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.
I have carefully studied National Resistance Movement (NRM) government policies in Uganda since it came to power in 1986. There are similarities (presumably unintended) with apartheid South Africa. Like in apartheid South Africa, the government of Uganda is in the hands of a small minority group of Bahororo (Batutsi from Rwanda) and their Bahima cousins. Like the white minority in South Africa, this minority group wants to rule Uganda forever. This is not a secret anymore! Like the apartheid regime in South Africa this minority group in Uganda is concentrating on three things: become filthy rich and build strong security forces for self-defense; establish strong alliances with external powers for protection; dispossess other Ugandans of their land and deny them functional education. Those who are currently benefitting from the regime may not agree with this analysis and may heap all sorts of accusations on the author, and those who are busy trying to make ends meet may not have had time to pay attention to these adverse developments. Let us look at land dispossession and functional illiteracy as they are evolving in Uganda.
Hiding behind structural adjustment which was externally imposed and included liberalization and privatization of Uganda’s economy, the NRM government has encouraged large-scale farming and herding and discouraged small holder farming and herding falsely considered less productive. The government has therefore been advocating commercialization and transformation of Uganda’s economy which many have interpreted to mean selling land and use the revenue to start business in towns. This has been facilitated by the concept of willing seller to enter into transaction with willing buyer of land without difficulties. This has enabled some heads of households to sell land without even consulting family members and to even use money in non-productive ways leading to both landlessness and pennilessness. The wealthy have taken advantage of this enabling environment and are accumulating land at break neck speed.
To accelerate the process of dispossessing reluctant peasants, the government has come up with the idea of expanding municipality boundaries deep into rural areas (which are now called rural-urban) in some cases by fiat (also termed political robbery) as in Rukungiri district. Once land is incorporated into the municipality, previous owners automatically become tenants. Either they sell at throwaway prices or pay all sorts of charges to municipal authorities to use the land as renters which peasants cannot afford. If this process continues or is speeded up, within a short time, the majority of Ugandans will become landless. To make ends meet they will become criminals and end up behind bars.
Regarding education, the 1960s produced quality graduates at all levels and this was acknowledged by remarks made about Ugandans working abroad when they fled Uganda in the 1970s. Amin’s regime denuded education of resources and education as we knew it in the 1960s suffered extensive damage. Starvation of public schools got worse under the NRM government because structural adjustment policies saw education as a non-productive sector that did not need support in the short-term and establishment of private schools for children from rich families many of them policy makers reduced enthusiasm for investment in public schools. Thanks to information technology the world is now able to see barefoot and half-naked children studying under trees and/or in partially thatched and dangerous structures called classrooms. That is where many Uganda children are attending so-called free universal primary education which was applauded by foreigners as a success story until these pictures became available alongside high figures about dropout rates and diminished quality education.
President Museveni and his minority group are aware that once Ugandans are denied education and are dispossessed of their land, their numerical superiority will not matter. He has weakened the majority further by dividing the country into so many economically unviable districts more or less along tribal lines which has diminished national consciousness and unity as a force to fight the government for its wrongdoing. The greedy Ugandans eager to become Members of Parliament or district chairpersons see these divisions as an opportunity and jump in jubilation without considering the long term adverse implications for their children. These districts which are unable to raise enough revenue then depend on central government for financial support with stiff conditions that benefit the minority leaders.
In the end Uganda will become a society of functionally illiterate, unemployed and unemployable, landless and penniless individuals and communities. Ipso facto, these individuals and communities will be politically and economically voiceless and powerless to challenge the NRM government led by a dynastic minority of one tribe. The minority has designed a complementary strategy of tapping into greedy Ugandans with offers of juicy but powerless positions to support the regime against their own people. The greedy officials are then tossed out in humiliation like a coffee paper cup when they are no longer needed. They quickly pick another group and domination of the minority group over the majority is consolidated. The majority is ultimately marginalized through disguised and unemployment, landlessness and functionally illiteracy accompanied by biting poverty as manifested in the nationwide jiggers’ epidemic with Busoga as the epicenter which has become a national disgrace. Without a doubt, jiggers represent the worst form of absolute poverty!
Unless Ugandans wake up early, put aside greed and selfishness or fear and challenge the Bahororo/Bahima dominated NRM government, the repeat of apartheid practices in Uganda is a possibility. This is not bigotry. This is the truth! The people of Uganda must not only demand justice but justice must triumph over tyranny.