A Meaningful Museveni-Besigye Talks could re-set the country

POLITICAL DIALOGUE

The looming prospect of talks between FDC leaders and the NRM dictatorship is kind of assuring. “Uncle” Muniini Mulera’s “Letter to Tingasinga” in the DM of April 4, 2014 (Refer: Museveni-Besigye talks: a necessary prelude to national dialogue) captures this national sentiment succinctly. However, in this article, Dr. Muniini nearly inundated me with an overdose of optimism in the tone of the text.

Optimism (Latin: optimum) is like fodder for endurance. When nothing seems to work, we tend to project the best possible outcomes. Optimism is medicinal, just like resilience; they help us to endure or bounce back from adversity through several pathways. One such pathway is by painting a colorful utopia, using some of the best literal devices in our possession.

Uganda is at crossroads at a point of adverse economic hardship, and saturated to the threshold with the Museveni hegemony. The prospect of additional Museveni rule, even a minute of it, conjures up the imagination of the claws he has dug into the flesh of this nation.

The viciousness of his henchmen, now turned mafias fed by a well-oiled machinery of the corrupted and greedy tribal cabal, and sustained through sectarianism is more than what Ugandans fathom. This group will sabotage any prospect that threatens their mafia networks, and even cause a coup, or assassinations to subvert talks.

Definitely, those on top or somewhere in the upper middle rungs of the food chain refuse to acknowledge this mess in the country. As long as their plate remains full and their tables have steady supply of “fodder”, the rest of us can whine and rant all we want.

Therefore, for those outside the ruling class strata, it is natural to cling on such “baits” for meaningful “talks”. In psychology, we refer to it as dispositional optimism - a loose set of beliefs that after all, the future will hold-up Ok. This is unlikely in Uganda with Mr. Museveni in the tow!

However, dependence on optimism alone is like self-inundation that numbs one of their current predicaments, and erases the gruesome memories of past events - the series of events that have brought us to this very abysmal point.

Life is full of paradoxical because even then, dwelling on the past has its special effect of immobilizing societies. Our own history and past experiences have the potency to militate against the fundamentals of “moving forward” or “bouncing back” from adversity.

It is with such consciousness that we ought to discuss and contextualize any dealings with Mr. Museveni. First, from purely a historical perspective, Mr. Museveni generally scores very badly on agreements, talks, respect for the opponents, and compromises. You can do the search and conclude for yourself. What has changed fundamentally with Mr. Museveni or his circumstances that makes us trust that any meaningful talks are possible? Is it because Sweden has offered to mediate? Would there be a difference if an Angel from Heavens had offered to mediate?

Pundits have variedly observed that this “talks” talk is a ploy to reinvent his legitimacy after the embarrassment of the 2016 Presidential elections. His allies have started seeing Mr. Museveni as a liability.

Dr. Besigye on the other hand, has gained substantial command of empathy from governments and legitimate pro-democracy authorities worldwide. Mr. Museveni has continued to benefit from a thin veil of support from rogue capitalists whose economic and security interests Mr. Museveni galvanizes at home and in the region. At home, Mr. Museveni has lost substantial legitimacy, thus the use of apartheid-era instruments of oppression to subdue.

Given the increasing influence of his family in plundering the country and the standardized decay in public services, Ugandans have become suspicious, fearful, and indifferent towards this regime.

There is a volcano of discontent welling up in the inside of Ugandans. An urgent and genuine re-set of this country through a broad and meaningful dialogue would help to diffuse this from exploding. 

END

Power of Uganda's economy lies in rural communities

RURAL ECONOMIES

The paradox of our generation is the “strongman” malaise that has undermined socio-political development in Africa in the last three and a half decades. Strongmen are old-fashioned residual posturing of Leninist/Maoist fascism, a derision drawn out of misinterpretation of Marxism. Every non-progressive African country has a strongman ruling a divided country with urban and rural economies separated. This strongman foreboding needs proper theorising if Africa is to become truly productive.  

 Uganda is a country of well-travelled, highly educated folks, and tortured souls - people who have endured a long history of trauma, tribalism, civil wars, sectarianism etc. This profile of a society would command national solidarity, and inspire resistance to repeat adversities. Unfortunately, we acquired opposite reaction tendencies - compliance, submissiveness, and reproducing our predicaments.

