Northern Uganda Messenger Post

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...

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 ...