Mediocrity in Uganda's politics

MEDIOCRITY

In the last issue of his column, “The Last Word: The missing intellectual voice”, published in The Independent of June 21, 2013, Andrew Mwenda revealed interesting traits of the social and political transformation in Uganda. Mr. Mwenda validated my long standing belief that Uganda’s politics has become the dumping ground for mediocrity.

I would like to agree to some observations made in that article but deviate fundamentally from the interpretation that public spaces have been dominated by intellectually inept and professionally unsuccessful Ugandans. This observance would signify a depredation of the aptitude of ordinary Ugandans, most of whom have become who they are - maligned and justifiably angry and bitter - because of the government that they have, and not because they have failed professionally.

Indeed, the level of mediocrity that dogs our politics reflects also the kind of dominant players who shape the political spheres. The brutality by which the NRM regime applies to diminish avenues of civil engagement has mediated the suppression of quality public discourses.

The regime has violated every article of the constitution on fundamental human rights and liberties with impunity. It has trampled on our freedom of speech, association, and other fundamental requisite conditions of human relations necessary for free intellectual nurturance to inspire enlightenment.

The regime is at most, delusional when demanded to account and thrives on the reproduction of uncritical masses; it proposes draconian laws such as denial of bail; preventive confinement; indiscriminate use of teargas and now the draconian Public Order Bill which literally requires that to socialize minimally, even under malwa, groups must obtain police permission.  The use of brutality as preeminent instrument of legitimation of political authority tends to discourage the intellectual middle-class from participating in the political spheres.

Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist once discovered that the nature of public education carries an essentially arbitrary cultural scheme based on power domination. More widely, Bourdieu concluded that the reproduction of culture through education is shown to play a key part in the reproduction of the whole social and political systems. In relations, the mediocrity prevailing in the social and political spheres in Uganda, are produced and reproduced by the regime’s established social and political cultures which significantly impact on the quality of socio-political discourses.

Mr. Mwenda opines that successful middle class are committing a blunder by retreating into the comfort zones of their professional successes, thereby ceding the public realms to those who lack values and skills to enlightened politics. Indeed, the so-called successful middle-class in Uganda is a group subject to state patronage (custody). 

The larger composite of this group are a creation of the system, either processed through statehouse scholarships scheme and/or seconded to positions that they hold at the behest of the regime as cadres. Majority of the seemingly successful middle-class in Uganda qualifies as atypical middle-class and are incapable of self replenishment without direct state intervention. This group cannot participate in shaping the political spheres out of absolute fear of severing the state patronage that holds each one of them in place. 

In essence, they are in intellectuals in captivity whose false values then manifests as a simultaneously paradoxical state of being calm/submissive, reflective/protective, refined/loyal, thoughtful/indebted, balanced/secured and insightful/fearfulness to legitimize their very occupancy of social and political spaces. After all, in the real intellectual world, the most accomplished intellectuals actually disdain complexity and hold themselves with utmost simplicity and humility.

The folly of the so-called intellectuals and accomplished professionals can be identified in their abstract imperial tastes. Mostly, they bay for western ideals and use such calibrations to judge their repressed and maligned fellow citizens harshly as inadequate. In their worlds, the description of being professionally successful encompasses hobnobbing between Presidential suites in various capital cities to sell their souls here and there; associating with what is western as litmus test of class and self actualization; working for international NGOs and to some, consorting with foreigners and so forth.

In reality, Uganda as a whole has been transformed into a state of mediocrity, whether you view it from the standpoint of an intellectual, peasant, middle-class or otherwise. Uganda is a place where the coupling of autonomy and intellectual engagement are denied thereby shrinking the extent of intellectual development. It is a place where intellectualism is dismissed as dissent and mediocrity uplifted by the state as the “new normal”.  

The true middle-class is holed up in intellectual captivity. This explains why graduates of Uganda’s Universities and Colleges perform relatively well in professional atmospheres outside of Uganda where they enjoy fundamental freedom to think and express their thoughts in the form of innovations. Even Ugandans who would pass for angry social media gurus, when accorded free intellectual spaces to exert themselves, they would thrive.