Mr. Museveni’s makes it worse by his colonial type social experiments that alienate the economies of the rural from that of urban Uganda. When you see the ever-widening gap between the Museveni urbanite plutocrats and their subdued miserable rural subjects, you confirm it by a confrontation with lapses in all aspects of public institutions. There is a deep flaw with the NRM liberation ideology beyond its deceptions. The gaps in social services between rural and urban settings reveal a major contradiction, or a limitation of that brand of ideology. These contradictions make it harder to manage a modern economy peacefully, where the supposed liberators are now the oppressors.

A modern capitalist society constructed under the aegis of neoliberalism needs to conform to neoliberal ideologies with uncompromising democracy as part of the deal. The regime is averse to democracy and alienates rural communities from such discourses. The near collapse of social services is another example of the regime’s inability to curb the vagaries of the liberal market, or develop a sustainable balance between public and private enterprises to extend to the rural economy.

Underwriting Mr. Museveni’s ability to comprehend such a dichotomy of the economy is suicidal, thus the reproach. Our gist is that Mr. Museveni’s arrows have simply run-out of his quiver. Some Christians say, “where human ability ends, God’s begin”. Mr. Museveni ought to do the biblical Moses thing. When you see the end, accept, hand over to the younger generation; have faith that they will lead the flock to the Promised Land. This stretch of the economy belongs to the younger crop of economists and entrepreneurs who understand globalisation, neo-liberalism and the liberal market trick-books. We should allow them to transition and integrate these economies to a unified engine for driving prosperity like Chinese government achieved in the last two decades.

Mr.  Museveni’s tries to politically re-invent himself by experimental approaches – he moots ideas to modernise agriculture, and promotes the use of hand hoes, slashers and menial irrigation; promises wealth for all, while his cows and crops are infertile or auto-suicidal. Too many contradictions demonstrate a blurred vision. They are retarding Uganda’s economic potential.

A good example of a failed experimentation is that private health services are not expanding fast enough to compensate for restructuring of the healthcare system. Uganda’s fragile economy would respond by ring fencing certain critical aspects of the market by instituting universal social policies. Critical areas in health, education, early child development, social security, Infrastructure, Water, and Agriculture, with strict regulations on environmental protection, would suffice. Ugandans wouldn’t mind paying a little more in taxes to finance a robust social policy that works for them, to build skills, prevent premature deaths; leverages opportunity for productivity and mobility, and offer social security and fair market competition.

To make even the least sense of Mr. Museveni’s experiments, the wealth creation program should be de-politicised and de-militarised. Social and economic programs should avoid liberation mentalities and politicking of Mr. Museveni. Such programs should put the people of Uganda first.

Lastly, by linking wealth creation to health, we support the idea that when people have income, they tend to have better health and afford health resources. Health and Agriculture are inextricably linked in a country were over 78% of our population still survive and reside in rural communities. The power of Uganda’s economy remains untapped in these rural communities.

END

Mr. Rwaboogo and the NRM ideological confusions

NRM IDEOLOGY

The attempt are reinventing the NRM ideology that is raging within the NRM need not get extinguished in haste by the state operators. The statehouse political architect and ideologue, Mr. David Mafabi demonstrates this typical trait of intolerance by slumming the door on Odrek’s thirst for a meaningful debate on ideological resurgence. Such intolerance, we must admit, is what keeps the heads of most dictators (aka Strongmen of Africa) hidden in the sand.

The first son, Mr. Odrek Rwaboogo has been the lone proponent in calling for debate on NRM’s future. Now it seems he is even debating with himself, and soon he will be distanced from his likes, in the manner of Mbabazi and others. Already, Mr. Rwaboogo is accused of generating ideological confusion, confusing biology with ideology, and undermining the works of the NRM Party Chairman, the strongman himself.

The fire of discontent is burning silently underneath the NRM and Mr. Rwaboogo maybe the first black smoke sprout out of the Conclave. The young Turks, bred in the ideological perplexity of the NRM have come of age. Their demand for change of direction is appears legitimate for them to find space and place to exert their own influence. Yet, the old Turks within the system still hold tight on the grip of power, privileges and influence. It is their carcass, they must chomp at it until infinitum.

