Moses Khisa
In the previous series, I provided some broad strokes on the foundations of political order, the theoretical pillars. I made some excursions into the complication of finding the right balance between a strong state, rule of law and institutions of accountability.
Last week, I underscored that getting the right mix of those three is critical, but so is charting a shared national identity and building a viable political community – the nation.
I wish now to bring the discussion to the Ugandan turf starting with the obvious observation that the state and nation we have are patently artificial colonial creations, in fact, contraptions of sorts.
Contrary to one of President Museveni’s key falsehoods he likes to repeat, rehashed by some of his ardent supporters, which is that Uganda has been in existence for over 500 years, the truth is that the entity called Uganda only came to be just over 100 years ago, at the turn of the last century.
Even more importantly, as an independent nation-state, Uganda is only 62 years old. The attempt to dream up some pre-colonial ‘Uganda nation’ is at best fantasy, at worst intellectual dishonesty!Ideally, building the necessary pillars of political order, for the long term, has to happen when a group of people is truly independent and self-governing.
This means that to assess a country’s itinerary and trajectory of establishing political order, it is arguably logical to start from the moment of attaining sovereignty and self-determination, but it is true that previous conditions, dynamics and institutional mechanisms matter.
In fact, in the case of former colonies like Uganda, present circumstances characterised by the elusive quest for durable political order have their roots in pre-independence, the how and why of the pillars of political order established during colonial rule.
Uganda’s present is, in the main, its past. We can plot Uganda’s current political problems on a grid that directly links to how and why the British created this entity as a colony and the problematic nature of key governance institutions. The colonial heritage alone presents stupendous obstacles to establishing political order that endures.
Apologists of colonialism, or those who take a truncated view of things, have a point to say we cannot continue blaming today’s problems on what happened a hundred years ago!Surely, they argue, the people and leaders of a country that attained independence in 1962 have to take full responsibility for whatever is wrong today just as they take credit for what is right.
Fair enough.Only that, it is either disingenuous or ignorant or both, or perhaps worse, to ignore the fact that colonies were never set up to be successful nation-states, at least not for the long term. They were outposts to serve the material and nonmaterial interests of the colonial metropole, not to advance the aspirations and long-term transformation of the colonised natives.
The type of state established, the institutions of rule of law and accountability set up were all primarily to meet the colonial imperative, not to serve or benefit the colonised peoples.To undo this colonial logic at independence would have meant dismantling the colonial state and rule of law systems, procedures and institutions to recreate a clean slate on which to write a new Uganda.This new polity would then reflect the people’s cultures, values, norms, aspirations and identities rather than perpetuating those created or imposed by the colonisers.
This was not done, and for reasons too complex for me to address here.Fast forward to 1986, we had what the architects told us was a fundamental change and a revolution. A key stated aim of the new rulers was to dismantle the postcolonial state, seen as anti-people and alien in orientation, replace it with a pro-people, truly independent state and nation.
Nearly four decades later, despite occasional denunciations and rhetorical bashings, referencing a civil service with ‘a colonial mentality’, President Yoweri Museveni runs a government operating in the same old colonial straightjacket and a nation with a colonial make!Our ethnic fault-lines and religious differences remain along the contours the colonialists defined and articulated for us.
The militarism of the state, the brutality of the police force, the failure of the central state to provide basic public goods, the selectively applied justice system and accountability institutions, including elections, are deficient mirrors of the colonial system.Yet, Uganda is here to stay, unlikely to dissolve into something else or disappear, so there has to be a way to make it work.
As I have noted here before, a section of the intelligentsia advocates abolishing Uganda, in my view a nonstarter project precisely because it is impracticable.
How then is it possible to go about designing the blocks for durable political order in a contrived former colony called Uganda?
There is no easy answer or formula, for if there was one, the problem would not be with us today! To this complicated question, with comparative lessons and insights, I shall turn in the next weeks.