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Yowana Yakubu's Law: Abolishing corporal Punishment

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

My heart sunk with agony of a tremendous loss after reading about the death of Yowana Yakubu of Iganga. Yowana, a nine years old pupil lost his life at a tender age in the presence of his teacher, Ms Kiwanuka. The teacher ordered a whipping for the victim by a fellow student over a common misdemeanor of "talking in class". This reckless cause of death has yet deprived Uganda of a young life in its infancy. A law against corporal punishment in our school must inevitably get enacted and named in memory of Yowana Yakubu. The story of Yowana Yakubu (RIP) is not a rare coincidence. 

Corporal punishment has been a feature of Uganda’s education system for many decades. Like the colonial curriculum that Uganda’s educators can’t overhaul, corporal punish has already found a life of its own inside that very system.

There was progress being made towards eliminating this vice from the education system. Research in all aspects of education reveals that beating a child is not one of the ways of enforcing learning. Usually, terror elicits survival and rowdy instincts, not learning curiosity and yet the Ugandan education system remains pegged to the use of such a rudimentary method.

I recall very well that in 1997, the government had put a moratorium on any forms of corporal punishment in schools. Subsequently, corporal punishment was abolished completely when UPE policy came into effect. A parent would have expected that beating students ceased to exist a decade or two ago.

The real challenge is that the quality of teacher’s education has not changed to reflect new methods of reinforcing discipline other than corporal punishment. Uganda’s elementary school teachers are some of the most poorly educated in the world. With certificates and college diplomas, Uganda’s teachers are below their counterparts in middle income or first world countries in formative years’ education with masters and PhD preparations. Unless a pragmatic approach is adopted to improve on the standards and quality of our teaching workforce, our schools will remain a chaotic place in the third world and will not create a vibrant workforce suitable for a first world country.

The life of Yowana Yakubu was a very special one. The lad had lost his mother and was taken to a village in Iganga, Eastern Uganda, to live with his poor grandmother. In many ways, Yowana was the consolation item for the grandmother and perhaps, a reason for the poor lady to have to cope with the loss of the daughter (mother of Yowana). Now, this teacher decided to make a fatal decision that, even if unintended to have taken the life of the child, was reckless enough to have done so.

For the last couple of years, my work in public schools and the community ensured that I promoted the enforcement of Sabrina’s law here in Toronto. Sabrina Shannon was an eccentric girl, quite inspirational, warm and kind hearted toward her peers and the people around her. In 2003, Sabrina died in her first secondary school year. Sabrina’s cause of death was an anaphylactic reaction triggered by diary protein which came from cross contamination of tongs used for poutine which made contact with her fries at the school Canteen.

Sabrina’s death shocked the entire school system and the Province and raised the issue of school safety. Through the deliberate activism of Sabrina’s parents to prevent other children from meeting such avoidable deaths, the Province of Ontario adopted the Sabrina’s Law.  In 2005, the Sabrina’s law (Bill 3), also known as “Anaphylactic Law”, was passed into legislation and it became effective in all schools in Ontario. The law requires that all schools trains its employees, including janitors and bus drivers, how to identify anaphylactic situations, respond adequately and where necessary, administer the epi-pen (epinphylin injection) to save life of the child. In Ontario, all children with allergies have their epi-pens at hand and their pictures are displayed in the Principal’s office for monitoring of symptoms. Measures to prevent any episodes of allergies, such as a ban on all nuts and other known allergens have been put in place and these rules are monitored frequently.

Given the swift response of the Police to the scene of Yowana’s death, one would expect that such an awful event could be the tipping point for Ministry of Education and the government of Uganda to take stern actions against the ministration of corporal punishment in our schools. I would propose that anti-corporal punishment law be adopted and named "Yowana Yakubu’s Law" in memory of the nine years old lad deprived of life at a tender age.

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The roots of Museveni’s economic optimism

STATE-OF-THE-NATION ANALYSIS

            The quality of the State-of-the-Nation speech has clearly deteriorated. It is no longer a platform where the President provides accountability of what is transpiring in his regime. This year, we saw the President failing to account for his promises of previous years and in stead, loaded with semantics and the gospel.

            The key features of this State-of-the-Nation speech for me were the projection of the economic path and the mediocrity with which corruption was addressed. The President stated that the GDP is growing at the rate of 5.1% annually; inflation rate tamed to 3.6%; foreign reserves grown to US$3.3 billion; export earnings are trickling in at US$4.9b and; remittances from Ugandans from abroad has increased to US$767.26 millions. Interestingly, the total size of GDP of Uganda has expanded to Shs54.7 trillion (Read Daily Monitor). Because of these improvements in growth, the President projected that Uganda is on steady path to a social transformation which will see it become a first world country by 2050.

