Saleh's two postings bashing Musevini and his brand of "no-party"
politics are too tempting to let go without some comment. First, Saleh,
I must say that your posting has such charm, panache and elegance, not
to mention intelligence, that it provides an enjoyable reading even
while one is disagreeing with you. One hopes that one will fare better
than the "Cowboy" from your sure-to-come articulate rebuttals at being
so bold as to express a point of difference:-)
I agree with you that "no-party" politics as advocated by Museveni is
not something to be emulated everywhere in Africa as a panacea or a
one-size-fit-all model, without taking the particularities of each
society into consideration. But we must not forget the bitter legacy of
"multi-party" politics in Uganda. We can not make judgements on
Museveni's style of leadership without taking into consideration the
bitter experiences of post-independence years of Uganda since 1962, when
it first gained its independence from the British. Uganda has suffered
terribly from the rule (or mis-rule) of political parties first under
Obote, then the dictatorship of Amin, then an assortment of lesser
figure politicians, then finally Obote. During Obote's last tenure, the
party politics degenerated into such low levels of tribalism of Southern
versus Northern, Bantu/Baganda versus Luo-speaking Acholi and Langi,
that by the time Musevni's National Resistance Movement (NRM) triumphed
against Obote's regime, the civil war unleashed by Obote had caused the
massacre of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Here is what Phares
Mutibwa, a Ugandan scholar who wrote "UGANDA SINCE INDEPENDENCE: A Story
of Unfulfilled Hopes" (Africa World Press, 1992) says about the horror
of that period:
"The 'bandits,' as Obote always called Museveni's NRA fighters, had to
be routed and those living in their area of operation - the Luwero
Triangle - were to be wiped out too. In a speech broadcast on Radio
Uganda, Obote told a rally held in Seroti in 1981 that if the Baganda
did not behave themselves, they (the Acholi-Langi alliance) would do to
them what they did to the West Nilers in 1980. He always claimed that
the trouble was confined to a tiny area which should pose no problem to
the rest of the country. He evidently did not care how many deaths and
how much suffering were caused in the process. As he and his close
ministers agreed, most of the blood that was flowing was that of the
Baganda, the stubborn tribalists who had always caused him political
problems. It is possible to exaggerate the extent of the massacres in
Buganda, but conservative estimates are that about 300,000 people may
have been killed and another 500,000 displaced in Buganda alone. 'For
the first time in Uganda's history', Samwiri Lwanga-Lunyiigo of Makerere
University has remarked, 'Ugandans were put into concentration camps
which really became death camps.' People were horribly tortured before
being murdered. 'Obote did all this,' Lwanga-Lunyiigo grimly concludes,
'to bring down the proud Baganda to their hobbling knees and he
succeeded with a vengance unprecedented in African history - possibly
only equalled by Pol Pot.'" [The book was written before the infamous
Rwandan genocide of 1992/3.]
I have not seen the Time article on Musevini, but the New Yorker
reportage written by Philip Gourevitch (Aug. 4, 97 issue) seemed to me
to be a fair assessment of the situation, not only of Uganda, but the
whole Greater-Horn/ Great Lakes region.
You seem to take issue with some of Museveni's statements as bombastic,
stating the obvious, etc. Well, that may be a matter of style and
emphasis in dealing with the Western Press. (Remember you are dealing
with parachute-journalists who, by your own admission, are lazy to do
the necessary research and fact checking, especially when it comes to
Africa. Too, the savvy "Cowboy," as you so fondly refer to him, may be
dealing with them in the sound-bites that these 'lazy' journalists are
used to being fed.)
Here is a passage from the New Yorker article that you seem to be
objecting. "As Museveni, who is the eminence grise of the new leadership
in central Africa, put it to me, 'domination of Africa,' by the West 'is
not so much because of the foreigners--it is more because of the
indigenous forces that were weak and not organized.'" Now, compare that
to the following: "We have been oppressed a great deal, we have been
exploited a great deal, and we have been disregarded a great deal. It
is our weakness that has led to our being oppressed, exploited and
disregarded. Now we want a revolution--a revolution which brings an end
to our weakness…" That statement came from non other than the Mwalimu,
Nyrere, himself in 1968. Now, there is no love lost between Museveni
and Nyrere. As a matter of fact, it was with the help of Nyrere that
Obote came to power for the second time in 1980, and in the bitter
struggle that finally ended in the triumph of NRM in 1986 and brought
Museveni to power, Tanzania never backed NRM.
Sal, in your first post, you indicated admiration for Paul Kagame. I
agree with you on this, but bear in mind that Kagame, as many of his
comrades in the RPF, served as a junior lieutenant in Musevein's NRM
during the struggle against the Obote regime. As the New Yorker article
correctly informs us, "In 1986, when Museveni became Uganda's President,
Kagame became his chief of military intelligence; in 1990, he quit that
post to lead the rebel army that eventually took control of Rwanda in
1994." Again, it might be debatable as to who influenced whom, but
clearly the two shared the same ideals in struggle, as they must do so
in the more complex challenges of nation building.
While I am not completely sold on Museveni's approach to building a
democratic society, what he has to say should not be outrightly
dismissed. Again, let's examine his record. According the New Yorker
article:
" Museveni has plenty of critics, and an interesting thing about them is
that they can generally live in Uganda unmolested and say pretty much
what they like. Milton Obote, the dictator he ousted, is one of them.
