Tag Archives: ugandans

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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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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Is Uganda drifting back to the troubled 1960s?

Uganda’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) government led by Museveni conveyed a message of hope when it came to power in 1986 after a costly guerrilla war. It promised to end all forms of sectarianism (ethnic, tribal and religion in particular) and all privileges by birth, root causes of political instability in the 1960s and the dark period from 1971 through 1985.

On capturing power the NRM government created an environment that accommodated every Ugandan and leveled the playing field so that every Ugandan could participate in the national development process on equal footing. This would correct pre and colonial deficits including lumping together people from different political, cultural, professional, social and discriminatory formations. For example, in southern and western Uganda pre-colonial authoritarian and exploitative governance system of rulers and ruled was not only retained but reinforced through the indirect rule system, causing endemic struggles between the two classes particularly in former Ankole and Rujumbura county of Rukungiri district.

Uganda’s situation was further complicated by religious feuds between Anglican Protestantism and Roman Catholicism and the economic divide between the north and the south. Thus, throughout the colonial period no attempt was made to create national consciousness through economic, social and political linkages. The federal independence constitution imposed by the British to keep Uganda together when it was very clear there was no sense of common statehood made a bad situation worse.

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Are poor people easy to govern in perpetuity?

Years ago, a Uganda official reasoned that well educated and paid people are difficult to govern, implying that poorly educated and paid Ugandans are preferable because their daily problems keep them too busy to exercise their rights. What the official did not know or chose to ignore is that poverty is one of the root causes of political and many other forms of instability. Making or keeping people poor so they are governed in perpetuity without difficulty can be counterproductive as developments in Uganda are beginning to show. Under the NRM government many Ugandans have sunk into deep poverty which was hidden under economic growth and per capita income figures until it manifested itself through diseases of poverty.

The NRM came to power determined to govern indefinitely. One of its strategies right from the start was to impoverish citizens in the short, medium and long term. In the short term, the NRM government of Museveni took 30 percent of Ugandans’ meager savings as a service charge for changing old into new currency. Many lost their businesses right away. Some of those who survived have not fully recovered 25 years later.

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Do not force Ugandans into birth control

In the past few months there has been a flurry of meetings in the country and articles in Uganda media about the dangers of Uganda’s population ‘explosion’. All the articles I have read are one-sided. They are directly or indirectly urging the government to coerce Ugandans into defusing a demographic ‘bomb’ through birth control which should be stepped up immediately. If my understanding of what is going on is correct, Ugandans are being treated like a herd of Zebras that have no capacity to adjust to their environment. If you lock them up in an enclosed area and leave them there, Zebras will reproduce to the limit of their biological capacity, eat all the grass and drink all the water and then perish through hunger and thirst. To prevent this catastrophe, Zebras need to be helped to control their fertility to match the available pasture and water. Similarly, Uganda authorities are being urged to act quickly and help or force Ugandans to adjust their fertility through birth control to match the number of mouths to feed with available goods and services. In my view, going down this road will create serious problems.

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External influence has destroyed Uganda’s independence

Ugandans struggled for independence to have freedom and determine their destiny. They had seen their resources exploited for the benefit of the mother country. They had witnessed their industries and markets destroyed to make room for European manufactured products. Uganda’s demand for independence grew out of the struggle by Africans to have a stake in the cash economy which was dominated by Europeans and Asians, keeping Africans as small holder farmers.

When British authorities finally agreed that Uganda should become independent, they retained the power to decide who would be the leader and which party would form the government. The Catholic dominated Democratic Party (DP) under the leadership of Benedicto Kiwanuka, a Catholic, won the 1961 pre-independence elections. The British and Church of England leadership was not happy. They wanted a Protestant Party led by a Protestant leader. Fresh elections were held and a coalition of Protestant parties (Uganda Peoples’ Congress {UPC} and Kabaka Yekka {KY}) formed the independence government in 1962 with Milton Obote (Protestant) as prime minister and Freddie Mutesa II (Protestant) as president. The Vice President was also a Protestant. The Democratic Party complained after it lost the 1962 elections that the Church of England led by the Archbishop of Canterbury played a decisive role in its defeat.

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Ugandans did not and still do not understand Museveni’s motive

From grade five through eight I walked to school through a homestead that had vicious dogs. As there was no diversion, I had to face them every day – early mornings and late evenings – when they were unleashed. My grandmother advised me that when moving in the northerly direction, I should throw a stone in the southerly direction, and vice versa, to attract the dogs there. I would be gone by the time they realized it was a hoax. Her advice worked.

Similarly, Museveni has engaged Ugandans in diversions. Right from the start he knew what he wanted to do – to create a Tutsi Empire or something close to it such as the East African Federation. He prepared Ugandans and increasingly east and central Africans to look elsewhere – at the benefits of East African community and population mobility etc. Museveni also knew how to get there – build a strong army led by relatives, bring Baganda, Catholics and foreigners into the fold and use them against Obote whom he painted as a common enemy, and marginalize the rest. Let us trace Museveni’s plan step by step.

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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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What the next Uganda government must do

I am writing this article on the assumption, inter alia, that:

  1. the new government will muster sufficient political will, genuine and real commitment to raise the standard of living of all Ugandans
  2. Ugandans and their friends and partners will recognize and accept that Uganda is basically an agrarian country dominated by peasants
  3. Ugandans will put the highest priority on meeting the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter
  4. the empowerment of the poor through inter alia mass quality education, healthcare and appropriate technologies will be promoted
  5. external advice however sound will not deliver without support from the nationals
  6. there is a recognition that structural adjustment has been a failure in social and environmental terms and sustaining economic growth
  7. development strategies are home designed, executed and owned
  8. land is life and a basic asset for peasants
  9. the respective roles of the state and the private sector will be redefined in a mutually reinforcing manner
  10. a bottom up approach will be supported through appropriate policies, strategies and institutions
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