Cheap Opposition?: The whole country is on sale for cheap

BUYING UGANDA

This weekend was an embarrassing one for the two-faced Opposition. They must be walloping in humiliation with the revelation by chief-buyer, that Opposition members including their MPs are cheap in the political market.

The cheapness of our Opposition is a matter of interpretation. It reveals the outcome of social transformation under the three decades of NRM corrupted rule. Mr. Museveni has previously applied numerous tactics, including doling out brown envelops, but most effectively, through political appointments to extract from the midst of Opposition, their most tenacious cadres. That is how he purged life out of DP in the early 90s and sucked the living hell out of UPC recently.

Characteristically, when Museveni fails to woo opposition characters, he jails them and even capitulates some from a productive economic lifeline. The economic alienation makes this country so unequal in wealth distribution, such that corruption became the natural means to equalize. Uganda has transformed into an economy where corruption is a means of production for many. Those privileged to own opportunities to steal public resources are at the top of the food chain. Many of them ally with the regime solely to safeguard their loot, while the NRM uses their “success” stories to entice members of Opposition.

Without any competitive buyer, the monopoly holder naturally sets the market price of goods. Where the supply of “good conscience” becomes too much, the price naturally falls. It has fallen to a low point where a mere lavishing of his targets with praises such as “good or better member” of Opposition can win him such an Opposition leader, cheaply.

The confusion over who pays better is even worse among the youths who should be flashing out this absurdity. The 2016 general elections brought out the worse among the youths – the Poor NRM Youths vs the jobless brotherhoods. They oscillated between Amama Mbabazi’s camp and Museveni camp, looking for who pays higher. Politics to them is for eating; wellness of society is reflected as an aggregate of economically well off members in this money nexus.  

In contextualizing Mr. Museveni’s mockery of Opposition, one needs to understand Museveni’s innate contempt for multiparty democracy and rule of law.  The Opposition has demonstrated little understanding of the exploits of a Multiparty Political dispensation in that sense. Some expect Mr. Museveni to “allow” them to operate. Museveni’s mission is clear – finish the Opposition by 2021. The revelation of cheapness of Opposition therefore is a blow to opposition credibility and further to undermined multiparty politics.

On its part, the Opposition unconsciously or consciously plays to the tunes of the Piper. The Opposition obeys every draconian law; lack ongoing agenda to engage electorates until the time of elections; exhibits too much in-house treachery – betrayal and snitching that goes unpunished; lack ideological identity or policy preferences distinct from that of the ruling regime; and consistently fails to demonstrate the ability to offer an alternative government.

As such, the Opposition is confusing to the electorates and youths because the only difference between NRM and the so-called Opposition appears to be the briskness of their leaders. Opposition is not about hatred, envy, ignorance and the drive to remove a regime. It entails a systematic organizing to form an alternative government in the waiting and to produce alternative policy framework to push society forward. In that sense, the Ugandan Opposition is atypical, unconscious, and unprincipled.

Not only Opposition politicians are on sale in Uganda. The whole country is. From traditional leaders, church leaders, youth, women and worse of all, the NRM carpetbaggers. Even with their numerical strength, the NRM secretariat still buys their MPs to pass egregious laws towards the life-presidency or mortgaging Uganda. If the regime buys conscience from Opposition, it pays heftily for loyalty from within.  The cheapness of the Opposition is not distinctive; rather, it is a continuum of Museveni’s corrupted rule.

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Regular screening could reduce noncommunicable disease mortality

PREVENTIVE TREATMENT

The article “What can be done to reduce cancer deaths in Uganda” (DM of June 23, 2017) was a compassionate appeal that must be heeded. The author raised many core issues about the escalation of cancer in Uganda. He left many concepts unexplained.

First, the increasing incidence of cancer and other non-communicable diseases in Uganda should be discussed within the liberal market orientation – the commodification of social spaces, healthcare and rapid consumer cultural transitions. Underneath these are major behavioural changes inspired by the industry that makes available, harmful products such as alcohol, cigarette, ultra-processed foods, etc.

