I had gone last month for a check on the state of my vital organs – heart, prostate, lungs, pancreas, liver, bladder, the lot – when the doctor inquired about the surgical mark I had some place. I explained the surgery that happened 12 years previously, revealing that it had been done by Ignatius Kakande.

“Ah, Prof Kakande!” lamented my doctor. “He is in Rwanda. I do not know why Uganda cannot look after its doctors.” Another highly skilled medical practitioner lost to Uganda, Kakande had for long been one of our best surgeons. I can only second-guess the good old surgeon - I would bet that he went for the financial returns and the more conducive environment.

Surprisingly, Uganda has done better in the distant past. Researching our history in the Independence Jubilee season, I came across staggering but little-known reports of how some old communities were well-advanced in healthcare. Historian Shane Doyle writes in ‘Crisis & Decline in Bunyoro’ (The British Institute in Eastern Africa with James Currey/Fountain Publishers/Ohio University Press, 2006) how there was preventive healthcare, including “several reports of pre-colonial Banyoro protecting water sources from contamination, maintaining good hygiene, and consuming herbs to prevent malaria and stomach infections during dangerous seasons.”

He talks of “a close relationship between the state and traditional healers. Kings gave healers ‘land spread in the different areas so that their services reach more people.’” What this speaks to me is that economic opportunity was availed, in the form of land, to attract the healers to different areas. I submit that economics is the reason most of our contemporary medical practitioners remain in Kampala (and why health facilities upcountry are short of staff – official statistics show that of 7,300 required staff in 40 general hospitals, 2,964 posts are vacant; and in 853 Health Centre IIIs countrywide, 8,034 positions out of 14,872 are vacant of professionals like medical officers/doctors, anaesthetists, pharmacists, nurses, dentists, midwives, laboratory staff, clinical officers). (The Ministry of Health human resources audit report says that the proportion of approved positions filled by health workers is 56 per cent and vacancies are 44 per cent).
By giving their healers land in far-flung parts of Bunyoro, the pre-colonial kings were availing economic opportunity. Can’t we do similarly today?

Travelling in 2006 in a foreign city, I met an old friend, a neurosurgeon, and he lamented how he had written to Ugandan authorities requesting for help in financing the purchase of a piece of equipment that is vital for neurosurgery. That machine is too expensive for an individual to invest in on their own, and he wanted a public-private arrangement that would enable him come home, and save the country from referring complicated cases to overseas institutions. He got a negative response; his skills are still being enjoyed by another country.

Doyle also records how after an outbreak of sleeping sickness in 1886-87, causing many deaths, Omukama Kabalega ordered a Munyoro healer “to make experiments in the interest of science”, which were “eventually successful in procuring a cure.” Doyle reports J. Roscoe, a colonial anthropologist, being told that Kabalega sent men to learn about inoculation small pox inoculation from an Egyptian garrison.

Perhaps the most staggering is a chronicle by JNP Davies of the observation of surgery by caesarean section by ‘native’ surgeons in 1879. The place was Kahura, near Mruli (presumably present-day Nakasongola). A missionary doctor, Robert Felkin, observed as the patient/mother was anaesthesised with banana wine, incisions made, the baby removed, the bleeding stopped with red hot irons, and the wound stitched. Felkin’s description was published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1884, and the ‘native’ surgical knife, which he took, he eventually presented to Sir Henry Wellcome, and stored in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (Wellcome is the world’s second-largest medical research funder).

The Government has done wonderfully in setting up health infrastructure (1,454 Health Centre IIs, 853 Health Centre IIIs, and 164 Health Centre IVs), but is yet to produce sufficient personnel, let alone incentivise them to serve there. Makerere Medical School passes out about 90 MB ChB degrees, 20 dentists, 15 pharmacists and 10 radiographers a year, while others come from Mbarara University of Science & Technology (50), and Gulu (40). Not enough.

WHO says “the main constraint is the inequitable socioeconomic development of rural compared to urban areas and the comparative social, cultural and professional advantages of cities. Cities also offer more opportunities to diversify income generation”. WHO’s website says the World Bank “has made recommendations to tie access to professional education to a commitment to practise a certain number of years in the country or reimburse the costs of training, to limit opportunities for training abroad, and to finance professional education through loans to students that need not be reimbursed when they accept work in an under-served area.”
Or do as Bunyoro did. It’s back to the future.
dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

How Independence nationalists Tom Mboya, Jomo Kenyatta, Oginga Odinga, Bildad Kaggia, Ronald Ngala, and Dedan Kimathi would be shocked if they resurrected in the 21st Century.

