What is in Museveni’s logic of marginalizing Arts and Humanities?

 

    EPISTEMOLOGIES

Recently Mr. Museveni reignited the debate of marginalizing Arts in society by claiming that sciences are more important for national development. In one short video clip that I saw, Museveni asked a rhetorical question, something like, “How does reciting Shakespeare or Macbeth help a nation?”

I suspect that Museveni’s persistent marginalization of arts is borne out of fear for the evolution of new and attractive ideas for reimagining Uganda beyond him. Mr. Museveni understands that works of Art are what inspired his revolutionary mindset. The younger Yoweri was a staunch Marxist and inspired by thinkers like Fidel Castro, Franz Fanon, Machiavelli, European history, and the cultural history of the Bachwezi dynasty and recited their ideas for decades. I have never heard Museveni reciting the works of science other than the Luwero methods or military science!

If Arts did not matter, why was the younger Museveni and now the de facto lifelong president, not inspired by great scientists like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and others? Arts and science are siblings – one inspires the other and one cannot live without the other. The desire for wars and conquest led man to develop the war industry; the desire for food security led to the invention of hoes, farming industry, and seeds genetic sciences; the fear of plant diseases led to the science of developing disease-resistant crops. Science responds to material human fears communicated discursively and textually. Literacy is a requite for sciences!

Clearly, Mr. Museveni’s mission is as obscurantic as it can get and is steeped in averting national and civil consciousness arising from his distortion of history, material marginalization that Ugandans are experiencing, denial of space for the voice of reason and counter-reasoning, as well as the pervasive human rights violation which have become the landmark features of his administration.

Any scholar appreciates the role of arts or humanities, including social and political sciences, literature, and expressive Arts as well as imaginations, critical thinking, and creative ways of innovations. When you kill the arts, you stifle society’s imaginative minds and reconstitute a society trapped in valorizing the status quo, even when they are ensnared in its misery.

The young Yoweri used his knowledge of arts and humanities, mostly to question society and create space for new ideas for nation-building. Museveni has bragged about losing thirteen of his early years in fighting Amin’s and Obote’s governments. Once he ascended to power, Museveni embarked on fighting something strange (not imperialism for sure) under the auspices of Pan Africanism, as a cheerleader of global neoliberalism in the continent.

I have never heard a speech in which Museveni does not project an issue to an ideological realm. Infatuating with an idea for years and implementing is, constitutes sciences. If there is any success of Arts, Museveni and Nollywood are its truest revelation. However, as we know, the older Museveni is now rejecting the ideals of the younger Yoweri which was inspired by arts and humanities. I conclude, therefore, that this debate is not so much about marginalizing Arts, humanities, and their teachers – a great travesty in modern unequal society. This agenda is Museveni rejecting himself and projecting it onto arts teachers and people in the humanities. Is it a surprise that his actions follow restructuring and clumping down on civil society organizations? Undermining arts is an ideological ploy to suppress the emergence of new ideas that are critical to his rule and threaten to puncture his equilibrium!

While we recognize the imperatives of sciences in driving socio-cultural revolution – like the times of renaissance, sciences do not happen in a vacuum as an end to itself. Science is not a discrete happening. Good science is not an event of discovery and technology either. Science is a continuum of everyday social life and it becomes relevant when science is used to produce knowledge and utilities that are socially relevant. There is science in arts, for instance, the methods of inquiry in arts are scientific, methodological and knowledge from it is transferrable beyond geographies. Sciences is not limited to assembling boda-bodas and buses.

The science that is separated from the everyday social events becomes anathema to that society and so will be the scientists. Overemphasis on science will attract students who lack the skills and interests in the field, graduates who will later suffer in their career due to a mismatch of skills. Most of our young professionals already suffer in the job field because the education and the career choices or types are too limited. Added the vice of sectarianism in the workplaces, many people end up in jobs they have no clue about. This is where the debate should focus – how do we structure our education system to offer a wide range of career training programs?

I must remind Mr. Museveni that creating inequalities in the classroom is not a wise decision. Teachers with the same qualifications and years of services must be paid the same, whether they teach arts/humanities or sciences. People in the arts do pay taxes, raise their families, and run governments and businesses. They deserve the best and equally motivated teachers.

Our people in Uganda are dying from preventable causes

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEATHS

Most Ugandans die young and from preventable causes. The Ugandan Ministry of health claims in its 2016 report that Malaria is the top killer of Ugandans while the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the top funders of Uganda’s health care system claims that Neonatal disorders, HIV/AIDS, and Malaria in third place, are the three top causes of death in Uganda.

 Few people really write about death (mortality, rigor mortis, demise, fatalities, etc) until a prominent person dies. However, Ugandans have been dying at an acceptable rate for a young population. Only that no one cares except for the red soils that devour them. The red earth is feeding on us too!

