Rethinking the Bandung NAM agenda

Uganda deserves congratulations. Whatever our political differences and strong objections to how the current government runs our country, when something good comes to town, it is worth embracing and celebrating.  Hosting the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), taking place in Kampala this week, is a huge deal. Indeed, bringing on Ugandan soil a major international security, financial, diplomatic gathering does add value to our economic prospects and global standing, directly and indirectly. 

If for nothing else, at a minimum the fear of embarrassment and feeling of shame forces the rulers to take care of a few basics, clean-up and fixes, in advance of welcoming visitors.  As citizens desperate to have some modicum of street lighting and potholes right in the centre of the national capital taken care of, we benefit a little bit when the rulers are compelled to fix such public works to impress upon delegates attending a major meeting like NAM. 

For Ugandans who do not have many kind words for the Museveni regime, and I am one of them, there will be time to return to asking questions and denouncing the rulership.  For now, it is in order to reflect on what NAM means and why holding it in Kampala is worth celebrating. NAM has a powerful symbolism but also substantive relevance, to which return below.

Over the years, Ambassador Adonia Ayebare, our representative to the United Nations in New York, has done a terrific job flying the Ugandan flag and working exceedingly hard to advance our national interests. He has excellently spearheaded the current meeting, which he and others have worked on for a long time. Ambassador Ayebare is a patriot, only that one wishes he served a different regime of rule, not that of Mr Museveni!

In my day job, I often talk about NAM (and other related movements for freedom and liberation), thus it is thrilling to watch from a distance its convening right in the capital of my native home. 

NAM is historical and, if nothing else at least, symbolically significant. We must understand its origins, more than half a century ago and especially the gathering in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955, in the context of the waves of the time. What it means to be ‘Non-Aligned’ had both ideological and practical implications.  

At the time of Bandung convening, only a handful of African states had earned independence from European colonial powers: Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Liberia and Sudan. Ghana (the Gold Coast at the time) was on course to full independence but not until 1957.  The so-called Cold War was underway. The United States and the Soviet Union were flexing geopolitical and ideological muscles in ways that became patently dangerous as both amassed deadly and destructive nuclear weapons. 

African and Asian leaders saw through the treacherous terrain that lay ahead for newly independent, poor and technologically backward nations in urgent need of socioeconomic engineering for transformation. They were wary of the vagaries of great power competition and wanted to chart different paths and courses that were not beholden to the interests of the two ideological blocs in the Cold War confrontation. 

Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah along with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, among other political leaders, sought to articulate a post-war agenda that represented the needs and interests of new states independent of the imperatives of the Euromerican agenda of dominating and controlling the world. 

For taking principled and uncompromising stances against Western imperial interests, leaders in Nkrumah’s mould ultimately got overthrown in military coups that had the hidden hand of the Cold War and the invidious power of external actors.  Today, the Bandung spirit of south-south solidarity remains incredibly significant, especially for African nations that are still occupying marginal status in global geopolitics. 

Yet, beyond nice speeches and well-worded statements, African nations, more than their Asian counterparts that have forged way ahead, must show seriousness in mustering their collective resources to tackle shared socioeconomic problems.  It is senseless to express sentiments of a shared colonial origin and denounce imperialistic policies of the West while failing to even trade among each other, instead continue to service Western security interests and unable to pursue prudent policies in dealing with new actors like China. 

In the main, during the Cold War and since its presumed end, we have had more of being ‘non-aligned’ in name but in practice, African governments are content playing to the tunes and dictates of external players. There is no other way around. It is on African rulers to lead the way in fixing African problems, and the Asians have shown that taking a hardnosed, determined and rugged approach to national transformation yields tangible, long-term outcomes. 

The convening of NAM in Kampala is especially timely in reminding Ugandan rulers that they promised a lot in 1986 but have delivered little, after close to four decades of uninterrupted rule

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