NRM revolution reproduces our painful past, fundamentally

FALSE REVOLUTIONS:

As we head towards our 50 years of “independence”, it is important to recognize that the essence of “revolution” has been truly assaulted by liberation movements. This article is an indictment of the NRM since 1986 when it took over power. Here, I will attempt to analyze the failed premise of the initial ten point program and the “fundamental change” promise which were the underpinnings of the so-called NRM liberation struggle.

The mainstay of this article is that the NRM ten point programs have become the ten commandments of failures, a peregrination similar to most socialist-cum-marxist political organizations in Africa. The “fundamental change” promise of near utopia has degenerated such that the NRM is fundamentally reproducing the conditions of the painful past and it’s very opposite - the “No Change.”

We expect that social and national liberation movements have the potency of fundamentally transforming society in the stewardship of men of abundant good will. The NRM came to power through castigating the UPC regime of Dr Milton Obote on many fronts. But Ugandans today can now take stock to realize that between Dr Obote, Idi Amin (both RIP) and Lt. Gen. Dr. Yoweri Museveni, the previous leaders were more patriotic and proper to the common aspirations of the nation to the extent and within context of their time. It is only in Museveni’s regime that comparisons of Idi Amin’s performance surfaced, because Ugandans now know very well that the NRM and Museveni are self-seekers intent on advancing personal interests at the expense of the masses.

The ten point programs were very meaningful to many Ugandans and indeed, it articulated the fundamental aspirations of many Ugandans. But the eisting programs of the UPC regime were tested and unrivaled. That Museveni’s fundamental change never arrived, because the contestation of this was murdered in 1996 when Ugandans had to go through that severe election. The year 1996 for many of us was the landmark point of deviation from liberation of “the wretched” as Franz Fanon once put it.

The nature of campaigns, the reaction of President Museveni to democratic challenges and the amount of bribery, brutality and use of force at that time and in subsequent elections illustrated that the NRM will never have a credible credential of commitment to Ugandans.

Henning Melber, the Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala, Sweden has done significant and elaborate works in studying the nature of African liberation movements in southern Africa; how they grow, succeed and quickly degenerate to become worse than the establishment they uprooted from power.

Melber argued that liberation organizations never overcome their militaristic mindsets of categorizing their citizens as pro- or anti- liberation once in power. In essence there is this element within them that glorifies violence as a purifying force. The absurdity is that most of these liberation armies have similar organizational structure and operations as the establishment that they aspired to replace. Once in power, they quickly replace, rather than cause change. In the long run, they transmit the same stressors that their predecessors experienced.

In Uganda, the RC system was not any different from the Mulango kumi concept of UPC government and so were the Resident District Commissioners (RDC) system from Special District Administrators (SDA). In essence, the fundamental change slogan was indeed a change of guard and that change of guard became the no change once all the guards were effectively changed.

Melber argues that there has never been legitimacy of claims of prudence with any military movements since the French revolution. It is common place that liberators quickly become oppressors, victims of yesterday turn into perpetrators and the regime starts to degenerate, to resemble and surpass the old one. This betrayal of trust is etched in the psychology of perpetuating fear as Indian psychologist Ashis Nandy eloquently put it “liberators tend to reproduce the past rather than offering genuine alternatives”.

We the people of Uganda have the right to say that the NRM regime has truly reproduced the past in a more profound and perhaps, fundamental way. If the political ills that they accused the Obote and Amin regimes for have not been overdone, then somehow, in the next few years, we shall live in awe.

In both the pre-Museveni regimes, social services were very operational, today; the malls have taken over such that our hospitals have become a supermarket for vending death. Our poor infrastructure has become determinants of our precarious lives. The political space and human liberties are at its worse conditions; there is more apathy among Ugandans today towards the central government over corruption and inefficiency than at any time in our history of existence.

When the fundamental change became “no change at all”, the NRM had written the ten points of failures for Uganda. In its tenure, they have deliberately executed it to reproduce our painful past.

END.