 Deaths and funerals are very important social occasions in the Ugandan tradition. Many people are called to order the moment they are threatened to imagine how many people would gather on their graves during mourning when they pass on. The crowd that gathers at your funeral determines how resourced or important you were to your community in your lifetime.

 Sometimes, your reputation gathers for you the most important decision-makers from among your people, to mourn and eulogize you. Not these days anymore when the prospect of soda and food can attract anybody. Most funerals are attended by children yearning for sodas and meals anyway.

 The e-burials under the aegis of the coronavirus pandemic should have made dying even difficult for those obsessed with popularity at death. But a dead man is a dead man, anyway. Death is a neutralizer such that the dead offers nothing new except the material loss for those indebted to him or his recipients mourning for their lost source of livelihood. I doubt people these days mourn the dead as it was in the past! How else would you explain that widows marry the next week and widowers the next day?

 I must assert myself here that deaths in Acholi regions are mostly preventable. it comes prematurely, and you know, the culture of not screening for ailments is partly to blame. Nonetheless, across Uganda, chauvinism kills more than diseases. The idea that you are not sick until you have pain, or that you are pretending of sickness to avoid chores, places many at risk of dying young.

 Cancer, for instance, is eating up people like the cow gobbing roughages. HIV/Aids has affected everyone and Ugandans no longer bother about it. They have accepted to live with it, and this has reduced stigma. With the advent of medicine, the viral load could be managed to an undetectable level and people are living to their full potentials.

 Malaria has been with us and seriously, I never knew of anyone who ever died of malaria, until I read in the media that malaria kills so many people. I have known of children who died of malaria and never an adult. I once told a Canadian friend that I suffered terrible bouts of malaria while in Uganda in 2017. The dude almost fainted. I had to explain that Malaria is not contagious – that some horny female Anopheles mosquito just flirts with your blood and deposits the protozoa that make a home in your liver for few days. Once you take an anti-malarial then hydrate, then it is gone! What I have failed to understand though, is why African governments spend so much money on weapons and not on research to combat malaria 

Deaths in Uganda have a political economy to it. The politically connected and powerful tend to have large unrestrained mourners attending to their funerals. We saw that with Lt. Gen. Lokech (RIP) and recently with BMK’s funeral. A humongous crowd seated skin-to-skin in total violation of the pandemic SOP of 2 meters apart. But they mourned, finished, and went home – no police disruption. Meanwhile, our schools are still closed until 2022, right? 

I have seen that people are fast and blissful at celebrating death and least enthusiastic at preventing it. In the many WhatsApp groups, I am enrolled, everyone is busy collecting money for funerals (Mabugo) and none collects money for health insurance schemes so that the ill can get the medical care they need and not die young. Some even innovatively begin to collect money to build a house for a dead man. People cash out of empathy and it is unconscionable, outright! Death has been used on occasions to reap money, and yet no one accounts for the fact that the deceased died from a preventable death. We are killing our people deliberately and that is social murder!

End.

Ugandan MP have become the "New Government"

"THE NEW GOVERNMENT"

For years, we have referenced the difference between “government” and “State”, terms that have been loosely used as synonyms. Discerning these terms is crucial for understanding public policy.

Using a simple explanation, the state is what already exists – the people, society/country, with its constitution, laws, tax systems, security apparatus, institutions, et cetra – such as the colonial and post-colonial states of Uganda. The government, on the other hand, is the interested group(s) that contend to impress its ideology upon the state - to control and steer it. Such as the Obote and Museveni governments. The state does not change much on its own but the government changes at every elective year or during coups, revolutions, death of a leader, and so forth. This change affects how the state operates or is operated. In the case of NRMO, the government has fused to become the state itself through dictatorial permanency!

The foregone analogy helps to understand an emerging phenomenon that defines the nature of governance in Uganda, today. This article argues that the slow death of local government has ceded the role of local governance to the Members of Parliament as the new governors.

The local government arrangement was a compromise for federalism as was popularly demanded in the CJ Odoki’s Constitutional Review Commission that resulted in the 1995 constitution. At the time, some Ugandans had desired Federal governance while Buganda clung on a less understood and historically divisive “Federo.”

For decades, local government flourished with the hope that it would unite Ugandans, bring services closer to the people, make people’s voices visible in decision making at the local levels, and make local government leaders to be accountable locally. The way Hon. Bidandi Ssali articulated local government was such that it is a bottom-up policy approach that made administration and governance truly pro-people.

The central government ceded much of the public service administration to the local government through the Local Government Act, 1997 (as amended). Schools, hospitals, education, water and sanitation, cultural ceremonies, local infrastructure (roads), urban planning, including security among others, became the responsibility of the local government. The central government would finance the districts through its ministry of finance and economic planning.

