As the week wore on, it was clear we would not be able to go home. SMACK was evacuated and students there some barely 13, endured long distances into rebel held territory. Brother Kisitu did not have the capacity to evacuate a much younger contingent.

In January 2011 the college chapel at St. Mary’s College Kisubi filled up, it quickly went into overflow. Kisubi has many dignitaries and hosts many events which will fill up the 1, 200-seat capacity chapel but this was a special day-
Lying in state at the head of the chapel was Brother Emmanuel Kisitu. Shortly thereafter, his plain casket would quickly disappear into the Brother’s cemetery. Emmanuel Kisitu’s life had been devoted to early childhood education. Born in 1930 all he had done was teach or run a primary school.

1985 found him in the care of a little over 250 children at Savio Junior School. Savio Junior School was founded in 1955 to act as a feeder school to St. Mary’s College Kisubi. At the helm of this enterprise was Emmanuel Kisitu. In 1984-1985 he had managed to keep the school running when schools were closing down because of lack of food. In 1985, Bro. Kisitu had made the right prediction and closed the school the Friday before the July 27 coup. The 1985 Coup today is written about as a bloodless coup but the country was in a state of paralysis for one week before the final resistance by pro-Obote forces died down.

The lives and innocence of children is almost sanctimonious. If the country at the time was falling apart- an ethnic divide between the north and the south; it was not up to people like Brother Kisitu to promote the same divisions. During my time, we had the son of a very outspoken District Commissioner Benson Ogwang, the Mpigi D.C. There were a few other names that would get folks then losing control of their bowel movements. Many of these sadly have passed on; David Kanyamusaayi, the CID Director, was one of those. As a child I thought he was a vampire rather than a human being. It almost seemed ironic that his name rhymed with that of his boss- Dr Luwuliza Kirunda the Internal Affairs boss. “Luwuliza” would listen in on people’s conversations before “Kanywamusaayi” sucked out their blood with long jail sentences or the Minister sent them to jail under the Public Order and Security Prevention Act of No. 11 of 1967.
So my god-father’s son Kasirye shared the same benches with the children of people who were responsible for his detention. These were the lives we were used to at the time very complex yet not removed from childhood pleasures like swimming in the lake and so on.
In January 1986, school opened again. But this time Bro. Kisitu seemed to have made a miscalculation of great proportions. The term was one week old when rumours of military movements descended on our hill. On one day, it dawned on us that NRA positions now seemed closer than we thought. It did not take long before sightings of the guerillas became common knowledge. An old UPM hand, Mr Byensi, who taught English, had disappeared at the end of 1985 to join the NRA rebels in something close to a Bond action; something that was replicated just two years later by our Music and Maths teacher Mr Ogwang to join the Holy Spirit Movement. Mr Byensi lived but Mr Ogwang did not.
As the week wore on, it was clear we would not be able to go home. SMACK was evacuated and students there some barely 13, endured long distances into rebel held territory. Brother Kisitu did not have the capacity to evacuate a much younger contingent.
To this day the profile of this man strikes me as not only courageous but saintly. He huddled everyone in the three dormitories. The gun-battle of Kisubi waged first on the Main road and then in the grounds of Savio Junior School with a gunner right above one dormitory. Shortly, after 9.00 a.m on a late week day, rounds began flowing down-hill at UNLA positions from the gunner.
The steady blast of gun-fire blasted bolted doors and windows open. Teachers stood over us while Brother Kisitu in breaks traveled from one dormitory to another. Kisitu a jolly man in happy times and even when he was very “cross” was in tears exasperated at how close we were to death. Now much older, I remember the implications were much deeper. On his pupil list there were kidnapping targets, possible ransom targets and another bloodbath that could begin if a deranged gunman opened the doors of the dormitories.
We did not have cell phones then. Somehow, Kisitu in his industriousness still managed to prepare meals for the students and teachers who were huddled. No mean challenge given that the kitchen even though closed used firewood which had to be taken apart by pick axe before being shuttled to the kitchen.
Palpable relief after two days descended on Kisubi after the war ended. Kisitu travelled to Kampala for the swearing in ceremony. When he returned, he announced to us we had a new government.
I recall raising my hand and asking how long had the President committed to staying in power. Kisitu wearily and perhaps in a signal of what was to come said weakly: “he says four years.” Happy 27th NRM Anniversary.

