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.  

Ordinary Ugandans need the Rwanda Market

Rwanda-Uganda FEUD

Rwanda's closing of its border seems to have hurt Uganda's economy seriously. We may never be sure of the extent of the damage; however, Uganda seems to need Rwanda's market more than Rwanda needs Uganda's. Or, Rwanda’s economy is more resilient such that they could keep away from trading with Uganda.

There will be lessons learned from the border standoff on both sides, which should illustrate to us that having a good neighbor is great for the economy.

For whatever reasons the two leaders have a feud with each other, Rwanda's case is much clearer that one should not benefit from an economy that he is attempting to destroy or destabilize.

Rwanda has had complaints against Uganda – mostly that Uganda's security has illegally held Rwandan nationals and tortured some for spying for Rwanda. Many of us in Uganda do not understand this complaint. The difference between Rwandese and Ugandans, especially in the security circles is hard for us to tell. What we know is that most of the Ugandan army and security personnel are children and bazukulu of former Rwandese refugees in Uganda, most of whom helped Museveni shoot his way to power in 1986. President Kagame was one of them.

Further, “Rwandese” is a contrived tribe recognized in the 1995 Ugandan constitution. In fact, people of Rwanda or Ugandans of Rwandese origin seem to enjoy unfettered privileges and favours in Uganda than say, former Sudanese, Kenyans or Congolese refugees. In fact, most indigenous Ugandans do not have such luxuries in their own country as our cousins from Rwanda. At least, from the impression that the common Ugandan has.

As for Rwanda’s security concerns, Ugandans were mostly aware of a Ms. Charlotte Mukankuusi, a former Rwandan ambassador who abdicated duty and was later seen visiting Mr. Museveni in Uganda and was given a Ugandan Passport. We still do not know why she was privileged to that level.

Underneath all this brouhaha, the Daily Monitor of February 19, 2020, outlined a few security concerns that Rwanda has leveled against Uganda (read Museveni). Rwanda claims that Museveni is harbouring Rwandan dissidents, rebels and terrorists. These are serious allegations.

Both Mr. Museveni and his son have croaked about a potential source of an attack on Uganda. Mr. Museveni once warned that whoever was planning to destabilize Uganda to watch their backs because once he (Museveni) mobilizes his military resources, those people would be in trouble. Recently, his son tweeted that whoever tries to attack Uganda would face the full impact of the empire force.

The big question is, why would Uganda want to destabilize Rwanda? In fairness of things, Rwanda may be like Uganda on many fronts. However, Rwanda has set itself a stride away on its social policies to meaningfully eradicate poverty and reduce social inequalities; Rwanda has built a defined stable economy and recently Rwanda released it's first homemade (assembled) Volkswagen.

In short, Rwanda has made a more quantitative and qualitative socio-economic progress than Uganda within the same timeframe. Rwanda has done much better in managing rent-seeking or political corruption among its political elites and public services when compared to Uganda.

It seems President Kagame does not lie and despises liars. It is most likely that his accusation of Uganda has grains.

If Rwanda has a legitimate security concern, let the government of Uganda respond to these concerns so the borders are opened. I am sure that Museveni would not have rested for one second had Rwanda hosted or been seen to support Uganda rebels. I believe it is written somewhere in the Bible that do to others what you want done to you.

The feud between Kagame and his former mentor, Mr. Museveni is affecting ordinary Ugandans who draw their livelihood by trading in Rwanda's market.

End.  

It is Uganda’s culture that we are trading in the liberal market

NATIONAL DECEPTION

As a country, we have become accustomed to deception as a gateway to success. The target of the extortion is the developed western countries and donors who are paying for decisions that should be made voluntarily. The payment, though, is not in vain. It serves an imperialist or patronage purpose. In that case, the deception and patronage feed off each other in an atypical predatory-cum-symbiotic relationship in the liberal marketplace.

The level of deception in Uganda is stupefying. As a society, we have reached a point where we desire for privileges but never accept its responsibilities. To evade responsibility, we employ deception. But, the more succeeded through deception, the more we become powerless.

Ugandans have learned to put up faces under this phony Museveni-orchestrated liberal market which is full of duplicitous vendors but “empty stalls”. It is in the context of this market that Europeans, Americans, Russians, and Chinese buy our bad cultures and we sell to them our willingness to transform or abandon our “risky”, “outdated” or “primitive” traditions, cultures, identities, even faith.

Over the last decades, the west has been buying us out on many fronts, and we have been selling our cultures, traditions, and identities in that liberal market. Their goal is to speed us up on advances in Eurocentric and pan American type liberalism.

