Ethnic citizenship clashes with civic citizenship in Uganda
When it serves his purposes, President Museveni will do anything. Having come to power on a narrow, ethnic, regional and personal ambition alone, the NRM has reached the natural zenith of power that such a non-national agenda can sustain. As seen from the recent riots in Buganda over the Kabaka and Kayunga, the Museveni has to heavily and openly rely on the army and a militarised police, to retain power and maintain grip on the state and government.
But what lessons can we learn from this recent brinkmanship with the Kabaka of Buganda?
The first lesson of the riots is that Ugandans need to reflect on what kind of a post- Museveni society they want to build. They can choose to build a just and fair society based on universal standards of equality, democratic rights of civic citizenship, or one based on inequalities ascribed by particularities of ethnicity, accidents of birth, wealth, and access to power and influence.
The other lesson is that ruling party and opposition leaders ought to never make political and public decisions with wider national imports without open, democratic national debate. And that when made, such decisions and policies must not be influenced by short-term, convenient, and narrow, tactical political considerations calculated to benefit the government in power, opposition causes, or to recruit and mobilise favoured elites or small groups to our self-interested agenda, rather than on the principles of fairness, justice, and equity, in the honest efforts to build a just and equitable society.
In his speech to the Baganda parliamentarians on the stand-off between Mmengo and the central government, the president shirked responsibility by reaching back into a distant past to blame Milton Obote for 1966, and the UPC-KY alliance as the basis for his problems with Mmengo and the riots of 2009! He further seems to suggest that the 1962 independence constitution was an Obote / UPC manipulative handiwork.
Museveni must not be allowed to avoid responsibility for the troubles Uganda has gone through since he launched guerrilla warfare against a democratically elected government in 1981. It is his opportunistic, short-term, and convenient political and policy decisions he has made since, that have bloodied, impoverished, conflicted, and diminished our nationhood, and responsible for the current crisis with Buganda and other minority nationalities.
The wellspring of the current trouble is that, in 1993, the NRM and Buganda, bilaterally restored the Buganda Kingdom, ahead of the 1995 constitution, and without a national debate, for political convenience, rather than any serious visionary national agenda. Museveni needed the Baganda vote in an election in 1996 that was supposed to bring to a close, the long, extended four years, turned into a ten-year transition.
The propaganda that the problem in 1966 was the UPC and Milton Obote, benefited the NRM / A recruitment and mobilisation in Buganda in the 1980s, while they were insurgents. Faced with the realities of governing a plural nation after coming to power, they seem to forget where they came from, when they now proclaim that in 1966 the problem was UPC, but in 2009, it is Mmengo, and they can abolish the monarchy because they restored it.
For those who have been keeping scores, this is vintage Museveni. When support from Buganda for the war in Luwero was necessary, the restoration of the Buganda monarchy was not only great political strategy, but a justice cause. Without any national debate on its broader implications for national politics, citizenship and minority rights, the Kabakaship was restored in 1993, in anticipation of the 1995 constitution. But today, the Buganda monarchy and its proponents are barely tolerated.
Despite its leftist ideological outlook, to the chagrin of nationalists in DP, UPC bent over backwards to accommodate Buganda, so that Uganda could go forward as a united country at independence. Therefore, contrary to Museveni's self-interested and intellectual dishonesty, the 1962 quasi-federal constitution was not a UPC document, but a consensus document agreed by Ugandans who founded the post-colonial Ugandan state. Until the mechanisms of the quasi-federal constitution became unworkable between the Executive Prime Minister and the Ceremonial President, after the constitutionally mandated referendum in the "Lost Counties" in 1964, no party signatory to the 1962 constitution had objected to the architecture of state and nationhood erected on those principles.
Furthermore, the UPC-KY alliance went against the ideological grain of UPC, but it was a necessary gesture to again, keep Buganda within the post-colonial Ugandan state, and for Uganda to remain united. In any case, the intention was to form a government of national unity, including the DP; but the DP, remaining inflexibly radical and nationalist on the question of the monarchies, rejected to join the coalition, hence only UPC and KY formed the governing alliance.
Rather than the political imposition of UPC, the 1962 constitution was a product of negotiations between and among the colonial government, Ugandan nationalists, and representatives of Ugandan nationalities, including Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro, Ankole, Acholi, Lango, Teso, Bukedi, and Karamoja, to mention but a few. It was therefore, a communal, consensual constitution that no one single party exercised disproportionate power over its process or outcome.
If Museveni were a honest, democratic revolutionary, he would openly accept that he made mistakes in restoring the monarchies without a national debate. Moreover, he would also point out that he could not re-instate the monarchy in Ankole, because the 1966 and 1967 Republican constitution, a national democratic revolution, rather than any failure of any district council resolution, liberated the Bahiru from Bahima despotism. Therefore, it is unacceptable folly, for the majority Bahiru in Ankole, to re-subject themselves to Bahima suzerainty, after they were set free in 1966/7.
For the same reason, the Banyara, Baruli, Bakonzo, Bamba, and other minority nationalities were emancipated from the domination of Ganda and Tooro neo-feudalism. It is democratic and moral equality, social justice and equity, which are the basis of their present resentment to external domination and aspiration for self-organisation. Contrary to President Museveni’s claims, their aspirations do not draw any moral force of relevance from the 1995 constitutional provisions on cultural institutions which re-subject them to neo-feudalist control, but the 1966 national democratic revolution and republican constitutionalism that unconditionally freed them.
Without these fundamental impasse being resolved democratically, and with a mind to justice, equality, equity and fundamental rights and freedoms, not only for Buganda, Bunyoro or Ankole, people will continue to fight to break free from all sources of arbitrary and irrational control and domination.