In a sense, we are seeing the emergence of the progressive forces from within the NRM led on the one hand by Mr. Rwaboogo, and yet, his lone voice does not seem to represent a corpus of progression. One would expect that virulently ambitious young Turks like Morrison Rwakakamba, Frank Tumwebaze, Agaba Rugaba and others of that generational breed would join forces with Mr. Rwabogo. Instead, they have sold their loyalty to the traditional forces. They are even hostile to the smallest suggestion of an ideological debate within the NRM. Odrek may be the lone voice for now - maybe his timing is wrong, but at least, he is not driven by impulses of a disgruntled man. Odrek has also been in the NRM’s inner circles longer than many of the young people that litter the statehouse corridors and alleyway today to oppose him. Rwaboogo could have taken a path that will either destroy him, or win him support from the inner NRM politburo retrospectively.

After all, the survival of any system is judged from its dynamism - adaptability to changing times. Moreover, the NRM  has remained on course for reasons other than ideology. For instance, its very existence is buttressed within the institution of the army, built around a personality cult of an African “strongman”. The test of its survival outside of these composites remains a bigger question that only Mr. Rwaboogo makes sense in his advocacy for ideological re-orientation. Messiahs have always appeared confusing, disturbing and condescending to an establishment, for which they have endured execution for reward.

Set that aside, if I were Odrek, I could consult with this man, Mr. Asuman Bisiika, the journalist I prefer to describe as “Prophetic”. Mr. Bisiika correctly pointed to an important aspect of this debate in an article in the Daily Monitor of August 15, 2015, (See: Odrek Rwaboogo and NRM ideological re-orientation), which could help guide Mr. Rwaboogo enormous. Mr. Bissika affirms that the NRM is least inclined on matters of ideology at this phase in which it finds itself. It considers ideological matters a sole enterprise of the Party Chairman. In that sense, NRM is an ideological captive of its strongman.

Further, the contradictions seen between the NRM ideology and economic progress in Uganda, suggests that the NRM no longer has controls over its ideology, as such, its ideology is not driving social and economic transformation of Uganda. In this sense the frontiers of contestation is what Mr. Bisiika correctly points out – the lack of a policy generation. The archaic ideas of ideology and revolution are intangible to the majority of the young people – the carpetbaggers of the NRM. The NRM ideology itself is more confusing and therefore it is even hard to accuse Mr. Rwaboogo of spewing ideological confusion when those accusing him are also ideologically confused.

The END.

Uganda: Youth Unemployment is a national security issue.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Over the weekend, I struck a rather interesting conversation with some young people on my Facebook chat. These chats started with usual pleasantries and then developed into inquiries about how Canada is and how a young person could migrate to Canada. Two of the youths had graduated from University five years ago and had never secured formal employment.

They felt a deep sense of dejection – that, their country has let them down. One youth had completed undergrad and was summing up a masters in Business Administration, a program that many young people are enlisting. He, too, like the others, had lost any hope for a job after wrecking up his relative’s pockets for fees and scholastic support.

These stories are regular and rampant. Many young people are graduating from colleges and Universities and have simply no start-up capital to invest, little skills and no proper supervision to translate classroom knowledge into a resource for earning a living. At over 83% youth unemployment, we should worry excessively that youth unemployment is of a major security concern.

Certainly, the government is aware of this problem and must be worried about it more than anyone else. However, few aspects of our economy need streamlining. First, we must continuously challenge the people who design our school curricula to tailor curriculum development towards the rapidly liberalising economy. Curriculum should focus on business models, apprenticeships, research, critical thinking, and innovation. Education system should produce curricula that respond to the economy by building skills and competent labour force.

Second, the tradition of graduates hoping to get employment with government or established business needs challenging right from the classroom. With high degree of sectarianism in government, coupled with a slow private sector expansion, the economy is unable to absorb the extra-labour produced annually. Government, on its side, is now behaving like an ethnic enclave where favouritism and tribalism pervades every department. Job opportunities with government are no longer on merit. Somehow, one must have a Godfather or Matriarch to access employment. Blotted bureaucracy, corruption, and ineptitude also stifle the flow and absorption of funds at local governments.