Here is a quick quiz. Which five of these are not Kenyan political parties/coalitions? The National Alliance, National Resistance Movement (NRM), National Democratic Movement (NDM), Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), Party of National Unity (PNU), KADU, Wiper Democratic Movement - Kenya (WDM-K), CORD Alliance, Jubilee Alliance, National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), NARC-Kenya, FORD – Kenya, Party of Independent Candidates (PICK), The Independent Party (TIP), FORD- People, New Ford Kenya, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chama Cha Uzalendo (CCU), Civic United Front (CCF Chama Cha mapinuzi), Africa National Congress , Kenya National Congress, United Republican Party, United Democratic Front, and Party of Action.

We continue: National Labour Party (NLP), Sisi Kwa Sisi, Social Democratic Party (SDP), Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), Kenya African National Union (KANU), Agano Party, Forum for Non Parliamentary Parties (FORUM), National Vision Party, National Party of Parties (NPP), Party of Democratic Unity, and New Democrats. (Out of breath? These are only 30 out of about 60 registered parties and coalitions, the total being roughly equal in number to Kenya’s ethnic groups – admittedly some parties are genuinely ethnically-inclusive, but the tribal names of their leaders normally have the final say on voters).

Answer: The obvious non-Kenyan parties above are our own NRM, ANC (South Africa), ZANU (Zimbabwe), Civic United Front (CCF, Chama Cha Mapinduzi) of Tanzania, and then the cryptic one, the National Party of Parties (NPP), which is your columnist’s own creation. I had considered registering a party in Nairobi, but my nationality came in my way. Are there no people of the Nsenene Clan among the Gikuyu, or maybe the Luhya? For our ancient lineages tend to transcend colonially-determined borders so, who knows, my clansmen could also have their own Kenyan party.

For this is how, on the face of it, Kenyan politics appears. Deeply riven along ethnic lines, the number of political parties is even greater than the total number of ethnic groups, depending on how actual ethnic alliances like Gikuyu-Embu-Meru would count (in Uganda we would be going down to the clan) Of course, it is not a straight forward linear thing that for every party there is a tribe, or for every tribe there is a political party. But the intricacies of the network of alliances and coalitions points to well thought-out ethnic compositions.

For instance, in next month’s election, the Jubilee Alliance of Uhuru Kenyatta/William Ruto is a well-contrived balance of the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin bloc, with their main opponents, the CORD Alliance of ODM maintaining the old Luo base, with a strong dose of Kamba allegiance from Kalonzo Musyoka’s Wiper. In the last election, in 2007, it was more a Raila Odinga-led Luo (for decades feeling marginalised) allying with the Kalenjin (feeling rejected after Daniel arap Moi’s departure), taking on the NARC, or NAK, or is it PNU, that apparently fronted Gikuyu interests in the form of President Mwai Kibaki.

Those who follow Kenyan football will know that Gor Mahia FC represents Luo cultural interests, and that AFC Leopards was once brazenly called Abaluhya Football Club after the Abaluhya community, the second-largest tribal group (Kikuyu 22 per cent, Luhya 14 per cent, Luo 13 per cent, Kalenjin 12 per cent, Kamba 11per cent, Kisii six per cent, and Meru six per cent). (Imagine Jinja’s Nile FC being Abasoga football club – even changing to the abbreviated AFC Nile would not hide the Soga element). Ugandans who have plied the Kampala-Nairobi road route may need to know that the venerable Akamba Bus Company was an economic stronghold for Kamba interests.

It is amazing that KADU (Kenya Africa Democratic Union), which lost the Independence fight to KANU 50 years ago, is back, albeit much changed. KANU, its old nemesis, still breathes but is weak. They have both lost the national character they had at Independence and have, inevitably, sank to the depths of the ethnic mire that Kenyan politics is today.

How Independence nationalists Tom Mboya, Jomo Kenyatta, Oginga Odinga, Bildad Kaggia, Ronald Ngala, and Dedan Kimathi would be shocked if they resurrected in the 21st Century. But many, including Karega Munene in the journal ‘Wajibu’, have argued that though at Independence Kenyatta, Oginga, and Mboya were elected on cosmopolitan (nationalist) tickets, “they and their disciples quickly retreated to ethnic refuges in their attempt to consolidate their political influence”.

