As Uganda heads into another round of multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections, this is the right moment to take stock of what the governing NRM party has achieved since it came to power 25 years ago. The NRM under the leadership of Museveni launched a credible and well thought out development blue print compressed into the ten-point program subsequently expanded to fifteen. This program put Ugandans at the center of development. Therefore NRM’s performance must be assessed against this principal goal.
By contrast the development program was not matched by a cadre with sufficient expertise and experience. A large number of NRM cadres did not have the requisite qualifications much less experience. Afraid of being swamped by the experienced Ugandans who did not fight the guerrilla war from 1981 to 1985, the NRM government chose not to invite qualified and experienced Ugandans in the diaspora and marginalized those at home. To fill the gap while it learned on the job, the government invited a wide range of foreign experts most of them young, inexperienced and ignorant of Uganda’s overall environment.
The NRM government soon realized that governing was very much different from criticizing the government for not providing goods and services to meet domestic demand. Upon taking power, the NRM government was shocked to learn that the treasury was empty. The therapy of printing money was ruled out as it would make matters worse. Obtaining financial and technical assistance through bilateral arrangements ran into trouble as the government was advised to reach an agreement with the IMF and World Bank first. The stabilization and structural adjustment programs (SAPs) sponsored by the IMF and World Bank differed fundamentally from the ten-point program. The two programs were almost mutually exclusive. The SAPs accorded highest priority to macroeconomic stability especially inflation control, balanced budget and export diversification whereas the ten-point program focused on providing education to Uganda children, preventing Ugandans from ill-health and accessing balanced diet with a view to ending the long suffering of all Ugandans. The instruments for implementing these programs were also different. The IMF/World Bank favored market forces and private sector whereas NRM favored a mixed economy of public and private partnership. There was no compromise and the NRM lost on its program and method of implementation. Uganda was broke and NRM had no bargaining influence.
In the area of food security, the NRM was unable to strike a balance between production for export and for domestic consumption. The IMF/World Bank forced diversification of agricultural exports that resulted in diverting food stuffs (beans, sim sim, maize and fish etc) traditionally produced for home consumption into export commodities. Earning foreign exchange was accorded priority over feeding the nation. Thus NRM’s cardinal goal of feeding Ugandans including school lunches was abandoned. Food insecurity and associated morbidity and mortality rose. Uganda began to bury children and adults killed by hunger. Members of households began to fight and even kill each other over food. A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) prepared for the MDG Summit has revealed that food security has stagnated or declined. At the current rate Uganda would not meet the hunger target by 2015.
In the education sector, the NRM had promised quality education for all from primary to tertiary education. The World Bank forced the government to focus on primary education and even contributed funds generously. However, the rush into universal primary education for political gain without adequate preparation has resulted in a serious shortage of classrooms, teachers and instructional materials. The dropout rate has been extremely high and the quality has suffered tremendous decline. Pictures of children studying under trees or in dangerous, partly grass thatched structures have visibly demonstrated the depth of education challenges in the country. Without a good foundation in primary education, it is impossible to construct adequate human capital essential for 21st century development demands. Like in the area of food security, the government was unable to report credible progress in the education sector at the MDG Summit.
The health sector has been described by national and foreign commentators as being on the verge of total collapse. Hospitals and clinics are without medicines, adequate staff and in-patients’ facilities. These shortages have defined the health sector of Uganda. Pictures showing women delivering on hospital floor, clinics found closed because staff is out moonlighting to make ends meet and stories of stolen medicines abound. The most disturbing development that has become a national scandal is the spread of jiggers which is a visible manifestation of extreme poverty and poor housing conditions. Normally jiggers attack feet. In Uganda they have attacked all parts of the body signifying the depth of absolute poverty. When government talks of halving absolute poverty by 2015 without spelling out a clear implementation strategy, one is left with a suspicion that the government is not serious. Government’s admission that maternal and child MDG goals will not be met by 2015 was not surprising at all.
At the start of its regime in 1986, the government declared, loud and clear, that imperfections in land ownership caused by faulty policies, corruption or political displacements would be corrected without delay. However, what is being witnessed is that people are losing their land very fast. The rich are grabbing large swathes by using all sorts of methods. The expansion of municipality boundaries deep into rural areas is turning out to be a clever way of ‘politically robbing’ people of their land. Once land is incorporated into municipality, the peasant owner loses it and becomes a tenant who is unable to pay rent and other charges. He is therefore forced to sell at throwaway prices and become landless.
The introduction of labor flexibility that allows employers to fix wages as they see fit and to fire and hire at will together with government’s inability or unwillingness to establish public works under appropriate government stimulus packages to absorb unemployed and under-employed Ugandans especially the youth have created tremendous suffering, not only to the unemployed but to those parents or relatives that are helping them barely get by. Cases of fainting on streets due to hunger, exhaustion and stress have become common in the media but government does not appear to have heard the message.
Ugandans including many that have benefitted from the regime but are worried about what lies in store for them should the status quo change are beginning to conclude that the government does not lack the means to meet the human rights of food, education, health and jobs. Rather hiding behind structural adjustment harsh conditionality the government has used the impoverishment instrument to weaken Ugandans economically in order to exploit them politically at election time. It is easier to buy the support of hungry, thirsty and partially dressed voters with a few commodities of soap, salt, matches and local brew whose price has been kept low deliberately. And NRM has the money to buy every desperate voter. This may explain why the rural areas have virtually been neglected.
Thus, wherever you turn in the countryside or towns, you see signs of failure. Potholed roads, mushrooming slums, school dropout children and early marriage that family planning alone will not do much about fertility, hungry and sick people, drunkards and criminals. Sadly, Uganda under the NRM leadership is increasingly becoming a country you do not want to be associated with. The jiggers’ catastrophe alone should force the government to reverse its policy.