Tag Archives: nrm

Land is life

Fourth appearance on Radio Munansi

Greetings fellow Ugandans and friends

In this session I wish to share with you why in Uganda land is life and cannot be sold or leased to outsiders as is being done by NRM government.

1. Every human being needs land for a house, factory, recreation, garden, final resting place or a combination of all these functions.

2. Thus, every Ugandan whether educated, urban dweller, wage earner or not should have a piece of land. President Museveni stressed this point of land ownership when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 23, 2008. He stated that in Uganda all families own land. This point was well received by the audience.

3. Land ownership is especially vital for those who do not have non-agricultural skills.

4. Based on how an urban area is defined, some 90 percent of Ugandans still derive their livelihood from land.

5. The issue of land occupied the attention of colonial authorities. After serious debate between London and Entebbe taking into consideration the failure of European plantation agriculture in the 1920s, the colonial administration decided that Uganda’s land would be owned and worked virtually by Uganda peasants.

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Taking stock of NRM’s performance on the eve of 2011 elections

As Uganda heads into another round of multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections, this is the right moment to take stock of what the governing NRM party has achieved since it came to power 25 years ago. The NRM under the leadership of Museveni launched a credible and well thought out development blue print compressed into the ten-point program subsequently expanded to fifteen. This program put Ugandans at the center of development. Therefore NRM’s performance must be assessed against this principal goal.

By contrast the development program was not matched by a cadre with sufficient expertise and experience. A large number of NRM cadres did not have the requisite qualifications much less experience. Afraid of being swamped by the experienced Ugandans who did not fight the guerrilla war from 1981 to 1985, the NRM government chose not to invite qualified and experienced Ugandans in the diaspora and marginalized those at home. To fill the gap while it learned on the job, the government invited a wide range of foreign experts most of them young, inexperienced and ignorant of Uganda’s overall environment.

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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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NRM government is about to make another policy mistake

The introduction of structural adjustment program (SAP) in Uganda in 1981 coincided with the launch of a guerrilla war by the military wing of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) against an elected government of Uganda. Political economy analysts in the NRM carefully studied the impact of SAP conditionality in Uganda and Ghana. They concluded that the SAP model sponsored by the IMF and the World Bank was not suitable for Uganda. They drew up an alternative political economy model of a mixed economy based on private and public partnership. The model was published in 1985 as a ten-point program. It was a consensus blue print that was carefully prepared by Ugandans in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders. Thus, it was a home grown program.

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NRM economics has failed to create jobs and distribute income

Uganda’s NRM government adopted stabilization and structural adjustment program (SAP) in 1987 under the assumption that after a short period (three to five years) of austerity and debt repayment, the economy under the guidance of market forces would begin rapid and sustained growth, create jobs and distribute income to all Ugandans through a trickle down mechanism. The government estimated that by 2017 poverty would be history in the Republic.

To lay the ground work for eventual sustained growth and equity, the government focused on monetary and fiscal policy to balance the budget, control inflation, establish a realistic exchange rate; privatize public enterprises and promote exports to earn foreign currency, pay external debt and use surplus for investment in productive sectors. Government participation in the economy and funds for social sectors would be reduced significantly.

Mindful that inflation was indiscipline, NRM government worked hard to bring it down to a low and stable rate of five percent per annum. This required drastic reduction of money supply in the economy and increased interest rate to encourage savings. However, high interest rates of some thirty percent discouraged borrowing by small and medium enterprises that create most jobs and spread income.

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NRM ‘revolution’ has reversed Uganda’s 90 years achievements

When the National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to power in 1986, it promised fundamental changes in Uganda’s political economy and society. Ugandans assumed fundamental change meant a quick recovery from the political, economic and social difficulties they had experienced since 1971 to a path of sustained growth, sustainable and transformational development. The launch of the ten-point program gave Ugandans hope. Unfortunately the ten point program never materialized. Instead, since 1990, Uganda has experienced a reversal of its earlier achievements including land ownership, economic transformation, ecological conservation and human capital formation. No one imagined that NRM’s fundamental change meant reversal of achievements Uganda had realized in the 90 years between 1894 and 1985. The reversal has affected the following areas:

The British colonial authorities left Uganda’s land firmly in the hands of Uganda peasants. This decision was taken after intensive discussions between London and Entebbe. British authorities further realized that adequate food and nutrition security was a human right that must be observed. They developed fisheries to provide affordable source of protein for low income families.