            The President also hinted that NRM is an expert in fighting corruption, giving examples of the corrupt officials in the office of the Prime Minister and in Public Service who are now facing legal actions. needless to mention that, no matter how these fellows are arraigned, as long as Permanent secretary Pius Bigirimana is still at large, the entire corruption fight will be undermined. There were many rants, but overall, as a citizen and one of the Ugandans abroad who contribute to the economy, I found this rosy painting of Uganda’s economic path to be an exaggeration beyond imagination.

            I would agree with the President that Uganda can be a middle income country by 2017 and first world country by 2050 if there were structures put in place to reconcile the current legal and black economies. First, the rampant corruption and poor service delivery attitudes in Uganda undermines any genuine development efforts; secondly, the President deliberately failed to recognize the unequal wealth distribution that is creating distinct disparities between citizens and classes. In painting a rosy picture of Uganda's future, it is obvious that the President is not speaking for all Ugandans and worst so, not even for the majority 70% of everyday Ugandans.

            Obviously, the fight against corruption in Uganda has failed because corruption as a vice is also the self sustaining production of state functionaries. The moral or ethical exhortations against corruption by religious institutions have also failed. The legal processes such as enacting laws, establishing rules and framing anti-corruption policies have also failed. These failures are inherent in the corrupt practices that prevail at each stage of these processes, such that each piece of anti-corruption legislation that emerges, becomes banal from the onset.

Class analysis

            To fully understand the complexity of the President’s challenge, a class analysis would be appropriate. This would enable us to understand which class is placed where, in the chain-link of corruption. Uganda’s class stratification could be simplified to include the ruling class, the working class and the peasants.

            Most of Uganda’s wealth is distributed among the political class, who are also the most corrupted, forming the top 1% on the corruption pyramid. This group relies solely on economic extortion and handouts from the state. The working class (lumpen proletariat), micro-traders, and the public servants form the 29%. These act as the main transmitters/deal brokers, distributors of corruption and the bridge between the 1% and the majority 70% comprising of peasants and powerless peri-urban (slum) dwellers, beggars, layabouts and so on.

The rampant corruption perpetuated by the ruling class has created two sets of parallel economy running concurrently; the legal economy and the illegal or “black” economy borne out of corruption, tax evasion, looting and stashing money in foreign banks in Switzerland, Israel, Rwanda etc.

            Conservatively, we can estimate that the current size of the black economy is up to about 50% of the legal economy considering the billions of taxpayer’s money that have been siphoned off and those unaccounted for in the last decade alone.

Some statistics

            On June 5^th, 2013, the Daily Monitor published a report in which the Uganda Revenue Authority listed about 310 companies that are bound to default its tax obligation. Among them is Hot-Loaf Bakery belonging to the President’s younger brother, Amos Nzeyi. The total owing from tax defaulting from these companies was estimated to be in the range of Shs.170.26b. On June 23, 2012, the government newspaper – The New Vision reported that Ugandans have stashed Shs.400b in the Swiss National Bank alone. This excludes the moneys in other countries such as Israel, UK, US and investments in foreign countries, such as Rwanda, Kenya and India. Already, Uganda’s annual budget depends on 29% of donors’ funding, a significant portion of which is lost to corruption annually. In fact, estimates by World Bank are that Uganda looses US $300M of donor money to corruption every year. These, with a plethora of illegal economic activities that goes under the radar, such as illegal trade in arms, timber, mineral resources, especially gold from Karamoja, land transactions, payment to ghost public servants and bribes solicited from investors, could amount to about 50% of our legal economy. And, it is getting even bigger!

The hands behind it
The perpetrators of the black economy are known. This shoddy deal is ring-fenced at the upper echelon and ranking associated with ruling family, security operative, foreign investors and the lumpen proletariats. The working class is coerced into corruption because of political patronage by the ruling class. The peasants have come to honor the vice since the legal and just process of wealth distribution has collapsed under the weight of the predatory ruling class and their associates.

Implications   

            It is important to put the significance of this “black” economy in perspective. First, this money is absolutely private capital with no legal control over it and no public scrutiny whatsoever. It is not taxed and society cannot use it for public good, such as investing in transportation, energy or health sectors. It is, in its own right, capital as any legal wealth but circulating away from the reach of the public.  No one fully understands the volume of this capital as it has evolved over the years. The implication is that the current ruling class is holding much of their capital outside the state control and yet they continue to feast also on public resources in such a predatory manner.  It is this class, which is unpatriotic and treacherous to Uganda and Africa as a whole.