FORD has many variants. It would be like if we had NRM, NRM Uganda, NRM Progress, NRM Original, NRM Reform etc. Except that FORD, in whichever guise, is nowhere as formidable as our NRM. There is also a party called Wiper (Wiper Democratic Movement - Kenya [WDM-K]), whose initials look uncannily like WMD – weapons of mass destruction. Here is to hoping that there will be no mass murder this time.

dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

I would wager that, by 2030, when Field Marshal Al-Haj Dr Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, would have been 50 years out of power, and Tumwine would have long retired, kijambiya Amin would have been found worthy of a post-humous award.

I half-expected to get a medal, for being a Ugandan, when a clutch of honours was dished out at the NRM celebrations last week. Any half-decent citizen was entitled to expect.
In the event, I was not cited, but some 3,500 of my compatriots were given honours ranging from the one-off 50th Uganda Independence (Golden Jubilee) Medal to the more regular Nalubaale Medal. Recipients of the Jubilee included Presidents Edward Muteesa, Milton Obote, Yusuf Lule, Godfrey Binaisa, Tito Okello, and Yoweri Museveni. It was truly magnanimous of President Museveni to award his predecessors, who otherwise he memorably referred to as ‘swine’ back in the 1990s. It is quite a swing, from swine to wine, for surely he would have wined and dined with them, had they been around to receive the honours. Or maybe not, for it was probably easier to award them now that they are safely tucked away in their graves.
The big miss-out was ‘Big Daddy’, Idi Amin, himself for reasons Gen. Elly Tumwine, the chairman of the National Awards Committee cited as a “bad legacy”. “The medal is for people who served honourably. Amin had so many bad cases,” Tumwine said.
I agree with him, but to the shock of people like Tumwine and myself, there are many Ugandans who would not agree. Last week I had a deep discussion with a young lady who opined that Amin deserves a much better press than he has been getting. She has been repeatedly told that Amin did many great things which, by far, outweigh the negatives. I told her that he had indeed done a few good things – promoting sport, bringing Uganda to the satellite telecommunication age, opening the airport and conference centre that Obote started, and a few more.
But I also told her that she did not know what it was like in the 1970s: not to taste sugar, milk and bread for years; to wash clothes with the sup of pawpaw trees; to be a Langi, an Indian or an Acholi; to have your brother locked away in a car boot before murder; to return to boarding school every term and hear of yet another boy’s father having “disappeared” or a family fled into exile; to not be able to drive a fancy car; to be hunted for being an intellectual; to be a persecuted Pentecostal; to have your beautiful wife/girlfriend snatched from you; to be free to wear a mini-skirt or bathroom slippers. She does not know; many will never know, for no fault of theirs.
That is because she is below 30 years, and it takes practical experience to appreciate despotism for what it is (the Luganda renders it well: Amin’s reign of terror is efugabbi, he a dictator nakyemalira, and a murderous one at that kijambiya).
But, increasingly these days, you hear a revisionism that attempts to rehabilitate Amin (one suspects that it is a loss of perspective by people blinded by disgust with what they view as Museveni’s corrupt and nepotistic government).
My discussion with the young sister was joined by a good gentleman, a European, who pointed out that even on his continent, there are increasingly more young neo-Nazis, those who find no fault in what Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s and 1940s.
You see the passage of time brings both healing and forgetfulness. Think of last week’s awards, then divide Uganda’s independence in half – 25 years which is 1987. Would Obote and Okello have been honoured in 1987 (Museveni was in power even then!)? Or go back to 1992, when playwright Mukulu immortalised the 30th anniversary with his great satire Thirty Years of Bananas. Not even genteel Binaisa was honoured.
I would wager that, by 2030, when Field Marshal Al-Haj Dr Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, would have been 50 years out of power, and Tumwine would have long retired, kijambiya Amin would have been found worthy of a post-humous award. The likes of that young lady would be in power then, and will probably entertain apologists’ arguments like Amin’s (racist) expulsion of Asians helping to build an African merchant class, and so on.
Amin’s award may not even wait till 2030. Consider these UBOS statistics: by June 30 last year, our population was 34.1 million, of whom 25.1 million (73 per cent) were born on or after June 30, 1986 (Museveni’s kids). Most are alarmingly ignorant of our history. With the rate at which we produce new Ugandans (1 million a year), those born before Museveni will be just a meagre 10 per cent of the population in 10 or so years. That means in a few short years, about 90 per cent would have had no experience at all of Amin. Why, then, would they not honour him?
The revisionism we hear today is borne of ignorance of facts and non-experience of events. Sign of the times.

dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

You see, he ushered in peace, opening the way for loose trousers. In the days I was a teenager, before Museveni took power, even if they had been there we could not have afforded to wear ‘balancing’ trousers, as the insecurity of the day frequently resulted in sudden announcements of duka, duka kimbia, kimbia (run, run).