I was recently surprised when I saw four extremely obese kids with their equally super obese parents walking out of a fast food outlet on Kampala Road with four full buckets of deep fried chicken. Many associate fast foods with class and stature.

The increasing propensity among consumers for fast foods in the Fast Foods outlets that litter our streets, illustrate the transformative influence of liberalisation, and its impacts on our cultures and health. Dietary transition, for instance, is a matter of public health, as an indicator of rapid cultural shift among young and middle class people from organic traditional foods to ultra-processed industry foods.

I have until recently, believed in the singular discourse of behavioural explanation of the rise high morbidity and mortality from non-communicable diseases in the so-called emerging markets of the developing countries.

However, after deeply investigating, I now believe that the loss of environmental control is a powerful predictor of such behaviors. Underneath this, are powerful driving forces of multinational corporations. These manufacture, transport, and distribute carcinogenic and harmful products. These corporations are vicious in taking control of our everyday social environment and transforming them into markets, through targeted advertisements, targeted product packaging such as the alcohol sachets, and investing in trade policies that galvanizes their operations. Sachets are designed to attract the poor; sweetened drinks and highly salted foods are targeted at children.

Moreover, certain products such as tobacco, whether over the counter, or counterfeit, most are laced with addictive chemicals.

The claim of sedentary lifestyle as a “causality” in an African settings is questionable as it capitulates upon scrutiny against sound evidence. What is the percentage of Ugandans indulging in sedentary lifestyle, and why? What population are most afflicted by Cancer and Diabetes, and why? When we analyse these questions, and others, with the help of National Health Survey data and from HMIS reports alone, we may discover interesting trends and intersecting patterns between cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases and heart diseases with poverty, age and gender, and HIV/AIDs status.

The sedentary lifestyle claim in Uganda in that sense is far-fetched given our modest modes of social interactions, poor transportation system, irregular and expensive electricity and television. The increasing use of social media may augment the risk of inactivity given that nearly 19.5 million Ugandans are now on social media. Most of these behaviours are associated with the emerging digital neoliberal economy.

Ugandans are becoming more obese with a bulging belly morphological dilemma. Government must at least make screening services universal and mandatory. In Uganda men tend to resist screening because of reputational masculinity – fear of diagnoses which may alter their social status. This is problematic because most of these conditions, when diagnosed early, are reversible and treatable. Many Ugandans live with hypertension and various conditions unknowingly. The culture of gauging illness by pain or immobility compromises treatment efficacy, and fans mysticism of poisoning, bewitching, etc. Ever heard of an oxymoron where one particular MP is always poisoned and goes for “surgery” in south Africa?

In sum, the liberal market emphasises labor market attachment, production, and productivity. There is little room for being indisposed from the production line. You are responsible for getting sick and expected to get well on your own, perish!  

END

Kyadondo East expose FDC’s lack of structure

GRASSROOTS

 One of the challenges of African society is the fortification of elders - those considered of high repute and advanced age - from scrutiny. However, democracy sets aside this cumbersome tradition and demands for transparency as well as accountability in social discourses. For instance, the Kyadondo East by-elections is about to expose a generational fallacy that FDC is building structures!

First, I have doubted the argument that FDC is building grassroot structures. If it is, Kyadondo East would by now be coloUred blue. In reading Hon. Nandala-Mafabi’s interview in the Observer of June 12, 2017 (Refer to: Nandala-Mafabi: FDC shall not work with Mao’s DP), it downed on me that this pep talk of building party structure is hypothetical.  Hon. Nandala-Mafabi confirms that FDC is unable to form and sustain grassroot structures because NRM "invaginates" such a structure with bribery and coercion. Nandala-Mafabi’s explanation speaks against the credential of current FDC Party President, the amiable and respected Gen. Muntu that is cultivated around this building party structures mantra. These days, every Party uses this cliché to sound busy and present at the periphery, whereas they are ensconced in the capital.

