President Museveni Stands To Regret Why He Assented To The Anti-Homosexuality Act

 

WORLD BANK SANCTIONS; How Will President Museveni Run Government Without World Bank Money?

The budget is the most important instrument of systems-control for

private individuals, families, organizations, corporate bodies and countries at large.

And it goes without saying that the quality of life for the citizens of an individual country depend largely on the size of the budget at its disposal. In other words, you are nothing without a budget and anything that negatively affects your budget must be resisted.

Therefore, anything that negatively interferes with the budget flow is obviously deemed to be detrimental to the stability of the country and the overall welfare of its citizens.

And to emphasize this argument I think we should revisit directive that was issued by the Ugandan ministry of finance this week to the effect that they were going to review the 2023-24 budget because of the sanctions that had been unleashed on Uganda by the World Bank for passing the anti-homosexuality bill.

WHAT IS THE WORLD BANK?

Anyone who underestimates the world bank is out of his mind because the World Bank is an international development organization owned by 187 countries whose role is to reduce poverty by lending money to the governments of its poorer members to improve their economies and to improve the standard of living of their people.

It also promotes long-term economic development and poverty reduction by providing technical and financial support to help countries implement reforms or projects, such as building schools, providing water and electricity, fighting disease, and protecting the environment.

Therefore, by its definition alone, you realize that no country can thrive without the blessings of the world bank.

When the extremely reckless Ugandan parliament legislated and passed the law on homosexuality, some ignorant MP’s thump chested and said that Uganda did not NEEED funding from the world bank! They also asserted that life can go on with or without the foreign donors!

Interestingly None of them sat down to make a breakdown of what the world bank contributes to the Ugandan economy.

WORLD BANK CONTRIBUTION

For the sake of statistics, it’s a fact that every five years the world bank disburses $16 trillion to the Ugandan government to finance areas of education, health etc.

The World Bank currently provides $5.5 billion in multi-year financing to the Ugandan government, whose total annual expenditure budget is $13 billion- as of 12 Jun 2023.

Most important of all is to realize the critical issue of the overall composition of the world bank which constitute of governments of member nations, which have the ultimate decision-making power within the organizations on all matters, including policy, financial or membership issues.

This alone implies that when a government like out poor Uganda is slapped with sanctions by the world bank, it ultimately means that it cannot undertake any activity with the 187 members.

This obviously means that Uganda’s foreign policy has been thrown into an absolute dilemma because it cannot technically engage with 187 countries out of the 197 countries (that constitute the united nations) in the world.

This means that Uganda is largely on its own because 90% of the countries of the world consider it to be out of their league of the world bank.

Now, this is the predicament that Museveni has put Uganda. We know that president Amin was slapped with sanctions and he survived to rule for 8-9 years, but the Ugandans who lived at that time have not forgotten how they suffered due to lack of basics like sugar, soap, cooking oil etc.

Although Amin is praised for leaving no debts behind, he also actually left the Ugandan economy bare on its knees in a total mess.

 Is this what Museveni wishes for us?

Although he makes arguments about social transformation, he has at the same time made a fundamental contradiction to the mission by infuriating partners in actualizing the same mission (of social transformation). Although the world bank funds are loans that can be repaid, they ae crucial in contributing to the idea of social transformation.

There are some people who argue that loans are not gifts and therefore countries shouldn’t be held under ransom for the sake of loans. But remember that great countries like Germany rose from the shambles of the second world war through the marshal plan in which the United States proposed to provide assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe.

 

INTRANSIGENT MUSEVENI

African leaders can be very amusing. Leaders like the late Robert Mugabe managed to inflict terrible suffering to their citizens because of their intransigence to the West.

Although Zimbabwe has the most literate citizens, it has never settled economically because of its intransigent leadership todate.

Last month Museveni –in show of defiance to the West -went to Russia and met president Vladimir Putin. But from what is known as a fact, Uganda gets more funding from the West than it does from Russia!