A small confession: On occasion, I have had to fight the temptation to tag a little on the loosely-secured trousers of a randomly picked young man and see what would happen with the pants, and how he would react. Restraint and repentance have won (thus far).

I do drive along the Entebbe highway every day and keep wondering about what’s going on in the minds of the young men, with ‘balanced’ trousers, who clamber over the rail that divides the dual carriageway. You see that rail was designed to prevent pedestrians from wantonly crossing the road, with proper zebra crossings and pedestrian bridges provided, and so anyone climbing over it would have to do quite some dexterous bodily and garment gymnastics. For women jumping the rail implies strictly no busuuti/gomesi, while for men it calls for a well-secured belt.

But contemporary fashion has brought on the phenomenon of ‘balancing’, which requires either no strap at all around the waist or, at best, an under-employed belt (the generational interpretation of undergarments has changed, thus we now see other people’s underwear, kundis/navels, ill-placed tattoos).

I would classify Ugandan men’s waists and their corresponding trouser styles in four categories:
• Low-slung, ‘balanced’ mid-way the bum
• Conventional, ‘I know my waist’
• High-slung, above-the-belly button
• Suspenders, with no belt.
Those categories also roughly correspond to age groups, and with them social-economic achievement, and a mentality or psychology.

The low-slung trouser fellows tend to be between 14 and 27 years old, with a hard-boiled attitude. They have a take-it-or-leave-it mentality, are not yet certain of what direction life should take, and generally seek or take the approval of only their peers.

Their thoughts when you disapprove: “Stuff it!” (I was once a teenager myself, and I remember wearing slashed jeans, with the names of my favourite footballers, and a girl, written all over). This low-slung ‘balancing’ group are, on the whole, unsure of what to do in life or about life.

It has S4 and S6 vacationists, campusers, early career professionals, one hit musicians and other pseudo-celebrities. One preacher I heard in church linked the ‘balancing’ fashion to people of certain sexual orientation – I am not sure that that message sunk to any depth, or let alone how legitimate it is, but who knows?
I would say, though, that if there is any blame to throw around for the entire ‘balancing’ thing, it should be squarely on President Museveni.

You see, he ushered in peace, opening the way for loose trousers. In the days I was a teenager, before Museveni took power, even if they had been there we could not have afforded to wear ‘balancing’ trousers, as the insecurity of the day frequently resulted in sudden announcements of duka, duka kimbia, kimbia (run, run). The security-conscious Ugandans of the time had to have properly secured trousers, didn’t they? With everyone running their own direction at the slightest rumour in town, the ‘balanced’ trousers would be the only ones with a definite direction – down to the ankles.

The conventional waist line is the average guy, for whom life is moving but maybe not quickly enough. He is likely to be a mid-level civil servant, a middle management professional, a contented teacher, in an average age group of 32-52 years. For this lot, life though okay can be a grind, with the odd excitement coming only with a promotion or an overseas trip. Security of job is reflected in security of belt around the waist; security of person is in right-fitting clothes.

The third group, with trousers belted above the belly button (the very antithesis of the girly kundi show), could be the Congolese musician or a prosperous pastor, aged 45-60. This is the “Now I have emerged” sort, typified by the newly rich Kikuubo merchant or shopping mall-constructing tycoon. This group buys over-sized clothes. In the 1970s, they would likely be the mafuta mingi merchant class.

The fourth group wear suspenders, like in classical movies. They are the ‘I have made it, happily retired, no need to work, enough grandchildren and sufficient investments’ group with age range 65-75 years. Like the young ‘balancing’ guys at the other end of the spectrum, these guys also may not own a belt – suspenders are sufficient. Wearing suspenders reeks of power and authority. I suspect many in the Ugandan Cabinet fall in this category, though I have not espied suspenders on our ministers’ torsos (it is unlikely that any minister is ‘balancing’).