At least, Uncle Muniini Mulera, on numerous occasions, praised Gen Muntu for working towards building grassroot structures. This emerging discourse is intended to legitimize  FDC power and brands around gen Muntu. In essence, hasten the alienation of,  and a focus on Dr Besigye.

This “structure” hyperperbole reminds me of the fierce debate in the 90s between Ministry of Agriculture under Hon. Specioza Kazibwe and Parliament. The scandal was about some dams built in the cattle corridor somewhere in Western Uganda. When the MPs went to inspect the Dam, they could not see any. Incidentally, an Agriculture Ministry officials was quoted to have opined that if MPs could not see the dam, at least the cows were able to.

The 2016 Presidential and Parliamentary elections exposed FDC’s lack of grassroot structure.  Therefore, there is legitimacy in entertaining the discussion around the same. However, Gen Muntu was FDC’s Secretary for mobilization prior and he should know better. Without a real structure, winning a 34 years old establisment will require divine providence. The ingeniousness of Dr Kizza Besigye and his minders, with support from the diaspora allowed the P10 matrix system to fill this gap in 2016. FDC cannot therefore remain wishful about structures, or depend on the good will of resentful Ugandans exhausted with the antics of the tyranny.

This, by no means, is anindictment, nor intended to undermine Gen.Muntu’s vision of building party structures. It is only to reiterate that there is a lapse in its realization, as  if the cart is placed before the horse.

In hindset, the Aruu South MP, Hon Odonga Otto once stated on his facebook page that FDC did not have polling agents in nearly 22,000 polling stations around the country, most of them in Western Uganda and Karamoja. This figure is startling, especially to know that these agents were there but coerced, jailed, or compromised.

This fate may be an FDC trademark, which will render its efforts minimalist, even in Kyadondo East. Their inability to read the constituency well may cost the party here. Mr. Kyagulanyi is a man of the people, a grassroot mobilizer who rarely wears shiny suits, or speaks polished “Brexit”, “Donald Trump” and modern English on TV. He speaks the language of the unwashed peri-urban dwellers and employs the people he aspires to represent in Parliament.

The dilamma is that Mr. Kyagulanyi’s nascent support for Dr. Besigye during past hardships endears him to opposition politics. Mr. Kyagulanyi was in courts, visited jail, and at KB’s  home amidst confinement. He paid his dues to the cause when some MPs-elect were denying KB like Peter did to Jesus. Bobi’s star power, organic local support, history of concrete community development initiatives and leadership credentials makes his candidature appealing!

END 

There is no justification of strongman rule in Africa

STRONGMAN MALAISE

The wisdom of African strongmen rule in Africa is an utter contradiction with no justification whatsoever over 60 years of post-colonial profligacy. Does any nation need a strongman ruler, given the history of their dismal performances thus far?

Consistent evidence show that when dictators establish themselves over their gullible populations, they rule uninterrupted by internal opposing forces. With few exceptions, (eg Ghadafi), all dictators drive their nations to economic downfall and over dependency on foreign aid. By the inherent nature of dictatorship, human suffering follows a steady environmental degradation, low economic productivity, decline in human conditions, unfettered expropriation of resources by foreign interests, and inexorable alienation of citizens from the state. Many unpleasant traits of dictatorships makes strongmen rule in Africa unjustifiable.

Mobutu  of Zaire ruled the vast African country for 31 years.  By the time he was deposed, the entire Zaire had barely 1000 km of road into the countryside with a huge part of the mineral rich countryside inaccessible and isolated. Nearly 92% of Congolese lived under the poverty line of US$2 a day. By not investing in infrastructure, Mobutu perpetuated under-development and the haemorrhaging of Congo’s resources by foreign interests. It took a combination of foreign forces in tow of malignant internal insurgents to kick Mobutu out.

Back home, Idi Amin ruled Uganda with an iron fist and presided over economic collapse and immense human suffering. Like under Mobutu, internal dissent attracted a death sentence under Amin. Only with an external force of arms by Tanzanian People’s Defence Forces were Ugandans able to rid itself of a vicious rule of tyranny and economic collapse in 1979.