Third, and most important, is for the government to enlighten the population about the operationalisation of the economy. Government today is chocking with an extremely high cost of public administration. The cost of politics and sustaining politicians have diverted critical funding from youth entrepreneurial development and development of infrastructure such as resource centres, recreation centres and centres for social innovations where youths could channel their ideas, energies and synergies.

Fourth, we have to analyse the culture of investment, attitudes towards private venturing, and co-operatives. Young people need mentoring into saving, investing, partnerships, loan servicing, and translation of knowledge. Youths have the energy and ability to learn fast, given the advent of technology that offers them unfettered opportunity to make good of their time and energy to earn a living. Government should strive to make computer skills and internet access, universal and a fundamental right of every youth.

Another challenge we have in Uganda now is the crisis of trust. I recall a young man I met in Ntinda in 2010 who recorded a music album. He was hopeful that his product would generate for him some money. However, he insisted that releasing his album without the videos for each song would be suicidal because he feared that established artists would plagiarise his songs. At that time, he estimated that the cost for a good music video for a beginner was between UGShs1- 2million. This youngster failed to secure the money for the videos. He never surfaced in the industry as a star of his dream.

The intellectual property rights and small innovation fund are crucial for young people to become relevant producers in the economy instead of consuming alien cultural garbage for entertainment. There must be guarantees and safeguards that innovations are encouraged, valued, and protected in this economy. When we leave our youths without guidance and nurturance, we breed insecurity. The apathy among young people now, towards the establishment, is a time bomb about to explode.

End.

The fallacy of Global Poverty Reduction Strategies

POVERTY

My friend Ojotre and his fiancée have travelled through many countries in Africa. They have marveled at the sight of expensive government guzzlers – four-wheel drives - emblazoned with big inscriptions such as “Poverty ‘Eradication’ or ‘Alleviation’ Programs”, and yet everywhere they have visited, unusual forms of poverty confronted them. This couple has wondered as to why African governments extol publicly an onerous task upon which they have no control.

Poverty alleviation is a hoax. Poverty eradication is a myth. One obsession of governments and international donors is this patronage and ruse that they intend to eradicate or alleviate absolute poverty.  Many of these people use that phrase to mean many different things at different levels depending on their role and the powers they hold. Poverty alleviation/eradication could mean exploitation, underdevelopment, political capital, power over (patronage), and imperialism (neoliberal - emerging markets). There is a whole industry and market out there where poverty is a commodity.

What constitute poverty is highly perceptional, relative, and political. As a political object, poverty is framed to justify a mobilizing ideology; as an international development issue, it is framed to conjure a sense of benevolence and sympathy. Incidentally, every effort at eradicating poverty only exacerbates it. Every poverty alleviation/eradication attempt has provided temporary fix and perpetuated worse outcomes for the long term, including producing disease and further helplessness/dependency.

To understand poverty, we have to understand what it is not – wealth, abundance, access, equitable society, power, social class privileges, and the manner in which societies and economies are organized and operationalized. Once we appreciate fully the structural systems that produce, reproduce, and transmit power globally and locally, we then can courageously grapple with poverty as the function of societal inequality resulting from that power relations and its controls production.

Thence, to alleviate poverty one has to focus on the pervasive inequalities in society that deprive people of resources and opportunities. The antithesis of poverty therefore is providing equal opportunity for production and distribution of resources. People can get out of poverty if they have ownership over their means of production and the products of their labor. When people have control over their environment and control over the requisite tools to harness and take sway over their environment, then they can emerge out of poverty. However, in all these poor countries, the glaring lack of infrastructure to support wealth creation and distribution, as well as the unequal rules of global trades and transnational movements, inextricably bind disadvantaged people to absolute loss of control over production, labor, capital, and environment. Poverty therefore is systemic and structural such that “alleviation” or “eradication” are obscurantist strategies.

There is a common observation that if 10 of the world’s richest were to share half of their wealth with the rest of the world, nearly 3.5 billion people, or half the world’s population would emerge out of absolute poverty. This formula applies in every society where enormous amount of wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small percentage of individuals.  