It really is a Pyramid of Waists – broad at the bottom, narrow at top, moving up the anatomy. The bigger group – the young men – are at the bottom and there is a tight, if sub-conscious, battle to climb up to the narrow apex of the pyramid. Man, where do you belong? Myself…….just pass me my belt.
dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

In other words, Mulwana, who died last week, contributed far much more to the economy than many of the wheeler-dealers we tend to admire.

It was Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple and its many fantastic apps, who said: “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful….that’s what matters to me.”

We often look at Kampala’s changing skyline of new buildings, the quality of vehicles on the road, and number of rich folk, and we pat ourselves on the back in bouts of self-congratulation that we are developing. But scratch a little deeper and the reality, certainly the statistics, says something different. One worrying characteristic is the lopsidedness of the economy – a lot of the supposed development is actually consumerism, as exemplified by shopping malls, vehicles, clothing, and vibrant night life. There is no firm base – it is consumerism that is not backed by productivity.

An alarming level of what we consume is imported, and we do not export enough. Actually Uganda’s import bill is twice its export earnings (last financial year we imported goods and merchandise worth US $5.3billion against exports of US $2.5billion); an unhealthy state. That would be like a family income, from Dad and Mum’s salaries and the family shop, of Shs 3million, and a monthly expenditure – in food, rent, school fees, and car maintenance – of Shs 6million. It is called living beyond one’s means, the consequences of which are well known.

The economy’s lopsidedness is mainly due to low productivity, principally coming out of very little manufacturing. Manufacturing is just 8 per cent of the economy (GDP), compared to 16 per cent in Kenya, and 15-20 per cent in South Africa.

Enter James Mulwana. He was not just another rich man in town; he was an industrialist. To appreciate his contribution to Uganda’s economy, just do a game of substitution. If you took his batteries away, what would Uganda do? Import batteries. If you took his plastics – pens, toothbrushes, basins, plates – away, what would Uganda do? Import plastics. If you took his yoghurt away, what would Uganda do? Import more dairy from South Africa and Kenya.

Conversely, take the business interests of other Ugandan rich men: If you took X’s supermarkets away, what would we do? Y would set up a chain. If you took M’s phone imports away, what would we do? N would import phones. If an earth tremor brought down B’s shopping mall, what would we do? K would build another. If J’s haulage transport business collapsed, what would we do? P would quickly fill the gap.

In other words, Mulwana, who died last week, contributed far much more to the economy than many of the wheeler-dealers we tend to admire. In other words, his life endeavours made Uganda that little bit less reliant on imports. His investments were painstakingly built, and in areas that truly matter in the economy (Nice pens and toothbrushes were there in the 1970s and 80s when I was in school; car batteries were there in the 60s when my dad was still young).

Old school economics used to call it import-substitution, a very important ingredient in turning economies around. One economist in Kampala reckons that Mulwana’s manufactures account for more than 30 per cent of Uganda’s manufacturing – that maybe an over-estimate, but there is not much more large scale manufacturing beyond Mukwano, Bidco, Tororo Cement, Jireh, Dairy Corp, Hima Cement, Roofings, sugar, and brewing.

It is very important that policy makers, and actual policy on the ground, realises that it will take a lot of big time manufacturing to turn the economy around, and therefore put investments and systems in place. It is important for policy makers to appreciate that the huge, young unemployed population can only be gainfully employed in manufacturing – it is manufacturing that can instantly create thousands of jobs.

Uganda was able to generally withstand the world economic slowdown of the late 2000s because, while trade with the wider global economy went down, our regional export trade in Eastern Africa grew most especially in what economists call Emerging Champion products – cements, dairy, plastics, soap, iron & steel, and processed food. Mulwana was a manufacturer of some of these.

His transformative effect is most evident in this chain: primary agriculture --> processing --> exports, exemplified by the Jesa Farm that produced milk from cows he herded, the factory that processed it, and the world-class yoghurts that are served on international airlines.

Mulwana inherently understood Roderick Hausmann’s theory of transformation of economies which, essentially, says that countries and firms should build capabilities of moving from one product to another related product while adding value (Hausmann lectured in Kampala recently). This is why it is important that an oil refinery be built here – Mulwana would use some petrochemical industry by-products in his plastics business, and we should consequently stop importing Chinese plastic toys and parts.