It is not hard to understand why America and Europe are keenly paying us out of our cultures, traditions, beliefs, and autonomy. The West has always acted as the patron of our civilization. If they can pay to sustain their imperialist agenda, then why not? The irony is that every sociocultural item that they buy us out of, and we sell, these people carefully repackaged and preserve at home.

For instance, America pays for us to end cultural practices that are deemed risk averse such as female genital mutilation, the same practice they would call surgical vaginal design. Do we need Americans to bribe us to stop hurting women in a place most sensitive? Well, the trend has been consistent. Once they pay, we immediately end the practice. They have been paying for us to dig and use pit latrines, bury our dead ones, treat our ailments, and many have even been paid to visit a health center!

There is a danger of dependence on this harmful cultural purchase melee. American pay us to plan our families, to use condoms, to take HIV medications, to make clean water available. We have reached a point where the whole country is paid to live or die, how to live and how to die; and what we should do when still alive.

It is comprehensible that liberalism strives to undermine the state to privilege market dynamism. The Ugandan case, however, is a new phenomenon because even the state is now paid to undermine itself. The state itself is captive to an illegitimate government that is constituted by a sham democracy that is paid for by the donor. The so-called experts who validate and legitimize the government are also donor-funded.  

Why should USAID, UKAID or EU pay our people to stop mutilating or pulling their labia? For them, women are “vajazzling”, undergoing vaginal rejuvenation or labiaplasty and others. I get it. It is the procedure and the practice that are risky.

It is not surprising that the recent government intervention to stop over pulling or elongating young women's labia is also donor-funded. The donor also funds our men so that they stop beating their wives (gender-based violence), pay men to begin taking care of their children and to send their children to donor-funded schools.

The more they pay, the more we slip backward and become helpless. Yet, those who engineer this social helplessness judge their success by how much their deceptive or folly enterprises have paid off. These are elites in small private sector agencies, and some linked to the discredited state functionaries in their folly to bring every aspect of social life in Uganda into the liberal market.

I am not even sure whether such a labial maneuver is a popular culture with serious sexual value, but it is on the market stall for selling to a donor. 

Unfortunately, you will not find a lot of manufactured goods on the “stalls” of our liberal market. It is our cultures, traditions, identities, and autonomy that we are trading. We have lagged in every competitive aspect of the global liberal agenda. We have no industries, lag in scientific and technological innovations, lack control over our natural resources and environment; we cannot produce or add value to our agricultural produces enough to access North American, European, Asian and other markets. We have retreated to our quarters to wait for the market spoils to reach us. Even our begging hands have retracted at the elbow.

The sad part is, in the west, liberalism has made it possible for individuals to circumcise, mutilate, elongate, design and sell their bodies or body parts, redesign their private parts, change their sexes, deliver in tubes or through surrogates, die and get cremated.

The Europeans and Americans are already preserving our historical artifacts in their museums, holding our history and knowledge at ransom. In every Zoo, you find more tropical animals indigenous to Africa than you could find in some national parks in Africa.

In our deceptive ways, it is our indigeneity, the very essence of our “Africanness”, that we are trading in the liberal market.

End.

UPDF must remain nonpartisan during elections

MILITARISM

As we enter the year of electioneering, members of the high command of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces have launched their threats to the population with talks of potential insecurity. UPDF must strive to be professional despite the force’s history which adheres them to their founder and the incumbent, who is also a likely candidate in the same elections of 2021.

State Minister for security, Gen Elly Tumwine, Commander of Land Forces, Brig. Peter Elwelu and recently a Capt. Sula Serunjogi has vowed that Presidential hopeful, Hon. Robert S. Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine will never be the commander-in-chief of the UPDF (meaning President of Uganda).

Elsewhere, active army commanders skirt the country to campaign for the incumbent, Mr. Museveni using military facilitation and security apparatuses to intimidate, illegally detain and threaten voters. 

On the village paths, the regime pours its military adorned in full war gears and armed to the teeth to scare the population from voting for any other candidates than Mr. Museveni.

This militarization of every aspect of the state and state functions is the distinguishing feature of this military dictatorship. While it is hard to pinpoint any one specific activity of the UPDF which is professional, the population understands clearly that the UPDF is a personal outfit for protecting Mr. Museveni’s power.

Ironically, the NRM should have been very proud of Ugandans coming out in large numbers to participate and vote in elections peacefully. They have always pointed at the 1980 elections as one that deprived people of their true voices in a messy election. Instead, the UPDF makes voting and elections very traumatic by creating violence. It is mainly during elections (and riots) when the army comes out in full war mode to intimidate, shoot, kill, abduct, torture, mime or abuse civilians. Sometimes we come to think that the UPDF is a redundant army of sorts.

