Tag Archives: can

“War of the flea” tactics will send NRM into extinction

Ugandans with support of friends and well wishers should craft a strategy for defeating NRM that suits local conditions. We should not emulate Egyptians, Tunisians, Philippinos, Ethiopians and Iranians etc if circumstances in Uganda are different. However, we should draw lessons from their struggles. One lesson is very clear: they all overcame fear and sectarianism. Egyptian Muslims joined hands with Christians, for example. Similarly, Ugandans must overcome fear, selfishness and parochialism. We should be guided by modesty and truth, not lies and deception. We should put Uganda and the future of our children first so that they can live happier and fuller lives than we have because that is what development or modernization is supposed to be. We should use our comparative advantages because every Ugandan has something to offer in this post-2011 elections liberation struggle that has just begun. Furthermore, we should be pragmatic and not idealistic.

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Soldiers have a responsibility to protect

Soldiers in time and space including those in Uganda have a responsibility to defend the nation against external aggression and to protect the people against internal regime oppression. In protecting the people against regime oppression, soldiers can either remain neutral or join the people against the regime.

Since 1966, the people of Uganda have suffered various degrees of regime oppression. It’s time that Uganda soldiers do something about it by peaceful means in the first instance. Soldiers everywhere have exercised their responsibility to protect the people by either standing neutral while the people battled against an authoritarian regime or joining the people when the government used force to silence the people. For easy reference here are some examples.

1. During the French Revolution of 1789, some sections of the army (the French Guards) joined the Parisian demonstrators because they sympathized with their suffering made worse by unemployment, food shortages, rising prices. When the Third Estate that had converted itself into the National Assembly refused to obey the king’s orders, the king was reluctant to call on soldiers because he suspected they would refuse to carry out his orders. They were on the side of the people. The Bourbon dynasty was removed from power.

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When people can’t take it anymore they revolt

There are examples from time immemorial which demonstrate that when people can’t take it any more they draw a line beyond which they revolt regardless of consequences. The peasants in feudal Europe had been taught by priests that they should tolerate suffering on earth because their rewards were in heaven. But when the burden of food insecurity and taxation among others became unbearable, they revolted. Since Uganda is basically a rural country of peasants, let us look at some examples of peasant revolts in Europe and one example in Kenya. The examples in Europe are drawn from Historical Facts by Robert Stewart (2002).

The Britons revolted against the Roman rule. The most serious revolt came in A.D. 61. One of the British tribes in East Anglia revolted because it was angered by loss of land to Roman soldiers and heavy tribute imposed on them. Thirteen years earlier, they had revolted because they were deprived of their right to bear arms.

In A.D. 220 there were revolts against China’s Han dynasty. The oppression of peasants by landlords and bureaucracy led to a series of revolts that ended the dynasty and left China with no central government for 350 years.

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Sweeping problems under the rug can only delay a catastrophe

I fully agree with Museveni that to recommend a solution, we must get to the heart of the matter and find out what the problem is. We have failed to recommend appropriate solutions to problems in the Great Lakes regions because we have not yet got to the heart of the matter. There are two major constraints in our work: western biased or distorted reporting in favor of Batutsi and against non-Batutsi people and cover up of ethnic conflicts.

Western reporting since Europeans arrived in the Great Lakes region in the mid-19th century has been biased in favor of Nilotic Batutsi and against Bantu people dubbed Bahutu and Bairu (slaves or servants). Speke and Seligman began this process. Batutsi who are black people were falsely christened white people through the Hamitic Myth and incorrectly credited with all the civilizations they found in the region especially in Buganda including earth works in the central region of Uganda. They even claimed Bachwezi were Batutsi and Bantu had never had kingdoms and kings or chiefs. It is now confirmed that Bachwezi were a Bantu aristocracy (B. A. Ogot 1999). The history that was written covered royal courts, leaving out atrocities committed against Bantu people whom they treated as slaves or servants or sold into slavery as Makobore did. “The coastal traders were also employed in interstate raids for slaves. For example Makobore, the king of Rujumbura, employed them in his raids against Butumbi and Kayonza”(Bethwell A. Ogot 1979).

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Can Batutsi problem be solved peacefully?

