Okello Oculi urges the African Union to develop capacity for building profiles of post-election relations in Uganda
On 8th January, 2024, CNN broadcast Christiane Amanpour’s interview with Bobby Wine, Uganda’s currently leading Opposition politician. A key item in their dialogue was the issue of electoral democracy in Uganda. The matter coincided with President Joe Biden’s vote-hunting speech to African-American voters in South Carolina.
Bobby Wine as a politician from Buganda Kingdom, carries heavy historical burdens, including: Frederick Lugard’s colonial investing in, and nurturing conflict within Buganda and its relations with other peoples in the ‘’Protectorate.’’
A major element in this investment was granting large tracts of land to ‘’chiefs’’ he appointed. This arrangement violated the role of leaders of clans in land management. Because these ‘’Mailo Land’’ chiefs could not recruit local labour, Britain hired labour from German-Belgian colonies of RUANDA-URUNDI and parts of Western Uganda.
Resentment of ‘’Mailo Land’’ by Buganda was expressed in contempt for imported labourers. British media consistently printed larger photographs of the ‘’KABAKA’’(King) of Buganda, compared to smaller picture of the OMUGABE (of Ankole), ‘’OMUKAMA’’ of Toro and Bunyoro-Kitara, and the KYABAZINGA (of Busoga). This manipulation of symbols of authority reinforced the disdain for labourers from that region.
This nurtured faultline was briefly disrupted when KABAKA MUTESA was deported to England as punishment for opposing a plan to create an East African Federation consisting of Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda. The spectre of European immigrants owning vast tracts of land in the other two colonies was regarded with horror. Support for Kabaka Mutesa became nationwide. This coincided with Joe Kiwanuka launching ‘’UGANDA NATIONAL CONGRESS’’ political party.
British officials reversed their policy thrust into vigorously promoting isolationism among Mutesa’s officials. The impact of Ghana’s independence in 1957 was countered by BUGANDA demanding secession from Uganda. Britain had anchored Buganda’s exceptionalism on establishing large numbers of Primary and Secondary Schools in the Kingdom. MAKERERE University College was also located in Buganda.
This historical drama is the stage on which Yoweri Museveni and Bobby Wine have fought their political boxing matches. As a student of FRANZ FANON, Museveni is likely to see violence as a tool for building self-confidence among historical victims of social contempt. He also travelled to zones in Mozambique ‘’liberated’’ through guerrilla war by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), from Portuguese colonial troops. His Zimbabwean professor: Nathan Shamuyarira, arranged that visit by a group of undergraduates.
Studying Political Science at the University of Dar es Salaam, offered Museveni several ecological benefits. The country was led by Mwalimu Nyerere, a political philosopher from a small ethnic group located in one of the least developed regions of the country; who used the power of thought and speeches to build an anti-colonial political party which was so popular that it won all seats in the country’s first parliament.
Tanzania was also the watering pond for leaders of liberation movements from Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. As brilliant student with a fire of hatred for his own country’s ruler, Milton Obote – for abolishing monarchies in Uganda – Museveni ingested their experiences of using the gun for winning power.
Nyerere was also a friend of Mao Zedong – leaders of 22 years of liberation in China who proclaimed that ‘’POWER COMES FROM THE BARREL OF THE GUN’’.
Idi Amin Dada, King of Scotland, applied Mao’s doctrine in 1971 when Museveni was an Intelligence Officer in President Obote’s Office. Eight years later, he allied with Tanzania’s troops using barrels of guns to drive Idi Amin into exile and death in Saudi Arabia. Bobby Wine was not a participant in this Long Trek for Power.
When I travelled to Rwanda in 2012 (to do a study for the United Economic Commission for Africa), I listened to frustrations of journalists working for private newspapers. They presented the dilemma of choosing between President Kagame’s priority in social engineering a post-genocide country and the prospect of an electoral campaign in which raw wounds of conflict could be torn open by Hutu politicians to win votes.
A winner-take-all electoral format is as exclusivist as ‘’ power comes from the barrel of guns’’. Expecting those carrying wounds from wars of ‘’liberation’’ to accept being shut out of power is illusory.
The African Union should develop capacity for building profiles of post-election relations which for Uganda, would guarantee power to Bobby Wine but shared with Museveni’s successors.
Yoweri Museveni has two conflicting legacies to work with. His Ankole roots had an ethnic aristocracy dominating communities of peasant farmers. His undergraduate environment was Nyerere’s political genius rooted in multi-ethnic, multi-religious mass popularity; and aspirations for building a Socialist society. When Nyerere retired lines of citizens wept along the route out of Dar es Salaam.
Those committed to establishing democratic politics in Uganda should help in reconciling these two legacies.
Prof Oculi writes from Abuja
