IEC should afford integrity and fairness to 2021 Elections

 SAVINGS ELECTIONS

 The gory scenes of Police vandalizing Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi's vehicle on his nomination day and battering his adherents conjured up frighteningly with the rather comical scene where the same police violently violated the FDC President, Hon. Patrick Amuriat. These events may serve the dictatorial regime, but it deprives the 2021 Elections of its much-needed integrity, decency, and fairness.

We should not tolerate violent elections or unfettered state violence against the opposition.

Images of scenes where journalists are battered to a coma while on duty tells a tale of tyranny and leaves quite impactful trauma in the mind of those who experience or witness it.

Those who care to read into and internalize this regime's militant engagement with the public rightfully have a very low expectation of 2021 Elections. As a social critique, the only plausible claim to any NRM ideology is militarism and its raw violence.  The conduct of the 2021 elections embodies this militarization in as much as the militarized agricultural programs or COVID-19 lockdown measures. And, the violence just increases at every subsequent election without an end in sight.

Comrades Kyagulanyi and Amuriat must take heed of these trends. I know they are doing their very best to remain level headed, calm and peaceful, however, even Chinua Achebe advises that any handshake which goes beyond the elbow, turns into something else. Solving sociopolitical problems using rampant and unjustifiable use of excessive state violence only helps to radicalize our youths and subdue our population. Thus, undermining the democratic processes.

The COVID-19 lockdown revealed a snippet of how meticulous militarism can go on a civilian population. The violence effectively immobilizes and disengages the opposition from interfacing with the voters and then generates voters' apathy towards the electoral process and its outcomes.

For democracy to occur, its tenets must be alive, and freedoms must be afforded to all.  How possible could Candidates Kabuleta traverse over 145 districts in 60 days when the only Candidate Museveni with rights to fly choppers and use the media unfettered?

The Byabakama's electoral commission has played its part in undermining the integrity of the elections covertly and overtly by their policy of non-action against police brutality on opposition candidates. Without equal access to the electronic media, this digital or so-called smart election is itself a big fat farce.

 The IEC must establish a clear rule to enable all Candidates equal and unencumbered access to the media. In Uganda, the NRM has consolidated its control over the media/press and press freedoms. The media is over-infiltrated, censored, surveilled, and most governed by the regime's cadres and operatives to the detriment of freedom of expression. As such, intellectual debates over the media have been curtailed and intellectualism has declined profoundly. 

 As it looks, Presidential Candidates, Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi and Hon. Patrick Amuriat will not be tolerated on the media waves to reach their audiences. I can predict that the regime may tolerate Hon. Mao and Gen. Muntu more for their benign presence on election tracks. Already Kyagulanyi is not even allowed to visit a district other than his own home in Magere or campaign venues.

 Further, the conduct of the militarized NRM police is a sobering indicator that there will not be any fairness in the 2021 elections. The so-called Independent Electoral Commission serves a mere functionality of legitimating an already flawed process if they cannot protect candidates and subdue the police. You could see how the Commissioners were so self-absolved and least bothered that Hon. Amuriat walked bare feet to his nomination at Kyambogo. That insensitivity ought to be called out. 

 The main conclusion is that the integrity and fairness of 2021 elections are on the line. The IEC should guarantee access to the media, control the police, and ensure free access to district facilities. 

End.

 

Raiding Opposition offices reveals the limit of Democracy in Uganda

 DICTATORSHIP

We woke up on Wednesday to the news that a combined force of the Ugandan army and police had raided the offices of Presidential hopeful and the charismatic youthful legislator from Kyadondo East, Hon Robert Ssentamu Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine.

Both the army and police have not explained their motive or whether there is a formal investigation. The armed forces detained more than 100 supporters of the NUP party. But the marauding forces took literally every document, computers, and whatever they could land on to stifle the nascent party from organizing itself to challenge the dictatorship in the forthcoming elections. The police confiscated nomination, promotional items, and apparently some money intended to pay for NUP flagbearers in the just-concluded parliamentary nominations.

The raid on the NUP head office is not the first of its kind and will not be the last. The Forum for Democratic Change Party, Uganda’s largest opposition party has suffered its own episodes. The same combination of army and police have raided party headquarters at Najjanankumbi multiple times and at critical times, to carry away computers and sensitive party documents before, during, and after elections.

The problem is that Ugandans take these violent state assaults as a mere episode, thereby ripping it of the context in which such acts should be assessed and understood.

The limits of democracy in NRM’s Uganda has been apparent and yet we fail to read it correctly. John Stuart Mills once expressed his fears of how monstrous democracy can be. Mills was concerned with the tyranny of the majority over the minority and argued that such tyranny could generate and impose on the population certain moral rules and culture that the people may not necessarily want. Lenin was more cynical about democracy and many prominent scholars have asked whether democracy even exists.

In Uganda, where the military dictatorship is preoccupied with violence, what passes for democracy is what Lenin prescribed as the opportunity to spread propaganda to the backward strata. The origin of liberal democracy is exactly what democracy is now reinforcing in Uganda. Democracy arose as resentment to the monarchical monopoly over power. Democracy aimed at ensuring that ordinary people made decisions on how they wished to be ruled and served. This gave prominence to equality in society, recognized individual will and rights, which must be exercised freely among free men (and later women).

The conditions that constituted a “free man” has eluded Africans and particularly, Ugandans, making our democracy stale.

The freeman in Africa was demolished by events leading to and including colonialism. The violent way that states in Africa were formed must be examined formally elsewhere. However, both the colonial state and hegemony were entrenched through absolute violence. 

Franz Fanon ably linked the colonial psychological violence to pervasive psychiatric problems for the colonized. Elsewhere you read about physical violence, seclusion, deprivation, and so forth. These forms of violence have a transgenerational impact that must be properly studied and understood. It seems that chronic repression deforms society in as much as a chronic monopoly of power deforms its bearers.

The Ugandan state has maintained this finesse of colonial violence and the Museveni regime not only usurped that violent state apparatus, they even sharpened it.

In such a suppressive condition, the free will of man is also squashed. There remain men without liberty and freedom, but only dependent men whose "free will" becomes their token for subsistence. That free will becomes the preserve of violence. Under such a condition, liberation is reduced to a personal endeavor to supplicate the regime’s middle class, for whatever they can spare.

There is no democracy without free will. This pervasive state violence means Ugandans will not be able to change their government through the ballot in the next thirty years. Those who try to challenge the tyrants will be violently raided, even killed.

