Is it end of the road for oldest parties?

Among the many developments in the run up to the 2016 general election has been the position of the two oldest political parties in Uganda, the Democratic Party (DP), and the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC).

The DP, founded in 1954, and the UPC, founded in 1960, were for decades the two main parties in the country, rooted as they were in the essentials of Uganda’s history and social life, from religion to the independence struggle.

The UPC led Uganda to independence in October 1962. The heyday of these two historic parties now seems such a long time ago. Today, the main role they are playing ahead of the 2016 national elections is that of accompanying bridesmaids.

The UPC
It was not always like this. The UPC in 1980 became the first party in post-independence African history to have lost power and returned to power. At some point it seemed to be the State itself.

A deep split within the party starting about 1984 led to a military coup in July 1985 and six months later the guerrilla group, the NRA, seized state power.

When the NRM came to power in 1986, the UPC remained the most sceptical party about Museveni’s intentions.

The UPC refused to join the new broad-based NRM government. The few who joined the government were frowned upon. The NRM leader, Yoweri Museveni, had been a junior intelligence officer in the Office of the President in 1970.

To the UPC, it was below their dignity to serve under him, not to mention that in the 1980 elections, Museveni’s UPM party won only one parliamentary seat, compared with UPC’s 74 seats.

The UPC became the lone voice crying out in the wilderness as the NRM government gained favour in many parts of the country and increasing recognition across Africa and in the Western world.

In April 1990, from his exile home in Lusaka, Zambia, the former president Obote authored a long paper on concealment of genocide in Uganda. The paper traced Uganda’s history to the aftermath of the 1971 military coup, the 1979 Moshi unity conference in Tanzania, the UNLF government, the 1980 elections and the civil war in Luweero.

Notes on concealment of genocide in Uganda became the foundational ideological text of the UPC party, the paper that spelt out the party’s stance on the NRM and gave party members the reason and conviction to stand firm during the many years when party activities were banned.

Obote’s son Jimmy Akena, also Lira Municipality MP, decided in the early 2000s to grow his hair long into dreadlocks, which he said he had done after taking a Nazarite vow, a vow to cut off his dreadlocks only after pluralistic democracy was restored to Uganda.

When Obote died in 2005, the party held together and the loss of its founding leader led the UPC to elect Miria Obote, the former First Lady, as party president. As with the Gandhi family name in India, the Obote name kept the party together.

The first serious split within the UPC since the 1964 delegates’ conference in Gulu began in late 2010. That was when the former ambassador to the United Nations Olara Otunnu, returned home after 25 years in self-imposed exile and announced he would seek the party presidency.

For many in the UPC, this was an affront. This section of the party loyal to Milton Obote had long been bitter with Otunnu and not just because he became the Foreign minister under Gen Tito Okello after the 1985 military coup; it was believed that Otunnu had been in secret agreement with the coup plotters who eventually overthrew the UPC in July 1985.

Every effort was made to see to it that Otunnu was not elected UPC president. He faced Akena in the race and in a shock development, was elected UPC president, deepening the bitterness further.

For five years, Otunnu was UPC president and Akena was a kind of leader of the opposition in the UPC. Events like the Milton Obote memorial lecture held annually in Kampala sometimes saw public bickering break out.

Press conferences at Uganda House saw the infighting acted out before the media.

When Otunnu announced he would not seek a second term as party leader, Akena became the front runner to succeed him.
Controversy erupted over procedure and how Akena had been elected. The pro-Otunnu faction of the UPC rejected Akena’s election, declared it unconstitutional and once again the UPC was publicly at war.

With the UPC now seriously split, the party’s senior leaders became free agents. Otunnu stunned many when he joined The Democratic Alliance (TDA) and backed the former prime minister Amama Mbabazi.

Pro-Akena UPC youth marched to the Naguru offices of the TDA and demanded that the UPC flag taken there by Otunnu be returned.

By the third quarter of 2015, the two leading political figures in Uganda were President Yoweri Museveni and Mbabazi, even though the FDC president Mugisha Muntu and the FDC presidential candidate Dr Kizza Besigye were also on the scene.

The fact that Museveni and Mbabazi, and not Museveni and Besigye, were the main centres of power was seen in who allied with them.

After Otunnu allied with Mbabazi, it should have come as no surprise when Akena publicly allied with Museveni.