For decades, the balkanization of districts in Uganda as an entrenchment political strategy for the ruling NRM created more pseudo-districts that are not viable through their tax generation. Consequently, the quality of public service has generally declined instead of improving, and the people are more alienated from decision-making than intended. Rent-seeking has created self-assured “Thiefdoms” in these districts as opposed to broader accountability and transparent practices.  The operations of the local government have become enigmatic and its functions are simply paradoxical. The lapse in local districts' performance has caused a political crisis that gave now makes the high-earning Members of Parliament become the new government in the place of local government.

Being an MP attracts a decent earning and in poor districts where there are four or more MPs, the collective monthly or annual income of their MPs outstrips such a district revenue collection. Further, districts like Kitgum has repeatedly failed to absorb central capitation grants. Consequently, the local people have abandoned seeking services from the local and central government only to turn their gaze of helplessness at their MPs.

Being an MP in Uganda today means running the everyday life of all constituents such as paying fees, acting as a husband to widows and father to orphans; being a health worker – providing ambulances and building health centers as well as pharmacies; being a chief mortician. paying for burials and body relocations; Being a chief witness at weddings and marriage counselor, a local conflict arbitrator,  a counselor of widowers and the terminally ill; agents of witchcraft, funder of flimsy business propositions, a chief mourner at funerals of people who die from purely preventable deaths, a transporter, teacher, priest, road builder, and even a cattle rustler in some districts!

The central government has reneged on its duties to fund local governments appropriately and the ministry of finance’s micro-management of local government accounts for some of these lapses. However, the central government has insisted on lavishing MPs with resources in ways that undermine the local government, and consequently, the MPs have gradually inherited much that local governments should do. This way, the MPS are constantly under duress from their insatiably needy constituents and their performance is judged not by the legislative requirement, rather by how they solve service gaps that the local and central government should have performed.

This also explains the rise in perpetual corruption, decline in legislative deliberations, and decline in the quality of leaders at all levels of governance. Additionally, the high commercialization of politics and its violent nature speaks to the level at which the MP transmits state tyranny, escapes credibility scrutiny, and evades accountability. In the end, when an MP is defeated at an election, they quickly depreciate physically, mentally, and financially. Most look up to a concession with the giver – Museveni – for fringe benefits or appointments.

The cost of public administration must be addressed to ease resources for local government to operate. The Ministry of finance should harmonize how it transmits funds to the local governments and ease up on micro-management which humiliates local leaders. Practically, the Parliament is bloated and needs reducing drastically. Districts that are impracticable need to be dissolved and a criterion to attain a district status be set based on the ability to collect taxes that can finance at least 60% of its operating costs. The MP should not be a “government.”

END

Museveni has Killed hopes for liberal democracy

AFRICAN DICTATORSHIP

I read with much consternation that Museveni’s regime suspended the operation of some civil society organizations in Uganda claiming that they have failed to oblige by the CSO standards and laws set by the dictatorship. Among the suspended CSOs is Chapter 4, a legal hub that offers pro-bono legal services to the most wretched of the earth.

Closing CSO is only one act of killing democracy. Not long ago, the last Parliament passed yet another draconian law that illegalizes same-sex relationships.  To mask all these retrogressive laws, Parliament also passed other bogus laws such as jailing, mostly, male sexual offenders for an incredibly harsh term only equivocated by a Taliban lawmaker. In this article, I wish to illuminate how Museveni’s regime has killed democracy and opened a door to a full military dictatorship – or perhaps, post-democracy parlance.

Civil society Organizations are very important in a developing liberal democracy. Civil Society Organizations are understood roughly as that space between the market and the state. It is not part of largely misunderstood political opposition. However, it can be mistaken as one depending on the level of democracy or tolerance of dissent in society.

The proliferation of Civil Society Organizations may demonstrate things – one, that the state is reneging on its duties such that a gap in service exists. Take for instance, CSOs that deal with human rights, or maternal-child mortality prevention shows that these gaps exist. Second, where the market becomes too dominant such that profit-making (high levels of commodification and stratification) trumps over social equity, CSOs may emerge to illuminate such social inequities. There emerges Anti-poverty coalitions, anti-corruption groups, pro-accountability groups etc. Third, in doing the latter two actions, CSO also helps provide employment in a society where a majority of the educated are unemployed or miseducated enough to spend time searching for white-collar jobs.

There are several instances where CSOs have been used and abused. Take, for instance, the fact that foreign interests may wish to inject an alien culture in society to create a consumer market. They make funding available to CSOs to promote that consumer culture. Scholars in this field view CSO as shock absorbers of corporate exploitation when they become recipients of corporate social responsibility activities.  I have previously made attempts to alert the nation that whatever cultural practices that Africans had, the anti-African cultural terrorists pay out people through NGOs to abandon it, only for them to reproduce and commercialize it. Take, for instance, vaginal and body adulterations or decorations. But this discussion is for another article.