Mr Ssemogerere, an attorney and social entrepreneur, practices law in New York.

kssemoge@gmail.com

Who once thought that a sovereign country like Uganda would have to go begging in Europe to construct 50 homes for chiefs in Acholi for example?

It is only the naïve who think that the President’s continued embrace of military fatigues- battle dress uniform (BDUs) for public occasions even where they are obviously in bad taste is not an innocent gesture.

The BDU is a very comfortable work-cloth. It is used to distinguish the President from other contenders to the throne. If some special instructions need to be issued to the proletariat they descend into the same form of dress bereft of rank and insignia. The Kyankwanzi annual retreats for the ruling party while light on actual military drills emphasize this point.
Uniform allows the President to remain assertive. This is a matter of style. However, with time, designs fall out of date with the times. A good place to start is looking around your neighbours to see what they are doing. Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete is a retired army colonel. You would struggle to find him in BDUs.

Elections in Tanzania have been contentious of late but Tanzania’s political system still has a track record of orderly transition of leaders from office. Tanzania is in an elite tier of states that have institutionalised the office of ex-President.

Others are South Africa where nationalist leader Nelson Mandela is a national icon and tourist attraction. With time, Sam Nujoma in Namibia another war hero legend who had developed second thoughts about peacefully leaving office may acquire the same status.

All of these countries have had good reasons to institutionalise military rule. The founding of Namibia, Mozambique (where NRA’s roots are in the defunct Fronasa), and South Africa are through protracted military struggles. Tanzania and Zambia’s history is intertwined with the struggle against apartheid.

Infact, in cash strapped Tanzania at one time the military was the only functioning institution just like infamished Ethiopia in 1984 was dominated by one economic activity Ethiopian Airlines whose business accounted for one half of the economy.

Military experiments while common during the cold war, both the United States and the Soviet Union and their junior lackeys ruthlessly promoted coup d’états to uproot popular regimes in Latin America, Africa and Asia they have been discredited as little more than personalised fortresses that had to be torn down to unleash the full potential of their countries. Chile, South Korea, Brazil and many others have made this stride.

Second tier countries with a long history of military rule may make this stride in this century after casting the demons of excessive militarism: Nigeria, Pakistan if the Americans withdraw from Afghanistan, Indonesia now the world’s fifth most populous country creating new true economic powers.

The President and his handlers seem to struggle with this point. The realities of global capitalism make “centralised” command rule very difficult to sustain. Variants of this model- foreign aid, foreign military intervention, monolithic political systems have all failed.
Who once thought that a sovereign country like Uganda would have to go begging in Europe to construct 50 homes for chiefs in Acholi for example?
The United States after a decade of waging a universal war on terrorism has realised the folly on a human and economic scale of the excesses of exported militarism and military rule. President Barack Obama’s inaugural address promised more alliances and less war an economic necessity as the bills from Iraq and Afghanistan come due.

A soldier in the barracks or in a confined area is very different from a soldier in a civilian or live environment. Command structures would have to be put in place in the more than 1,000 local governments in the country at the sub-county level, 200 districts and so on.
Military governors or viceroys are part royalty- part commanders you can see how kingdoms re-established after years of protracted negotiation and struggles would clash with the new regime.

Budget enthusiasts have watched in horror as the Police’s budget crept from reasonable to unreasonable- military rule will probably bankrupt the treasury.

Soldiers executing civilian functions requiring a civilian lifestyle will make our current military royalty who have dabbled in business look like chump change.

The military option like corked champagne is very difficult to return to its genie once the bottle is uncorked. Somalia, Egypt, Myanmar, the DRC have all learnt and are still learning these lessons.