END.

Uganda Elites' fear-mongering discourses against Kyagulanyi erodes our democratic rights

FEARMONGERING

The Uganda elites have been most unfair to Hon. Kyagulanyi since he emerged as a firebrand opposition leader. They have treated Kyagulanyi condescendingly without letting up. Kyagulanyi, however, has continuously manifested himself in the total opposite of those who frame him as an elusive object of fear. The groups most vicious in their onslaught are even embedded within the enterprise opposition.

In politics, we understand the role of paid propaganda as part of the discourse production to sustain the status quo. A discourse is usually evidence-driven views, both textual and discursive that prevails in society as part of the dominant idea. These are transmitted either consciously or unconsciously to the masses to shape perspectives and decision-making in favour of those who produce it – those in power.

In the Ugandan context, “innuendo and rumours” have “replaced evidence-based” in as much as violence and impunity have replaced due process in laws. The rumours and innuendos gain legitimacy through certain individuals with power. Their sources of power could be patriarchy, crooked professionalism and experience, wealth and marital polyandrous status drawn from having regime ties and privileges.

Over time, the core arguments levelled against People Power Movement have varied and some, strange; yet unchallenged.

That Kyagulanyi’s group draws mainly from low life rascals, the “unwashed” of slums and are to be feared – as if Kyagulanyi produces slum dwellers.

Another group claimed that Kyagulanyi is violent, unpredictable and capable of derailing the rented elite conveniences under the repression – these hate to hear sentiments such as freedom or liberation.

Other groups argue that opposing Museveni’s tyranny and draconian laws equate to triggering a war – these pessimists do not realize that Hon. Kyagulanyi does not command an army or speak the language of violence.

Then there are the “Obama birthers” equivalent among desktop academics - these claim that Hon. Kyagulanyi is not academically sophisticated or experienced to lead Uganda - such groups fail to produce desktop evidence showing that high-level academics have delivered transformational corruption-free leadership anywhere in African since independence.

The non-Baganda groups argue that the People Power Movement, and now the National Unity Platform Party is a Ganda-centric ethnic consciousness whose central leadership is exclusive and hostile to non-Baganda – this group sits by and does nothing to probe up their own ethnic consciousness against misrule.

However, the most prominent of the siasa discourse emanates from the sensational propagandist, Mr Andrew Mwenda – that people power is a group of radical intolerant extremists capable of lynching anyone with whom they are disagreeable – this line disregards the main source of violence as Mr. Museveni, whose regime “crushes” any forms of organized opposition.

Of course, all of these claims are contrived and lack both substance and good intentions. Time has decomposed some of them with the failing the reputation of their proponents such as Mwenda.

Absolutely, it is not my place to speak for PPM or Mr. Kyagulanyi. However, as a righteous citizen of Uganda, it is important for me to redirect the masses away from the petty politics of fear and defending rented convenience.

I know that Mr. Museveni and group came to power with a one-way ticket and will do anything to retire in power.  Thus, exposing Uganda’s elite pretensions in this repressive environment can alleviate the fear levels.

Uganda is one of the many African countries where unconscionable elderly statemen are in charge of a very young population. These fellows are far more concerned with the hereafter than us who should concern ourselves about our future.

In generating and sustaining fear-mongering propaganda against Hon. Kyagulanyi, we collectively violated our own civic rights as citizens of Uganda with contempt and narrow the democratic space.

In sum, we are consciously digging our graves wider and deeper beneath the Museveni’s decades-long entrenched dictatorship by embracing fearmongering discourses.

END.

Of Gulu City's Illicit trades, Part 2

ILLICIT TRADES

In the first part about Gulu dames, I decried the Gulu elites’ bashing of prostitution as a viable economy. I recognized that prostitution is a blight in our societal conscience. I took exception of child prostitution and attempted to explain with many difficulties, the genesis of child prostitution as the total

breakdown of our social safety nets. Most of these maladies of society are exacerbated in the

post-conflict Acholi. 

I also paled off any pretense that Acholi that we know now, is as conservative, morally, as the Acholi we knew before the war. In this section, I guide my readers to what we should do. I start by enumerating the inevitability of societal evolution.

Far from Gulu, the other worlds have evolved spectacularly within the liberalised economic doctrine.

They have developed liberal markets where every item that money can buy, are sold. With such a

market, many of our vulnerable persons become commodities. Children become commodities,

not just for sex, but for labour, organs, research, trafficking, objects of luscious fetish, and so on.

A researcher, Kevin Bales concluded that these humans – without a proper and firm foundation

in a protective society, become disposable human beings. The children are used and recycled and

sometimes disposed of in mass graves.

An old report by the International Organization of Migration (IOM) revealed that children and

young women from East Africa, including Uganda, are being enticed by a mere plate of cooked

food and trafficked into the global line of human sex trafficking. These are serious concerns that

we should not turn into our past time gossip subjects. 

Clarity

I am not saying that prostitution is good. I am saying that it is despicable. Prostitution is a sign of

societal failures to provide equal opportunity for all. I am reiterating that prostitution is our

reality of a failed society. I am saying that by spending time lambasting the people who earn a

living as prostitutes, maybe someone should begin to understand them beyond their trade or that

identity – to look at them as daughters, parents, and citizens of value in a perverted society. 

Had it not been for COVID-19, and had it not been for the hunger associated with the quarantine

to force these women to place our leaders at “pussy point” as Bosmic Otim said, very few people

could have known that prostitution is marketable in Gulu. We now know that the demand for

prostitutes is high. We also know now that the most profitable consumers are Gulu local leaders.

A condition must exist for an event to emerge.

I am saying that these women lacked, and still lack opportunities for alternative income-

generating activities. , I am certain that we could do more for them as a society.– We could

initiate public policies that will provide a safety net for the children, make a demand for

prostitution unsavory and retrain these women into productive citizens.

Lastly, the colorful language we employ in describing prostitution is simply uncouth, violent,

dismissive, and barbaric. These people are earning a living and partaking in a sensitive sector of

the pleasure economy. They should be legalized, and their trade legitimized as work, licensed,

and therefore taxed. The taxes could be levied from designated operation chambers – brothels,

bars, stages, or hotels. 