Recently, ECOWAs forced out the deranged Gambian dictator, Yahya Jammeh with the combination of diplomacy and potential for external force. There are many strongmen buttressed all over Africa such that to depose them, only an external force may suffice. Internal opposition has proven insufficient to galvanise the critical masses needed for change. Strongmen are vicious, employing corruption, and collaboration with external capitalists to exploit Africa.

Moreover, terrorism charge is strategically employed as a weapon against internal dissent and armed insurrection.

The young Joseph Kabila in DRC, himself a trainee dictator, seems to have graduated given his clutch on power. Soon he will join the regional club of full time dictators armed with strongmen ambitions run their countries down. Nearly every African country where strongmen rule, they have lurked and disabled internal dissent.

The lessons are there for us to draw from in order to realise the potentials of good governance and development.

African scholars should increasingly interpret the terms “good governance” and “development” correctly. These terms exists in situations where western capitalist interests of exploitation are guaranteed. Clearly, good governance and development are interpreted differently for Africa.

Even those who claim to value democracy and good governance as a pretext for development, support the entrenchment of dictatorship in Africa in as far as their interests are guaranteed.

We have to only look at the 2015 report “How the world profit from Africa’s wealth” which highlights the exploitation of Africa. According to the report, African nations received $162 billion in aid, loans, and remittances in 2015. At the same time, Africa lost $203 billion through resource extraction, debt payments, and illegal logging and fishing.

In Uganda’s 2017/18 budget, about 52% was allocated to debt repayment and government is reported to have paid taxes for several investment companies to keep them afloat! Indeed, Strongmen rule is akin to steady decline of Africa.

Nevertheless, not all love is lost with strongmen of Africa. Decisions by Rais Arap Moi of Kenya and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania to relinquish power demonstrated that when strongmen hands over power peacefully, their countries tended to harness the potential of transformation into a form of democracy quite quickly. Further analyses and theorising of this phenomenon may be of scholarly interest to academics.

End.

Ugandans need deliberate reflections and reflexivity

THOUGHTFULNESS

A friend and I indulged in a reflective practice recently and concurred that, occasional self-reflection and reflexivity have the power to replenish our “reality” and relations as we glow in our primes. By reflection and reflexivity, we mean giving a serious thought to one’s values, beliefs, acquaintances, and interests; and how these shape their reality as well as defines their relations. 

We recognized that our lives seem to happen on the fast lane, forcing us to park certain critical aspects of it into our past. Life drives us from one phase to the next as active passengers but never fully in control of its steering. Reflection and reflexivity allows us to at least, be aware of the direction life is swinging us to.

In the pursuit of life, we suppress experiences, missed potentials, or near-misses. At some phases, historical contentions remain unresolved and thus, we get fixated. We may pretend that we are over the unresolved past, in reality we expend energy in suppressing them. Then we speculate and rationalize our fate as luck – bad or good, depending on success or failures.

Yet, for every human failures or success, one can trace the genesis to their individual history. Only your history reveals the point at which you deviated from, or converged with your current predicament.  As such, some of these contentions could somehow get resolved through reflection and reflexivity.

We also grapple with the mystery of life and death. As we live, we become accustomed with news of demise of your contemporaries.  Upon hearing such, you shudder with shock for a bit and then you let go. Such news inevitably evokes past memories – history. Nonetheless, it affirms that you have aged and alive.

Our truths lay claim that life and death are a continuum - an endless rope tied on your waist at birth connects you to death. That obscure rope is history - your history. No matter where you go, you could never disconnect with that life-rope.

After all, one begins to die upon conception. Time covers the distance between one’s birth and death. The rest of our earthly activities are only necessary conditions for that transition.

A reflection when combined with reflexivity helps us a lot, in conjuring up our subjectivity, allowing us to remain conscious of how much time we have at hand, and how to expend it. This conscious work of reflection and reflexivity make our sojourn and transcendence through life, memorable and meaningful. For, we cannot separate our past from our present.