A good leader has the wisdom to choose useful partners. What does Museveni want from Russia, -which is on the verge of a total downfall, by the way.

Apart from the AK47 Kalashnikov rifles, Russia exports nothing to Uganda and vice varsa. I don’t know what Uganda sells to Russia!

In other words, Russia is not a trade partner to Uganda in any way since there is no item of trade between the two countries.

On other hand the US trades directly with Uganda, under the AGOA pact.  The United States also provides significant health and development assistance to Uganda, with a total assistance budget exceeding $950 million per year.

Now when you hear president Museveni claim that we shall survive with or without foreign assistance, then you know that the country is in very wrong hands of a leader who has lost it completely.

BLACKMAIL

Some overzealous Ugandans may try blackmail us by saying that some of us are pro-gay and therefore don’t care about the moral campus of our country. But we also have children whom we have to protect by all means.

But we are also saying that homosexuality was already a criminal offence in Uganda and there was not need to pass a law that had the repercussions of infuriating our development partners to deny us crucial funds.

In any case I don’t think that it was the most critical issue in the country because there are parts of the country where it has never been heard of before.  

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE?

What we needed to do was to make aggressive crusading against it (homosexuality) and stop it from spreading through absolute vigilance in schools, social places. We could also have put placards at the Entebbe airport that pronounces that NO GAY AND LESBIAN activities ALLOWED IN UGANDA!

The same measures should have been used to make sure that public places like bars also have strict instructions not to permit gay activities.

Passing the law was one of the most reckless acts president Museveni has ever made. In fact, with time he will live to regret it because it is going to have downhill effect on his government.

CONCLUSION

Looking at the circumstances under this law was passed reveals that the Ugandan president doesn’t have sufficient intelligence that can guide him to take appropriate measures.

It also shows that he can easily be moved by rumors and plunge the country into chaotic situations.  

Lastly but not least, am still wondering how Museveni could fall prey to a well laid trap (of bringing down his government) and assent to a bill that was presented by an opposition member of parliament Hon Asuman Basalirwa! Yes , I don’t think Basalirwa can work in the good interest of a leader he has wanted to overthrow for very many years, I don’t!

This means that at this moment Museveni is like a cow that eats everything whether its grass, thorns kaveera etc to the extent that he even forgot to cross examine who passed the initial motion for this bill.

But it will be interesting to see how he will run the country without the funds from his development partners. Obvious evidence shows that he has already invited unnecessary and avoidable pressure on himself.

Fred Daka Kamwada is social critic, blogger and a journalist

kamwadafred@gmail.com

 

President Museveni’s State of the Nation Address Was Full of Contradictions of His Own Beliefs

 

President Museveni’s State of the Nation Address Was Full of Contradictions of His Own Beliefs

Yesterday 7^th June 2023Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni delivered the 2022-2023 state of the nation speech at the Kololo grounds where he made some insights about the state of the socio-economic, political and security situation of the country.

Interestingly, the president spent almost 80% of his three hour speech on the state of the economy in which he made some interesting revelations that also contradicted his own long held views.

 

For instance, Museveni reiterated his long held view that a society that is metamorphosing into a first rate society has got less people dwelling in agriculture as their main occupation. He qualified this point by giving figures in which he revealed that the US, UK and most developed countries all have less than 2% of the average population engaged in agriculture in contrast to the third world which has more than 70%.

At the same time he is the same man who has had a long held view that Ugandans should engage more in agriculture by desisting from land fragmentation by taking advantage of government programs like NAADS, operation wealth creation etc. In fact he used the sam occasion to congratulate Gen Salim Saleh’s operation wealth creation program for having lifted assize able percentage of Ugandans from poverty through supply of seedlings, animal breeds and other innovations-which are all agricultural-orientated in nature. This obviously means that he still believes that agriculture is the way to go for his country. This could mean that the president is not entirely convinced that agriculture can transform society. And yet at the same time he contradicts this sentiment by imploring Ugandans to engage in the same (agricultural) practice.

