Politics of “PHD” and why Museveni is not Uganda’s biggest problem

Watu wenye nia ndogo. Les gens à l’esprit étroit. Small-minded people. I mean…I’m constrained to find what else explains the mentality of people who spend most of their time trying to pull others down. The theory cats have christened this having a “PHD” – Pull Him Down. There was a cruel twist to this recently, and it happened, a week or so ago, ironically to a goodly soul that actually earned a PhD in some field of science. He is one of my homeboys – a university professor at that and for good measure, teaching in a serious European university.

He shared, on our homeboys’ WhatsApp group, a sad, painful video of a tragedy on his farm. Some really nice neighbours (in the village everyone is more or less a neighbour, since we live more or less as communities) had paid his farm a visit. The good professor runs a livestock outfit and takes great pride in breeding goats – nice, exotic goats that would be the pride of any place on earth. Someone didn’t like the fact that the goats were looking nice; so they found their way to the farm and poisoned the goats.

You might understand, explain or even forgive a thief who steals the goats because he wants to eat them or sell them for money. These ones didn’t want to eat or sell the goats; they just didn’t want the professor to do so well. The animals died by the dozen! When the professor woke up, all his fanciful philosophies and theories from academia evaporated from his head as he beheld the catastrophe.

For a man who is using his exposure in the western world to boost our village economy, it was really painful. You would have thought that people would have been happy seeing one of their own do well and try to learn from him and even pester him to help open doors to Europe through scholarships for their children.

Some of our neighbours didn’t want to know all that – they chose to cut him down to size. But as soon the professor shared his experience, several other people immediately began to share similar stories. Turns out we are in a part of the country where some people not only feel bad when their neighbours do well, they also go out of their way to ruin them. It is a good thing to have prosperous neighbours, all factors equal. There is always a spillover effect as well as forward and backward linkages that you eventually begin to cream off. Plus, they inspire you to think higher and work smarter; while poor neighbours may make you complacent since you feel ‘rich’ or, at worst, equal. 

It is true that political leadership is a critical factor in the development equation and it is very true that nearly four decades of one-man rule have occasioned more harm than good to Uganda’s transformation aspirations. It is therefore essential that Mr. Yoweri Museveni leaves power to enable the country pick up its democracy credentials and correspondingly, build socio-economic momentum.

But when you hear stories of what happens in our communities, you shudder! We are small-minded people! Mr. Museveni definitely knows this and uses it to his advantage! That is why he’s been in power for so long. In a country where people munch on excuses as they sip their tea every morning, always blaming others for our failures, never admitting our shortcomings, and then pulling down those who are transcending our mediocrity, a dictator will thrive real nice. In a country where, for just a few shillings, people will vote a person who is manifestly lousy and reject a promising politician because he didn’t bribe them, dictatorship thrives.

Ultimately, development relies more on a quality, high-reasoning, hardworking and innovative citizenry than it does on a highly functional government. No amount of nice leadership will cause transformation in a society where people are corrupt, malicious, wilfully lazy and do not feel able to celebrate the progress of their neighbours and use them as stepping stones to higher ground. 

So even while many Ugandans agree that Museveni has overstayed in power, when he’s off the helm, many of the problems we are facing will still persist.

Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda    

[email protected]