At a Kampala restaurant, I met up with old school friends. An awkward encounter ensues as we all became depersonalized. To me, the more we self-actualize, the more we unveil our specificity. The purification process involves the pruning of one’s rough edges to discern them from the common societal values.

Everyone develops specific traits essential to sustenance of their new becoming. In the process, we endure subtle conflicts with societal values and traditions, given our own emergent values. Many end up living half-lives, trying to find a balance between the two.

At the behest, the common societal values vanishes, and are re-enacted within the new trades identities upon which our self-actualization materializes, and with the actualized self. The lesser values one shared with society, the more one appears triumphant in this aegis of neoliberalism beast.

So, in a typical reunion with childhood friends, you are confronted by displaced persons. Immediately after exchanging pleasantries, you are introduced to a lawyer, journalist, doctor, accountant, director, manager, and so forth. Big titles. Fond names and memories of the past are now distanced from the person you eagerly awaited to re-unite with. People have become work places and work places have become people.  Elsewhere, materials define people, and people are defined by materials. Why do we interface with someone’s workplace and their material possessions simultaneously during a simple private social gathering?

The End.

Uganda: A state of Censor

 State Censorship

There is an old adage that when you offer a handshake to a leper, expect a hug in subsequent encounters. This adage seems to prevail in Uganda with state censorship in our ordinary lives. The state has appropriated our inherent rights as enshrined in chapter 4 of the 1995 Uganda constitution (as amended). Our freedoms of free speech, association and, liberty are probably the most censored in the entire continent.

It is becoming harder not to infatuate with the idea that Uganda is not a full dictatorship or a neo-fascist state. Personally, I see a bleak future where Ugandans wear shackles at every aspect of their limbs and duck tapes over their mouths as this regime reinvents itself for the worse.

The plight of maverick Dr. Nyanzi of thirty-three days in a maximum prison on accusation of her social media communication is a signal. The crime (sub judice), is related to her exercise of creative speech.

The numerous attempts to obliterate the mysterious social media figure - Tom Voltaire Okwalinga accentuates Police budget. Suspected Okwalinga’s have been arbitrarily arrested and jailed. The story of Shaka, aka Maverick Blutaski conjures a memory of the intents of the state to shut us up. Incidentally, as they close one communication channel, modern communications technology keeps creating others.

Certainly, the Police spend much of its time and resources in containing public free space. That is the irony. When you have an educated population, you should expect value clash and critics when performances are below par.

Unfortunately, the state censorship and surveillance has peaked levels that prevail under totalitarian regimes. Soon, they will fly their supersonic jets and helicopters over your villages to distribute pamphlets with scripts of what to say in your daily conversations.  Their morbid desire is to police Ugandans until they develop a common language of the subdued.

Some Ugandans condemn Dr. Nyanzi, TVO, or Shaka, subjects of witch-hunt by state functionaries. However, it is our free speech and intellectual freedom that this state is after.

Even if these critics’ writings or public utterances irritate the regime, or were somehow wrong, morally objectionable, and are indifferent to the emperors, should we just destroy them or shut them up? These people convey relevant issues that concern our expectations from our government, and we should listen, attentively.

Few days ago, a letter threatening to suspend the trade license of NBS TV, dated May 11, 2017 and referenced LA/181/39 was issued by Uganda Communications Corporation, the state agency that censures our public and private dialogues, and regulates the media. Apparently, the UCC was “appalled, concerned…and took exceptions to strong language and conduct of a guest” on NBS televised show. This action demonstrates the boundless state ascendancy over our free speech.

You can imagine how much caution any Ugandan or business must exercise to survive a harsh confrontation with state apparatus. This hypersensitivity and high-handed censorship are detrimental to intellectual development and a threat to foreign investments.

Moreover, such excessive state intrusions into private spaces drive Ugandans away from active public life into self-exile within the diminishing personal spaces. Excessive censorship drives progressive views underground and engenders resistance. For instance, there is a phone tapping law whose victims are random, and then the Public Order Management law where the Inspector General of Police is the absolute authority over our rights to associate, assemble and free speech.