The emphasis here is that Mr. Museveni and his minders have lost the cause of liberal democracy by tightening the noose on civil society organizations. Proponents of neoliberalism in Uganda should pay heed because a revolution is inevitable under these circumstances.

At the swearing-in ceremony in 2016, Museveni promised that by 2021, there would be no opposition. When Robert Kyagulanyi’s red-army movement sprung, it took Museveni by surprise because he thought he had succeeded in destroying the opposition. FDC, the strongest and most sober opposition political organization had splintered. Dr. Besigye, its main brand had been isolated using both soft and hard violence. The traditional parties, UPC, CP, and DP had become NRM allies or indulged in internal kitty-cat fights that crippled their effectiveness.

Democracy without an alternative school of thought is called a dictatorship. In the US, we can also say there is a dictatorship in their democracy that is dominated by the Republicans and Democrats. At least, it is a two-party dictatorship. In Uganda, it is a one-party military tyranny characterized by violence, voter bribery, and suppression of human rights as well as the civic space. Seen in another way, both Uganda and the USA are dictatorships. The difference being judicial independence and public participation in the US, while in Uganda, violence, suppression of human rights and liberties predominate.

The implication of closing the CSO space is that alternative spaces for social and political renewal have been quashed. Not long ago, we saw Museveni celebrating how Kyagulanyi and colleagues were brutalized in Arua. In another public appearance, he faked concern over the brutality visited on suspects under UPDF and Police custody. Above all, the bigger statements are seen in the policies of the regime and not the few verbal niceties that numb the mind of its tyranny. The US has demonstrated once again that it is no longer a champion of democracy if it can exploit Africa. No one cares about democracy anymore as everyone is economically strapped in the post-COVID-19 era. Harshly, we must think of a post-democracy world and contend with it!

END

 

 

 

 

 

How the Museveni's Regime is Committing Social Murder under COVID-19

  

SOCIAL MURDER

When COVID 19 first hit the world, it revealed that many societies had successfully obscured widespread social inequities. Towards the end of 2020 data confronted us from the US and UK that unveiled these outrageous inequities as COVID 19 struck had. COVID 19 made visible a form of embarrassing social inequities. But these were known as deliberate outcomes of public policies that had developed over centuries in capitalist countries.

The morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 among the disadvantaged population demonstrated a need to review the dominant policies that seek the production of health. The poor and less powerless section of the population, mostly people of color, immigrants, the elderly single mothers, and the elderly were the most exposed, contracted, and died from Covid-19.

Such morally objectionable differences between people that we can correct through a democratic and equity-oriented public policy became the defining moment for the developed industrial countries. Even superpowers were helpless in halting and reversing the onslaught of coronavirus.

Social inequities anywhere call for immediate action to address the structural and systemic facets that make them thrive. Specifically, the situation with COVID 19 called attention to the redistribution of social, cultural, economic, and political resources - all of which are determinants of health. It called for less commodification and stratification of society but more of decommodification and destratification. The pandemic response should have been driven by a unified global sense of urgency to save humanity from its indignation, suffering, encountering unnatural deaths, and not to entirely commercialize or profit from it!

The causes of social inequities in every society have their historical, structural, material, and power relations. Power and governance are key determinants of social inequities, especially under the neoliberalism capture.  How power is distributed determines which group gains or loses societal privileges to better services and/or social and economic resources to live a healthier life.

Those without power are deprived of the material conditions to live a fulfilling life in the same society, thereby creating a two-tiered nation – of the poor majority and a rich few. In Uganda, we saw how some people reaped big from the streams of COVID-19 prevention monies lavished to Uganda.

When Rudolf Virchow introduced the concept of social medicine in 1848 in his report entitled: "The report on the typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia", he had studied the developments in Upper Silesia that led to a frequent typhus epidemic and concluded that the people there were suffering because they lacked education, liberty, and democracy. Those people lacked civic engagement and decision-making power and were quite impoverished. Virchow recommended that the treatment of the typhus epidemic was not pharmaco-medicine, rather a "full and unlimited democracy".

It follows since then that there is a causal link between oppression on people with the overall standards of health of the oppressed. People who lack political or civil rights tend to be at a high risk of getting sick and dying young. This observation, which is beyond the scope of this article, has been an obsession of many social epidemiologists for decades.