As such, the women will no longer be called prostitutes, but dignified Sex Workers with rights

and respect like all traders and workers. This group, however, becomes of the essence for public

health, thus the necessity for licensure. Society must also be careful to discern the prostitutes

from the prostituted and sex workers. This can help in identifying the Pimps, Johns, and Madams

early on. Prostitutes do it voluntarily, independently, and are perverse. The prostituted are forced,

exploited, and often mistreated – children and disempowered rural women. The sex workers

have more rights and recognition in society because of their legal status. They could even have a

Union. It is hard to find a city in the world that has settled the issue of sex-workers, prostitution and prostituted decisively. One thing we must safeguard, however, is our people from

exploitation, human trafficking, and cruel treatment. The Bishops are allowed to disagree with

me!

End.

Evaluate the role of Political Parties in Uganda's democracy

PARTY POLITICS

I read Norbert Mao’s piece titled “Political Parties are key in democracy” in the Daily Monitor of Aug 2, 2020, that reminds us of the relevance of political parties in a pluralist democracy. Mao observes that political parties galvanizing the socio-political spheres in a polity through enforcing a set of core beliefs.

In adjoining this discussion, I emphatically assess that political parties in Uganda have been in abeyance for too long and have collectively lost their shine. Mao presides over the oldest political party in the country – the Democratic Party. His sobering recollection could, therefore, affirm that his own party’s values have faded and hard to recognise. As a seasoned lawyer and politician, Mao has a commanding knowledge and experience in party politics where he is held hostage to a turbulent party environment.  One challenge is that reinventing parties that are subsumed in a chronically repressive environment and yet strives to partake in a sham democracy willingly becomes a major contradiction.

Youths reading Mao’s article becomes doubtful if political parties in Uganda actually adhere to any core values or perform those roles, functions or responsibilities as Mao articulated. When I read the article, I struggled to delineate between Mao’s ideals and parties’ realities in the Ugandan political context.

The youthful Ugandans are acquainted with the abnormalities of parties and not their core values. Uganda has 29 registered political parties. Some are sold like pancakes to the highest bidders. Most are briefcase elements for pomp and defections. Those established and barely functioning parties are themselves war zones - places for quarrels, fights, and protracted tribal wars; or even where to rebrand for meal cards politics. Parties in opposition are known as the nexus of both physical and mental poverty.  There are parties in Uganda that have built reputations as the political uterus in which potential NRM cadres are conceived.

Ugandan Political Parties are treacherous and have become a reservoir of the politics of violent confrontations. The NRM regime has pulled out the gut material from all political parties and organizations rendering them clientele agencies. When Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi bought NUP, some people lamented that the People Power sophistication had ended. This is how people have strayed away from Parties.

Under Museveni, Parties are like bars - enclaves for political hotheads to cool off. Talk about flattening the political pressure curve! Party leaders are mostly listening post for the ruling regime, making it hard to trust any of them.

Mao needed to move beyond validating political parties and reinventing their relevance for future generations. Parties in Uganda have outgrown their usefulness. It is time for movements that are not legally bound to the repressive laws of the regime to take center stage. Parties have left spaces for robust social movements and various non-traditional formations to emerge. Ugandans should take those spaces to liberate the nation from impunity. Parties no longer command such ideological thrust and have alienated the majority of Ugandans from the democratic process. Parties are no longer repositories of trust and preferred engines for social transformation because they have not shown maturity or brought the desired change when all they do is fight for flagbearer position.

In the Ugandan context, no Political Party can survive in a political environment when it has no independent source of well managed and steady revenue. Paid party membership must have significantly declined over the decades.  Parties cannot contribute meaningfully to democracy when they are resource-constrained and operated on a non-democratic non-value basis. Thus, the sad realization about Uganda’s political parties is that they are prone to imperialism and elite class collaborations with foreign donors and exploiters.

End.

The Acholi Dames - Part 1

#AcholiDames: Part 1

Pauline Lagot and Nancy Aber have been friends from childhood. Both were children of Police Officers in Gulu. Their best memories were playing nyorio and kedu wic (weaving hair) on the verandah of holy Rosary School back in the days.

With the war raging, the two girls took a different life's path. Each going with the twirl of opportunity available at the time. Pauline went to Sacred Heart in Gulu, and Nancy went to Trinity College, Nabingo. The choice of the school reveals how deeply entrenched their families were in the Catholic faith. And, like most of their contemporaries, a Sunday mass at Holy Rosary was exhilarating.

Once separated, the two girls tried as much as possible to communicate, by writing letters, when they could. Those snail mails of the 90s were the ropes that strum them together. The Postal bus service was the most reliable means of delivering the letters from one end to the other.

Recently, Pauline found her bundle of letters from Nancy and she re-read them again. The page on which these words were inscribed, became the scene for articulating and etching a beautiful vision that would never be realized.

These letters are so detailed, the points raised with deep thought and passion, notwithstanding the overbearing girlish imaginary.  The content reveals that girls have the same, if not even better concerns and great aspirations as boys. In fact, much more than boys at their age. They reveal that young women mature early and yet their aspirations are nurtured late, leading to missed opportunities.  

One thing that the girls vowed to each other was to grow into change agents. “I want to change the world”, Nancy wrote in one letter. Pauline replies: “ I dream to work hard and own half of the world. My father should live to see my success”. No one at this time fantasized about a marriage.

And, as fate would adorn them, they had great prospects - great social support around them. Their perseverance through adolescence could be accredited fully to stability within their families. Both families were humble, modest, but intensely hovering, imposing, and regimented. There were order and accountability, respect, and a sense of forwarding thrust. No one sat on their hands or spent time kissing their teeth Infinitum.

 The disruptive and violent tide of Uganda’s 90s luckily did not rob them of their parents like their contemporaries. When their contemporaries lost relatives and guardians to HIV/AIDS or War, the girls reflected on those in their letters and found a source inspiration for self-preservation. They vowed never to flirt with a boy. Pauline writes in one of her letters: “There is this hunk of a lad. He is handsome, stubborn, hot-headed. He wants to be so bad. But I have to switch off my feelings else I will violate our commitment to the future”. Nancy responded, “hold on tight my sister, seek the guidance of Mother Theresa. These boys can wait. You know they say the beautiful ones are not yet born…..yeah! Keep focused”

In the letters, the girls became alive and wrote passionately about their individual struggles with language, ethnic tensions, school regulations, grades, and desires for love. The latter subject was always switched off as a deviant thought. The Sacred Heart girl always described her ordeals in fine details, providing names and frequency of boys from various schools in Gulu who schemed desperately, with all strategies and tactics to display their adolescent vigor for her emerging curvatures.