One hopes that Defense Minister Crispus Bazarrabusa Kiyonga and President Museveni are offering more thought to this idea that if they fail to resolve to assert themselves over the body politic it will be necessary to call the army in.

They need to pay more attention to the deteriorating economy more than anything else. Because without food, it will be impossible with both the civilians and the military.

As we speak, the NRM caucus or to be more accurate 155 MPs or a little more than half of MPs elected on the NRM party ticket are deliberating on their party’s agenda at their annual retreat in Kyankwanzi.

The ruling party is entitled to regularly brief and whip its members to support its programmes in Parliament. NRM’s meetings assume a higher profile because it is the ruling party. Leading members of NRM’s executive occupy national posts including the Speaker of Parliament- who is not attending, the Prime Minister and a number of other cabinet ministers.

Ruling party caucuses are not an unusual feature in modern democracies. In the United Kingdom, the 1922 Committee comprises of the backbench Conservative Party.

Confidence motions in the Prime Minister normally originate in this committee. In 1990, one of the most powerful Prime Ministers of all time Margaret Thatcher lost support of a significant number of members of the 1922 Committee when members of her government first resigned and then ran against her in a secret ballot while she attended an EU Summit in Paris. The high drama ended with the resignation of her then deputy Lord Geoffrey Howe the only surviving member of her 1979 cabinet.
Other parties run things a bit differently.

In South Africa and Tanzania this is a function of the National Executive Committee or Central Committee can recall key leaders with little or no ado. Thabo Mbeki had to resign as the President of the Union of South Africa several years ago when the ANC voted against him.

The Central Executive Committee of the CCM has been “electing presidents” in Tanzania since 1985 when Julius Kambarage Nyerere voluntarily tendered his resignation and left office.

In the case of Uganda’s NRM the relationship between the Parliamentary party, the Central Executive Committee and the Delegates Conference is a bit more amorphous. It seems the preserve of the Parliamentary party does not extend to reprimanding and removing the nation’s top executive.

Neither does the Central Executive Committee whose resolutions have gone unimplemented for years including one directing the Prime Minister to stand down from his party position as NRM Secretary General.

If media reports are correct, a request by Buyaga MP Barnabas Tinkasiimire, a parliamentary chair, asking the Party Chairman to reconsider his stay in office is likely to be ignored as well.

These “soft-powers” are an important check between the ruling party and its members who are also office holders.

The genesis of the current dispute in the parliamentary party is basically backbencher unhappiness with the performance of the front-bench.

Members of Parliament hold an important oversight function over government on behalf of their electorate. They share law making powers with the President. The President’s principal role is to implement the will of the legislature by enforcing laws and policies proposed by the executive but passed by Parliament. When this primary relationship breaks down, there is hardly a need for Parliament.

The former American President Richard Milhouse Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment when he set on a deliberate course to subvert the course of a criminal investigation relating to the Watergate break-in. Successive US presidents have gotten into trouble for subverting the will of Congress and gotten a number of reprimands from Congress for doing so.

Ronald Wilson Reagan got into trouble for arming Iran by authorising Israel to secretly arm Iran and Contra rebels in Nicaragua out of Israeli foreign aid.

George W Bush and his successor Barack H Obama have expanded the use of signing statements to express written disagreements with Congressional legislation limiting their authority. However, American style “presidentialism” is different from our hybrid system because the President and his cabinet are not members of the legislative branch.

They share rule-making authority but this can never be compared to purely legislative prerogatives like levying taxes, ratifying treaties, authorising borrowing and other prerogatives enjoyed by the Congress.
The posturing in the stand-off between Parliament and the Executive this time seems to have escalated on what the role of the President will be in the future vis a vis that of Parliament.

Oil has succeeded in returning high level acrimony to the political debate. The passage of legislation to regulate the oil sector in 2012 has raised tempers so high that some Members of Parliament have begun the new year in jail.