Still, Museveni has adamantly refused to allow multi-party politics in
Uganda. He argues that until a middle class with a strong sense of
political interests develops, and until there is a coherent national
debate, parties are bound to devolve into tribal factionalism, and to
remain an affair of elite's struggling for power, if not a cause of
actual civil war. He has called his regime a 'no-party democracy,'
based on 'movement politics,' and has explained that parties are
'uni-ideological,' whereas movements, like his National Resistance
Movement, Kagame's Rwandese Patriotic Front, and, presumably, Kabila's
Alliance, are 'multi-ideological.' He told me, 'Socialists, are in our
movement, capitalists are in our movement, feudalists--like the kings
here in Uganda--are members of our movement.' The movement is
officially open to everyone, and 'anybody who wants' can stand for
election."
"Like Kabila, Museveni is often described as a former Marxist
guerilla, yet his current analysis favors the formation of political
groupings along class lines, which produces 'horizontal polarization' of
tribalism or regionalism. 'That's why we say that, in the short run,
let political competition not be based on groups, let it be based on
individuals,' he said, adding, 'Because we are not likely to have
healthy groups. We are likely to have unhealthy groups. So why take
the risk?'"
Museveni's complaint is against what might be called cosmetic democracy,
when elections held for election's sake, at the order of 'donor
governments' (remember Cambodia), sustain feeble or corrupt powers in
politically damaged societies. 'If I have got a heart problem, and I
try to appear to be healthy, then I will just die," Museveni told me.
We were speaking of the way that the West, having won the Cold War and
lost its simple template for telling bad guys from good guys around the
world, has found a new political religion in promoting multiparty
elections (at least in economically dependent countries where Chinese is
not widely spoken). Museveni described this policy as 'not only
meddling but meddling on the basis of ignorance, and of course, some
arrogance.' He said, 'These people seem to say that the developed parts
of the world can all be managed uniformly. Politically, this is their
line, and I think--to be charitable--this is really rubbish, because
it's not possible to manage radically different societies in a uniform
way."
Pan-Africanism a dead-and-buried idea, Saleh? Well, that's too quick
for a post-mortem pronouncement, when the ideology is still vigorous in
its youth. While the strong are uniting everywhere to rob the poor,
doesn't it make sense for the poor to strengthen their union all the
more in order to defend themselves? If what happened in the Congo
recently is not a manifestation of pan-Africanist solidarity and
coordination, what else can it be viewed as? How many African countries
where involved in bringing about the demise of the shame of
Africa--Mobutu? Starting from the north and going all the way south:
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Angola, Zambia,
Zimbabwe, South Africa, and finally the whole of the OAU in confirming
and legitimizing the victory. Again, going back to that New Yorker
article:
"Since the sixties, Museveni has wanted to overlay the modern map of
Africa, which was drawn up in 1885 by European colonial powers in
Berlin, with more organic regional common markets and political
federations. Of course, Mobutu's Zaire always stood in the way, and
behind the obvious concerns about military and political stability the
pan-African involvement in the Congolese revolution was spurred largely
by economic motives. 'America can live without the Congo. Rwanda
cannot,' and adviser to Kagame said to me. 'By itself, ours is a
nonviable country.'"
"Everywhere I went in central Africa, I heard talk of forging a
regional political and economic federation, which might include as many
as six of today's countries. An Alliance political officer called this
dream state Democratic Republic of Lumumba, and Kabila has spoken
enthusiastically of a United States of Africa. Rwanda's Kagame told me
he would not stand in the way, and when I asked Museveni what he thought
about such a transitional federation he said, 'It's not that it could
happen. It will happen.' Zaire, he said at Kabila's Inauguration, had
been 'the big hole in the middle of Africa,' and now that whole was
filled again, by the Congo, the time had come to construct an African
common market, to run open roads through the continent, and to prove
that the Alliance's victory 'has liberated not only Congo but also all
of Africa."
Finally, on Museveni being touted as the darling of the West, or at
least the Western press, it wasn't until recently that he was being
lionized all over. For that matter, the Western press speaks very
highly of Eritrea now. But we know, don't we, of the days of silent or
even negative treatment. Even amidst all this adulation, when Uganda's
economic performance was being praised sky high (growth rate compared to
that of the Asian tigers) and the World Bank and IMF had scheduled
Uganda to be the first recipient of debt-relief program for the early
part of 1997 (the first AFrican country to have that honor, if you can
call it that), when the whole Congo affair unfolded, and Kabila's army
was marching unhindered towards Kinshasa, in a last minute attempt at
pulling the rug from under Uganda, the debt-relief program was postponed
till 1998. I don't know what the last word on that was, but many
progressive Africa advocates and lobby-groups in the West where in an
uproar about such unfair treatment, as budget had been ear-marked by the
Ugandan government, with the expectation of the debt-relief, for the
building of schools in many rural districts of the country.
My point is that there are certain aspects of Musevini the man, and his
programs and policies that make sense. So far since its independence,
he is the best leader that Uganda has ever had. Kenya's so called
'multi-party' politics has a lot to be desired for when compared with
the 'no-party' democracy of Uganda, and I would choose Museveni anytime
over Moi. There are many countries in Africa in far worse situation
than Kenya that could benefit a lot from Museveni-type of leadership
than get hurt by it. With all that said then, my dear brother Sal,
don't you think that it is more apt to compare Museveni to Lee Kwan Yhew
(sp?) of Singapore than to (adjectives-deleted) Rush Limbaugh:-) I hope
you will reconsider.
I Apologize for my extremely lengthy posting, and I hope it hasn't
inconvenienced anybody.
Amicably,
Elias Amare Gebrezgheir
Lawrenceville, NJ