“They write to me love letters, some use obscenity, others are so funny, but some, unbelievably are arrogant and abusive. I think some boys just lack class”. The one from Nabingo narrated her ordeals of tribalism, tribal hate, discrimination, and unsavory punishment that she encountered. Her letters always ended with a sigh of hope "....nino mo bene bi gik".

Twenty years later, the two girls met again. The meeting was occasioned. The heartless shocks of S6 exams had created a rift between them. Nancy went to a business school while Pauline had proceeded to a university overseas. Over the years, two of the brothers who lived in exile had secured for her a place. So she left without informing her dearest friend. The lull between the two had eroded the bond of camaraderie and left each to their own fate.

Pauline had returned to the country a changed person.  She appeared smooth and affluent but uprooted. She knew little about the new trends in Uganda, Kampala or even Gulu. The two friends thus met with fate in a dingy dusty city street full of noise and fast passed people going about their everyday hassle.  None had the childhood zeal for their ideal vows had been abrogated by the cruelty of A level exams.

A level exam is a bitch. Had the girls passed well, they could have reunited at MUK or any other publicly funded University. Their sisterhood bond could have reinforced. But now, they were like two strangers meeting in Umuofia.

On the fateful day of their surprise meeting, Pauline was the first to recognize Nancy. At first, she had her doubts. But she kept following her to confirm from a scar on Nancy’s forehead from playing Nyorio in childhood. Once Pauline confirmed that she approached with an exuding eagerness.

“Jal, Nancy, ningo!” She called out. Nancy froze at hearing a familiar and yet a distant voice that hit her like a din from the past.

Nancy recognized the characteristic voice of her childhood friend – her bestie. It was still rich with the same old passion, sharp and soft.  Nancy halted her walk and came to a sudden stop. She shivered and strengthened her grip on ger handbag when another passer-by body bumped her. Kampala is a city with many tales.

"Itye nining, man an Pauline do, jal dyera!" Pauline reaffirmed herself and crackled with a big smile like someone who had just recovered from comatose to realize that they were not yet dead!

"Ayii, atye, an Nancy to jal....", as Nancy turned fully to orient herself to the new development.

“Man in?”, Nancy inquired, to confirm.

"Man komi, dong iling kum?" Pauline asked.

"Anongi kwene kono, makun bwomi otwiiyo ni, ojone", Nancy reiterated as she stretched her arms to reach her long lost friend for a huge hug, pushing her leather purse towards her back. Nancy’s eyes locked in recognition of her friend’s rather polished features.

                                                 *******************

The two women hugged and talked a sthey drew themselves away from the centre of the street to the shades under a verandar. Behind them a strong aroma oozed. It was a restaurant. On the other side were hardware shops. The noise on the street made everyone strained. The two friends decided to walk casually, hand-in-hand, and head-on-head to a nearby restaurant for some quiet. Pauline sat Nancy down, or vice versa. They exchanged pleasantries and contact information. The conversation was explosive. It appeared they wanted to talk about everything but skirted on the surface. Each had to account for their absence of for the near-misses given their childhood vows.

Time, as usual was not there when most needed. Nancy on realizing that time had passed quite quickly, pressed the "I must go" button. Pauline was hesitant. She ignored the call to let go. Pauline was still not in the mood for disengaging. She talked on and on and on.

"Wabed kong diya, pe imming an?" Pauline Pressed curiously while her eyes peeved into Nancy’s with that childhood protest.

"Tell me, tell me something", Pauline just continued as if their meeting had just begun. She ordered for another cup of tea,

"Man imiti awaci ni ngo? An dong adoko imat mujee, lutino adeg ki Lacoo Boo-kec moni". They both burst out into a ball of heartily laughter.

"Boo-kec we! Ah, man ber do. Eno ma oweko dong imito muku wot me dok pacu ni?" Pauline asked

"Ku bene ya...atye ka ryemo kor cul na moni, atye atimo business i town kany. Kwo eni dong pa Min Obet gi ni yaa",Nancy laughed indiscreetly and yet reassuringly. Nancy's humility always exuded to mask any of her true circumstances, whether happy, successful or in trouble, she remained calm. Now she felt her statement accounted for the grand dreams the two friends had at childhood.

Pauline gave Nancy’s responses a thought. She glanced at her watch and indeed the time had gone. She had to make a phone call to her husband in Italy. Those calls have to be consistent – same time every day or a constellation of other questions and demand for explanations ensues.

"Aya wek dong awek iring, ci omyero igoona cim wek dok warwate ma peya adok i Italy ba" Pauline offered to continue the conversation at a later date.

"In kono, komi ki moo ma lyel alyela calo mac kibirit ni, kwo tye ka teri nining?" Nancy now asks a matter of fact question.

"Kwo perac, ento waboko nino ma lacen" Pauline retorted. “Cawa ne bene dong odiya”, she concluded.

"Ayela peke, abineno ne.....abilwongi wek ibin wa i pacu i ceng abicel eni. Yube. An abedo inge bar dege kacaa. Atami ingeyo onyo iwinyo kama tye iye?"

"Ayenyo-o jal, meno lok ma tidi mada", Pauline assures Nancy as the two women rose to hug and bid another farewell.

Part 2....loading!

The hunger pandemic awaits us – so lets us grow food during COVID-19

COVID-19 Pandemic and Hunger

The reason we fear COVID-19 is that we fear to die. However, some more situations and conditions are causing death while we run away from COVID-19-related deaths. Deaths and human sufferings have no preferred causes. If we have decided to fear COVID-19-related death, we should also protect our population from other causes of preventable deaths and anguish, including hunger and starvation.

In a few more weeks to come, the level of frustration from parents failing to feed and treat their children under this COVID-19 regime will climax. The national COVID-19 Response teams should not only focus on the containment aspect of COVID-19, but develop and implement plans to treat the sick, and ensure undisrupted food production. Evidence shows that good and regular nutrition is effective in fighting COVID-19 and all diseases.

The patterns of government's food distribution are already showing signs of a significant pending famine that may kill more than COVID-19. In Northern Uganda, parents of children with nodding disease are starving. If you wish to understand the impact of nurturing children with nodding disease, just go to Omoro district and see for yourself.

But who cares for these wretched souls? All they care about is the vulnerable urban poor in Kampala and Wakiso!