The Sunday Monitor in one or two of its “Grapevine” political gossip pieces had several years ago hinted that Akena was a secret visitor to State House to meet Museveni and Museveni was using or working through Akena to undermine his fierce critic Otunnu.

To those familiar with the inside political story in Uganda, Jimmy Akena’s teaming up with Museveni was only a matter of formalising what had been taking place in secret.

The DP
As it is with the UPC, the DP finds itself a deeply-divided party ahead of 2016. The last time the DP led Uganda was the one year between 1961 and 1962 when it was defeated by the UPC in the elections that led to independence.

Since then, the DP has become a perennial Opposition party and over the course of time has developed the mindset of Opposition, always playing second fiddle to dominant players.

After the bitter 1980 general election that many still believe was won by the DP, the party took up its place as the Opposition in Parliament while at the same time secretly collaborating with various armed groups such as Andrew Kayiira’s UFM and Dr David Lwanga’s FEDEMU in an effort to overthrow the UPC government.

When the NRM won the 1981-85 guerrilla war in 1986 and formed a broad-based government, the DP became the main party in the arrangement, with its leader Paul Ssemogerere being named Internal Affairs minister and later Foreign minister. Several DP leaders were also named to the Museveni cabinet.

Even then, DP remained a significant voice acting as a check and counterbalance to the NRM government. At a time when the NRM was being lauded for bringing about “fundamental change”, the DP, through an affiliated newspaper The Citizen, alerted the country to certain dictatorial tendencies creeping up in the NRM and various human rights abuses by army officers.

Anthony Ssekweyama, the editor of The Citizen, and human rights activist, Michael Kaggwa, leader of a radical wing of the DP, the DP Mobilisers’ Group, and several others became leading voices in the early 1990s criticising the growing autocracy in President Museveni.

Separately, the DP and UPC in their various publications and reports focused the spotlight on the NRM government and their published material starting in the late 1980s and right up to the mid-1990s have left a valuable body of knowledge and information on a dark side to the NRM that will be crucial for future historians of Uganda.

Through this period, DP remained mainly united. In 1995, a disillusioned Ssemogerere left the NRM government and announced he would contest the 1996 presidential election.

In that election, DP and UPC agreed to set aside their decades-long differences and rivalry and formed an alliance, the Inter-party Forces Coalition (IPFC), with Ssemogerere as its joint presidential candidate.

The large crowds that followed Ssemogerere at his various campaign stops shocked the NRM, which had assumed that it had buried both the DP and UPC.

In 2001, with Ssemogerere not running for president, the DP lent its support to a new, charismatic player on the national political scene, Dr Kizza Besigye, a former personal doctor to President Museveni.

From that point on, DP would see a downward trend in elections, becoming more and more, like UPC, a minority party, its best days well behind it as a new party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), founded in late 2005 and led by Besigye, became the new leader of the Opposition in Parliament and across the country.

Although DP and UPC, as we have seen, led the moral crusade in the late 1980s and early 1990s against the NRM government and did much of the media and political reporting in this regard, FDC overnight took up the mantle of these two parties.

DP shrank back to its origins in Buganda and UPC was reduced to winning only in Lango, home of Milton Obote.

From 2011, the ethnic tensions over who leads DP and UPC became national. The election as DP president-general of Norbert Mao, an Acholi, was resisted in traditionally Baganda-led DP.

The election of Olara Otunnu, an Acholi, as UPC president revived the tensions between Langi and Acholi that had played a key part in the 1985 coup.

Partly in response to the resentment of his leadership of the DP, Mao threw his support behind Amama Mbabazi, the latest serious challenger to Museveni. Several DP Members of Parliament and other party officials also backed Mbabazi, while another faction of DP backed Dr Besigye.

Thus, DP took positions similar to the equally split UPC: it was not going to field a party presidential candidate for 2016 but was going to act as a coalition member and supporter.

What next for DP and UPC?
The fact that DP and UPC for the first time since 2001 both being unable to field presidential candidates in a general election is a reflection of the dramatic change in Uganda’s political landscape.

It is a lesson in how uncertain African politics can be. Today’s dominant political party can on short order fade into near oblivion.

The last hurrah for DP came in May 2014 when in spite of President Museveni’s intense campaigning, DP won a popular victory in the Luweero Woman MP by election, in this historic birthplace of the NRA/NRM.

It showed that DP was not completely undone and could win against a heavily financed State candidate.

