Northern Uganda Messenger Post

Déjà Vu? Since the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between Khartoum and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/ Army (SPLM/A) that established the Government of South Sudan at Juba, border and land disputes have characterised relations between South Sudan and Uganda. These disputes between border communities and the two countries underscore the need to revisit the notion of nation-statehood based on arbitrary colonial boundaries. In its issue of 25 October 2011, the Sudan Tribune reported South Sudan accusing Uganda of tampering with international boundary markers between the two countries that extended Uganda’s northern frontiers by tens of miles into South Sudan. This is the border area between Magwi County in Eastern Equatoria State of South Sudan and Lamwo District in northern Uganda. According to the report, a meeting called to discuss the concerns agreed a joint resolution to investigate the matter, but Lamwo Resident District Commissioner (RDC...

Dear friends and readers, Sorry I have not been able to write for the last couple of years. However, I am happy to announce that I am back and can once again make the time to write and comment on global and African issues of interest, particularly democratization in Uganda. Interestingly, I was away in Uganda, trying to do my bit about changing the world....putting to test and good use all that Professors Rodger Schwass, Peter Penz, Bill Found, Roger Keil, David Morley, Gene Desfore, Jennifer Clapp, Jack Craig and the good people at York University based their lectures, talks, conversations, workshops, debates and those ever useful brownbag lectures on sustainability. And not forgetting the Summer Practicum with Greg Albo and Vandan Shiva. Yes, Uganda has been one of the bright spots for the last several years as far as neoliberal indicators for development are concerned. However, in terms of sustainability as I learnt at York University, and as propounded by Vandana Shiva and...

Otunnu Welcomes US Congressional Directive on 2011 Ugandan Elections Jan.13, 2010 Kampala, Washington, Mr. Olara A. Otunnu, former United Nations Under Secretary General and an opposition leader in Uganda, today welcomed the directive by the United States Congress to the US Secretary of State to closely monitor preparations for the 2011 Elections in Uganda. Mr. Otunnu said, “I am delighted and applaud the US Congress for taking this decisive action in favour of free and fair elections in Uganda. This is a most welcome development.” Speaking in Washington, Mr. Otunnu said that the U.S. Congress has directed the US Secretary of State to work with other countries, including the European Union and Canada, to ensure free and fair elections in Uganda in 2011. Mr. Otunnu stated, “The Congressional directive is of particular importance given the extensive and well documented rigging and fraud witnessed in recent elections in Uganda.” The Congressional directive calls for close monitoring of t...

Sometime last year, President Yoweri Museveni reprised the ethnographic genealogies of Uganda’s ruling monarchies. In his adversarial stand-off with the Buganda monarchy, he derisively dismissed the Tooro, Bunyoro, and Buganda ruling houses as “Luo”. Gen. Museveni sounded to use “Luo”, derogatorily. As if anticipating spirited Ganda denials, the president pre-emptively challenged them to contradict him on whether “Wang Kac”, a clearly Lwo phrase, imprinted at the entrance to ancient Buganda palace gate, was in Luganda. Apparently, unlike the Christian God, and the Chosen Galilean Son, who has been “blind”, “deaf,” and has “absconded” for two thousand and nine years, the Luo Gods were not asleep when President Museveni spoke. Suddenly, a national, regional and international constellation of “Luo Stars”, which would include Kabaka Mutebi of Buganda, began to align in ways that has thrown a gauntlet to President Museveni’s 23 years of unbroken autocracy. Even moderate, perennially neutral...

In the wake of the Kabaka riots, the Banyoro-Bafuriki controversy, and the perception that our country has been splintered a thousand folds along ethnic crevices since the NRM came to power, I would like to identify and discuss three broad political tendencies and their contributions to the national debate on a post-museveni society. These are the democratic centrist reformers; the federalist right; and the democratic left. Each of these groups draws its membership from across a wide spectrum of organised Ugandan political, civic, professional and religious organisations. They are as ideologically eclectic as their political characteristics, boundaries and strategies are diffused. Since the Kabaka Riots over Kayunga, their respective leading ideologues have been soul-searching for some magic-glue like national habits, which could be used to firmly sew up and keep fast, the seams on the patchworks of our multi-nationality state. For the democratic reformers, which include opposition p...

A New Vision article by Edward Mulindwa attacked Olara Otunnu for serving the 1985 Military Council government. According to Mr. Mulindwa, it is unacceptable to serve your country under military regimes. It is clear Mr. Mulindwa and others view realities from the same frame and stock of divide and rule, and exclusionary politics that has been perfected for the last 23 years by Yoweri Museveni. Divisions along regional, ethnic, historical , and who served what government; who fled and who remained in the country; who fought and did not fight what regime, which have been used too long, as a basis to exclude, marginalise and legitimise injustices. In the rush to label, condemn and exclude, such proponents confuse the conceptual distinctions between a state and government. The NRM, UPC, FDC, DP and any other party or clique of army generals may form a government; through elections or military putsch. Such regimes or governments, will come and go, but the Ugandan state remains. Civ...

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 ...

“Nationalists” and “constitutionalists” have criticised President Yoweri Museveni for injecting justice entitlement considerations over land conflicts and compounded historical injustices in Bunyoro Kitara Kingdom ( See Museveni’s original letter on land issues in Bunyoro, DM, 04 Aug 2009 ). The president’s critics evade the fundamental question of justice and historical injustice, by latching on the incidental, secondary claims of civic citizenship rights, rather than the compelling need for justice for Bunyoro Kitara (see Anger over Museveni tribal talk, DM, 02 Aug 2009 ; Bunyoro belongs to all Ugandans, DM editorial, 01 Aug 2009 ). Bunyoro Kitara, like Buganda Kingdom’s quest to repossess their “things,” deserves sympathies and serious considerations. But sympathies alone are not enough; we must provide the correct and just national solution to this problem. We agree with the president in his understanding of what the problems are. There are three grounds upon which Bunyoro deser...

Joseph Kony, Yoweri Museveni, Joachim Chissano, Riek Machar Teny, northern Uganda, Southern Sudan, Sudan People's Liberation Movement / Army (SPLM/A), Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Juba Peace Talks, Third Party Intervention, Third Party Mediation . Even before the final stocks are taken, there is no doubting the damning verdict that Third Party Intervention & Mediation -the outsiders looking in-failed in northern Uganda. The last nail on the coffin of third party mediation, aka the Juba Peace Process , was dealt by Uganda's decision -at the behest of the USA- to cobble together a coalition of DRC Congo and Southern Sudan, for high noon showdown in Garamba with Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). However, the failures as processes, can be accounted for by five inter-related components of actors and their framing of the northern Uganda conflict. 1. First on the list is superpower-small-states politics , and the structure of global inter-states and multi...

Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Joseph Kony, Yoweri Museveni, National Resistance Movement (NRA), DRC Congo, Southern Sudan, Uganda, Juba Peace Agreement. News that Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the autonomous regional Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) have attacked the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in their Garamba Forest hideout, must be condemned in the strongest terms possible. For the last two years, an uneasy peace held over northern Uganda and much of the region previously ravaged by the LRA insurgency and NRA / UPDF counter-insurgency. Although faulty in process design and severely limited in its objectives, the Juba Peace negotiations and agreements , had moved the parties and the region closest to a peaceful resolution, more than at any one time in the many previous attempts and twenty-three year history of the conflict in northern Uganda . For the first time, there was international involvement and somewhat credible third party mediation, through...