Prime
The storm after Kaguta’s son’s exit
Mr Charles Onyango-Obbo
What you need to know:
- Only a fool or a snake oil salesman would claim to have a single definitive answer. Many outcomes are possible.
Tribal tremors” continue to dominate Ugandan political conversation, and some of it is very agitated. A wise, grey-haired Ugandan recently asked what it all means for the future of the country. He was delicately asking an old question: “What will happen to Uganda when Yoweri Kaguta Museveni ceases to be president?” Only a fool or a snake oil salesman would claim to have a single definitive answer. Many outcomes are possible. In fact, some people have a problem with the framing of the question itself.
A while back a similar private discussion with many clever folks took place in the presence of one of Uganda’s leading scholars. He was disappointed and surprised, later saying he was appalled by how much Museveni had imprisoned the minds of Ugandans, they were unable to imagine a transition or future for their country in which he wasn’t a central factor.
Not to earn his wrath, the best answer to the question might be via a scenarios approach, which allows people hedging for risk to put their eggs in several baskets. Several outcomes are possible in a post-Museveni Uganda, but we focus here on four:
The Flying Crane scenario: The first, the most optimistic one, requires us to acknowledge that Museveni has loomed large like no previous leader over Uganda. He has been a boon, and also a bane. Today, despite the widespread antipathy toward his decades-long rule, the momentum of his record plays a big role in keeping together a minimum “One Uganda consensus”. This consensus and the repressed progressive tendency in both the ruling National Resistance Movement and the UPDF may reassert themselves upon his exit, and there will be an NRM 2.0; more liberal, less corrupt, less nepotistic, and less violent, that presides over the creation of a confident New Republic. This is the Flying Crane scenario.
The Katogo Scenario: The second possibility is that Uganda muddles through. This is the Katogo scenario. The NRM, discredited by years of brutality and corruption, and the opposition humbled by a failure to build an alternative national democratic movement, come together and share the political spoils in a national unity arrangement. But no political force is strong enough to assert a new and reformed direction.
Uganda remains in a funk, almost like Sierra Leone and Liberia immediately after the end of their civil wars. Meanwhile, in Kigali or Dar es Salaam talks go on to establish a new national settlement. The country might even have an East African Community Stabilisation Force for Uganda (EACSFU) that intervened to end the unrest that broke out immediately after Museveni’s exit. The country is divided into three zones; under Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda.
The Switzerland Option: More than 40 years later, no part of Uganda is willing to accept that a leader who isn’t from their region rule over them, and there’s no force strong enough in the country to impose a centralised authority. Even within the army and Police, there is too much fracture. Different regions and, even, districts create autonomous authorities. Buganda is the strongest element in this picture, and the only Uganda these disparate parts will accept is a highly decentralised one modelled along Switzerland’s. There will no longer be a national army, only regional ones. The bulk of the revenues from local resources (oil, fisheries, game parks, and border taxes) remain with the regional government. The government in Kampala has mostly ceremonial powers, and the president is elected by the provincial governments. There is only a small federal parliament.
The Humpty Dumpty scenario: The fourth possibility, is a total collapse, and a bloody war breaks out between districts and Ugandan peoples. Like Humpty Dumpty, the character from the nursery rhyme, the country can’t be put back together. There has never been such a situation in Africa, only Somalia coming close. The Humpty Dumpty scenario has two faces.
After a while, a ruthless Shaka Zulu or Genghis Khan figure rises on the back of a small but formidable army built from the fabric of urban youthful discontents. He wipes virtually all the elites, clan leaders, religious leaders, and anyone with authority outside his or her household, and builds a completely new country from the ashes. Three to four million people are been killed. Nevertheless, he and his organisation write new rules, reform the land-holding system, education, and everything, including renaming the country and, naturally, creating a new national anthem and flag.
The second possibility could be a tiered system, with different regions establishing support and supply relationships with the countries near them (e.g. eastern Uganda with Kenya). There are several currencies in use, not just the shilling. The country is kept together by a compact, which is renegotiated every three years. The main work of the Kampala government is to issue passports. It’s possible that Buganda, Acholi, Kigezi, and possibly West Nile, could be fully independent countries.
Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3