In Uganda, the history and patterns of oppression are easily traced to how power is appropriated and maintained violently within a tribal cabal. Every post-colonial regime that ascended to power - except for Idi Amin - enacted its constitution as a procedural tool or standards by which to cling to power. Where the constitution is tested and fails, these regimes reverted to the strong arms of colonial laws to perpetuate oppression. The constitution has not served Ugandans beyond a regime. As such, there is no guarantee that subsequent grabbers of power will not oppress and exploit Ugandans.

The current regime's oppression is characteristically corrupted and violent. It is driving the young Ugandan population into various vulnerabilities leading to an early and unnatural death. Most are resigning too soon to fate while the desire to flee Uganda has peaked. Sizeable others are disinterested in matters of governance or accountability owing to the politicization of everyday social spaces complemented by crude violence – torture, deforming, humiliation, and death.

The monopoly of power has transformed this Museveni regime into the most reliable source of morbidity and mortality outside tropical diseases, epidemics, and pandemics. The regime kills Ugandans even more than the natural calamities such as landslides and El Nino rains.  

Someone may ask, how so?

I believe Friederich Engel referred to such unconscionable conduct of the regime in which the masses are led to die maliciously through deliberate policy decisions, as social murder.

Covid-19 has demonstrated that Uganda's health care system is far from its potential to contain a pandemic. Understandably, the colonialist and subsequent post-colonial governments did not design the healthcare system to handle pandemics. Rather, healthcare was part of the colonial social policy package designed to incentivize participants in the colonial rule and economy.

Subsequent post-colonial regimes maintained a healthcare system that would respond to the health needs of all Ugandans in line with the WHO 1946 constitution. The current regime has for decades, embarked on undermining and dismantling it. It prefers the proliferation of a predatory private health sector most accessible by regime loyalists in the same fashion as the colonialists’.

The violent repression, occasioned by a state-inspired corruption deprives Ugandans of the opportunity to seek accountability just as the people of Upper Silesia. Inevitably, the state’s neglect of the public healthcare system in Uganda is nothing short of social murder.

End.

CUT - Unedited

Access to a good healthcare system is not only a common good but a basic human right. This is proscribed in the WHO’s 1946 constitution of which Uganda is a signatory, demands "…the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right of every human being." According to the WHO, health as a human right creates a legal obligation on states to ensure access to timely, acceptable, and affordable health care of appropriate quality and allows addressing underlying determinants of health. At the moment majority of Ugandans cannot afford good quality healthcare.

The out-of-pocket costs in the private hospitals have come to bear on household expenditures and it has reached beyond what experts consider calamitous spending levels. Hospital bills averaging Shs 60m from a short stay in a private clinic or hospital, especially when the patient dies, leaves families highly indebted and immediately slides them into abject poverty, misery and early death.

Recently, I read Hon. Betty Nambooze's (Mukono Municipality MP) plea in a situation where a doctor who treated COVID 19 patients himself contracted the virus. Unfortunately, the doctor was rushed to a private hospital where he died after a short stay. The hospital held the corpse hostage pending payments of exorbitant hospital costs that the family, friends, and the clan combined, could not raise among them. The private hospital administrators suggested that the family sell off the deceased man's family house to recover the service costs from which he died. The doctor is only one such example as many people prefer to die from home for a decent burial than indebt their families.

Engel wrote in 1845 that

“…when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by sword or bullet…or forces them, through the strong arms of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues…it is murder!

Covid-19 has demonstrated a need for the government to rethink its policies on strengthening the public healthcare sector. A two-tier well-balanced healthcare system would still work to complement each other. The economic sense of this argument is that a healthy population is a prerequisite for a robust economy.

End. 

 

 

Gen Wamala Mutumba's near-miss Assassination: Arms proliferation undermining security.of person and persons

 

GUN VIOLENCE

 "Gen Wamala Mutumba survived an assassination," one person wrote to me on WhatsApp at 6:30 am ET on Tuesday, June 1, 2021.

 My social media feeds then flooded with gory images of a perpetually subdued and frightened General Mutumba Wamala. Another picture of his black SUV parked with blood running under it, suggesting fatalities. I then learned that Gen. Mutumba Wamala was attacked by gunmen while on his way to a funeral. That he had lost a daughter and a driver in that senseless violence. 

 Reflecting on this whole scene, I have raised concerns over the increasing proliferation of society with small arms and light weapons (SALW), which continues to undermine the security of persons and property.

 This election year, the presence of small, light, and large firearms in the hands of civilians seemed to have peaked in previous election years. Overall, Ugandans are some of the most suppressed and unhealthy global citizens, constantly fearful of the state and gun violence - a social determinant of health!

 The images of random people dressed in civilian clothes brandishing pistols, assault rifles, AK47 with other firearms, and acting lawlessly affirms that Uganda is either under a lawless society usurped by organized criminals or under a military dictatorship.