Last week, a friend reached out to me for help. His family has been confined to a village where there are hardly any amenities left. The gentleman has a motorbike, but only he can ride to the garden, 6km away. He cannot transport his family members on his motorbike or mobilize villagers to come to support his farming activities. He has run out of food and medicines for his aging parents and children who may die anyway.

I read somewhere that the government is transporting people from Busoga to Lamwo district to teach locals there how to grow sugarcanes. If such people could assemble in the field, why is it so difficult to ease the countryside to farm?

The UN Fund for Agriculture (FAO) has sounded the alarm bell for global famine, predicting severe food shortages. The COVID-19 containment measures have a profound impact on the entire system of food production and must not be taken lightly.

Farmers could still adapt physical distancing while farming, say for at least five hours a day three times a week. Their movement to the farms could be coordinated within a specific window of time, say between 5 am -11 am or a shorter shift of 4 – 8 pm so that farmers could harness the rains to grow food, and the dry period for harvesting to make food available in the markets.

In Uganda, the patterns of COVID-19 community spread is predicted with precision. Of recent, most of the cases are resulting from our lackadaisical handling of Truck drivers from source countries like Tanzania Kenya. Once this problem is sorted out, the Farmers could be eased into activities.

Once we contain truck drivers and people moving from country to country, we shall have a more definitive control over community transmission COVID-19. Rwanda, for instance, has embarked on mass testing of its citizens, owing to its small population. We could adopt this method for farming communities. Farmers in remote villages separated from contact with the outside world should be given farming privileges to avert a severe food shortage.

Lastly, let the Office of the Prime Minister scale the food distribution or unconditional cash transfers to every part of Uganda. People are trapping rats and mice for a meal because they have run out of food. The Coronavirus emerged precisely because of these crazy consumption patterns that promote zoonosis. Let's prevent eating snakes, cats, rats, and bats.

END.

What new things did you learn during this lock down?

COVID-19 INSIGHTS

Soon, countries will begin to thaw from the COVID-19 global lockdown. Research and Academic journals will be flooded with all sorts of studies about the impact of the COVID-19 on a wide range of issues, from causation, pathogenesis, management to the economy, human rights violation, mental health, etc.

Ugandans will consume this literature passively. Personally, I have read quite a bit and participated in so many webinars initiated by academics, researchers, and professionals from various fields. The might of this pandemic has been hegemonic, freezing the world’s economy and consumptions. It has also stretched healthcare systems and placed spotlights on many social and historical inequalities in society.

In Europe and the US where its impact remains dramatic, we saw different people affected differently. The poor and the blacks were reportedly suffered a disproportionate level of hospitalization and mortality compared with other races. The bottom line is that COVID-19, as we know, is not a “cold-hearted” killer as such. It kills those already riddled with certain degrees of disadvantages – older, frail, pre-existing conditions, oppressed, and lacks access to medical care.

In Europe, countries have some sort of universal health coverage. This every person can access timely healthcare services they need. In the US, the story is different; fewer people have health insurance and more so, the poor Blacks, Hispanics and a sizeable proportion of rural white population.

The US is the leader of neoliberal economic ideas – where the government is forced out of providing health care and private providers are given the mantle. The colonial healthcare systems that Uganda inherited, was not structured the US way or now the Museveni-era healthcare. The colonial-era healthcare was financed directly by the state from taxpayers’ money, and there was no cost-sharing or discrimination based on ability to pay.

During colonial times, the formal sector was made to privilege colonial workers, most of whom were serving the colonial agenda. Health care and education were part of the reward for their loyal services. Housing was part of the package for teachers, doctors, nurses, soldiers, Police, Prisons, and the Senior Management Team of various state ministries and agencies.

The health service privileges were extended to the general workers in the formal sector, only employ about 10% of the population or less, while most Ugandans were rural-based farming privately to augment raw materials for European civilization. These farmers also produced cash crops and food crops to sustain the colonial state labour force and paid taxes. A healthy rural reserve sustained a steady supply of labour for expanding mining and industrial work. This post-war social policy was consistent with the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 1940, and amended in 1945.

The Museveni-era liberalization of the economy dismantled that. They imposed cost-sharing, reduced the size of government workers at first, to shed off “Obote’s loyalists”, before expanding it irregularly with a loyal ethnic-based cadership.

The Museveni regime reducing the proportion of its health spending on health neglected its management and maintained a stockout of essential medicines to about 80%. It is only recently that they have mooted a National Health Insurance System, copying from those in capitalist countries.

 Most industrialized capitalist countries offer healthcare based on health insurance policies, mostly related to labour attachment. But there are many different models. In Canada, only the state can buy health insurance, thereby reducing market competition – the type in the US where individuals and companies buy health insurance from the same market. In Switzerland, insurance companies cannot make a profit, except on supplemental plans; Japan, Germany, UK, and others have their own systems tailored to the typology of their welfare state systems. Rwanda, our next door has its own locally made success story.

During this COVID-19, I learned that liberalized healthcare may be a façade that cannot sustain frequent pandemics of our generation. There is a need to rethink seriously of universal healthcare as a public good and rights of the people, not a market commodity for those who can afford it.

End. 

COVID-19 and the limit of science-inclined education policy

COVID-19 Hotspot - 

The coronavirus continues to challenge the logic of the old-world order by spotlighting most of its institutional inadequacies and policy lapses. However, the complementary role of physical and social sciences is reaffirmed for cynics to bear.

It would take a long article to reproduce the origins and imperatives of having both the physical and social sciences taught at colleges and universities. Experiences of COVID-19 has simplified this debate for public consumption.

There is a need to clarify the purpose of education as an important driver of a progressive society. The way education is organized in a country reflects the ideology of the regime in power on a wide range of issues. Education feeds all the sensitive aspects of the economy and informs societal functions.  How a country organizes and delivers its education also reveals its patterns of domination. For instance, when a certain group in a country has unfettered access to the best education that a nation can offer, such a group also obtains and sustains the monopoly of power over the means production.

A good example is when state resources are skewed to privilege policies for one sector over the other; undermine physical sciences over social sciences; affirmative action for one group over the other; and state scholarship for one group and denied to another.  

In the above scenario, a country is likely to get a section of its graduates who are problematized, reduced in esteem, made subjects with limited prospects. This group often strays into careers that are underdeveloped. For a long time, comedy and music suffered such a fate, until a new generation transformed these industries into lucrative, competitive, and attractive ventures.

The COVID-19 is here with us, but scientists have failed to find a timely cure, vaccines, or deliver consistent tests. Much of the COVID-19 work is situated at the community levels and moderated between persons.