This state affair needs a rebuttal. We must resist excessive state censorship and halt the usurpation of our inherent freedoms. The mechanism of control begins with destruction of our social bonds, creating isolated individuals. Once isolated, no matter how legitimate your causes are, the state’s strong arms crashes your will and duck-tapes you infinitum.

The right of free speech, the freedom to assemble and associate are the fundamentals of intellectual development. When you shut those avenues down, you brood a nation of near imbeciles who are too easy to dominate.

When we concede to tyranny by passively relinquishing one or two inalienable rights, we slowly and surely forfeit all.

End.

Labour Day should make sense to workers and living conditions

LABOUR

Ugandans spend Labour Day unconsciously as simply another public holiday. Labour Day has a long treacherous history whose commemoration requires deeper and purposive reflections on labour. The debate on labour has spanned generations, and yet no one ever explains the relations of labour to capital like Marx and Engels ever did. These analyses allow us time to place appropriate value on our everyday struggle for work, income, and a better living, as humans. Irrespective of your qualification, political connections, or ethnicity, we should use Labour Day to evaluate the changing meaning of labour in this era.

To Marx, Labour, is a commodity in the market. He averred that capitalism separates the person from his labour, and allows the person to sell his or her labor in the open market to a bidder. In the capitalist organization of labour, man is alienated from the product of his own labour – that is, through differentiation and specialization, either one is hired to make parts of a whole with no idea of the whole, or are paid very little that they hardly afford the product of their labour (simplified).

With the hegemony of neoliberalism, many anti-statist policies such as restructuring and deregulation have created havens for exploitative corporatists in the private sector that bring impress upon us a lifestyle transitions and diseases. The state has retracted from its public obligations - in funding social services provision, while maintaining some juridical powers. Unlike in the past where government was the main employer, in the aegis of neoliberalism, it has relegated these roles to corporations/private sector.

Uganda is a captive of neoliberal policies allowing for limited jobs in government, which are tightly controlled and distributed on sectarian basis. The bureaucracy, political patronage, and corruption conspire to sabotage rapid growth in the private sector to absorb the abundant labour.

The Museveni regime adopted structural adjustment program in the early 1990s and have since created an economy in which the state, and not government, maintains partial control over certain sectors – such as banking, education, health, while allowing greater role for private investors in every aspects of life. Unfortunately, the over dependence on foreign investors have not yielded much to the needs of the ever growing pool of labour. This has led to a huge gap in services (decline in quality of education, and near collapse of healthcare system), and a huge labour pool. 

Recent employment statistics demonstrates over 80% youth unemployment, and over 90% unemployment rates among university and college graduates. Moreover, those employed are likely to be under employment, in precarious employment - part time, occasional employment with no job security, benefits, and/or unsafe and stressful working conditions. Our working conditions have a direct bearing on our living conditions, which inadvertently affects our overall health. Capitalism produces mental health crises in its zeal for expropriating profits wherever it is entrenched.

In its response to the sluggish private sector growth, the Ugandan state has shifted its employment policy from contracting social service providers to lavishing politics. The wage bill for elected and appointed politicians surpasses the state investment in career public servants. This should worry the left leaning labour unionists.

The relation of labour to freedom is in the control over land. Ugandans are losing their land and control over productivity, even for subsistence. When the regime expropriates all the land from the people, then everybody will start to rent land they once owned for a fixed period as proposed in Buganda recently. If you have no income to service your tenancy, you are rendered homeless – dehumanized. Without ownership of land, everyone becomes a tenant. That is the essence of powerlessness and loss of freedom. The way this economy is organized and operationalized will appropriate your land and place it in the hands of a few landowners.

A Labour Day reflection like this allows for a conscious reflection on the meaning of labour, and a better understanding of the economy and emerging changes in societal structures of power and class. Independent workers Unions should emerge from every profession and field of service besides professional associations. Evidences show that in capitalist societies, a high union density remediates unfair labour expropriation.

The END