After he was sworn in as president of Uganda on January 29, 1986, Museveni addressed the nation and the world. In the middle of his address, he made a historic remark: “There is in philosophy something called obscurantism, a phenomenon where ideas are deliberately obscured so that what is false appears to be true and vice versa. We in the NRM are not interested in the politics of obscurantism [hiding things]: we want to get to the heart of the matter and find out what the problem is. Being a leader is like being a medical doctor. A medical doctor must diagnose his patient’s disease before he can prescribe treatment” (Y. K. Museveni 1989). I couldn’t agree more. Sadly, Museveni hasn’t practiced what he preached on that day of January 29, 1986. He has hidden his true motive which is to take care of his Batutsi people in the Great Lakes region through creation of a Tutsi Empire where Batutsi will impoverish, dispossess, marginalize and dominate the rest. We have already experienced much of it in Uganda.

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NRM can easily be unseated on four conditions

The popularity of NRM among Ugandans at home and abroad including many in NRM itself has sunk to the lowest level. The uncaring attitude of NRM to the suffering of Ugandans particularly women and children especially during the current economic hard times so soon after NRM was re-elected for another five-year term has driven the point home that Museveni – who is the de facto government of Uganda – does not care about Ugandans. He only uses them in pursuit of his imperial ambitions including changing the demographic composition of Uganda by increasing immigrants, ultimately turning indigenous population into a minority in their own country.

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NRM can easily be unseated on four conditions

The popularity of NRM among Ugandans at home and abroad including many in NRM itself has sunk to the lowest level. The uncaring attitude of NRM to the suffering of Ugandans particularly women and children especially during the current economic hard times so soon after NRM was re-elected for another five-year term has driven the point home that Museveni – who is the de facto government of Uganda – does not care about Ugandans. He only uses them in pursuit of his imperial ambitions including changing the demographic composition of Uganda by increasing immigrants, ultimately turning indigenous population into a minority in their own country.

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NRM can be unseated by peaceful strategies

There is general consensus that NRM has reached a point of no return. It has been bedeviled by rampant corruption, sectarianism, human rights abuses and infighting. It is therefore rotting away and features of decadence are there for all to see. The economy is in a comma – or very close – and social sectors are dying – if not dead already witness some hospital wards that have turned into hospices – and the environment is drifting towards desert conditions as warned by a United Nations agency not so long ago. NRM propaganda based on economic growth and expected social benefits from oil has not convinced the public so has the argument that external factors are responsible for Uganda’s economic, social and ecological illness. NRM has lost the will and capacity (in part because the government is broke) to adjust to the wind of change. Ipso facto, it has tenaciously clung to the discredited and subsequently abandoned neo-liberal economics which failed in many respects including trickle down mechanism to distribute equitably the benefits of economic growth.

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Why Museveni will not step down voluntarily

Yoweri Museveni believes very strongly – and he has said so – that he – and his mercenaries from the great lakes region – fought and defeated Ugandans. Therefore Uganda and Ugandans are his properties and he has every right to do what he wants with them such as keeping some Ugandans in the diaspora, appointing over seventy ministers and dividing the country into over 100 districts and still counting as well as giving land away to non-Ugandans.

If he had not been forced by western powers that provide financial, technical and diplomatic support, Museveni would not have accepted elections because conquered people have no right to tell him what to do. Although he accepted elections, he cannot see himself or his National Resistance Movement Organization (NRM) losing an election at the presidential, parliamentary and local levels. And that is why he can defy everybody by refusing to have an independent electoral commission or invade the treasury and central bank (as we are told) and get all the money he wants to bribe voters and disenfranchise others as well as bring in foreigners to vote for him and his party. He has crafted a plan to stay in power indefinitely.

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“War of the flea” tactics will send NRM into extinction

Ugandans with support of friends and well wishers should craft a strategy for defeating NRM that suits local conditions. We should not emulate Egyptians, Tunisians, Philippinos, Ethiopians and Iranians etc if circumstances in Uganda are different. However, we should draw lessons from their struggles. One lesson is very clear: they all overcame fear and sectarianism. Egyptian Muslims joined hands with Christians, for example. Similarly, Ugandans must overcome fear, selfishness and parochialism. We should be guided by modesty and truth, not lies and deception. We should put Uganda and the future of our children first so that they can live happier and fuller lives than we have because that is what development or modernization is supposed to be. We should use our comparative advantages because every Ugandan has something to offer in this post-2011 elections liberation struggle that has just begun. Furthermore, we should be pragmatic and not idealistic.

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