This virus is profoundly sensitive and intelligent in selecting its target and population. No one can yet explain why it has shied away from poor Africans. A recent journal article observed that this pandemic has become a great sampling device for social analysis. The author argued that unlike other previous outbreaks, epidemics, or pandemic, COVID-19 has made visible the usually latent societal structures of inequities.

Most societies have embraced the limit of sciences in dealing with COVID-19, thereby turning to break community transmission of COVID-19 using non-scientific measures such as quarantine and physical isolation. The Lancet Journal is full of commentaries decrying potential mental health impacts of these measures. Prolonged quarantine measures may even trigger a wave of psychosocial distress pandemic.  

But most of this work involves the expertise of social workers, sociologists, and community workers in tandem with field scientists.

For instance, public health officials are trained sufficiently and equipped with the science and social theories that attempt to mobilize, understand, organize, and move societies out of danger.

Thus, COVID-19 has demonstrated that a prudent modern society could do with both physical and social sciences such that where one fails, the other compliments. After all, scientific innovations find relevance with its social adaptation. A television could only work with theatres; immunization gained public approval through community interactions; politics define sciences in as much as scientific advancement shapes and defines politics, culture, and traditions. The left-hand washes the right hand.

The beauty of being alive is that we learn every day. The mechanics of life have roots in sciences while the course of daily life is steeped within a complex mesh of social relations.

We now know that with just minimal sciences, such as accurate testing of COVID-19 and proper medical care, the most potent public response to breaking community transmission of a COVID-19 is physical isolation and change in patterns of wasteful consumption.

End.

People Power is truly Made in Uganda

PEOPLE POWER

In every African family setting, fathers long for the birth of their able sons - hair apparent. Mothers, on the other hand, seek restlessly to bear a daughter. Irrespective of the western concepts such as Oedipal and Electra conflicts studied in human psychology, boy-children will cling onto their mothers and the girls to their fathers until some point. As they grow and become socialized to their respective gender roles and responsibilities, the boy takes after the father and the girl follows the paths of womanhood.

In such settings, every father is proud and protective of his son. A well-groomed son is a successful son who grows and emerges from the patronage of the father. A good son is seen with a readiness to extend the visions of the father while projecting his own. If the father was a failure, like Onuka, Okonkwo’s father, the boychild would be justified to deconstruct from such a trait and reconstruct in his own identity to do better in life than his father; if the girl were the oldest, the mother would pride in her daughter's protective nature expressed over the care of her siblings.

Life is such a progression. And, in any society, which does to support progression, perpetuity stalls.

This is the situation unraveling in the Ugandan political scene. Older and established politicians have done everything within their might to stall progression. They are holding on to power tightly to dominate the political scene. Many would rather bequeath power and prestige to their great-grandchildren and not to their immediate progenies.

The rise of the People Power outfit has challenged this notion of stalled progression in this patriarchal society. It is making elders shiver with rage and driven their grand-children in panic. People Power is threatening the plots of their Fathers from becoming indomitable Chiefs. The heir- apparent are threatened that their ambitions would end with sniffing the coffee beans from the spoils of their father's imaginary empire. It is clear from such mental disturbances that we have an occupation force in Uganda.

The youthful following of People Power is not by coincidence, rather, it is by the creation of history. They are the products of a regime that rules society through protracted violence. Such regimes produce sons without fathers and daughters without mothers. These children become desolate, unwashed and confined to societal margins, and mostly to the outer periphery. The problem is that as violence continues and so is the production of such an excess population.

When you see learned fellows who in their rights are at liberty to aspire to be leaders stand to dismiss People Power adherents as lumpens and those who support their causes as insane, you begin to understand how repression gets internalized by its victims.  It is as if being elite cures one the sense of foreboding.

How does a section of Ugandans, born and raised in Uganda become dismissed as mere lumpens unworthy of executing even their civic responsibilities? To answer that question, we need to study the history of Uganda. Probably, the legacies of wars and incivility in Uganda offers us some insights.

Without sounding rather a tribalist or sectarian - concepts used these days to technically suppress the enumeration of unequal ethnic relations in Uganda, here is my take.

In 1986 when many of us became refugees within our own countries, ensconced in Kampala, there were Baganda in Kampala, in villages behind Bukoto flats, in Kanyanya, in Gayaza, Kyambogo, Banda, Bweyogere, etc. Those were Baganda villages. When refugees and orphans from the countryside started pouring in the country, the population pressure mounted. As Uganda became peaceful, many more people fled wars from the countryside and filled slums of Kampala. The internally displaced persons piled pressure on slum facilities. But internally displaced were not alone. There were former government employees, civil servants, with their families who were retrenched from public service fighting for the same destination. Some of the instant destitute had worked in various state parastatals whose jobs were liquidated by foreign investors.  They were mostly forced out of their jobs with little resettlement but without the onset of their social security payouts. The common destiny for all these people, including those migrating from rural to urban and from employment to unemployment merged in Kampala’s slums - Naguru, Nakawa, Kataza, Namwongo, Luzira, Kitintale, Kamwokya, etc.

 

Today, those indigenous Baganda we found in Kampala in 1986 are no longer in Kampala, many were pushed out and long retreated to their burial grounds in Masaka, Wakiso, Mukono, Luwero, Kayunga, Mubende and so forth. But even there, they found regime minders already have appropriated their ancestral lands – in large chunks. The little they were left with, some had to sell to buy second-hand boda boda to sustain their lives. The little plots of land left were no longer of much value. These people are now squatters in Buganda, homeless, under-housed and most sleep on their bikes for only a few hours in the night.

Today, there are more homeless Baganda and severely under-housed Ugandans in Kampala and nearly in every countryside where land conflict is raging as the order of the day. Incidentally, there has been a major shift in the geographies of desperation. As the Baganda and former civils servants left Kampala, the Batoro and Bakiga replaced those degraded dwellings. Then recently, with the destabilization of Karamoja, the Karimojongs have filtered into the City without much skills to survive in the city, except pitiful begging on the street with their children. They have added to the dirty profile of Kamapal's streets! We now have the people with money, mostly from western Uganda, causing inflation in Kampala by buying plots and houses at exorbitant prices to spend the loot from state coffers.