For a meaningful progress in improving life conditions, social and historically entrenched inequalities in this world should be the target of discussion. It is not coincidental that the countries usually designated as endemically poor also share a history of profound repeat abuse – slavery, colonialism, and now corporate imperialism. For societies where poverty is endemic, you find a history of colonialism, disease, corporate exploitation, ethnic clashes, dictatorships, and environmental degradation. Poverty therefore is the product of all these entrenched inequalities that we never debate. Poverty has nothing to do with what we invest our time, money, and resources on such as MDGs or SDGs.

We must often revise the nearly prophetic works by Nina Munk, Dambisa Moyo and many other thinkers before and after them who have countered dominant discourses about global anti-poverty strategies. They called upon the world to recognize the inherent historical factors that subverts real development, address structural bottlenecks - unfair global trading rules, and the destructive economic policies such as structural adjustment that have further underdeveloped states in the southern hemisphere. Structural adjustment policies are never going to eliminate poverty, but produce it!

End.

A letter to the entire leadership of Acholi

Dear Acholi Leaders

I am writing for the very first time to you. Given the gravity of the subject, I humbly beg that you invest just few seconds of your rather busy schedule to scheme through this letter.

This letter comes at a time when the online newspaper AcholiTimes has reported a pending meeting between you, our esteemed elected leaders – notably, MPs, with Mr. Museveni, on yet to be named date, time and place. We anticipate that investments and acquisition, or rather bluntly put, expropriation of land for plantation will top the agenda of this meeting.

The land issue has refused to vacate the investment discursive space and invariably so for reasons. Without dispossessing Acholi of land, the Museveni anticipated promises of social transformation of our people from a free and self-sustaining state into perpetual slaves appears incomplete.

In the 1990s, Mr. Museveni promised many things. One of those is modernization of Uganda through industrialization and a social transformation of northerners from a backward chauvinism to whatever model he foresaw then. We interpret the two decades of genocide as the initial phase of this process. Land dispossession is the last phase in the spectrum.  We also know that he is being nice to the process. He could be forceful. However, Mr. Museveni should not subdue us on our land. His recent land reform policies and the speed at which the economy is liberalizing should concern us excessively. Needless to remind you that Acholi are deliberately excluded from this economy and the condition in which our reintegration is apparent resides on our land.

Land is the primary means of production, which is becoming very scarce and contested item in areas that this regime kept peaceful and productive. Those who exercise ownership over land have also exercised control over means of economic production. Most revolutions in the world, that I have studied, have happened and succeeded on the question of land expropriation. Landless state is associated with immense diminishing of human value and suffering in a life of absolute destitution – migrant labor and homelessness among others.

When we lose control over the land, the Acholi people will be no more. We shall become laborers like those we employed in the 1970s and 80s, to look after our cows. This time, with sophisticated technology, our people shall offer even cheap and degraded labor in precarious employment. The least you can do for Acholi now is to guarantee our inherent land rights.

The fate of a typical Acholi in the post conflict society is also ready dire as is. Many are failing miserably to cope with post war challenges. Homes have broken down and the typical Acholi household experiences have profoundly transformed, where children and women are now the household heads. Men are struggling to adjust and cope with helplessness, drunkenness, and violence in its broader sense.

What still holds all of us together, and confer upon us, and our children some semblance of sanity and dignity, or worth, is the fact of the land that we still own, communally. It is only on this land, that we find peace, consolation, and realization as a people. Elsewhere, we are fiercely problematised and alienated from the mainstream society and economy in concert with the grand scheme of Mr. Museveni’s sectarian politics.

Let me give you a glimpse of the implications of losing our rights to land. Take the instance of rapid rural to urban migration as landless people will get vacated by Mr. Museveni’s industrialists. Spaces and social services in urban centres are not planned, or evolving commensurately to contain lowly skilled migrants. This is a major problem for the near future. It is a clarion call to local district councils and urban centre administration to examine urgently. A radical housing policy is inevitable. Expansion of sewers, public spaces, social services, enterprises, transportation, and industries to absorb the landless people must top the metropolis economic agenda for the next 20-30 years because these people must find alternative economic activity for self-sustenance.

The idea is that we should not wait for the inevitable to befall us and then react. The responses may be too late and too little. We should foresee and plan ahead of time. Most importantly, we have to pay heed to the rate at which the economy is liberalizing. It may swallow us if we are unprepared.