 The extent of the problem is widespread as we see Uganda traders getting killed en route to the lucrative South Sudan market or in Kasese, Mbale, and so forth. Every Ugandan lives in utter fear and uncertainty, knowing well the pending tragedy of armed robbery or state-inspired drone kidnaps. It gives relevance to musician Ronald Mayinja’s epic song, “Bizeemu”, laments of Uganda returning to its darker days of state terror in the 70s and 80s.

 Uganda developed policies and an action plan on SALW and yet the rapid rate at which guns are getting into the hands of assailants highlights the criminal nature of the state or its inability to subvert organized crime. Others go as far as observing that these senseless crimes and assassinations are state enterprises.

In trying to understand assassinations versus armed robbery or other forms of targeted gun-killings in Uganda, one must revisit concerns over possession of military stores.

 Innocent youths are languishing in deplorable prison facilities and safe-houses on fictitious accounts of possessing military stores – meaning owning artifacts, objects, or items such as ammunition that the army has a monopoly on. However, the real assassins roam our streets unfettered.

 Various reports indicate that the arms from police and military armory are finding their way into the hands of robbers. One such case was detailed in the Daily Monitor story of February 17, 2019, entitled: "why are criminals using UPDF, police guns to kill and rob?"

 In that report, Police officials admitted that their guns get stolen often while the staff is reporting on duty. Herein lies the complicity in this gun crime if police officers have difficulties protecting their own weapons and accounting for it. For instance, the guns recovered in an armed robbery-murder case CRB 270/2018 registered at Bweyogerere Police Station were confirmed to belong to the army.

Ugandans generally avoid possessing guns or weapons and this trend has been consistent from Idi Amin era. It was the NRA's Kyaka mkyaka programs that strove to demystify the fear of guns, grenades, and probably even landmines among the Wanainchi, thereby raising the appetite for guns locally.

 Not long ago we saw Mathew Kanyumunyu gun Akena down at Lugogo - an act that dented this nation’s conscience. To this day no one has explained the circumstances under which Kanyumunyu came to own a gun nor has he been held accountable for the possession and misuse.

 The near-miss shooting of a decorated army General, Wamala Katumba, on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, seems like a sequel to the gruesome murder in cold blood of Arua Municipality MP, Abiriga. These patterned events have an everlasting shocking effect on the mind of ordinary Ugandans and enforce the pervasive sense of insecurity to person and property.

 Ironically, Museveni who claims Uganda is so peaceful and vowed at inception never to preside over a country where insecurity is commonplace, has himself perpetuated and justified violence - and gun violence in particular.

 I am raising this concern over small arms and light weapons proliferation in society because the existential threat is surreal and is growing rapidly. Uganda has entered a phase of exploitative and predatory socioeconomic relations. In stable and democratic nations, such phases are moderated with the state ceding more democratic rights and independent judicial systems for mediation. In Uganda, however, we see the opposite trend. The more predatory the relations of production, the more the state applies its hegemonic subduing force against the exploited.  The place of violence in our society is firmly etched in its social, economic, and political processes.

 There are many people postulating as to why Gen. Mutumba Wamala was targeted. One dominant narrative is that the General was interfering in mafia exploits. One thing is clear, with or without these street hypotheses, the assassins were professionals. Although they lacked the precision and finesse with which Kirumira, Kawesi, Kagezi, and Abiriga were diced, indeed, these gunmen were not amateurs.

 The bigger question is, who are these highly specialized and precise assassins? Obviously, they are not ordinary irate civilians attempting to settle land disputes or business grievances. These were highly trained hitmen with a high level of sophistication. The nation should know before the next scene of murder because we no longer know who shouldn't possess weapons in this society.

END

Primer on Methodology

 

Can democracy grow “organically” in this era of neoliberalism?

HOMEGROWN DEMOCRACY

I read Dr. Moses Khisa’s article in the DM of April 17/21 entitled; “The Problem of Promoting Democracy” and extracted three interesting premises which I thought are worth a rebuttal.

The first premise was that the reductionist act of casting a vote and enthusiastically supporting one’s candidate while unaware of the socio-political context in which such an exercise was designed, simply aid in afflicting the mind of an overzealous nation with utter delusion. The second premise was that democracy cannot be an import. It must be grown from inside, organically, through protracted citizens’ activism and struggles. The third premise, and perhaps a classical observation was that a viable democracy depends on a viable state.

I found Dr. Khisa’s piece evocative. There are more versatile political scientists who could, perhaps, rebut this piece. On my part, I am compelled to respond to the three premises as follows.

Premise 1 – on derision and delusional anticipation of change through the reductionist act of casting one’s ballot as democracy, I do agree with the author. Indeed, democracy is not merely validated by an event of voting or running crazy after a sloganeering candidate of choice. This observation has been the convergence point for many of us who, for the longest time, dissuaded the legitimate section of Uganda’s opposition from validating sham elections disguised as “democracy” where the habitual candidate and incumbent organize it behind closed doors.

