Tag Archives: when

Why I have clashed with Museveni

Some people –Ugandans and non-Ugandans – close and not so close to me have wondered – directly and indirectly – why I have decided to oppose Museveni when there is no chance of winning because he is powerful at home and abroad. Besides I or someone else could get hurt. Some have even questioned my motive.

This is the first time in Uganda’s political history that I have actively campaigned. I have chosen to participate in order to defeat Museveni in his re-election bid for another five years. He has been president for 25 years already. During this period, as outlined below, the welfare of the majority of Uganda citizens and the environment has deteriorated.

My education and profession were influenced greatly by the injustices of the colonial indirect rule system which was an extension of a repressive feudal system of lords and serfs (rich and poor) in Rujumbura county of Rukungiri district in southwest Uganda. The chiefs and their families lived very well at the expense of the poor who produced goods and services. Through tribute, taxes and free labor the poor peasants toiled for the comfort of the chiefs. Most of the nutritious food (goat meat, chicken, eggs, beans, fruits etc) was consumed by chiefs. Heads of households would disappear for months to work for tax money leaving their wives behind toiling to keep the family alive.

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Ugandans have a habit of pleading ignorance when things go wrong

I have devoted some time to studying and writing books on Uganda’s political economy. One of the findings is that when things go wrong at the individual, community or national level, you hear those involved saying that if they had known, this or that would not have happened or would have been done differently. I have heard Ugandans regret that if they had known, they would not have dropped out of school or married early, or sold their land or abandoned their families or ignored their parents’ advice or voted for so and so to represent them at the district or national level or neglected environment issues in Uganda’s economic growth. Another common observation is that when events do not affect certain groups, Ugandans tend not to bother. For example, those who have comfortable jobs do not care about the unemployed. They even blame them for being lazy or drinking too much. It is only when they are directly (or family members or relatives) affected that they care and actually complain that the government is not doing enough to resolve unemployment.

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Who are Bahororo – Revisited ?

I have received many requests to elaborate on what I have written or posted on my blog www.kashambuzi.com about Bahororo. While many people have some ideas about Bahima and Batutsi, they are not sure who Bahororo are, how they are related to Bahima and Batutsi and how and when they entered Uganda. This brief will try to provide a clarification. But first let me summarize the relationship between Bahororo on the one hand and Bahima, Batutsi and Banyamulenge on the other hand.

1. It is now established that Bahororo, Bahima and Batutsi have a common Nilotic and Luo-speaking ancestry. The Nilotic Luo-speaking people entered Uganda from Bahr el Ghazel in southern Sudan with long horn cattle. It is not clear what caused them to move. However, conflict with Dinka people (whom they resemble) over grazing land and water has been mentioned as a contributing factor. They crossed the Nile in phases into the grasslands further south. In Bunyoro, Toro and Buganda the Nilotic cattle herders mixed extensively with Bantu speaking people and formed new communities based on mixed farming of cattle herding, crop cultivation and some manufacturing largely of iron products. They adopted Bantu language.

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What has Uganda family planning skipped?

Since Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) government came to power in 1986, Ugandans have developed a habit of dragging the country into fads without proper analysis of pros and cons or even when they know these fads won’t work. Because Museveni likes to be in the news or popular with the west he has plunged Uganda into experiments in economics, agriculture, health, etc that have overall produced adverse outcomes. Uganda adopted shock therapy version of structural adjustment in 1987 fully aware that it had been rejected in Ghana because of negative consequences. Uganda adopted abstinence in the fight against HIV knowing fairly well that it would not work. Uganda also developed a confrontational regional policy in an atmosphere of geopolitics that has created poor relations with neighbors witness the plunder of Congo resources, meddling in Kenya’s 2007 elections and the latest allegation that Uganda troops were involved in Hutu genocide in DRC. Also Uganda elite have become obsessed with making money or keeping their jobs that many will fully support donor-driven projects or government programs even when they know they will hurt their fellow citizens.

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When you have no land and education you’re finished unless you wake up in time

Undeveloped or underdeveloped societies are characterized by a high degree of illiteracy. These societies therefore depend on land for their subsistence livelihood. As they get educated and develop non-agricultural skills, they move out of land-based activities and shift residence from rural to urban areas. The smart ones, however, keep a piece of land in the countryside just in case. In Uganda land in the countryside has saved many lives during economic and political hard times. When Amin’s government started hunting down the educated in towns, many fled the country while many others retreated to their pieces of land in the countryside where they kept a low profile and survived.

In South Africa, the minority white settlers that had wanted to rule forever decided that the best way to do it was to dispossess the black majority of their land and deny them education. The training that few blacks got was related to their work. For example, drivers were taught how to read road signs. The whites reasoned that it would be dangerous to provide education to blacks in areas where they will never work such as engineering. Blacks were therefore dispossessed of their land and denied education. I have studied the apartheid system in South Africa and written about it. In my first book titled “Critical Issues in African Development” published in 1997, I wrote two chapters on education and land ownership in South Africa.

