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Why a paradox of Uganda’s economic growth and social decay

The unprecedented diseases of poverty in Uganda led by jiggers and malnutrition (that have become a national scandal) have not only humiliated a proud people but also embarrassed an arrogant NRM government and donors that support it. The government blamed previous ‘bankrupt’ regimes of Obote and Amin for wasting scarce resources including travelling to the United Nations and other destinations in private jets, staying in expensive hotels, hosting expensive functions to compete with superpowers and furnishing their residences with expensive imported furniture. Meanwhile Ugandans suffered all indignities and deprivations including lack of shoes and adequate food resulting in jigger infestation and severe malnutrition. Previous governments were also accused of maintaining a colonial development model that kept Uganda a producer of raw export commodities with low and fluctuating prices against ever rising prices of imported manufactured products. Unfortunately, Museveni and his government that had never run a government set about transforming Uganda’s economy and society in ways that created a paradox of economic growth and medieval social decadence (I wrote a chapter showing similarities in today’s Uganda and medieval Europe in my book titled Uganda’s Development Agenda in the 21st Century published in 2008). Below are a few examples.

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Silencing victims is double violation of human rights

People tell or write stories to record experiences and draw lessons for others to emulate or to avoid. History is being repeated in parts of Uganda and extended to the rest of the country in subtle ways difficult to understand. Some leaders in the NRM government took advantage of the victory euphoria and introduced laws like anti-sectarian to silence those who had grievances of a sectarian nature, violating their human rights twice (exploiting them and then denying them the right to speak). As Bahororo in the country with their epicenter in Ankole and Rukungiri consolidate their political, economic and military dominance in Uganda, it is important for Ugandans to understand what is in store for them. Those who disagree with the story, feel free to rebut but in a civil manner.

Bahororo are Nilotic people and Batutsi from Rwanda. Their defining characteristic is that they adopt local names and local languages but men do not marry from other tribes so they have remained Nilotic. They avoid marrying women from other tribes principally to keep secrets to themselves. They also fill sensitive and strategic public positions with Bahororo people. Because of their extensive network, they know where these Bahororo are outside of Ankole and Rukungiri and outside of Uganda. Because of careful camouflage, it is difficult to know who Bahororo people are. You have to construct the family tree.

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Who is in charge of Uganda’s economy?

The struggle for decolonization focused on political independence, hoping that economic sovereignty would automatically follow. But it did not. Post-independence economic challenges were thus attributed to inherited colonial economic structures. African governments were forced to find a solution and attain economic independence. In 1979 African leaders adopted the Monrovia Declaration of Commitment on guidelines and measures for national and collective self-reliance. In 1980 African leaders once again adopted the Lagos Plan of Action to attain self-reliance with support of the international community. At the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Africa in 1986, it was resolved that Africans have primary responsibility for the development of Africa. In theory, Africans became economically independent to determine the continent’s course of economic and social development.

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Uganda’s state house needs a new occupant

I began thinking seriously about the potential and challenges of Uganda’s development early in my life. I decided then that whatever I did for a living, I would make room for research and writing on Uganda’s political economy. I have so far written ten books and created a blog www.kashambuzi.com. I also decided very early against a single sector education because knowledge cannot be compartmentalized. I therefore adopted a horizontal approach and studied geography, economics, demography, international law and international relations/diplomacy, sustainable development and history with a focus on how they interconnect with one another. Not least, I have developed a dialectical approach in research, writing and commenting on other writers’ work, meaning that I focus on those dimensions that are omitted to give a balanced picture and enable readers to make informed decisions. For example, when I read an article about a glass half full, I comment on missing dimensions. Put differently, I go for the glass that is half empty and vice versa.

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Uganda government is warned to move cautiously on birth control

The sudden upsurge of interest in birth control (family planning) in Uganda has coincided with the rising anti-immigration mood in the developed western world. When family planning began after World War II, there was fear that population in developing countries was growing faster than Europeans’. The main fear was that there would be competition for scarce resources and consumers in developed countries would be forced to scale down their lifestyles. They were not prepared for that. To avert this threat, developing countries had to reduce their population growth through contraception. To avoid controversy, the proponents of birth control came up with a ‘sugar-coated’ idea that contraception would ease the suffering of women who produce too many children in rapid succession. They also replaced the unpopular birth control terminology with family planning to disguise the fact that in the end population at couple and national levels would decline with adverse national security and economic development implications.

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Uganda’s development is being sacrificed again

Uganda is sacrificing its development – for the third time – as government directs its attention to hosting the United Nations peace keeping force of 50,000 military and police contingents, and 11,000 civilian staff budgeted at $5 billion (about 11 trillion shillings) a year. Ugandans who don’t know the challenges and implications of a project of this magnitude may dance in jubilation, hoping jobs will be created for Ugandans making poverty history. First of all the peace keepers will be internationally recruited with few jobs if any going to Ugandans with connections. Secondly, besides being the best political donation for Museveni and his NRM party a few months before presidential and parliamentary elections which is bad news for opposition parties, Uganda will also experience unprecedented shortages and high prices.