The opposition must not wait for the next elections to begin organizing and engaging the fascist regime in a meaningful dialogue. We have learned that most last-minute deals have degenerated into transactional politics – the dominant means of survival among the “Abazukulu” politicians.

With the many draconian laws that curtail human liberties and freedoms to organize, the Ugandan version of democracy has become an illiberal ritual of validation. Indeed, participating in this kind of democracy makes prominent politicians compete with invalid votes because the incumbent already holds the leash to the “valid” outcome.

Premise 2 – On growing democracy organically from within, I disagree with the author. In the era of neoliberalism, foreign interests such as multinational corporations have amassed for themselves so much power, influence, and privileged situatedness with sacrosanct legal rights. In an authoritarian environment like Uganda, multinational and transnational corporations have enough dirty money to write the course of “democracy”, to shape public policies without input from the people.

In the Ugandan scene, I hear a cacophony that the small Indian businesspeople pay more taxes than all Ugandans combined. In another, that MTN - a multi-national corporation is a top taxpayer in the country. Ironically, a 2019 Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) study found that domestic investors in Uganda pay more taxes than multinationals.

The cumulative impact of this propaganda is to undermine citizens’ capacities to nurture democracy through legitimate civil activism and holding the authorities accountable. The space for exercising civil rights is already violently curtailed because the state, itself under captivity from the armed junta, considers citizens as unworthy elements in shaping the nation’s destiny. The state survives on taxes. If the taxpayers are foreign investors or multinational or transnational corporations, that shifts the allegiance of the state to the ones who pay taxes. Neoliberalism itself is anti-statist for its exploitative agenda. It, however, expects a strong state intervention when the marginalized masses threaten its exploitative nature.

Further, democracy as an idea, ideal, or practice is inherently alien to and highly contested in the continent. The nations that might grow their in-house democracy, are nations that chose democracy as a compromise over annihilation from anti-imperialist wars. Democracy is not “native” to any of them.

Premise 3 – On democracy as dependent on a stable and a neutral, thus a viable state, I agree and reiterate that the relationship must be mutually reinforcing.  

End.

 

 

Why power discussion is central to health equity.

 

HEALTH EQUITY AND POLICY

Reading Amb. Rudi Veestraeaten and Prof. Rhoda Wanyenza’s article in the Daily Monitor of April 7, 2021, about health equity as the theme for this year’s World Health Day was refreshing.

The article applauded Uganda’s strides towards affording Ugandans a certain level of health services, mostly that reduced maternal-child mortality and so forth. The article also identified key areas where efforts have lagged mostly due to government underfunding of the health sector. It further identified emerging health challenges such as early teen pregnancies, a barrier to accessing health information, and specific sexual and reproductive health services reaching the poor.

My rejoinder is that the two dignitaries could have been clearer by not mixing the pursuit of health with healthcare. And this is the "problematic" prevailing in health equity debates, especially when a non-committal term such as "disparity" is used to ascribe inequities. Critics have identified the persistence of positivist science as central to this aberration such that we must be deliberate to discern health from healthcare in every conversation.

Health inequity consideration arises from social and economic conditions, most of which are unfair but also avoidable. Health care pertains to downstream curative approaches which are narrow in scope. Health is the general wellbeing, and it depends on social, economic, and environmental determinants (Social Determinants of Health), whose resource distribution is moderated through public policies. How these resources are produced and distributed across the population defines inequities in health. For example, the closure of schools and workplaces during the pandemic and subsequent failure for parents to feed or pay fees for their daughters to return to school contributed to a national teen pregnancy crisis.

For health equity to materialize, society should question imbalances in the distribution of power and privileges in a way that paves way for equity public policy - itself a social determinant of health. Rudolf Virchow demonstrated this correlation during the 1847-8 Typhus epidemic in upper Silesia. Rudolf developed the term “social medicine” to reflect the need for social, economic, and cultural factors that he deemed central in the typhus etiology and identified the lack of participatory voices (alienation from politics and democracy) as contradicting local efforts to contain the outbreak.

Virchow’s experience translates in the Uganda scene by the increasing socio-political disempowerment of Ugandans through the rampantly fraudulent and violent socio-political processes. The chronic and pervasive corruption and violence against the people disempower citizens from holding their state managers accountable for inequities in their health experiences. When people feel that they have no voice in how their society should be managed, their input in the public policy processes diminishes to their own detriment.