Some of us think that the president should boldly assist Ugandans from agricultural practices through deliberate programs by instituting programs that can create a conducive environment for the urban folk to engage in wealth creation.

 Some of the measures revolve around making sure that his government institutes affordable tax regimes even offering tax holidays to the urban dwellers, affordable power tariffs, deliver on the infrastructural obligations of good roads, railways, waterways, etc. More importantly the parish development model should have been dedicated to urban dwellers to activate them into development to attract more Ugandans from rural areas.

The president seems oblivious of the fact that the Ugandan youths have already embraced his view of moving out of agriculture by migrating to urban areas by selling land to engage in services like boda-bodas, hawking. Unfortunately, it’s his same NRM government that is frustrating Ugandans from metamorphosing from agricultural practices.

But it goes without saying that the NRM government doesn’t seem to have a well nurtured policy on how to regulate the services sector.

They don’t seem to know what to do with hawkers, the boda-bodas and the informal sector at large. Instead Museveni has opted to play politics with these urban dwellers by patronizing them by conscripting them into the Muhoozi and Jajja projects.

As a result of this confusion, the informal sector and urban dweller in general is surviving without paying taxes and any sort of regulation because he still relies on state patronage.

Yet the best alternative should have been to find a way to regulate the urban Ugandans, create a conducive working environment for them and eventually find a way of conscripting them into the taxation system so that they can have an input into the national economy.

CONTRADICTING STATISTICS OF THE STRATEGISTS

Another shocking contradiction of the speech was that the president seemed to be at variance with the written script that had been authored by officials from the ministry of finance. He spent most of the time either contradicting or disagreeing with the figures, statistics and agreed positions of his economic strategists.

Last year Mr. Museveni shocked economic experts when he revealed that Uganda had achieved middle income status, an assertion that his economic strategists and the World Bank unanimously disagreed with. This time he revealed that the Ugandan economists were under estimating the development of the economic progress being made and picked out the milk sector which he claimed that had multiplied by 190%.

Incidentally, Mr. Museveni passionately believes it’s {the milk output} is much more than that 190%.. However, if the milk sector has developed at a tremendous pace, what has your NRM done to tap that growth potential? Why has the extra supply of milk not subsidized the prices of milk around the country-evidence actually shows that the price of a one litter of milk is costing much more than ever before at 2,400 per litter in most areas of Kampala.

Secondly, why doesn’t the president talk about the possibility of instituting an industry that can transform the milk into powder milk that can make Uganda a power house in the milk industry on the continent?

GLOBAL CONTRADICTION

President Museveni also insists that the economy will grow from the current USD 52bn to USD55bn within the next twelve months.

However, he quickly forgets that that projected growth may not arise because he has already plunged the country into an economic crisis by signing the anti-gay bill last month that incited the western powers to unleash sanctions that will have a very negative effect on the economy.

The president is oblivious of the fact that the sanctions from the donors will obviously lead to a decline of the tourism sector-which the president praised for having contributed tremendously to the national treasury according to the statistics; Uganda generated around 518 million US dollars from the tourism sector and I known to contribute almost 4% to the GDP.

Given the fact that homosexuality was already a criminal offense in Uganda even before this law was legislated upon  this year, the president should have desisted from assenting on it to maintain or protect Uganda’s reputation as a free country for tourists all over the globe.

 

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a blogger, and social policy critic kamwadafred@gmail.com

US -Africa summit; Here Are The Reasons Why President Museveni’s Agitation For ITTS With America Is Shallow, Unrealistic And Untenable

 

US -Africa summit; Here Are The Reasons Why President Museveni’s Agitation For ITTS With America Is Shallow, Unrealistic And Untenable

 

Africa Needs To Clamor For Infrastructure Projects Like Railways, Airports, Power Dams, Roads, Mega Industries From The Western Powers

Early this month a contingent of African leaders went to attend the US-Africa summit. Although there were widespread petitions by several human rights bodies protesting Ugandan president Museveni’s attendance, he managed to maneuver his way to the summit.