The level of excitement in the oil sector may be more than is necessary today. Yes, the potential for oil to transform the economy is there but tourism, mining and agriculture could do the same. And projections of $2 billion in annual revenue may be too high if one considers the fact that Uganda’s net share of each barrel may be somewhere between 60 and 70 per cent of the market price per barrel. Production sharing agreements are a cheap way for poor countries like Uganda to enter into the oil market, but they are an indirect mortgage of such an important resource.

Cheap oil producers like Saudi Arabia can get oil out of the ground at about $3-5 a barrel. Private oil producers where private companies own the resource and pay royalties to the government similarly have good economics. Uganda is unlikely to be a cheap oil producer for two reasons. First, it will take years to ramp up production to large volumes where Uganda can enjoy economies of scale. Small scale producers like Ghana- about 200,000 bbl per month have very little sway on the world market compared to large producers. It will take time to benchmark Uganda’s oil in the global oil market. Ghana chose a single marketing outlet to buy the entire output until such benchmarks for its Jubilee oil are set.

Inland oil producers face another problem: transportation of crude oil. Most pipelines today have been constructed to transport white products from ports to inland markets. Very few pipelines and these are costly ventures exist for the outbound marketing of crude. Even the fast growing producer, the United States, still has not been able to achieve this balance. A proposal to construct the Keystone Pipeline across the northern prairie and the midwest to transport crude from the new lucrative oil wells in the Dakotas was blocked by the Obama administration leaving only more expensive “tracked” options on the table: road and rail. In Nigeria the crude oil pipelines have been targets of sabotage, arson and outright pilferage. Royal Dutch Shell is terminating its relationships with the Nigeria National Pipeline Corporation on account of the untenable situation in the Niger Delta.

Uganda will have to move crude oil from inland to the coast. For drillers, an external outlet for crude ensures a more liquid market for their output. For Uganda refining domestically is a better option because it allows Uganda to address problems in its long-term internal energy imbalance growing upwards of 50MW to 100MW per annum that cannot be filled even if every last beautiful waterfall on River Nile is dammed. The public, for example, received a few months of non-existent load shedding before the monster returned. Even the cleanest energy economies like the United Kingdom can only produce about one third of their energy from clean sources like wind, solar and hydro.

If you are looking for a cautionary tale of overland pipelines transiting more than one country, you don’t have to look further than the struggles of newly independent Republic of South Sudan. Government has so far not disclosed how it intends to fund either a pipeline or a refinery. External funding carries a lot of risks, constraints and charges to future production that can reduce the longterm value of either option to the Ugandan Treasury.

Oil decision making follows a pattern of either open or closed systems. Closed systems carry more financial security but require a lot of faith and political capital to burn. One trust in government to make the right decisions is imperiled: closed systems become less of an option, indirectly negotiated contracts that protect the identity of the buyer and seller in return for guaranteed funding streams. Russia runs a closed system but many other countries run a variant of closed systems.

Open systems carry very high transaction costs. If you are looking at a PPDA model to sell crude oil, you only have to look at the challenges of entities involved in large scale procurement like NSSF. Allocation chits have to be turned over very quickly into cash and infighting among buyers and interested parties is likely to overwhelm fragile political systems like the Ugandan one. Faced with cheaper sources like offshore oil producers that are more proximate to refineries in Europe, inland producers have to sell at a deep discount.

American oil producers have been happy to offload their crude oil at a deep discount taking advantage of huge tax breaks; and everyone else is starting to feel the music. Ask the Nigerians long accustomed to Bonny light ruling that part of the world. 20 (1) million crude cargoes are lying unsold.
Mr Ssemogerere, an attorney and social entrepreneur, practices law in New York. kssemoge@gmail.com

Yes, they can conduct any test you want for the required answers but the place has been ignored for so long this could hardly be the venue for receiving a high profile client.

The people of Butaleja will forever associate Christmas with the unseemly death of their energetic youthful legislator Cerinah Nebanda who in a short spell in the House captured the imagination of many with her optimism and idealism that things could change for the better.