The country is therefore in its current predicament because of its ability to produce low class citizens. The government has failed its citizens and must take responsibility for that. Universal education is untenable because a robust education system is sustained by a stable community. If families suffer from any form of insecurity – food, housing, safety, violence, etc, they are likely to become mobile and the school becomes a structure without students. This is partly how we have so many unwashed youths whose futures have been squandered. Families of every configuration in Uganda is insecure today than never before. The public healthcare has also collapsed under the weight of corruption, while safe house for torturing those who complain of the inadequacy of the regime have mushroomed. 

I think it was Gen Sejusa who once observed that the social inequities caused by the private-public sector divide are so profound that the majority of those who study in public universal schools, would never become managers even of a small village bank brank. In the last 30 years, youths from northern Uganda have performed worst in all levels of national exams. This also reflects on the prospects of jobs that they get and the kind of life that they live.  True to that, most youths from Northern Uganda have filled the ranks of lowly paid security jobs in urban centers. Nowhere in the world have we seen such an enthusiastic but fully disempowered youthful population as we see in Uganda.

The rise of People Power is the one thing these youths are all proud of because that is the congregation of their collective sentiments – their resentment of patriarchal systems of governance that undermines their youthfulness, perpetuate social inequalities and above all, blames the young people for their predicament as if they inflicted it upon themselves.

There is a large majority of the youthful population all over the country who feels disenfranchised exactly in the same way. Many have become conscious of the fact that their future has been squandered, and that they have no way out except to stake their lives, blood and might to see this change come to pass. Many, probably do not even understand the difference between the government and the state. What they know is that they have none of those entities standing up for them and that they are on their own in a jungle of the corrupt. To them, the state manifests in a punitive form, arresting them for being idle and disorderly, stigmatizing and dismissing their existence through labels such as lumpens, bayaye, rascals and the unwashed of the slum.

Their lives of the youth of Uganda highlight the multiple layers of injustices in life for which they find themselves juxtaposed, deprived of their parents and relations upon which to realize their true potentials through state violence. It is with such gusto that the young people that you abuse, stigmatize, undermine and dismiss with contempt, shall rise to become everything you had never expected of them. Whatever the flaws of People Power there is, it truly is a reflection of the state violence, failures and the excesses of the power green in all those who chide them.

For me, at least, I believe in their aspirations. People Power is Our collective Power. #Mission2021

End.

What really is Mao’s problem in DP

What really is Mao’s problem in DP

Background:

I had resisted the temptation to comment on the ongoing leadership wrangles in DP, but I realized that such an impulse was inevitable. The instability in DP affects all of us, but most important, DP is the barometer for reading the potential of change of regime in Uganda.

Before I start a disclaimer is in order. I have never been a DP Party member. In the past, however, I had the luxury to associate with some Party members – especially the DP current leaders. In addition, I have followed politics in Uganda since I was twelve years old. Although I feel a bit distanced from what goes on behind the scenes in these Parties, the leadership wrangles reveal that there is a lot of discontent going on.

It is important to declare that this piece is drawn from my introspection, decades-long observation, and information pieced together from various print sources and in-person conversation with leaders within DP and their associates. The purpose of this write up is to begin a long conversation to bridge gaps in explaining the difficulties we have in changing the regime in Uganda.

Several of the current crops of leaders in DP or those from the Social Democratic Party who recently re-joined their mother Party are our contemporaries. Our connections go back to the formative years of Young Democrats, and then working together to sweep Seeya to City Hall in Kampala as Mayor, against long time City Mayor, Yiga in the 1990s. I struggled with, for or against a subsequent crop of UYD leaders in the late 1990s at Makerere University  - on and off-campus - for leadership there Thus, the introspection comes from a very good place. This is not an academic piece.

What has been happening?

In the early 1990s, the influence of a young Norbert Mao was strong on many of us that I nearly joined the Uganda Young Democrats. Since my youths, I believe that power in society is experienced and demonstrated in action. The UYD was a vigorous group that appealed to my youthful energies when art 267 and others gagged political participation. Some of UYD leaders were visibly very intelligent. I still have high regard for many of them, to this date.  

I must hasten to say that through my studies, I have tried to set aside my ideological biases to learning the evolution of Uganda’s political organizations, including the Democratic Party. When UYD emerged, we were fully aware of its role in shaping the politics of Uganda since its inception, relative to other political organizations in Uganda.

My general impressions and assertions about DP are as follows; the DP was formed to address socio-political inequalities, most of which were generated and accentuated by the nature of the colonial state and its socio-economic setup. These contradictions were further complicated by the nature of the peasantry society that Uganda was – and remains so to this date. DP’s real problem could, therefore, be said to emerge from its inability to fully understand the state and its relations to the economy and the peasants. The second problem of DP is elitism stretched to the realms of activism. DP seemed permanently rooted in the ideology of social justice which has failed to gain traction in the post-colonial and neoliberal society. Their propensity for elitist politics has further alienated most of their leaders from the grassroots – mostly peasants. As such, DP has made little inroads in mobilizing its countryside support base since Uganda returned to multiparty democracy. Diabolically, DP’s propensity for elitist politics has also generated among them, very ignorant and opportunistic elites. The third problem is materialism and the fourth, the Achilles heel, is tribalism – ethnic-based social mobilization. These are DP's main diseases.

The permanent blemish

The evolution of DP from its inception reveals to us certain patterns of activism without a purpose. Most political parties are formed to vie for power by fronting specific policy options and ideological values. Unfortunately, political parties in Uganda lack such clarity of purpose. DP’s effort to exert itself in the prevailing political space qualifies them only as a political organization to a level of legacy holders and aimless activists, not power-seekers. With fairness of things, only UPC seemed to have fully understood the material relationship between the state, the economy and Uganda’s peasants in full. We could also say that UPC knew its role and prepared for it. We can conclude that DP has either lived past its shelve time and relevance or is living ahead of its time.

Why Baganda Catholic DPs reject Mao

The gist of this writeup is to attempt to explain logically, and to an extent, systematically, why Hon. Norbert Mao’s leadership has faced such rejection within his own Party. Is Mao the polarising figure or it is the nature of DP which is the polarising? This author observes that DP needs Mao more than Mao needs DP. Among all his adversaries, no one doubts Mao’s quality as a peace-loving leader, a catholic, a lawyer, intelligent, and an eloquent elite. But Mao is also an exceptionally clean politician, free from incumbrances of political corruption that haunts his contemporaries. At least, you have not heard Mao’s name mentioned in any scandals or corruption as a public trust holder. Mao’s qualities are, in fact, part of the reasons he is resented by a largely impulsive but also material driven colleagues from within his own party. Perhaps, Mao’s incorruptibility makes each one of them nervous and conflicted all the time!