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Why did NRM lose the human touch?

I first came into contact with some leaders in the NRM government at Ntare School in the early 1960s. We reconnected in the late 1970s in Lusaka, Zambia. I participated in their informal conversations and was impressed by what they were planning to do particularly in the economic and social sectors. The agenda was people-centered. To them everything – security, politics and economics – was to serve the interests of Ugandans who are sovereign.

This message of hope was contained in the ten-point program published in 1985, shortly before the NRA captured power in January 1986. Uganda would be united and prosper with no one left behind. Religion would be a matter between the individual and his/her God. The government would ensure that classrooms, teachers and instructional materials were available in sufficient quantity and quality. Adequate hospitals and dispensaries would be built, properly staffed with trained staff, and equipped with medicines and supplies. Preventive programs in line with primary health care requirements would also be provided. Households would have adequate and balanced diets for a healthy, productive and active life. These pronouncements and more endeared the NRM government to the people of Uganda who were prepared to do what it takes to make the government succeed in its noble mission, including postponing elections. The president, ministers and senior civil servants travelled abroad to sell their program which was well received in the international conferences and summits.

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NRM government is deliberately impoverishing Ugandans

It is not a secret that the NRM party and its government under the leadership of Museveni is primarily interested in retaining power indefinitely. Impoverishing Ugandans is seen as one way of doing so. There are four principle ways of making a country strong and prosperous or weak and poor. They are adequate food and nutrition security, quality and relevant education, good preventive and curative health care and remunerative full employment in decent work conditions. On these four areas NRM’s performance has been deliberately poor. Stabilization and structural adjustment imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave the government an excuse to impoverish Ugandans and get away with it. But before outlining how impoverishment is proceeding, let us review the 20th century record by way of introduction.

There is sufficient record that before colonial rule Ugandans ate well, although they suffered from famines when the rains failed or pests or warfare destroyed crops and granaries. The young were orally trained, learned on the job from parents and obtained additional knowledge through interaction with relatives and neighbors. Traditional medicines handled local diseases pretty well. The introduction of foreign diseases required new medicines. There was no unemployment as gender specialization of labor kept everyone busy.

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Ugandans are dancing to NRM music whose composer they don’t know

Recently I had a serious conversation with a fellow Ugandan who is a staunch supporter of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government under the leadership of President Museveni. I told him that I do not know who sets policy in Uganda since 1986 when the NRM government came to power. I asked him to help me understand the policy making process and the key players. He paused for a while, closed his eyes, ran fingers through his short hair and finally began to talk. He said that Ugandans since 1986 are like people who dance to music without knowing the composer and the meaning of the music until very late. He added that what he was saying was similar to the invisible hand which economists follow enthusiastically until later on when they realize that it did not delivering as expected. I asked him to elaborate on the respective roles of the presidency, cabinet and parliament in policy formulation and key players in each organ.

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Why has NRM rejected Keynesian economics when Uganda needs it badly?

What John Maynard Keynes wrote is that when a country is experiencing serious economic difficulties including unemployment the state should step in and increase spending to stimulate the economy, reduce unemployment which in turn create effective demand for goods and services and ultimately pull the economy out of the recession. Keynes advice was well received by politicians because it helped them deal with economic and social challenges that would have created political problems for them at the next elections. Governments have used Keynesian advice and it contributed significantly in tackling the economic depression of the 1930s and after WWII. Since the recession that began in 2007, governments around the world have intervened in national economies with stimulus packages.

In view of the deteriorating economic, social and ecological conditions in Uganda one would have expected the NRM government to fully embrace the Keynesian model and actively intervene in the economy especially as the country is preparing for multi-party elections early in 2011. As noted in a separate article the introduction of the five year development plan in April 2010 did not signal government determination to intervene in the economy. It appears this was a political game to hoodwink voters after which the plan will gather dust in the ministry of finance, planning and economic development.

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