Place of foreign backers in Ugandan politics

In 2006, Winnie Byanyima told one of the fables from Ankole lore of Ishe Katabazi. When Kizza Besigye returned from exile where he had fled after the bitterly fought 2001 election that pitted him against NRM’s Yoweri Museveni, it was assumed that his absence from the scene had made him irrelevant.

  Then he started pulling huge crowds which confounded ‘intelligence assessments.’ He was arrested on tramped-up charges of rape and treason. 

According to Byanyima, Ishe Katabazi attempted to wrestle with a heavily pregnant woman, which ordinarily would have been an easy feat. But to his consternation and to the amazement of on lookers, the pregnant woman floored Ishe Katabazi!

Ishe Katabazi then put on a brave face and said he had been left on his back because he was fighting ‘two people!’ Byanyima said the charges against Besigye were Ishe Katabazi-like lame excuses to come to terms with Besigye’s popularity. 

When National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, declared his intention to stand for presidency, many people wrote him off. They said he was a novice in politics who did not know the meaning of fiscal policy. That NUP was that new Kabaka Yekka, not known or supported beyond Buganda. 

Bobi Wine has pulled large animated and passionate crowds all over the country. The droves take the risk of contracting the Covid-19, gunshots and teargas from the security agencies to attend Bobi Wine’s rallies.

So now the narrative is that Bobi Wine is not wrestling NRM alone. In his womb are ‘foreign backers.’ He is a puppet of foreign interests who want to prop him up in exchange for mortgaging the interests of Uganda, so cheaply.

Note that from colonialism in the late 1800s to Independence in the 1960s to date, Africa has been the playground for foreign interests. 

There was a time when a country either subscribed to the communist or the capitalist ideology and pandered to the whims of the States that sponsored their thinking. 

So countries either looked to USA and Western Europe or the Soviet Union and China.  

The global giants fought deadly proxy wars on the continent. In Angola, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA rebels were sponsored by the US while the government of Jose Eduardo Do Santos and his MPLA had the backing of Soviet Union and Cuba.

The calculation and sights on most of the developed world powers was that if they had a government on the continent as part of their sphere of influence, they would have cheap unfettered access to the abundant natural resources.

Leaders who resisted were either overthrown in military coups or assassinated and compliant stooges planted and supported. 
The assignment of the replacement is to weaken the State and its citizens, thus making it easy for foreign interests to have a free rein. 

Patrice Lumumba of Congo, later Zaire, was assassinated and eventually replaced by a kleptocrat, Mobutu Sese Seko, who did the bidding of the West as they looted the minerals of the Congo. This legacy lasts to date.

In Libya, Col Muammar Gadaffi, for so many years an independent Eastern-leaning African leader, was killed by NATO-backed rebels and now the oil resources of that country are bleeding incessantly. 

The long standing African leaders have learnt to play this game of survival. They are the custodians of the interests of foreign powers.  Their actions speak louder than their political rhetoric. 

Many African economies are now funded by money from the West, World Bank, China and budgets balanced by the IMF. 

They call the tune by cutting or delaying aid to put pressure on African countries depending on what they want you to do. They use sanctions, travel bans, freezing of assets denying market access plus raising of tariffs to arm twist poor countries like Uganda. 

The book, Confessions of An Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, gives a lot of insight in these matters. Many African countries like Uganda have no option, but to open up their economies, give away fertile land even to the disadvantage of nationals, just to keep at peace with these world powers.

Uganda in its strategic location in the Great Lakes Region must have an open refugee policy that, for instance, welcomes people displaced from the Congo by powerful international mineral cartels that sponsor wars to displace people from mineral-rich lands.

 If they remain fighting for their land, the climate would disrupt the interest of these global merchants of blood diamonds.

Uganda must also position itself to ensure that South Sudan does not implode. South Sudan acts as the buffer to the expansion of the Islamic State of Sudan to the North. 

It is feared by the West as a bed rock for Islamic Fundamentalism and militant Islam. If the buffer slips into chaos, the project to split the countries and curtail the influence of The Sudan, risks falling apart.

Uganda should also offer bodies and boots on the ground in far flung places like Somalia as an ally in the war against terror to save interested countries like the USA from the heart break of receiving body bags of their own children dying in these sort of wars.

Securing foreign interests is part of the package of successfully leading an African country. 

If Bobi Wine shows the potential of acting this part well, it helps him acquire a very important vote for the top job. 

Those quarrelling about him having foreign backers may not necessarily view it as being unpatriotic.
It may be that the foreign backers now have another option in the same locality, willing to do business.

Twitter: @nsengoba