That is why Steve Jobs’ words would, ironically, be a fitting epitaph on James Mulwana’s tomb.
dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

This would be the equivalent of the young Museveni, when he took power in 1986, executing the then surviving predecessors Tito Okello, Milton Obote, Godfrey Binaisa, and Idi Amin, with a few acolytes, and with them Aminism and Oboteism.

The withdrawal, or attempt to withdraw signatures from the petition a group of MPs have drawn up to recall Parliament brought to mind the brilliance of the graphic artist at ‘The Economist’. The cover of the year-end edition of the world’s premier newsmagazine has a montage showing Hell in a contemporary setting, illustrating the lead story ‘A rough guide to Hell’, and the kind of people they, cheekily, think should burn.

Those swimming in the fiery lava include Muammar Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar Assad, a nuclear rocket-juggling Kim Jong Un, an oil-guzzling USA, a prideful Barack Obama, envious Republicans, greedy bankers, and war-mongering Israel and Hamas. Urged on by devils with pitchforks, they await, on the edges of the fire the sexually lustful Silvio Berlusconi and David Petreaus, environmentally hazardous India & China, and a garbage truckload of British journalists. Had the ‘Economist’ editor known what was happening in Uganda, would he have thrown in a few of our MPs as well?

For what can explain how people of sound mind (is that not a condition for standing for Parliament?) turn around and say that they were duped into placing their signature on a document? Adults? Of sound mind? Little wonder the President referred to them as fools and idiots. But it is also just as well that ‘The Economist’ did not know about them, for we should not wish anyone Hell (in any case, as the scriptures say, “God our Saviour wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of him” [1 Timothy 2:4], and “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” [2 Peter 3:9]).

President Museveni is certainly well within his rights (as are the signature hunters in collecting) to fight his corner in attempting to defeat the signature campaign. But why, oh why, do those MPs brazenly tell us that they were duped? Am I foolishly idiotic to determine not to vote such people into power at the next election? Like Donna Summer sung, “Who do you think you are fooling? Who do you think you are?”
*******
Ghana is having it good. Last week, they swore in a President for a new mandate, an extension of the fourth smooth change of power in 20 years of stability. The economy is ticking along nicely, and has been identified as a resource-rich growth hub. Their oil (from the Jubilee Fields, so-called for their discovery and development at the 50 Years of independence in 2007) is being profitably and peaceably exploited. Ghana remains the sole sub- Saharan country the Africa-connected US President Barack Obama has visited. Heck, even the football team has obliged, thriving at the 2010 World Cup, and will be favourites for the Africa Cup of Nations which kicks off later this week. Why has Ghana stood out?

That Ghana has become a model for democracy in Africa, and an example of how to run an emerging economy was not always so. It may have become the first nation to gain independence, in 1957, but things did not work out well. It was an early declarant of the one-party state as Kwame Nkrumah consolidated power. It exported violent revolution, even before Tanzania, Mozambique, Libya, and Egypt - it was Ghana that first trained African revolutionaries in Chinese-run special camps with what one military commentator, according to Guy Arnold in ‘Africa: A Modern History’, observed as “Nkrumah’s principle that havoc could be caused in the political system of an unfriendly regime by a few men with a few primitive weapons.” Ghana underwent convulsions of violence, with periodic coups. But now it is stable. Why?

Could it be that Jerry Rawlings’ much vaunted “house cleaning” of 1979 and 1981-92 is paying dividends? When he took power as a young soldier in June 1979, Rawlings found a heavily corrupt system, even within the ruling military elite, so he promptly executed, by firing squad (on beaches!), not just the President, Lt. Gen. Fred Akuffo, but even Akuffo’s two predecessors, Gen. Ignatius Acheampong and Brig. Akwasi Afrifa, together with eight other regime luminaries.
This would be the equivalent of the young Museveni, when he took power in 1986, executing the then surviving predecessors Tito Okello, Milton Obote, Godfrey Binaisa, and Idi Amin, with a few acolytes, and with them Aminism and Oboteism. (Rawlings left the army in 1992, stood as a civilian president for two constitutional terms, and has since watched from the sidelines as other elected presidents have come and gone).

This is not to endorse bloodshed, but Ghana’s experience was that, because by many accounts he governed well, Rawlings was able to sweep out all the corrupt systems, using the executions and the subsequent roots and branches clean-up. In Nigeria, they call it the JRS (Jerry Rawlings Solution), of decisively and dramatically sweeping out the old and coming up with the new that actually works. Real fundamental change.

dsseppuuya@yahoo.com