President Museveni’s speech delivered at Hoima on June 11, 2010 is very scary indeed. Ugandans and their friends must not allow his scary remarks to be repeated or put into action.
When President Museveni, a head of state and chairman of the ruling party, talked about cutting someone’s head for entering his olubimbi (territory) was he saying, for example, that:
- opposition parties cannot aspire to form a government in Uganda with a new president
- poor people cannot aspire to become rich
- illiterate people cannot aspire to be educated
- women cannot aspire to inherit their parents’ properties
- women cannot aspire to work outside of the home and earn an income
- raw material exporting countries cannot aspire to industrialize?
If our understanding of his message is correct, then President Museveni is advocating a static division of labor or comparative advantage which is very difficult to accept. For example, Uganda cannot and should not accept to remain a producer and exporter of raw materials because we do not want to enter the lubimbi or territory of industrialized countries. This lubimbi concept explains why under Museveni’s leadership Uganda has de-industrialized.
Regarding national unity:
- you do not build or foster national unity by dividing the country into small economically unviable units virtually along sectarian lines which is what President Museveni is actively forcing.
- you do not construct national unity by creating a few filthy rich households connected through blood and marriage while deliberately keeping others functionally illiterate, unemployed, dispossessed of the limited assets they have such as land which result in extreme poverty and the associated death, disfigured or disabled bodies by preventable diseases from jiggers, scabies, alcohol, malnutrition, violence and insanity etc.
Leaders in the NRM who are practicing sectarianism along many fronts that is tearing the country apart are the ones that should be condemned and prosecuted; not those who are opposing those practices. Uganda is now (in 2010) more divided geographically, regionally, politically, economically, socially and ethnically than at any time in its history. And those inside and outside of Uganda who support the NRM government know it!
The people of Uganda should be facilitated to exercise their freedom including in research and publication of their findings that should form the basis for debate and informed decisions. Ugandans are intelligent people and they know how and when to separate wrong from right. NRM does not have the mandate to decide for Ugandans and it should not be allowed to assume that mandate.
Pre-colonial and colonial history is being overhauled because it was biased. For example, people are beginning to understand who the Bachwezi people were, who the first chiefs and who constructed earthen works at Mansa, Ntusi and Bigo and established kingdoms first were and previous conclusions are being reversed. Naturally those who falsely reaped where they did not sow are uncomfortable. It is now established that Bachwezi were a Bantu aristocracy. The earthen works were constructed by Bantu people who transited from mixed farming to cattle herding. It is now established that Bahima, Batutsi, Bahororo and Banyamulenge ancestry is Nilotic Luo-speaking people from southern Sudan who have retained their Nilotic identity in southwest Uganda (Ntungamo and Rujumbura), Rwanda, Burundi and eastern DRC because men do not marry outside of their ethnic group.
These research findings should not be divisive. People should accept the new information and we move on. It is not clear how such research findings should create antagonism and divisions. Racial, ethnic, and religious differences among peoples do not necessarily constitute the basis for quarrels and fights. This happens when there are wide differences in levels of income and standard of living and monopoly over power as we have in Uganda under Museveni’s leadership. Suffocating constructive opposing views using state power is counterproductive.
The abuse of power in Uganda has reached an intolerable level. NRM leaders at local and central levels are using fake democratic and legislative instruments to rob voiceless citizens of their properties and rights like what happened in creating Rukungiri municipality.
People (Ugandans and their friends) who want to keep Uganda as a united and peaceful country for all should gather courage and oppose the mushrooming dictatorship under President Museveni and those who are funding it. All people including in Uganda are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They should exercise these rights to the fullest extent.
This is the hour. This is the day. This is the week. This is the year to do it.