NRM is not any taller than people they laughed at 33 years ago

There is an African saying, that when you are young, you don’t laugh at short people. As an inquisitive young boy many, many years ago, I remember sitting quietly and listening into a conversation among a group of teenagers. They were talking and laughing about someone who was ‘barren.’

I had not heard of the word in the context of a human being and kept it at the back of my mind. Many, many years later, I learnt with sadness of the passing of one of the people who was laughing in the ‘barrenness’ conversation. His marriage ended without a child.

He then desperately cast the net far and wide, failed to get a child and in the process, contracted HIV. He drunk away his frustration and died a broken man.

Around 1985, well before the advent of FM radios, no programme in Uganda was as popular as the BBC’s Focus on Africa.

Our own and only radio station was the State broadcaster, Radio Uganda, which had the blue and green channel. For news about the country, it was mainly boring State-sponsored propaganda. So BBC came in handy.

I recall many of us crowding around the battery-powered radio of Michael Tindikawa listening in to the interviews of the late Chris Bickerton and Henry Gombya giving updates about the NRA guerrilla war in the jungles of Luweero.

It was exciting and anticipative to hear then guerilla leader Yoweri Museveni elucidating the Ugandan predicament. His was an ‘A game.’

He spiced up his speeches with popular phrases from left-leaning ideology and revolutionary semantics; things like the ‘lumpen proletariat,’ playing a key role in subverting the State. The exploitative and predatory activities of the ‘bourgeoise comprador.’

The ‘primitive accumulation’ of wealth by a largely ‘parochial sectarian’ middle class aligned with the State based on ethnic and tribal considerations.

We learnt about the late Ugandan presidents Idi Amin and Apollo Milton Obote being stooges of Western imperialism who accepted trinkets in exchange for our people who were sold off as slaves.

He talked extensively about State-inspired violence and impunity plus the total disregard of the law from which his group had come to liberate the country.

He described the late Gen Tito Okello Lutwa’s government as a ‘military junta,’ which was the first time many of us heard about this phrase.

They would bring to book all those who committed crimes against civilians and ensure the end of impunity once and for all. Security of person and property would be as key as the respect of the rule of law.

When Museveni was sworn in on January 26, 1986, the revolutionary fervour in the country was as palpable as the hope that Uganda had started on a new path never to return to the ‘dark days of the past.’

Pursuing the correct line, Uganda would embark on a period of prosperity by building an independent, integrated and self-sustaining economy. He always toured with a chalkboard and taught about things like ‘backwardness’ being the heavy reliance on muscle power. This was on the way out.

Lest we forget, he frowned upon African leaders who flew private jets yet ‘their people’ wallowed in poverty and of course the ones who were Africa’s problem i.e the type that overstayed in power.

It was difficult to contradict Museveni and the myriad of cadres espousing the virtues of frugality, good governance and patriotism.

Now 33 years later and still in power for God knows how much longer, Uganda in many ways looks like the country Museveni and company talked against when he was much younger.

There are ‘untouchable’ military generals like Maj Gen Kasirye Ggwanga and now Matayo Kyaligonza, who violently break the law in broad daylight and the police investigate until they do it again and the cycle continues.

Uganda is now borrowing money at an alarming rate, even those in lending as a business are becoming apprehensive.

Most of the economy is now in the hands of foreign investors with many of the local pre-1986 business people having collapsed in the middle of the much touted sustained economic growth. Most of the youth are unemployed and the cases of mugging and theft are on the rise.

Security agencies are many times spotted hunting with known criminals. The police have failed on many occasions to solve the rampant mysterious murders of Muslim clerics and women in Entebbe.

Many of the cases of the headline grabbing land evictions point towards people with State protection. The social safety net as epitomised by the health and education sector has seen steady deterioration overtime.

President Museveni and his NRM are beginning to look like the young child in the African saying referred to earlier, who laughed at short people, but did not grow tall himself when he became an adult.

Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political
and social issues. [email protected]
Twitter:@nsengoba