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Why birth control in Uganda will be difficult to implement

Suddenly Uganda is witnessing a flurry of birth control activities. Where the urgency has come from is still baffling. Uganda is a country that has lost – and still losing – so many people since the 1970s due to the Amin murderous regime, the guerrilla wars in the Luwero Triangle and in northern and eastern Uganda, AIDS pandemic, malaria particularly in Kabale due to climate change that facilitated mosquito invasion of the district with devastating outcomes and increasing diseases of poverty. According to Shifa Mwesigye (Observer {Uganda} August 2010) there is a conflict between on the one hand Uganda leaders and politicians who want more children and on the other hand donors and experts who want fewer children. That is already a major stumbling block that needs to be resolved first.

Birth control programs in Kenya that started in the late 1960s experienced implementation difficulties because they were imposed on an unwilling national leadership soon after independence that was won after a devastating Mau Mau liberation war. But since birth control was a prerequisite for foreign aid, the Kenya government went along but was not keen on birth control implementation. This lesson should not be lost on those eager to implement birth control in Uganda where resistance is still very strong.

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The population scare has raised its ugly head again

Since the 1950s when Third World people began to over-breed their European counterparts, the latter got scared. Europeans feared among other things that competition for developing countries raw materials would lower their standard of living. To avert this threat they recommended that Third World countries practice birth control through contraception. Researchers, commentators and policy makers at state and non-state levels painted a very bleak picture that needed to be addressed on an urgent basis. Statements likening population growth to a bomb by Paul Ehrlich and nuclear war by Robert McNamara occupied center stage in the development discourse. “Robert McNamara, president of the World Bank in the 1970s, compared the threat of unmanageable population pressures with the danger of nuclear war [McNamara had been secretary of defense before joining the World Bank]”(The Economist 2006). International conferences including those at the UN were held, expert reports were produced and institutions such as the Population Council and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) were set up. Developing country governments were advised or forced to undertake urgent measures of birth control or they would not get international assistance. In the rush to prevent this ‘catastrophe’, inappropriate or wrong assumptions, omissions and commissions were made and the prevailing circumstances particularly in Africa that was decolonizing were not properly assessed much less understood.

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The difficulty of applying Malthus essay to Uganda’s population

Uganda’s population challenges enter the development discourse when there are serious economic and social problems. Amin condemned population growth when the economy turned sour and ordered doctors to deal with it through contraception which he had banned a few years earlier. Currently (in 2010) Uganda’s population ‘explosion’ is again at the center of the development debate, invoking Malthus’ idea of population racing ahead of food production.

Malthus stated that population was growing geometrically (1,2,4,8,16 etc) while food production was growing arithmetically (1,2,3,4,5 etc), implying that all the food produced would be consumed in the same country. He concluded that if not checked, the least able to procure food would starve to death. Those able would survive – hence the survival of the fittest concept developed by Charles Darwin based on Malthus’ essay. The essay was written for Europe and North America. He used statistics compiled by Benjamin Franklin whose figures had included migration into America where it has had no application. During the 18th century agricultural productivity had doubled which Malthus ignored when he published his essay on population in 1798. One of the principle recommendations to check population growth was delayed marriage.

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When will Uganda become an independent country?

According to Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary independent means, inter alia; not dependent; not subject to the control, influence, or determination of another or others; not subordinate; not depending on another for financial support; self-commanding or self-directing; bold, unstrained and controlling or governing oneself.

After the Second World War, British colonial authorities realized that time had come to involve African participation in colonial administration and to make sure that there was an orderly transfer of power to stable, pro-British governments. The innovative policies designed by Arthur Creech Jones and Andrew Cohen in 1947 represented an attempt to anticipate the growth of nationalism and as the first steps in creating a future ‘informal’ empire. These proposed initiatives were to remain confidential. London was expected to conceal its hand and to “withhold from aspiring colonial politicians the knowledge that Britain had already decided to reward them in the future with political power” (L. J. Butler 2002).

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When someone treats you like a slave you have got to defend yourself

According to Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary a slave is, inter alia, (1) a bond servant divested of all freedom and personal rights; a human being who is owned by and wholly subject to the will of another, as by capture, purchase, or birth. (2) one who has lost the power of resistance, or one who surrenders himself to any power whatever… (3) …one who labors like a slave.

A number of developments with reference to the Great Lakes Region (especially Rwanda and south west Uganda) have forced me to revisit the issue of being a slave. First, my visit to Burundi, DRC and Rwanda in January/February 2010 and the detailed stories I heard in formal and informal settings in addition to information from other sources has made me realize that groups of human beings in the region have been deprived of their human rights. Reports about massacres or should we say genocide of Hutu people in Rwanda and Eastern DRC committed by Tutsi, the hidden mass graves of brutally murdered Hutu people some of them under buildings in Rwanda and DRC, the comments from people who should know better but think Hutu people – all Hutu people – are barbaric, wild beasts, genocidaires and assassins that deserve to be punished made me wonder where the world is headed.

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