Nebanda arrived in Parliament as an NRM MP after defeating Dorothy Hyuha, the NRM deputy Secretary General. It goes without saying that big money has come to rule politics in Uganda and the stakes only get bigger. While Hyuha, a Cabinet minister was no shrinking violet, her opponent “Nebanda oil” or mafutamingi the millionaire class matched her pound for pound for the affection of the voters.

I have been in a few offices where civil servants are fielding Nebanda’s calls on a number of subjects close to her constituent’s hearts. The President at her funeral wake acknowledged Nebanda was on his case about the state of dispensaries in her rural district. On the issue of the day- oil, Nebanda and a coterie of legislators mostly from the ruling NRM, have been a sore note in the government’s positions in Parliament.

The Government wants to retain direct ministerial authority over oil; a position consistent with our common law traditions but at the same time create a large specialised agency- the Petroleum Authority with broad sector oversight. These seem like intellectual disputes but in Uganda have become a referendum on what critics from both sides of the political divide describe as the perils of increasingly one man rule.

After Nebanda died under mysterious circumstances, rumour mills and social media went amok on the cause of her death. Quickly, the discussion moved on to whether Uganda had the capacity to pinpoint the cause of Nebanda’s death before her remains are interred in Butaleja. I went to a modern day version of a science polytechnic, so there is hardly a shortage of scientists, chemists, doctors and engineers on my speed dial. The clinicians weighed in first. All causes discussed so far were general and had to be eliminated one by one. If a foreign substance was suspected, the case had to be referred to a microbiologist, tissue specialist or some more advanced tests.

A highly trained pathologist at Mulago hospital after recusing himself from participating in Nebanda activities then hit the nail on the head as he always does matter of factly. The final answer as early as a few days ago lay with the chief government chemist. Nebanda’s autopsy would require further tests. The problem is that these tests required helium which had ran out at the government chemist’s six months ago. I have been a client of the office of the chief government chemist housed in crumbling infrastructure opposite the now infamous Ministry of Public Service.

Yes, they can conduct any test you want for the required answers but the place has been ignored for so long this could hardly be the venue for receiving a high profile client like the late MP Nebanda. From my dear friend the pathologist, he had the final answer that came close to the clinician that the final answer was the correct answer. Verdict impossible within the borders of Uganda.

Many of my doctor and medical professional friends who are exhausted and irritated when I heckle them on abandoning patient care: one of our classmates who went as far as becoming an airtime dealer in Mbarara has began writing back informing me that since government chose to humiliate them after their last strike in 1996 with continuously poor pay, they have been on a go-slow. I remember running into a former State Scholar in the company of his classmate now MP Dr Michael Bayigga with “wornout” shoes simply because the Minister of Public Service at the time Amanya Mushega did not think it important to hire doctors that financial year.

Go-slow means see something-say nothing. It is of course little surprise that the biggest whiners who go abroad each time they catch a cold are responsible for the derelict state of affairs of the medical professionals. Very few are willing to be “triaged” in public institutions like Mulago yet the care is there, especially if you don’t run into a frustrated medical professional living in a nearby slum for want of a better word to say where the toilets flush half the time and overflow the other half of the time.

The saga is in its early stages but the “Police-state” described in these pages as the strangulation of whatever few institutions left is now strangling a hapless medic Dr Sylvestre Onzivua, a brother to my law school classmate State Prosecutor Gilbert Alule for seeking the final and conclusive answer: that cannot be found in the broken facilities we have here.

Unlike the rest like Dr. Chris Baryomunsi, Onzivua does not have parliamentary privileges; the Speaker should have delivered her convoy for a day to ship these remains out of the country. But if a rock star like Ms Nabakooba can overrule Dr Onzivua it is not enough to say the country is on the edge and probably staring down a cliff.

Mr Ssemogerere, an attorney and social entrepreneur, practises law in New York.
kssemoge@gmail.com