            The above factors cloud the prospects of Uganda becoming a first world country in 2050 or a middle income country by 2017. The root of the Presidents’ optimism may perhaps be inspired by the capacity of the black economy in the hands of the ruling class of which he is a member.

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Media Censorship is the litmus test of a dictatorship

MEDIA CENSORSHIP

The Daily Monitor newspaper withered yet another storm that lasted 11 days for telling the truth every day. The DM is not only a respected independent newspaper; it is also the paper that many Ugandans identify with as a fair platform where all voices can find a home, unlike in the New Vision where all views must be sympathetic to NRM warped “ideals”. The media platform provided by the DM is a unique one which exemplifies cardinal principles of tolerance, equity and justice. At the bottom of it all, we realize that increased media censorship is the litmust test of a fully blown dictatorship.

The trade in truth telling is one which has unambiguous challenges. One of those is in the relative nature of the truth itself. What may appear to be the truth to one person may not be for the other. In that case, objective truth becomes the only means by which a franchise like the DM can survive in murky and corrupted country like Uganda where even the right hand of one person often doubts its left compatriot despite being on the same body and worked by the same brain.

Further, it is only rational that objective truth must be told at any cost every day even when this might rub some people in the wrong part of the shoulder. This lesson was learnt in the weeks that the DM was occupied by the Uganda Police and military personnel who claimed they were searching for a letter which was written by Gen Sejusa aka Tinyefuza. This letter claimed that there is a plan to assassinate senior military officers opposed to a Muhoozi project. Apparently, there is a grand plan to have Brig Muhoozi, the President’s son anointed heir apparent to the throne.

So, if we all agree that the truth must be told, where does a newspaper like DM go wrong in reporting what Gen Sejusa believed was the truth considering his portfolio as coordinator of national security? How on earth would DM or Redpepper verify such a claim other than believe it from the mouth of the horse itself? Gen Sejusa was the coordinator of security agencies in Uganda and therefore an authority and an impeccable source of information on the inside workings of security issues in Uganda.

The fact that the DM was bullied into apologizing for doing their work well does not eliminate the problem that Gen Sejusa wrote about. It only escalates the problem because we have learnt something new about the regime’s intolerance and fear of the truth. Little wonder then that most times, when public relations officers from any government institution address an issue, the first obvious lines expected are outright denial of basic facts, foolery and then loads of zingers.

Take for example the current military spokesman, Paddy Ankunda. He was not ashamed to deny the basic truth that some military officers are barred from retiring from the army. We all know that Kiiza Besigye was initially refused from leaving the army when he disagreed with the system. Tinyefuza was actually dragged back into the army using the most atrocious of means and in the news, the former army commander Gen Nyakairima was also refused a request to retire from the army.

The government should only be fair and stop compelling professionals to compromise on their ethics and performances. For instance, Ofwono Opondo is a journalist and he knows that the very umbilicus of journalism is tied to the code of confidentiality. A journalist is only one, when s/he can keep the integrity of his/her sources unexposed and can actually go to jail or loose life over revealing their sources.

Further, it is sad to know that the biggest impediment to verifying “truth” in a story is with the inability of government agencies to yield credible information or compel journalists to reveal their sources. If government could strengthen its data or information gathering and sharing mechanisms with the journalist, there would never be a problem of “untruth” arising. Very often, any truth, when reported by the media, is considered security threat. The dilemma is that the media does not have any benchmark to determine what portion of “truth” comprises security risk. For instance, would reporting graft involving a military officer, Cabinet Ministers or Prime Minister constitute national security threat?

Given the challenge that the DM and Redpepper newspapers endured, the media fraternity must take the opportunity to demand for respect, transparency and a mechanism through which objective truth can be reported without drawing acrimony from the state. It is unfortunate that the Uganda Police conducted itself in such a manner contemptuous to the rule of law when they refused to respect court orders to vacate the occupation of DM and Redpepper.

The role of responsible journalism in a young democracy like Uganda is no doubt situated at the very pinnacles of its evolution. Nonetheless, objective and responsible journalism does not mean arm twisting, one-sided censorship like what we expect the DM to oblige to, after making the apologies for no wrongs committed. The onus is on the state to improve on its commitment to constitutionalism and rule of law.

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