As we open 2017, Ugandans are unlearning everything they’ve known for 54 years

As 2016 ended, the most serious debate about Ugandan politics was not in the mainstream media. It was on social media and, especially, Facebook.

The gloves were off. It was nasty. But there were also some very valuable insights. Among the things that struck me were two. First, some former NRM supporters are saying things about the government of President Yoweri Museveni that are, almost word for word, the criticisms that NRM hardliners labelled against the “northern regimes” of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 80s.

Secondly, what crudely passes for “class analysis” is once again returning to Ugandan politics.

In all the bitterness, I think something wonderful has happened. We are at a point where, finally, the ground has been laid for a more scientific study of our political problems.

Ugandan politics had historically been framed along two paths. The first, that British colonial “divide and rule” policy had created deep cleavages, underdeveloping the north, and dooming the people there to be in lowly manual labour, and at best the army.

The main south was designated for commerce, agriculture, clerical and high bureaucrat jobs, but without the hard power of the army.

The lines were, of course, not so finely drawn, with the east and west falling somewhere in between.

Then it went horribly wrong, with the north leveraging its domination of the military to grab power. At its best, it resulted into a coalition between the northern elite and the south (like during Milton Obote 1 and early in Idi Amin’s rule).

At its worst, it led to the second path along which politics in our country has been framed. Namely that a northern militariat, having no local commercial base, preyed on the richer south. That took the form of forceful grabbing of property (during Amin’s time), and corruption.

And when it came to politics, faced with the risk that power would slip into southern hands in 1980s, the Military Commission conspired with the UPC to steal the election.

And southern resistance to extortion and expropriation resulted into savage use of force by the State. The first dispute we saw in that regard was the face off between Obote and Kabaka Mutesa, leading to the 1966 crisis, the storming of the Lubiri Palace, and subsequent abolition of kingdoms.

So we are in 2017. True, one region, the east, has not provided a president. But if you consider a president and vice president as a ticket, the east had Specioza Kazibwe, who was VP from 1994 to 2003. And, indeed, before her between 1963 and 1966 William Wilberforce Kadhumbula Nadiope III, was Obote’s VP. From the conduct of both Nadiope and Kazibwe, we can get a general sense of what a president from eastern Uganda would look like.

So from the south, we had an executive prime minister (Ben Kiwanuka) one titular president (Kabaka Mutesa), two executive presidents (Yusuf Lule and my favourite man Godfrey Binaisa). Actually, make that three, because despite the Presidential Commission of 1980, Paulo Muwanga was the effective president.

We have had three from the north (Milton Obote, Idi Amin, and the duo of the Okello generals Tito and Basilio).
And counting all the VP, prime ministers, 2nd, 3rd, and I don’t know what else prime ministers, every part of the country has had a chance to sit at the table – either at the front or second row.

Except for the short-lived period of Kiwanuka in 1962, the rest of the regimes have had corruption, nepotism, violence, and people have tried to cling to power.

And because Museveni has been there one and a half times longer than everyone else combined, the excesses have been that many times bigger in his time.

We now know that brutality, the use of force to win elections and keep power, and torture and mass murder is not a “northern thing”. It is as much – and to even a greater scale - a southern, western, and eastern thing.
In fact, if it comes to some aspects like clinging to power, the Obotes now seem like angels.

I think this realisation – that tribal exceptionalism or demonisation is bunk - is what is forcing some people to look again at class, and they are right to.

Hopefully the institutionalists will now have the courage to crawl out the corners where they have been hiding in the last 20 years. I am also happy to hear the voices saying Uganda itself is a colonial project that was never supposed to happen, beginning to speak up.

I think all those “past leaders”, Amin, Obote, Lule, the Okellos, must really be smiling in their graves. In the goodness of time, I suspect history will re-evaluate them all more kindly.

Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3