In the event of your discussion with Mr. Museveni, please, consider the following;

Implore Mr. Museveni to abolish the idea of plantation investment in Northern Uganda. Plantations everywhere, are associated with a decline of society, and destruction of both social and physical environments. Each district should plan and locate industrial parks for lease to investors. No investor should buy and own land in Acholiland – they must lease and pay rent. We must, as a matter of policy, encourage our people to secure titles to their lands and to lease the land, so that they become landlords, not landless people, or mere laborers on their own land.

For improved agriculture, advocate for improved seeds that resist the adverse weather and pests, while giving high yield. Mr. Museveni should suspend import taxes on farm implements and generate more electricity to sustain agro-based industry. Plantation agriculture is a thing of the past; at least, sugarcane plantation is out dated.

End.

Hon. Mao, let the end justify the means

 STRATEGY

We learnt long ago that Political Parties are formed to vie for power, and capture it. Once in power, it must fight as much, to retain it. A success of a political Party is judged by its abilities in these regards, criticizing the strategies of the other, is only part of the game. Parties reflect an aggregation of ideas and convictions, which must contend to gain dominance of public space.  In Hon. Mao’s absolution of Andrew Mwenda’s blatant and cruel assault on the critical and monumental role that Dr. Kizza Besigye plays in changing the tempo and rhythm of politics in Uganda (read: The hazard of Besigyeism in the Opposition: Has Mwenda got a point? In DM of January 22, 2017), lies a conflicting perspective on Opposition strategies.

Hon. Mao claims that Dr. Besigye’s obsession with capturing power concentrates the energy of the NRM; engaging in the countryside, disperses the energy of the NRM and blunts its blows. Accordingly, Mao’s virile prescription is the attack from the flank.  Hon. Mao believes that when the Opposition succeeds in challenging the NRM from the flank, then the direct challenge focusing on the Presidency shall bear fruits.

This flank approach would have worked in 1980 where the government of the day was formed based on the number of Parliamentary seats a Party had won. Unfortunately, Museveni rules by the gun such that victory at the flank does not necessarily translate into defeat, or a reduction of his omnipresence over the army and thus, as President.

Hon. Mao’s prescription is therefore an under-dose from an expired medicine vial.  The limitation of flank approach is an over assumption that the NRM is rigid, lacks fluidity and would not be concerned with defeat at the grassroots. The struggle for liberation of Uganda needs both protracted and short-term goals, each with clear strategies and tactics.

Obviously, the flank approach is resource heavy, requiring money that all the traditional Parties and their followings do not have. Hon. Mao is aware that DP alone cannot field and fund candidates at every flank position in the country, not even in Buganda, or in Acholi. UPC, CP and whatever Party simply lacks the resource capacity to out-do the electioneering, bribery, and vote stealing machinery of the NRM.

To counter this challenge, the Opposition must emphasize on the implementation of the law that bans vote bribery.  Museveni has defended his flank and he will do so even at the forthcoming LC elections by bribery and coercion. To assume that Museveni is insensitive to his flank is a “strategy” suicide!

The strength of the flank approach is to reawaken the traditional support base of old Parties. Unfortunately, after 30 years of hegemonic Musevenism, most of the Party activists and enthusiasts in the countryside have died, aged beyond relevance, or disinterested themselves with politics of corruption. Yet, many in DP have lent their loyalties to Museveni.

Criticizing Dr. Kizza Besigye’s may be a past time because insects naturally eat each other when locked in a bottle. KB’s campaign is effective, albeit with some limitations. One of it is the treacherous Opposition members who double deal for breadcrumbs from the regime. KB has exposed the regime sufficiently. It would be fruitful if Opposition players like Hon. Mao and contemptuous critics like Andrew Mwenda harnessed the opportunities to finish the dictator off, rather than slam-dunk on KB.

Let KB and his Party focus on their agenda; DP and Mwenda should focus on theirs. To suggest that Besigye should first stop, such that you start, is like pygmies engrossing in a height contest.  To reclaim Uganda, we need multiple approaches and broader collaborations. After three decades, we now recognize that no one strategy is superior to the other. As long as such approaches fall outside of challenging the military might behind dictator Museveni. Whoever can liberate Uganda from dictatorship, will be the real hero. Hon. Mao should let the end justify the means.

End.