Professionalism is a key aspect of every profession which permits safeguards in its functions and a minimum expectation upon which its public image is branded. In the case of the UPDF, like their sister cadre institutions, the Police and Judiciary, they appear blunt when dealing with other threats such as floods, landslides, terrorism, but sharp and firm when dealing with any political circumstances that threaten the status quo.

With 2021 general elections coming up, many military officers will continue to remind us that only Museveni will remain commander-in-chief of the UPDF. This revelation is important to us given the history of the force and the rank files of its key officers. Like the armies before it, the UPDF has demonstrated a great propensity for ethnocentrism, something they will quickly deny and accuse whoever points it out as practicing sectarianism.

Ugandans should worry because by the UPDF ring-fencing the Presidency for Mr. Museveni after 34 years, our democracy becomes stale – meaningless. Such statements also undermine any pretense that Uganda is a democracy and that Mr. Museveni is elected regularly to retain his seat.

The chaotic nature of the elections in which the militarized police conjure up with paramilitary and security operatives to coerce the population already brings little hope for democracy. The unfortunate implication is that UPDF is constantly reminding Ugandans that the only way to access power is by launching a war. Clever enough, they have cut down the bushes, appropriated or sold the land into sugar cane and tea estates making it difficult to find a bush.

Given the level of peace that the UPDF claims to have established in Uganda, a professional force should remain nonpartisan and keep out of civil affairs. The force should withdraw its members from Parliament, embark on professionalizing and nationalizing its force ranks, and where possible, focus its attention on protecting the integrity of the state and territory from people who are deformed by power.

End.

Effect Reforms in Electoral laws

ELECTIONS 2021

Uganda will hold a general election in February 2021. These elections require urgent reforms in its laws before it happens.

An election year in Uganda is usually full of tragedies. The military regime in power has made elections synonymous with brutality, violence, intimidation, torture, hate propaganda and fearmongering such that the average Ugandan sincerely dread the fatigue of these elections.

Mr. Museveni does not actually depend on elections or needs one to stay in power. They only use violent and meaningless elections as a ritual to renew, validate and legitimize their dictatorship.

The irony is that Ugandans know that an event of the election alone does not define democracy. Democracy is a function of liberalism that comes with a full set of requisites rights and freedoms - a free press, liberty, freedoms of expression, association, worship and innovation and respect for human rights and rule of law. Most of these have been constrained under a tight leash by the regime. Without these rights and freedoms, the Museveni-type democracy is rightfully a total mockery.

In addition, a democratic society must have functioning democratic institutions and a supporting democratic culture of accountability, transparency, and consultation as its defining marks. In Uganda, Mr. Museveni is the defining institution of the state and the state is him. In this case, democracy precludes him or his position at the helm of the nation.

A dictatorship is not hard to identify. There is that one dominant leader who refuses to go away controls the ruling party and the country’s assets. His government controls all aspects of the state and often controls, bans or tightly monitors opposing groups and their meetings. The disregard for individual citizens' rights and the displacement of indigenous citizen's rights for loyal foreigners prevails. Mr. Museveni's use of archaic, colonial and unjust laws, policies, torture and spies to control every aspect of people's lives looms large over every mode of cultural expression - radio, cinema, newspapers, and television.

The potential showdown in a violent election makes many of Ugandans disinterested in the politics and leadership of Uganda.

Further, utterances from the military, the main constituency of the ruling dictatorship, have already pre-determined the 2021 election outcomes.

Ugandans can vie and win elections at every level except the Presidency. This position is ring-fenced for Mr. Museveni.

Somehow, The US, UK, and EU are satisfied that Uganda is a democracy. This double standard has lowered the passing grade for Uganda so low such that it has eroded the value of human rights and fundamental freedoms as a quid pro quo for their interests in the region.

In the meantime, Mr. Museveni's opponents are not having it easy. They have faced the full brutality of the militarized Police. Many are now garrisoned, their businesses disabled, and sources of income placed under strict regime's sanctions.

  

The consistent conduct of Uganda Police removes any pretense of impartiality as a legitimate authority over law and order. The Police are overtly disruptive - serve to constrain and humiliate opposition elements.

The story is the same as the so-called "Independent" Electoral Commission. Its ranks and rung are filled with biased cadre officers of the ruling party.

These circumstances are dire and make elections in Uganda an embarrassment. Unfortunately, the "meal card" politics within the opposition compels some to legitimize this tragicomedy by participating in it.

The most respectable thing to do is for opposition to boycott any violent and irregular elections. The first major step is for the Opposition to demand comprehensive reforms in the electoral laws.

These reforms should specify the role of the Police, the Army, and Paramilitary groups during these elections. Most importantly, the Electoral Commissioners should comprise representatives from all Parties elected to Parliament.

 End.