American president Joe Biden made a passionate plea to integrate Africa in the strategic plans of his country and enticed the leaders with a 55 billion dollar outlay to kick off the renewed friendship.

This pledge shows that the American administration is willing to listen to good proposals from the African leaders but they are a bit arrogant not to ake advantage of the goodwill. For instance the Americans delivered most of the vaccines for the covid19 pandemic.

This shows that they can deliver on most of what we cannot produce.

Our (am talking about Africa) problem is that we have leaders who think they can challenge the western powers (remember Robert Mugabe, Ghadafi).

This arrogance has made Africa lose the opportunity to discus and present the real issues to the bigger western powers.

Ugandan president Museveni has tried to challenge and even openly dismiss the western powers and yet his country largely depends on their resources to make things move to a more reasonable direction.   

The western powers have spent trillions to African economies in the sectors of health, education and even security.

We should have encouraged the western powers to assist us build infrastructure like roads, railways, airports , ferries  ,power dams etc.

But because of arrogance African leaders try to impress by claiming that they don’t want aid but want to trade with the western powers.

Yet the reality is that most African countries may have the minerals and products that they can trade but there are issues that make it difficult to trade them on the international market.

This shows you why Museveni’s AGOA failed miserably.

 

This explains why this time Museveni was silent about his old song of promoting the African growth and opportunities act which had created a trade arrangement between Ugandan and the United States of America.

AGOA was a trade arrangement which collapsed on its inception because Uganda couldn’t fulfill its production potential. Although the US market was open to Ugandan products, the East African country lacked the potential to produce those particular products at a competitive level.

There was the case of the cotton fabrics which Ugandan had intended to earmark as the first product to export to the US market but ended up as an embarrassment when the Bugolobi factory closed before it could produce any cotton fabrics.

This time Museveni has again driven in the same direction of agitating for trade even when he knows that he almost has nothing to sell the American market. He came up with a very interesting acronym of ITTS (investment, trade, tourism and security) as the message he was trying to advance at this US-African leader’s summit.

When you look into his message you find that he was simply recycling the same arguments like those of AGOA.

If you claim that you don’t want aid but you want trade, do you have any products that can impress the international market?

Recent experience shows that the answer to that question is an afrimative NO.

Although Uganda has got plenty of goods that can be put on the market , they need to be upgraded to fit the international market.

For instance we have very good pineapples here , but making them qualify to the standards need a sophisticated value addition that can make them compete at the highest level.

Its true we have cotton , but we don’t have the means to make it compete with the cotton from other countries because we have failed to add the necessary vale that can advance its quality.

What does this mean?

This obviously means that Museveni should have first tried to convince the western powers to give us machines to set up industries that can add instant value to our cotton, coffee, pineapples, beef, fish ,Chicken, eggs, tomatoes , hide and skins etc.

After setting up the industries and making sure that they can produce high quality products that can satisfy the local and regional market , he would then run to the western powers to grant us the market to sell these products.

But the problem is that he putting the cart before the horse. In other words he is busy pulling the cart and praying that a horse will show up from somewhere. That cannot happen.

As a result of this helter-skelter way of doing things, we (Uganda) have even failed to match the standards on the regional market.    

Our brothers of Kenya who have a much bigger economy even slapped a ban on some of our Ugandan products because of their poor quality.

The Kenyans rejected our maize because it had toxins. Now if your maize cannot even rise to the standard of Kenya, who do you expect it to even penetrate the American market?

THE WAY FORWARD

As stated earlier, we should have pushed the western powers to help us build powerful things like the railway line from Kampala to Cape Town, Kampala to Kinshasa and beyond. Build power dams, airports and ports etc.

Other words, agitating for trade and tourism with the western is simply a waste of time because our products are too poor to compete in the international market.