Today, very few Ugandans can seek accountability for failures of government to deliver services relevant to health. Take, for instance, we all know the importance of education and early childhood development, accessible healthcare services, employment and working conditions, infrastructure and built environment, etc., have on the health of every community. These services are often delivered within a community, requiring community input in ensuring that they are made accessible and culturally relevant. Without the political clout and community voice, the government has felt no obligation to elevate these services to an acceptable level rather than divert service delivery to the private sector. Social services are constantly on the decline among the poor majority indicating a loophole in the policy processes, but also a strong favor for the market orientation.

Most revealing is the new concept of equity in this aegis of neoliberalism. The government is steering Uganda into the money nexus, and yet many Ugandans are not prepared. In effect, commodification has augmenting exclusion in understanding the dynamics of the money economy and its distribution, thus, equity now means the ability to pay from out-of-pocket to gain access. 

Moreover, monetary income is the most important element in the market economy. In the Ugandan context though, the market orientation is exclusive of the majority with soaring unemployment across the population affecting the social and family context. That experience further strains social relations as everyone depends on the other. This is made worse because liberalism thrives on individualism which is literally tearing families apart.

Lastly, health equity has been redefined and Ugandans should see it for that. The true meaning of health equity is that individuals, and not the government, should cater to their needs using out-of-pocket resources, which is driving families to catastrophes. The idea that healthcare is the solution to poor health is untrue. We must escalate investment in a socio-politically empowered community and in their public health systems. The 2008 WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health stated it succinctly that what makes people unhealthy or healthy are found in the communities and not in healthcare facilities.

END

War Mongering during elections is unconstitutional.

WAR MONGERING

In 1996, Dr. Kawanga Semogerere of DP teamed up with Hon. Cecilia Ogwal of UPC to give Museveni a ran for his money. I was a high school student watching Museveni lie through his teeth. I was also an avid admirer of Ms. Ogwal, not so much of Semogerere, because he played a significant role in legitimizing the fraud that the Museveni regime has become and the decline of DP.

I was a regular at my HSC debating club during the 1994 Constitutional debate that resulted in Uganda's 1995 Constitution. That Constitution lacked in many ways, but it was a document that designed a clear democratic path for Uganda.

I could say some democracy because many of the critical levers that may have cemented Uganda's democracy were also made vulnerable to manipulation by Museveni's regime agenda.

The 1995 Constitution also gave Ugandans hope through term and age limits and a civil language that encouraged civil society organizations and opposition political parties to fetter. These are critical platforms that mediate between citizens and the state.

That Constitution also assured Ugandans that civic engagement was a right and not criminal – that citizens could protect the state from intruders and pronounce themselves over Uganda's territorial integrity using state machinery.

Left in its 1995 form, that Constitution could have delivered Ugandans to unimaginable triumph on several fronts, such as a peaceful transfer of power from one President to another or from one political party to another. This feat is vital because there has never been such an experience in Uganda's entire existence.

Suppose the Constitution was so clear on avenues through which Ugandans could legally participate in democratic governance and see that their will to be governed is respected. Why do we always get into this war-mongering mode at every election since 1996?

In philosophy and African wisdom or even in moral discourses, one does not get a valid result from a fake process. You cannot be pregnant by eating a mango. This concept feeds into the logic of mathematics and all sciences. Machiavelli failed society as a desperado by claiming that the end justifies the means. In lawful and organized philosophical or scientific society, only the means matter.

In 1996, when Dr. Semogerere picked Mrs. Ogwal as his running mate, Semo was demonized as Dr. Obote's empathizer. Musevenists went to Luwero and displayed skulls by the roadside, attributing that to wars of Obote. Spooky stories of ghosts of Obote and the northern hate-mongering filled the airwaves. The threat of going back to the bush was the highlight of that campaign.

Many Baganda shunned Semogerere and treated him as an Obote ally, a traitor, and an anti-progress that the NRM had brought. You may understand why the north is cold about a Muganda Bobi Wine.

In 1999 when Col Besigye jumped off the NRM bandwagon to challenge Museveni, the regime did not take it lightly. It blackmailed, threatened, and went ballistic on all fronts, accusing Col Besigye of planning wars, being an enemy of the state, and so forth. A similar pattern came on in 2006, 2011, 2016, and so forth. From 2006 to this date, there has never been a Presidential candidate not charged with treason.

Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu and Lt. Gen Henry Tumukunde have treason charges looming on their heads in this campaign.

In sum, it is a pity that the 1995 Constitution, even when fraudulently amended several times, did not remove Ugandan's rights to unseat an incumbent as treasonable. Some of the provisions within 1995 constitution, as amended dubiously, still recommend the preservation of human rights and rights to civil liberties, right to participation in civic discourses. Above all, it upholds that elections every five years.

If contesting against the incumbent constitute a threat to national security/war, or leads the state to kidnap, shoot at, detain without trial, torture, or murder citizens who are practicing their constitutional obligations, then what is the worth of a constitution disorder?

END