Tag Archives: against

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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How Uganda became a land of thieves

The NRM government which is led by a religious president with a religious first lady must be embarrassed for presiding over a country whose citizens have largely become perpetual thieves. Everywhere you turn you read or hear stories about theft – of money and property and increasingly of children. People are no longer ashamed to be caught or accused of stealing. It has become normal to steal. There are those who steal because they are too poor to make ends meet and those who are already rich but steal to become filthy rich.

When we were growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s all religious faiths preached against stealing. If you found money, handkerchief, etc, etc, you took it to the nearest Protestant or Catholic priest so the item could be returned to the owner. On Sundays there would be announcements of the lost and found items. Those who found them would be praised. As a result, employees, housemaids, gardeners etc would not steal from their employers. Those who still managed to steal would be denounced in public and punished. This served as warning to potential thieves. At school, thieves would be called names and teased by fellow students until they left the school. Some thieves would confess and be forgiven.  Priests, church wardens and teachers never stole church money or school fees. They served as role models. These early exposures prepared many people from stealing in their adult life. Unfortunately, when economic hard times set in caused by political instability and economic decline, and corruption, stealing crept in and started to gather speed. 

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Western bias has undermined human security in the Gt. Lakes Region

The great lakes region of Africa including DRC, Rwanda and Uganda is one of the richest, if not the richest, region in the world. It has natural resources in diversity and abundance and many resilient, intelligent and hard working people. In spite of these attributes, the region has some of the poorest people in the world.

Before slave trade and colonialism, Bantu people in east and central Africa had developed economic and political systems and institutions that ensured human security. Bantu groups such as Ganda, Nyoro, Kongo, Luba, Lunda and Rwanda had established great kingdoms (The World Book Encyclopedia 1983) which ensured human security through law and order, food security and respect for human dignity for all Bantu peoples. All these developments and civilizations were undermined by the arrival of Europeans through slave trade, colonialism and bias against Bantu people. Slave trade took place in all parts of the great lakes region. The introduction of European weapons and hunting human beings caused too much damage in demographic, economic and social terms.

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Why DRC may disintegrate

During a mission to DRC in January/February 2010, concerns were expressed by people from many walks of life – national and foreign – in formal and informal settings about the possibility of DRC disintegrating. A review of the underlying forces needs to go as far back as the 16th century when hunting for ivory and slaves led to ethnic conflicts and hostile relations. The political, economic and social disruptions that occurred in Central Africa made it easier for Europeans to implement a policy of divide and rule. Weaker communities that had suffered sought European protection while established rivals used European allies against their hostile neighbors.

In Congo, Leopold II and the subsequent colonial government encouraged ethnic isolation or rivalries and hostilities. Some rulers and/or ethnic groups were allowed to exercise hegemony over others. The Luba were favored and enjoyed higher status because they were considered superior to others. These divide and rule tactics created mistrust and antagonism among ethnic groups and weakened national consciousness.

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Why patriotic Congolese have misgivings about decentralization

The Congolese people that want to keep the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as one country have expressed misgivings about the idea of decentralization. While they are not totally against decentralization as such, they reason that decentralization presupposes the existence of a strong central state with viable institutions. In any state a certain amount of centralization is essential for the effective functioning of a large entity, be it a corporation or a state. On the other hand, over-centralization produces undesirable outcomes such as inefficiency and red tape. When this occurs decentralization is recommended in which minor decisions are made on lower levels of administration.

Since its creation as a state in 1885 in the wake of the Berlin Conference on the partition of Africa among European countries without waging war against one another, no efforts were made neither by king Leopold II who owned Congo Free State as a private property until 1907, nor by the Belgian government that assumed colonial responsibility for Congo from 1908 to 1960 when the country became independent as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, nor since independence as Zaire and now again as DRC since 1997.

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