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a researcher, policy analyst and blogger;kamwadafred@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

WORLD CUP; Fifa Should Increase More African Teams And More player Substitutions At The World Cup

 

WORLD CUP; Fifa Should Increase More African Teams And More player Substitutions At The World Cup

The 2022 world cup Exposed The Racist Tendencies Of Ugandans Who Considered France More African Than Morocco  

At last the world cup came to an end this weekend concluding what has since been dubbed the best of all world cup tournaments in history. This world cup has, however provoked some of us to come up with some innovations that can make it more competitive

 When critically observed, of all football competitions, the world cup is the easiest tournament to win. Why? There are very few games a team needs to win at the world cup. Because, first of all, on average, a given team needs to win seven only games to win the world cup

 In fact Argentina managed to play Saudi Arabia, Poland, Mexico, Australia, Netherlands, Croatia and France to win the world cup.

Secondly, you need to also realize that you can be fixed in a group with very weak teams like Qatar, Saudi Arabia or even china.  

 

On the contrary, you need to play and win over thirteen games to win the European club champions league.

Therefore, I think it would be better to add more teams to expand the world cup teams that play in the tournament so that a given team plays at least ten games to win it. And since morocco has managed to play to the last four (semi finals), Africa deserves some two more slots to expand the tournament to a more competitive tournament.

Another suggestion concerns the number of substitutions made in a given game. I think five substitutions are very few in a given game.

Remember a world cup team comprises players selected across the globe to play for the national team. Now it’s not fair that you select 24 players for the tournament and only revolve around using only eleven plus five substitutions.

This is national team football which requires a given team to use as many players as it can to exhaust its full potential. Simply allow the team to select from the 24 players for a given game.

In most games we saw how teams would play games into extra time and you could see that even players who had come on as substitutes were completely exhausted.

A case in point is Japan which pushed Croatia into extra time and eventually to penalties. If you observed critically, it was evident that the Japanese players couldn’t lift their legs to take the penalties. If there had been a provision to change, it would have necessitated making some changes to enable fresh players finish up the game in extra time.

Therefore allowing the team to make substitutions to the whole team harms no one because it reflects the full potential of a given team. Those innovations can go a long way in making the world cup a more entertaining tournament.

The limitation on the substitutions made some teams appear weaker than they are. Teams like England and France have lot of talent that they cannot be limited to five subs only.

Because of the limitation in the number of subs, most coaches made errors in selection which cost their respective teams. A team like England had very good players that it was practically difficult to fix them into one eleven.

You could name two elevens of the English team and they all give you a value for money performance. For instance England has players like Alexander Trent , who is considered the best right back in the world but he never got a single minute of world cup football!

Because of the limitation on the number of subs, managers made mistakes which could have been avoided if they had room to make more changes.

For instance the French coach couldn’t field talented players like Eduardo Camavinga and Kinsley Corman in most matches.  But when he got the chance to field them in the final against Argentina, they changed the game, which France was losing 2-0 and forced it into a 3-3 draw after extra time and into penalties.

With England you can accuse the manager Gareth Southgate for having the wisdom to play Rushford, Grealish and Alexander Trent from the start or after half time. But you can also argue rightly that a flexible provision of more subs could have given him the space to give them playing time.

UGANDANS ARE RACISTS

Another observation about the Qatar 20 world cup was the level of sectarianism that was exhibited by Ugandans. When morocco went on to play the semi finals, most of the Ugandans made blunt racist remarks that the Moroccan team was not African by appearance.

And as such most Ugandans made lots of noise when France beat our African brothers from North Africa in the semifinals. They rooted for France simply because it has typical black skinned Africans!

These are the same people who complain about the racism by the white people in the Diaspora. While we are agitating for African unity of whole continent, most of our people still consider our Arab brothers as foreigners residing on the same African continent.

While we claim that football is a uniting force, this world cup also demonstrated that it can also evoke terrible divisions in society.

But my ultimate prayer is that FIFA should adopt those aforementioned suggestions of adding at least two more slots for African teams and also allowing teams to make as many as eleven substitutions to exhaust the potential of the teams.

