazil that have posted high growth figures have reduced poverty considerably. Not so in Uganda where absolute poverty has remained basically where NRM found it in 1986 at over 50 percent. Ugandans are not buying these figures and are beginning to show real resentment through for example the walk to work campaign.
To achieve its goal, NRM has turned its back on true democracy and invested heavily in instruments of repression and in impoverishment of the people who do not share its policies. NRM’s slogan sounds like “If you are not with me you are against me and you will get punished” – no matter who you are and where you live. Draconian legislation has been passed such as anti-sectarian and anti-terrorist acts. Under these laws anyone can get arrested and charged with treason punishable by death for even writing or speaking against tribalism that has become a debilitating fact of life. In doing these things, however, NRM has forgotten lessons of history: one of them being that no situation is permanent. Suppressing and exploiting peasants and workers in imperial France and Russia produced Robespierre and Stalin respectively and terror. It is hoped that NRM will not persist in its policies and help create a Robespierre or Stalin and their actions. To avoid that true democracy must be given pride of place in Uganda’s politics beginning with addressing the following challenges.
Ugandans have demanded that food production should meet domestic needs first and export surplus. To date, NRM policy has been driven more by earning foreign exchange and responding to the laws of demand and supply than domestic food security. Consequently food traditionally produced for domestic consumption especially nutritious beans, fish and beef has entered the export markets leaving insufficient amount and mostly of non-nutritious kind such as maize and cassava. The outcome of this policy has been disastrous. Poor feeding has resulted in high levels of malnutrition and insanity. People including Ugandans who eat too much cassava and maize develop neurological disabilities. Together with stress because of hard economic times, poor nutrition has contributed to rising insanity (madness) in Uganda. Pregnant women who do not eat enough produce underweight children with permanent physical and mental disabilities. Nursing mothers who do not eat enough do not produce enough milk to breast feed for the recommended six months. Children that do not eat enough during the first three years develop smaller brain size than normal with serious repercussions in performance at school and in adult life. School feeding programs improve attendance and performance especially of girls which have been recognized and endorsed by NEPAD. Uganda parents, teachers and children have been demanding that school lunches be provided to primary school children. The NRM government has refused. School dropout rates have shot up because hungry children do not have the energy to sustain them in school the whole day. In a true democratic country this level of food insecurity would force the ruling party out of office at the next ballot box.
The level of under-development and unemployment is so high in Uganda that in a true democratic country, the government would have done something about it. Youth unemployment is over 80 percent and rising. NRM government has done absolutely nothing to assist, arguing that job creation is the responsibility of the private sector. But private sector is not growing fast enough because of high interest rates and expensive intermediate imports in manufacturing enterprises and cannot create jobs. If anything Uganda is de-industrializing and shedding workers. In a truly democratic country, the government would have lowered interest rates, streamlined foreign exchange rate to make intermediate imports in manufacturing enterprises affordable and protected domestic industries against unfair competition from imports like second hand clothes.
Ugandans have complained about the deteriorating environment in rural and urban areas due to inappropriate policies. We have all seen what happens when it rains in Kampala. We get floods because vegetation was cleared to construct houses on hill sides and drainage channels have been taken over by buildings causing water to pile up and cause floods. To increase the export crops, much vegetation has been cleared exposing soils to erosion by strong tropical rains and wind. Instead of sinking into the ground, water runoff has increased, water tables have dropped, rivers are disappearing and lakes are shrinking. Droughts and floods and mudslides have become more common than before. And NRM has continued to ignore the peoples’ call for environmental rehabilitation.
Ugandans have emphasized time and again that land is the only basic asset and source of livelihood they have. It should not be treated as an ordinary commodity for sale. But NRM is not listening or hearing what Ugandans are saying. It has gone ahead and is dishing out chunks of land to large scale developers without consent of land owners. The recent incident of a land dispute in Amuru district represents the seriousness of the land question which the government has ignored. Ancestral land means a lot for many Ugandans. Therefore dispossessing them at gun point can only generate bitterness with unpredictable outcomes.
The suffering and insecure situation sketched above has occurred because Uganda lacks true democracy. Ugandans are not happy about these developments. But nature does not tolerate injustice forever. As noted already, in France it produced Robespierre and terror during the French Revolution. In Russia it produced Stalin and terror immediately after the Russian revolution. Injustice in the two countries created these two men who caused too much suffering and insecurity. Hopefully Uganda will have none of them. That can happen only when true democracy has replaced the current democracy at gun point in the Republic of Uganda.