Perspectives

In anthropology and such sciences, societies been understood from their emic and etic purviews. Purview is a scope or range of influence or concerns prevalent around or among a group. Emic purview represents the insiders’ perspectives of the subject of study -  how they view themselves, their opinion or concerns, and how they make that society alive, vigorous and self-sustaining. Etic purview is the opposite of that, what outsiders have come to know, appreciate, or conclude about the group under study.

From the emic purview, Mao himself belongs to the generation of the current crop of DP leaders, most of whom are lawyers, Catholics, materialists, and elitists. This group has also amassed wealth from their various roles either in influencing leadership or while in leadership around Kampala, Masaka, Wakiso, Mukono, etc. One of Hon. Mao’s problem is that he does not belong to this wealthy group and he not the source of their wealth. They despise Mao as a poor man and as someone whose integrity and principles subverts their continued wealth seeking - or bribe-taking in politics of DP.

Loyalty to Wealth or Meal Cards?

These people have loyalty to wealth such that their political ambition is not power or capturing state power, rather, accumulation of wealth. To them, wealth is the means to power and therefore their power is defined as possession, outside the realms of the state contestation. This view directly conflicts with Mao’s traditional approaches to politics. Mao has invested his time in ethical politics where he is trying to organize his party to contest and gain public trust or gain an advantage by cultivating dominating ideas. In that sense, Mao is seen as an ideas' merchant. His leadership is rejected by a highly materialist group who view Mao as a stumbling block because they neither appreciate nor interested in ideas or ideology. They only understand wealth and its privileges.

I know a lot of these young men who have never worked, looked for work or bothered about work. Many amassed wealth – land and rental properties in Kampala, Masaka and different places and have stable sources of income. Their wealth is working for them. They just want more. Their concerns are that this wealth is not expanding. They blame Mao for that. The newer democrats who are accustomed to their elders living in wealth have become equally irate to demand similar opportunities. I think Mao is aware of this and he named such a phenomenon “Meal Card politics”.

Opportunism within the Ranks

DP has lost several of its high-ranking officials to the ruling Party. The ease and frequency with which DP leaders dissociate to join the ruling regime outpace all other parties. Within this group, the state has allies – many sellouts. It seems that whatever they cannot get from Mao, they would rather get from the state. Only in DP where Museveni can appoint, pick or nominate a leader and their colleagues appreciate admiringly. This is different from the past DP of the 1970s.  We can now understand the competition since UPC has also joined this foray recently. To them, their goal is to create political capital to heighten individual opportunities of being appointed in government or get elected.  Once elected, their job is to hoard wealth. DP is not about a change in regime, rather the mission is to enhance personal or individual fortunes. Imagine that a sitting Party Chairman is appointed Ambassador and that is OK with the leadership. Part of Mao's woes is complacency to this kind of opportunism. Party members are appointed to serve as RDCs, Ministers, etc and it is OK. All others are now looking for that opportunity – either to get elected or appointed into wealth. Period.

Incorruptible Norbert Mao

Norbert Mao is not a corrupt man. At least, he does not tolerate political corruption. His legacy is cemented in Gulu District Council where he set a stable and peaceful district leadership when he was Chairman LC5 there. Gulu is now so focused on development that in the next decade, Gulu City will be one of the must-visit cities of Uganda. Gulu town has been declared the least corrupt district administration or local government unit for several years starting from the leadership of Mao and his successor.  Gulu’s success is not a coincidence. This kind of stability, ethical politics, and entrepreneurship of ideas are the factors that have unsettled Mao from his colleagues in DP.

Individualism in DP

DP is not about to offer a serious political threat to the State in its current disorganized state. Most feuding Party members converge on the idea of building a base of successful individuals within the part by collaborating with any existing regime. They have, from history, found no problem legitimizing a scandalous regime if its members are guaranteed the opportunity to break even. It is this overt mission of the DP within Buganda that the rest of the DPs from the countryside should pay attention and rally behind Mao. There may be exceptions within the DP’s Buganda Caucus, however, their undemocratic behaviours show that a few are in pursuit of good governance.

I will not spend much time discussing the ethnic divisionism in DP’s top echelon, which is their very potent chalice. It would waste our time and that of my readers. 

Going Forward

Instead, I would like to advise opposition leaders. There are leaders who have surrounded themselves with only poor followers, while some are captives of wealth seekers. Few members of this opposition are in genuine pursuit for power or good governance. There is. however, a logic to their approaches. Politics is about protecting the interests of the wealthy or grabbing the opportunity for resource sharing. The contradiction is that most of these people do not offer many resources for good governance. They spend their resources looking for more - hoarding.

Then we have the leaders surrounded by the poor lot. Most of the follows seek facilitations and benefit from their participation from that one leader. I think JPAM's brief stint in opposition to Museveni exemplifies this kind of leaders. This is a form of political bribery whose inevitability is made complex by the nature of poverty in the country. The quantitative and qualitative change that we anticipate in Uganda – the post-Museveni era - should be achieved through personal contributions. Surely, it will come at an expensive cost. If you must be bribed for your participation, to act or to mobilize one another, then you know that you are not ready for the change that you want.

Every change-agent ought to have his or her resources or means to inject into the struggle. A large disparate group is a threat to national security if properly aligned without depending on one leader for resources. Let everyone sell their goats to pay their taxes for the change they need.  Leaders should be proactive to surround themselves with resourceful persons, people they could trust, tap on, or expect to be able to mobilize resources as and when needed, and maximize its use towards the change they desire.

Conclusion

Uganda is at crossroads as whole with an immense crisis of loyalty and group cohesion. Everyone is in search of self-aggrandizement. This pursuit is dangerous because the conditions under which these agents of change operate seem to vibrate within a narrow arc of fortunes. If Museveni were to offer his audience, transport refund, money or a job today, all these fellows would immediately forget the bigger and chronic problem of joblessness and hopelessness that they suffer and pervades the country. They will stay in opposition to occupy space if they have no means. These groups use their voices in the opposition and exploit spaces they occupy in the opposition ranks to improve on their chances or price value in the market of conscience. There is no real commitment to good governance. Not from the Democratic Party of Uganda. I could be wrong, harsh or even uninformed. These are the trials of taking emic and etic views.

End.