NRM Ideology is Incomplete without Duplicity, Militarism and Violence

FALSE IDEOLOGY

Last week, I was treated to one of the best feature stories in a long while. The Daily Monitor on January 30^th, 2016 ran an article titled “What political ideology does NRM stand for?” I found that article very insightful and thought provoking. It incisively unpacked the falsification of what has been promoted as NRM ideology, whereas it is not.

A series by senior Congressman, Amb. Harold Acemah in which he meticulously offered an insightful review of Yoga Adhola’s book had pre-occupied me with the DM. In reading this article about NRM ideology, I reflected very deeply on the various presentations, speeches, short writings and books written by Mr. Museveni and that of Yoga Adhola.

When one reads and interacts with Mzee Yoga Adhola, two parallels emerge; first, in the discourse of explaining ideology, only a true understanding of the deceptions in NRM's ideology emerge as a clutter of ideas. It reveals that Ugandans are not ideologically disorientation, in-fact, the reverse is true. Second, it is easily deducible from the many writings of Mzee Yoga Adhola, Kajabangu ka-Rusoke and Harold Acemah, et al., that the NRM’s central ideology is incomplete without a mention of duplicity, militarism and violence.

In December 2015, President Museveni made a long speech that was carried by many Dailies, titled, “Every political organization must have an ideology”. In that speech, the President defined ideology as the diagnosis of society’s problems and the prescriptions for the cure of those problems. Mr. Museveni claimed that the NRM ideology emerged from the questions: What are the factors that can lead our society, our tribes, our clams, our families, to prosperity in the context of the modern world characterized as it is by the money nexus? And; What are the factors that can lead these component parts of society to security? Accordingly, the answer to these two questions are Prosperity and Security - these became the cornerstones of the so-called NRM ideology.

The search for Prosperity is indeed complimentary to matters of security. Every wealthy member of community, clan, family or individual needs security for his wealth and himself. I found the explanation of NRM ideology as search for Prosperity and Security to be contradictory - either an intellectual fallacy or a dissonance. Look, the history of Uganda is littered with the domineering presence of Mr. Museveni as the active ingredient of violence and insecurity.

Nonetheless, Africa as a continent has many of its own problems. One of such, is intellectual dishonesty, and dishonesty generally. It is imbued in the cultures and conflicting identities of the elite and middle class people who are torn between their Eurocentric conceptualization of the world and their Afrocentric realities.

Any ideology that searches desperately for prosperity and maximization of profit, is obviously capitalistic. The afflictions of capitalism are all well known to society, but the grinding depravity it creates in society is the mainstay of societal conflicts, pitting the wealthy exploiters against the exploited majority. In Capitalist societies, the exploiters are vicious, building towards the so-called 1% who control all the means of production, while the impoverished 99% are left to vend their labour, alienated from the product of it and live perpetually in the shadows of Prosperity. 

The clamour for security by Mr. Museveni therefore signifies the ever increasing inequities in society, where his cronies and foreign investors, the coveted 1%, own nearly 99% of wealth in this country. This makes security becomes a necessity for that group's sustained status quo. 

The real challenge then, is that the, NRM constantly evades its own ideological problems. The NRM was built on reactionary philosophies and dominant pre-independent political thoughts of 1950s and 60s. Mostly liberation sentimentalism from Regis Debray, Franz Fanon et cetra, most of which were, in turn, grounded in Marxism. Unfortunately, the NRM never actually outgrew these mentalities in practice once they became state actors. As such, they are stuck with a contradicting persona, a Marxist spirit with a Capitalist intent.

The Army and the core NRM doctrines remains fiercely Marxist, camouflaged as Pan Africanism. And yet, its policies espouse mindless pursuit of prosperity. The NRM has become diametrically a vicious capitalist.

At the end of it all, Mr. Museveni must liberate himself from self-deceit so as to reconcile his conflicting ideological issues that is causing conflict in society. It is these contradictions that have seen the country split between a terribly impoverished population, and extremely wealthy few. The steady decline and decay of Public facilities and social services reflect the poor judgement and misdiagnosis of the real problems of Uganda. At least, Uganda is not an experiment.

END