The task for the nationalist and democratic citizens of Uganda, therefore, must be to not let Museveni and the opposition leaders have their democratic, justice and equity cakes and eat it too. Their feet must be held to the fire of a democratic, just, fair, and equitable society.
But what lessons can we learn from this recent brinkmanship with the Kabaka of Buganda?
The first lesson of the riots is that Ugandans need to reflect on what kind of a post- Museveni society they want to build. They can choose to build a just and fair society based on universal standards of equality, democratic rights of civic citizenship, or one based on inequalities ascribed by particularities of ethnicity, accidents of birth, wealth, and access to power and influence.
The other lesson is that ruling party and opposition leaders ought to never make political and public decisions with wider national imports without open, democratic national debate. And that when made, such decisions and policies must not be influenced by short-term, convenient, and narrow, tactical political considerations calculated to benefit the government in power, opposition causes, or to recruit and mobilise favoured elites or small groups to our self-interested agenda, rather than on the principles of fairness, justice, and equity, in the honest efforts to build a just and equitable society.
In his speech to the Baganda parliamentarians on the stand-off between Mmengo and the central government, the president shirked responsibility by reaching back into a distant past to blame Milton Obote for 1966, and the UPC-KY alliance as the basis for his problems with Mmengo and the riots of 2009! He further seems to suggest that the 1962 independence constitution was an Obote / UPC manipulative handiwork.
Museveni must not be allowed to avoid responsibility for the troubles Uganda has gone through since he launched guerrilla warfare against a democratically elected government in 1981. It is his opportunistic, short-term, and convenient political and policy decisions he has made since, that have bloodied, impoverished, conflicted, and diminished our nationhood, and responsible for the current crisis with Buganda and other minority nationalities.
The wellspring of the current trouble is that, in 1993, the NRM and Buganda, bilaterally restored the Buganda Kingdom, ahead of the 1995 constitution, and without a national debate, for political convenience, rather than any serious visionary national agenda. Museveni needed the Baganda vote in an election in 1996 that was supposed to bring to a close, the long, extended four years, turned into a ten-year transition.
The propaganda that the problem in 1966 was the UPC and Milton Obote, benefited the NRM / A recruitment and mobilisation in Buganda in the 1980s, while they were insurgents. Faced with the realities of governing a plural nation after coming to power, they seem to forget where they came from, when they now proclaim that in 1966 the problem was UPC, but in 2009, it is Mmengo, and they can abolish the monarchy because they restored it.
For those who have been keeping scores, this is vintage Museveni. When support from Buganda for the war in Luwero was necessary, the restoration of the Buganda monarchy was not only great political strategy, but a justice cause. Without any national debate on its broader implications for national politics, citizenship and minority rights, the Kabakaship was restored in 1993, in anticipation of the 1995 constitution. But today, the Buganda monarchy and its proponents are barely tolerated.
Despite its leftist ideological outlook, to the chagrin of nationalists in DP, UPC bent over backwards to accommodate Buganda, so that Uganda could go forward as a united country at independence. Therefore, contrary to Museveni's self-interested and intellectual dishonesty, the 1962 quasi-federal constitution was not a UPC document, but a consensus document agreed by Ugandans who founded the post-colonial Ugandan state. Until the mechanisms of the quasi-federal constitution became unworkable between the Executive Prime Minister and the Ceremonial President, after the constitutionally mandated referendum in the "Lost Counties" in 1964, no party signatory to the 1962 constitution had objected to the architecture of state and nationhood erected on those principles.
Furthermore, the UPC-KY alliance went against the ideological grain of UPC, but it was a necessary gesture to again, keep Buganda within the post-colonial Ugandan state, and for Uganda to remain united. In any case, the intention was to form a government of national unity, including the DP; but the DP, remaining inflexibly radical and nationalist on the question of the monarchies, rejected to join the coalition, hence only UPC and KY formed the governing alliance.
Rather than the political imposition of UPC, the 1962 constitution was a product of negotiations between and among the colonial government, Ugandan nationalists, and representatives of Ugandan nationalities, including Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro, Ankole, Acholi, Lango, Teso, Bukedi, and Karamoja, to mention but a few. It was therefore, a communal, consensual constitution that no one single party exercised disproportionate power over its process or outcome.
If Museveni were a honest, democratic revolutionary, he would openly accept that he made mistakes in restoring the monarchies without a national debate. Moreover, he would also point out that he could not re-instate the monarchy in Ankole, because the 1966 and 1967 Republican constitution, a national democratic revolution, rather than any failure of any district council resolution, liberated the Bahiru from Bahima despotism. Therefore, it is unacceptable folly, for the majority Bahiru in Ankole, to re-subject themselves to Bahima suzerainty, after they were set free in 1966/7.
For the same reason, the Banyara, Baruli, Bakonzo, Bamba, and other minority nationalities were emancipated from the domination of Ganda and Tooro neo-feudalism. It is democratic and moral equality, social justice and equity, which are the basis of their present resentment to external domination and aspiration for self-organisation. Contrary to President Museveni’s claims, their aspirations do not draw any moral force of relevance from the 1995 constitutional provisions on cultural institutions which re-subject them to neo-feudalist control, but the 1966 national democratic revolution and republican constitutionalism that unconditionally freed them.
Without these fundamental impasse being resolved democratically, and with a mind to justice, equality, equity and fundamental rights and freedoms, not only for Buganda, Bunyoro or Ankole, people will continue to fight to break free from all sources of arbitrary and irrational control and domination.
The task for the nationalist and democratic citizens of Uganda, therefore, must be to not let Museveni and the opposition leaders have their democratic, justice and equity cakes and eat it too. Their feet must be held to the fire of a democratic, just, fair, and equitable society.
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