What we have learned about Obote and Museveni leadership

It is now recognized that the quality of a leader and development perspective can make or break a nation. This matter came up in one of the discussions at the United Democratic Ugandans (UDU) conference in Boston in October 2011. Requests were made for a study of the background and leadership qualities of Obote and Museveni and draw lessons that might help in selecting future leaders.

Obote was born in Lango. Museveni’s birthplace has remained unclear, raising many questions. Obote and Museveni have a common ancestry of Nilotic and Luo-speaking people (sometimes referred to as River and Lake people) who entered what later became Uganda from Bahr -el-Ghazal in South Sudan, not from Ethiopia as originally suggested. Obote was a member of the Oyima group; Museveni is of the Batutsi/Bahororo group. Ipso facto, Obote and Museveni are distant cousins.

Museveni and Obote have played high politics in Uganda rising to the level of head of state and government and commander in-chief of Uganda’s armed forces.

What we have learned about Obote and Museveni leadership

It is now recognized that the quality of a leader and development perspective can make or break a nation. This matter came up in one of the discussions at the United Democratic Ugandans (UDU) conference in Boston in October 2011. Requests were made for a study of the background and leadership qualities of Obote and Museveni and draw lessons that might help in selecting future leaders.

Obote was born in Lango. Museveni’s birthplace has remained unclear, raising many questions. Obote and Museveni have a common ancestry of Nilotic and Luo-speaking people (sometimes referred to as River and Lake people) who entered what later became Uganda from Bahr -el-Ghazal in South Sudan, not from Ethiopia as originally suggested. Obote was a member of the Oyima group; Museveni is of the Batutsi/Bahororo group. Ipso facto, Obote and Museveni are distant cousins.

Museveni and Obote have played high politics in Uganda rising to the level of head of state and government and commander in-chief of Uganda’s armed forces.

What happened to Uganda historians?

In many countries, history or civics is a compulsory subject in schools. The idea is that students should know where their ancestors came from, how they have interacted with others over time and how they are governed.

Because Africa was considered a “Dark Continent” at the time of colonization, Europeans assumed it had no history and darkness was not a subject of history. Thus during colonial days, we were taught the history of European explorers and missionaries in Africa. The little Uganda history we were taught was about kings and their royal courts because first colonial and missionary officials came from aristocratic families in Europe and were not interested in peasant or commoners history. The first batch of Uganda historians was either from royal families or connected with the royal court. So for some years after independence, Ugandans continued to be taught the history of royal courts and British work in Uganda.

A new breed of historians emerged after independence led by Prof. B. A. Ogot, Kenyan mathematician turned historian who taught me in Nairobi. They began research into the history of Africans which led “to abandon certain formerly accepted terms and to introduce others”. Uganda historians began to write a new history of Uganda about who Ugandans are, where they came from and where they live and how they have interacted with one another.

Finale: What we have learned about Uganda’s political economy

I have come to the end of a research project that began in 1961 when I was in third year of high school (senior three) at Butobere School in the then Kigezi district. To get a good grasp of the interconnectedness among Uganda’s development variables, I studied Geography, Economics, Demography, International Law and International Relations/Diplomacy, Sustainable Development and History.

My first book came out in 1997 and I have written a total of the following ten books.

1. Critical Issues in African Development (1997)

2. The Paradox of Hunger and Abundance (1999)

3. Africa’s Lost Century (2001)

4. The Failure of Governance in Africa (2003)

5. World Leaders at the UN General Assembly (2008)

6. Uganda’s Development Agenda (2008)

7. Rethinking Africa’s Development Model (2009)

8. Defying Poverty Through Struggle (2009)

9. For Present and Future Generations (2010)

10. Fifty Years Ago (2010).

In 2008, I created a blog www.kashambuzi.com to share information more widely and facilitate debate at the global level with good results so far.

Uganda’s distorted history needs to be corrected

The late Samwiri Karugire (1980) wrote that “To undertake to write a history of a country whose societies are so different, almost in all respects, is a task that imposes its own limitations. This means that the historian has to choose what aspects of history appear to be important and this judgement is inevitably arbitrary in many ways”. Historians should explain why they have taken a particular aspect but they should not distort or even lie.

Until very recently Europeans and Africans who studied and wrote Uganda’s history came from aristocratic families in Europe or were associated with royal courts in Uganda. At the time of Africa’s exploration and colonization, racial prejudice was intense in Europe. In the racial hierarchy Africans (Negroes) were located at the bottom of the pyramid and treated as people who had no history and civilization. Africa was therefore described as a ‘Dark Continent’ and darkness is not a subject of history. Africans were therefore described explicitly as people who lived in a state of savagery and barbarism without social organizations and achievements in arts and sciences.