Prof Tandon to Museveni: hand over power to younger generation
Yash Tandon, "Common People's Uganda"
(2019) Nairobi: Zand Graphics
https://www.yashtandon.com/common-peoples-uganda
The book is dedicated to:
· Ignatius K Musazi and Semakula Mulumba who united us all; and to
· John Kakonge and Dani Wadada Nabudere who showed us the way
Ngugi wa Thiong'o has Prefaced the book with the title: "Towards a Common people's Africa". And in the Foreword, Edward Rugumayo has related some of his own experiences in the struggle for Uganda's liberation.
So why this book?
Neoliberal policy makers in Uganda are in denial about two things:
1. A reluctance to look at imperialism in the face, and acknowledge that the capitalist-imperialist system of production and wealth distribution is inherently and fundamentally flawed.
2. Left to the so-called 'free market', the system not only divides people between the rich and the poor but further compounds this division over time because the market rewards the rich and penalises the poor.
In the northern regions of Uganda including West Nile and Karamoja (where I come from), up to 26% of people are chronically poor; 80% of households live below poverty line, compared to 20% in the rest of the country.
Recognising this reality, it is important to place Uganda within the broader global geopolitical as well as national contexts.
1. Uganda got its independence on 9 October 1962. Is it possible that for over half a century Uganda is still not fully independent? What has imperialism to do with it?
2. Why is it that over half a century since independence Uganda is still an exporter of basic raw materials and importer of manufactured products, and dependent on the so-called "foreign aid"?
3. What are the policies that really matter? Specifically, what are the policies that affect the production and distribution of goods and services (like health and education), policies that affect the welfare of the common people?
This is one objective of the book. The second is to learn from the American and French Revolutions; the Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions; and, above all, from Africa's struggle for liberation from the colonial Empires.
And the third is to provide an analysis of the political-economy of Uganda and Africa - a knowledge-kit necessary to make a critical assessment of the decisions taken in the name of the common people, and to challenge our politicians and also the media that distort reality in this era of “fake news”. To this end, each chapter ends with a list of questions. These help readers in two ways:
1. They allow the readers to reflect on the questions without necessarily agreeing with the author.
2. They raise issues related concretely to Uganda. However, many of the questions are general - especially Part Three on “Imperial reckoning: rebooting the revolution”, may apply to the rest of Africa and the global south.
In the last chapter on "Some Concluding Thoughts", I raise some issues for discussion on the strategy and tactics of struggle, and the question of leadership. This is a challenge for our President, and I ask: Can the Prince of “Sowing the Mustard Seed” rise up to the challenge?
Epilogue
Here I draw on two recent publications, Apollo Makubuya: Protection, Patronage, or Plunder? Imperial Machinations and (B)Uganda's Struggle for Independence; and Frederick Juuko and Sam Tindifa: A People's Dialogue Political Settlements in Uganda and the Quest for a National Conference.
I examine how the proposal of holding a "National Conference" put forward in the Juuko-Tindifa report might be taken a step further. I draw from the experience of the group that put together the Moshi Conference in 1979 which gave birth to the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF). The Juuko-Tindifa proposed National Conference is both a challenge and opportunity for the nation to address.
I also analyse the Bobi Wine phenomenon as an emblematic symbol of a generational shift in Uganda's politics.
Bidandi's open letter to Museveni
http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3109:bidandis-open-letter-to-museveni&catid=37:guest-writers&Itemid=66
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni,
President,
Republic of Uganda,
Your Excellency,
I salute you Mr. President.
Mr. President, the People’s Progressive Party and indeed all peace loving Ugandans are worried that, up to now your government has not bothered to bring to Parliament the necessary amendments to the electoral laws that should ensure free and fair elections.
Your Excellency must be aware of the controversies that followed the 2001 and 2006 elections that ended in Courts of Law whose verdict was that, the electoral process was marred by malpractices which many consider worse than those which triggered your heading for the bush to wage an armed war against the Obote II government. You need not be reminded of the price this country has paid as a consequence in terms of blood epitomized to date by monuments of human skulls and the tragedy of the northern war which still claims lives of Ugandans and has created a traumatized society in disarray whose hearts will continue bleeding for decades to come.
Judging by what has been happening during the by-elections which have included intimidation, beating of voters and stuffing of ballot boxes perpetrated especially by your NRM, the country is likely to experience the same if not worse chaos come 2011.
The primary solution obviously lies in amending the electoral laws and procedures in order to ensure free and fair elections. The PPP and other Parties are certainly working to dislodge you from the leadership of this country to arrest further destruction of the country, your good beginning in the eighties and nineties notwithstanding. However, the PPP will not raise a finger if your unbridled love for power is achieved through free and fair elections which unfortunately are not possible with the present Electoral Commission and present laws.
Mr. President, we see your unwillingness to amend the electoral laws as part of a deliberate scheme to rig the 2011 elections so that even if ultimately some amendments are stampeded through Parliament, it will be logically impossible to implement them because of time and resource constraints.
I can assure Your Excellency that that will be a recipe for another spate of bloody chaos in the country. You might have equipped the army, militarized the police and the civil service and misused the poor peasants’ children by training them into Kiboko Squads to beat the very people you are mandated to protect but this time the price in human blood and subsequent skulls could be much more than the country has seen before.
In stating so, I am not a harbinger of doom, but one only needs to feel the political pulse of the people of Uganda today and place it in focus with our past and what recently went on in countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe.
This is the time to reconstitute the Electoral Commission in order to reflect a credible institution that will not only be, but also appear to Ugandans to be impartial under a multiparty democracy. Be informed Mr. President that there is a limit beyond which reliance on money or the might of the gun and other means of coercion will keep one in power against the will of the majority of the people’s wish.
Incidentally Your Excellency, what really happened to the Museveni of the eighties and nineties? Why have you persisted in destroying the democratic institutions of governance with impunity and instead taken over their roles? Why set Parliament against the Presidency? Cultural institutions against each other? Public officers against each other? As a student of political science, what does NEPOTISM mean to you? And what do you feel when its ugly face and consequences are attributed to your leadership? When you read in The Independent Newsmagazine issues detailing the involvement of almost your entire family and relatives in the governance of the country, isn’t your conscience perturbed in any way?
Mr. President, you have played your part and made a monumental contribution to this country. You have an obligation to hand over to the next generation a united, peaceful and free Uganda with its people living in harmony.
A word about my son Muhoozi Kainerugaba. I know him well enough. By nature and training he should be one of the finest soldiers we have in the country. Please protect him by weaning him from your parental grip to enable him fulfill his professional mandate to the country. He is NOT his father’s soldier. You have ceded Muhoozi the son to the service of Uganda and its people. Set him free so that his destiny is not embroiled in your destiny which in the end will be defined and decided by your own actions and decisions. This is a divine law of nature that has enabled the children of past leaders like Amin, Obote, Lutwa and others live peacefully outside the shadows of their parents. The same position though does not hold in respect of the children of the late Mobutu Sese Seko or the Sadams of yesterday.
You and I are not prodigies of the whims of the late Kaguta your dad or Bumali Kakonge, my late father.
Finally, let me once again assure Your Excellency that I write all this to caution a colleague I respect but who I believe has lost conscience and all ethical ethos of leadership, and therefore bound to land our country in the abyss of further disintegration, hatred and chaos.
FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY.
Bidandi-Ssali
Chairman,
People’s Progressive Party