Looking into the future, Akena’s decision to ally publicly with Museveni might mark the final blow to the UPC.

If Obote loyalists in the UPC rejected Otunnu because of the lingering suspicion over his role in the 1985 military coup, Akena’s alliance with Museveni, the man deeply resented by the core UPC, must have broken many hearts.

Somebody is going to rise up in the UPC, espousing a militantly anti-NRM position, and will most probably become the party leader.

The DP will retain its guaranteed minimum of support in Kampala and some other parts of Buganda, continue to field individually popular, vocal leaders like Masaka Municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga, Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze, East African Legislative Assembly representative Fred Mukasa Mbidde and Busiro East MP Medard Ssegona and be a valuable coalition partner for others.

It is possible that with a long, hard look back at their history and a realistic assessment of their weakened, divided present, these two historic parties can reinvent themselves and win over a new generation of Ugandans, the same way the American technology company Apple emerged from the depth of crisis in 1985 to a revival in 1997 and today is one of the world’s top brands.

Whether the DP and UPC will find in themselves the imagination and organisation to reinvent themselves, remains to be seen.

Chronology of UPC events
1960: UPC is founded.
1962. UPC leads Uganda to independence in October 1962.
1980: UPC becomes the first party in post-independence African history to have lost power and returned to power, having won 74 seats.
1984: A deep split within the party starting about 1984 leads to a military coup in July 1985 and six months later the guerrilla group, the NRM, seizes state power.
1986: When the NRM comes to power, UPC remains the most sceptical party about Museveni’s intentions.
1990: In April 1990, from his exile home in Lusaka, Zambia, former president Obote authors a long paper on concealment of genocide in Uganda.
2000: Obote’s son Jimmy Akena decides in the early 2000s to grow his hair long into dreadlocks, which he says he has done after taking a Nazarite vow, a vow to cut off his dreadlocks only after pluralistic democracy is restored to Uganda.
2005: Obote dies. The party is held together and the loss of its founding leader leads UPC to elect Miria Obote, the former First Lady, as party president.
2010: The first serious split within the UPC since the 1964 delegates’ conference in Gulu begins in late 2010.
2010: Otunnu is elected UPC president and Akena is a kind of leader of the opposition in the UPC.
March 2015: Otunnu announces that he will not be seeking re-election. Akena becomes the front runner to succeed him.
June 2015: Controversy erupts over procedure and how Akena had been elected.
September 2015: Otunnu stuns many when he joins The Democratic Alliance and backs former prime minister Amama Mbabazi.
November 2015: President Museveni tells a press conference at Barlege State Lodge in Otuke that the UPC group led by Mr Akena is working with his people.
2015. Today, the main role UPC is playing ahead of the 2016 national elections is that of accompanying bridesmaids.

Chronology of DP events
1954: The Democratic Party is founded.
1961: The last time the DP led Uganda was the one year between 1961 and 1962 when it was defeated by UPC in the elections that led to independence.
1980: After the bitter 1980 general election that many still believe was won by DP, the party takes up its place as the Opposition in Parliament while at the same time secretly collaborating with various armed groups such as Andrew Kayiira’s UFM and Dr David Lwanga’s FEDEMU in an effort to overthrow the UPC government.
1986: When the NRM won the 1981-85 guerrilla war in 1986 and formed a broad-based government, the DP becomes the main party in the arrangement.
Early 1990s. Anthony Ssekweyama, editor of The Citizen and human rights activist, Michael Kaggwa, leader of a radical wing of the DP, the DP Mobilisers’ Group, and several others became leading voices criticising the growing autocracy in President Museveni.
1995: A disillusioned Ssemogerere leaves the NRM government and announces he will contest the 1996 presidential election.
2001: With Ssemogerere not running for president, DP lends its support to a new, charismatic player on the national political scene, Dr Kizza Besigye, a former personal doctor to President Museveni.
2011: The ethnic tensions over who leads DP become national. The election as DP president-general of Norbert Mao, an Acholi, is resisted in traditionally Baganda-led DP.
September 2015: Partly in response to the resentment of his leadership of the DP, Mao throws his support behind Amama Mbabazi, the latest serious challenger Mr to Museveni.
Several DP Members of Parliament and other party officials also back Mbabazi, while another faction of the DP backs Dr Besigye.
Thus, DP takes positions similar to the equally split UPC: it is not going to field a party presidential candidate for 2016 but is going to act as a coalition member and supporter.