Identity Politics has become the landmark of NRM regime

IDENTITY POLITICS

In writing this article, I have made deep reflections on the evolution of NRM regime in its close to 30 years rule. Most interesting is the current manifestations of the regime, from a promising state builder into the very political organism for which its predecessors were condemned. We all recall in the late 80s and 90s when President Museveni, then liked by the masses as messiah incarnate, would berate the Obote’s UPC regime as a government which had perpetuated tribal factionalism, escalated religious divisionism and above all, a regime that was characterized by obscurantism.

To Museveni, the NRM had come with ten point programs, one key facet of it was the restoration of true democracy, establishing meritocracy in individual merit and so on. That the first ten point programs became the commandments of failures and were revised to fifteen points, then shelved, reveals the point of deviation to where we are today.

President Museveni has excelled in symbolic misrepresentation of both his intentions and relations. Where he promises rule of law and democracy, he instituted and ruled by legal notices, which in themselves are dictatorial decrees; where he promised free democratic society, he imposes the draconian article 269 in the 1995 Constitution to limit fundamental human liberties and rights of people to associate or indulge in free speech and he presides over rigged elections.

These, and many more, explains why it was inevitable for the NRM to become in all purposes and intent, the very vice for which it had promised to resolve.

Today, every public institution is confronted by breakages. Since independence, Uganda’s public service has suffered enormous neglect and mismanagement. Indigenous Ugandans have to endure limited options for basic and fundamental services like healthcare. Our hospitals have become a place where death is vended. 

Schools are in worse possible shape in history and for the record, even the government agrees that the education standards are at its lowest, regionally. Ministry of transportation, roads and infrastructure authorities have presided over the decay of the public transport sector with poor infrastructure all around the country.

Today, Uganda is experiencing growth in the private sector where ordinary Ugandans have been left unprotected against the vagaries of rogue individuals and private institutions. 

Hard-working Ugandans are losing homes over unsustainable mortgages whose rates are unstable; Banks are in cahoots with loan sharks to rip off hard working citizens while the regime watches with glee. The counterfeit products are being imported into the country in full gaze of the regime's minders; food prices are soaring by the day with scarcity of almost every basic food items despite the fact that Uganda still relies on agro-based economy.

Amidst these all, something more stellar a revelation must be made out of courage – identity politics has become the landmark of the NRM regime. 

If the UPC regime got the country divided on ethnic identities, the NRM regime has excelled in perpetuating identity politics. This is something they deny, but available facts counterpoises their obscurantism which is pedaled by a well orchestrated machination.

Frantz Fanon has argued that the chief consequence of identity politics is the rift in the nation along religious and ethnic boundaries. Fanon identifies that it is the national bourgeoisie who flame these religious and ethnic divides for which they are major beneficiaries.

In the case of Uganda's malicious middle class, we must find a plausible explanation to the prevailing rampant decadence in social services and in public institutions. This is attributable to identity politics, if not identity crisis.

We all know that the bush war NRA was founded on the basis of ethnicity in the pretext of fighting the same vice. The original 27 people who started the 1980 bush-war were all people from same ethnic group. The NRM government has retained such a characteristic through its close to 30 years in power. Majority of cabinet and key public service positions are retained by persons from the Western part of Uganda.  

Incidentally, the bulk of the NRA guerillas were nourished by many sons and daughters of former Rwandese exiles living in Western Uganda since 1959. Today, many of them have taken up Ugandan citizenship, while equal number or more, continued to hold dual identities of Ugandan and Rwandese – like the recently slain Col Patrick Karegyera - thereby setting grounds for identity conflict and crisis in loyalty to Uganda as we saw in the Kisangani conflicts. 

And yet, In Uganda, this group wields enormous power and are influential in both private and public sectors. Those in government are strategically located in key military and government positions where their influence remains visibly profound.

Herein lies the dilemma, could the conflicting identities and crisis in loyalty also explains the disparity in degree of commitment to public service delivery between Uganda and Rwanda? Why is Rwanda governed meticulously with social services delivered to near efficiency while in Uganda things have fallen completely apart? Why do we endure this high disregard for public utility in Uganda, while in Rwanda every public officer is accountable, professional and efficient?

In his book, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon explains that identity politics generate distinctive situations that wear the spirit of a nation out; the ruling class becomes sympathetic to the bourgeoisie who don’t usually care about the welfare of the masses and nation building. Avigail Eisenberg and Will Kymlicker in their 2011 book “Identity politics in public realms: Bringing institutions back in” provided a robust analysis of state response to identity politics and illuminated both the risks and opportunities embedded in state response to identity claims. They concluded that public institutions can either enhance or distort the benefits of identity politics based on the agency of citizenship.

The above citations show that the Ugandan regime has increasingly become supportive of predatory middle class, many of whom are direct beneficiaries or a prodigy of the regime itself. And yet these groups are faced with identity conflict leading to crisis in loyalty to Uganda and to public service. Because of the crucial positions that this conflicted group dominate, the regime’s utmost interests have grown to become exclusively mutual with that of the many impoverished and disenfranchised common citizens of Uganda.

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