Uganda’s development has been delayed twice already because of ideological wars – the cold war between the capitalist west and the communist east which began in 1945 and ended in 1990; and the economic war between market forces and state intervention or socialism which began in the 1980s and is still with us although it was officially abandoned in Uganda in 2009. Uganda did very well economically and socially, especially in the 1960s before the impact of the cold war became evident. Donor funds and Uganda taxes were put to good use with tangible results. Quality education and health care were realized, infrastructure such as roads were paved, agricultural production facilitated by cooperatives increased, food security improved and more money was put into the pockets of farmers and those who provided services to the agriculture sector.

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Response to David’s comments on Museveni’s fading star

I thank David for his contribution to the debate on the above subject. If David had carefully and objectively read the article he would have noticed that the first and in fact the larger part of the article is about Museveni’s rising global star.

The rising star was based mainly on Musevenis adoption of structural adjustment which had been designed to be a new development model based on market forces and private sector as the engine of economic development and social transformation which would lead to the improvement of the standard of living of all Ugandans. However, the failure of the model as reflected in rising functional illiteracy, unemployment, diseases of poverty ( jiggers, malnutrition and neurological abnormalities, etc), as well as environmental degradation forced the government to abandon structural adjustment in 2009 causing Museveni’s star to fade.

Secondly, his rising star was also based on the exemplary manner Museveni exhibited in preventing the spread of the HIV and AIDS pandemic by especially recommending condom use. His subsequent switch to abstinence is believed to have contributed to the rising HIV infections thus eroding his star.

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Dangers of failure to punish perpetrators for crimes including of genocide

The total international community’s neglect of the 1972 and 1993 crimes of genocide of Hutu by Tutsi in Burundi is believed to have emboldened the Hutu extremists in Rwanda to commit crimes of genocide against Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda in 1994. The perpetrators of Rwanda genocide thought that the international community would not act as in Burundi. They were wrong. But action against Hutu perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda and omission to act against Tutsi perpetrators of genocide in Burundi in 1972 and 1993 were judged as double standards practiced by the international community including the United Nations. Hutu survivors were forced to take up arms for self-defense resulting in human loss, injuries and displacements and destruction of property, infrastructure and institutions.

In 1994 Gersony submitted a report showing that the Tutsi in the Rwanda Patriotic Front and Army (RPF/A) had committed serious crimes against Hutu that could be classified as crimes of genocide. The Secretary-General of the United Nations acting either alone or under pressure suppressed publication of the report. The massacre or what some have called ‘genocide’ of tens of thousands of Hutu internally displaced persons (IDPs) at Kibeho camp was also ignored by the international community. The failure to punish perpetrators emboldened the hardliners in Rwanda government to commit more crimes and to get rid of moderate voices.

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Why a rising tide of opposition against Uganda’s NRM regime

From time immemorial opposition, rebellion and even revolution against a regime develop not because the regime is getting stronger or becoming more dictatorial but because it is getting weaker and less capable of delivering desired goods and services. What triggered the French Revolution of 1789, for example, was a reaction not against the rising tyranny of the ancient regime but its weakness and inability to deliver expected results.

In Uganda, the NRM regime is following in the footsteps of France’s ancient regime. NRM’s domestic, continental and global strength and glory are fading. At home the promise of eradicating poverty has vanished. Instead absolute and relative poverty is increasing. Some twenty percent of Ugandans are believed to be getting poorer. Those in the top income bracket are getting richer leaving behind those in the middle income causing a feeling of relative poverty.

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Ugandans have a right to be angry at their government

Ugandans have a right to be angry and to show it when a mother produces an underweight child because she is undernourished in a country that exports food to earn foreign currency to meet the needs of the few rich families; an infant dies of jiggers because of poor housing conditions and lack of shoes; a child dies of hunger because the mother is forced to produce food for cash rather than for the stomach; a child drops out of school for lack of school lunch because the government has sold food to feed children in neighboring countries; jobs go to foreign workers when Uganda graduates are unemployed because of a liberal labor and immigration policy; domestic industries are closed and workers dismissed because of a trade liberalization policy that allows in cheap used or subsidized imports; droughts and floods cause hunger and famine because of reckless and unsustainable de-vegetation policy that has adversely changed thermal and hydrological regimes; people who lose elections or are censured by parliament for corruption are appointed ministers; family members, relatives and friends of key officials are appointed, promoted or reassigned to positions they do not qualify for while qualified people are sidelined; children of rich people attend private schools at home or abroad while those from poor households languish in neglected public schools and graduate without learning anything; members and relatives of senior officials go abroad to deliver or get treatment while those from poor families die in child birth or from preventable and curable diseases because the health system has been plundered; well connected citizens steal huge sums of public funds and are not touched while junior officers who steal ‘peanuts’ to make ends meet are arrested and jailed; weak and voiceless citizens are ‘politically’ robbed and dispossessed of their land and property as in Rukungiri through municipal legislation; twenty percent of Ugandans get poorer and many more hungrier in a country that has been boasting of eradicating poverty and all its offshoots of hunger, disease and illiteracy; government divides up the country into many economically unviable districts making them dependent on central government for budget support with stiff conditionality; and government hosts expensive international conferences when money is needed to meet basic human needs of Uganda citizens etc, etc. Anger has also been accumulating for the following illustrative deceptions.

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