Tribe, bread, history, and Uganda politics today

In  1996 in Mbarara, during a conversation with activist and politician comrade Winnie Byanyima (currently Executive Director of UNAIDS, in Geneva), she noted the growing tension and rising sentiment against people from western Uganda. She also felt that while the 1995 Constitution had its shortcomings, it was the best Uganda has had (agreed) and that it could put the country on a stable political future.

I told her that despite the growing anti-western sentiment, I believed the next consequential opposition politician would come from western Uganda. I also said Mr Museveni would amend the constitution to lift presidential term limits. She gave me a long look. I imagine she was saying to herself, “This comrade doesn’t drink. Did he start this morning?”  She then flatly disagreed on Mr Museveni changing the Constitution.

It took another two years before I could write those thoughts in this column. Most people thought I had lost it – one of the few exceptions was the late Democratic Party leader Paul Ssemogerere. He called, then followed with a warm letter, associating himself with my views (especially that the term limit would be deleted). I was flattered, of course. 

In 2000, history took deliciously sweet revenge on Winnie. The most significant opposition figure of post-1986 Uganda emerged from the west in the form of Winnie’s husband, Dr Kizza Besigye. In 2005 the constitution was amended to scrap term limits. I won a bet that I will finally collect from Winnie’s Ruti ancestral land one of these days.

These stories are retold here to explain the turmoil splitting the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), whose founding president was Dr Besigye. We have also heard FDC Secretary-General and Budadiri County West MP Nandala Mafabi once told Dr Besigye that he did not support leaders from eastern Uganda. FDC today is led by people from the east, with Mr Mafabi SG and Mr Patrick Amuriat as its president. We are seeing what looks like an East-Southwestern split in the party.

It looks that way, but it is more complex. This takes us back to 1996, when I suggested that the next significant opposition figure would come from western Uganda. 
The history of the last 37 years of the National Resistance Movement’s rule, and the longer 61 years of independence, have created political tendencies that are very regional in nature.
In the two periods when Uganda was led by the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), it was led by Milton Obote; the leaders were from northern Uganda. Western Uganda provided either some of its most militant youth leaders, its most progressive leaders, or its most hardline and reactionary. 

The eastern UPC politicians tended to be more pragmatic and moderate (James Ochola, Osindek Wangwor, David Anyoti etc). For 37 years, Mr Museveni, from the west, has been president. Because NRM was historically a southwestern party, the more principled ideological split has happened within its ranks in this context. That is how Mr Besigye emerged, as much as Museveni was the product of a division within the UPC.

Because the north provided all Uganda’s leaders except for the brief interlude of Yusuf Lule and Godfrey Lule, its politics tends to be revanchist; i.e. it mainly seeks a place back at the high power table. As a result of that, it is given to transactional politics – and Mr Museveni has played that well with the region. Like the west’s, northern politics, too, has a sprinkling of entitlement. You won’t find that in Buganda or the east.

Eastern Uganda has never provided a president and labours under a strong sense of exclusion. As a result of that, its politics are more negotiational mixed in with some transactional ingredients. It has a peculiar half-a-loaf-of-bread-is-better-than-nothing political tradition.

The fissures in the NRM have left Buganda, where the party’s guerilla war is based, feeling betrayed. With a sense that its land is being grabbed and it’s facing some state-inspired ecological terrorism in the way its environment is being destroyed, it has created strong grievance politics in Buganda. That was evident in the ferocious engagement of National Unity Platform (NUP) leader Bobi Wine’s Buganda supporters.

That Democratic Party leader Norbert Mao and UPC leader Jimmy Akena Obote have a cooperation pact with NRM doesn’t tell us about them, but about the dynamics that drive northern Ugandan politics. Likewise, it shouldn’t be a surprise if Mr Mafabi and Mr Amuriat were in bed with President Museveni. What is, is them saying they are not.
In all, if Uganda is to have a democratic future that is an alternative to NRM, then it will come via leadership from the west - or Buganda. If we muddle our way to the future through a negotiated democracy and power-sharing, then northern and eastern Uganda would be a crucial part of that process. The future is written in the book.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, 
writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3