Fred Daka Kamwada Is A Researcher, Policy Analysts And Blogger ; kamwadafred@gmail.com

 

  

 

 

 

 

Ugandans Should Interrogate What President Museven Is Doing With 146 RDCs, 139 Advisors, And 83 Cabinet Ministers

 

Ugandans Should Interrogate What President Museven Is Doing With 146 RDCs, 139 Advisors, And 83 Cabinet Ministers

 

 

·        The Mantra Of Small-Government-Big-Business Is A More Critical Than Merging Government Agencies  because you can merge and remain with a bigger workforce

 

In the last two to three years the NRM government has paid lip service to the inevitable need to cut down on the unnecessary and avoidable expenditures.  They have exuded the art of a man whose heart is willing but the body is weak to undertake a given task.  Some few months ago the media was awash with suggestions that government was in advanced stages of merging all agencies that were duplicating roles or blowing resources.

From the look of things however, it seemed that the government was concentrating all the energies in pursing the option of merging government agencies at the expense of other measures that can lead to a sizeable reduction on the cost of administration.

A few months ago (around August) state minister for public service Hon Mary Grace Mugasa presented a report to the NRM Parliamentary Caucus which revealed that  that government had resolved to retain 88 government agencies and merge, mainstream, and transfer the functions of 69 agencies out of 157 that had been reviewed in 2018.

This was intended to streamline government architecture to enable efficient and effective service delivery and mostly address wasteful expenditure and challenges of duplication of work, conflicts and mandate overlap.

The immediate implication was that Uganda was to save up to UGX 649 billion ($167,148,846) annually from the rationalization, merging, and mainstreaming of agencies of 53 government agencies and functions according to the Ministry of Public Service.

This move deserves a clap or standing ovation of some sort.

We honestly applaud the move to trim public expenditure by taking on the rationalization reform to merge several of these autonomous which were agreeably created without clear justification, some being pseudo-government projects, while others have had their mandates overtaken by events.

However there are justified claims that these agencies were formed to increase efficiency in service delivery but the problem now portends on whether an appraisal has been carried out to determine whether the desired objectives have been achieved or not before undertaking the merging process.

AN APPRAISAL

There are those that have lived to their expectations and indeed delivered while others have been practical failures. The obvious should have been to simply trust the mainstream agencies to deliver to their expected mandate rather than creating new ones. For instance the state house anticorruption desk is doing what the IGG is supposed to do.

The Multiplicity of these government agencies should have never happened to begin with because the Ugandan taxpayer has been overburdened by an over-bloated public service. These bourgeoning agencies have over time become a major strain on the national treasury at the expense of efficient service delivery.

Despite of the fact that it is a good move to embark on the merging and streamline of these agencies, it’s not enough. More needs to be done to cut down on the cost of public administration.

THE FACTS

The 2021 Auditor General’s report shows that only 13 out of the 26 public corporation and state enterprises evaluated were profit-making.

In august this year President Museveni supported the decision and accused most of the government agencies for not working but rather spending the money allocated to them from their mother ministries and implored the NRM MPs to back the rationalization reform

 He also said apart from research and farmer institutions only profit-making parastatals should be spared while money-eating parastatals should be gotten rid of in order to save government billions of shillings.

But the president did not elaborate on whether the bigger cabinet, bigger parliament of 520 MPs, a hundreds of presidential advisors and RDCs, which are not known to make any profit to the state coffers.

 

At 71 ministers strong, Uganda has the third largest cabinet in the world after North Korea and Kenya. This is in circumstances where the global average of ministers is 30 while average for Sub-Saharan Africa is 40.

 Rwanda has got a cabinet of 27 and Burundi 29 ministers but you can justify that by saying that they are much smaller countries with a smaller population than Uganda to necessitate a bigger cabinet.

But it’s shocking that much bigger countries have smaller cabinet than Uganda. For instance Nigeria which is five times bigger with a population of 211 million people has only got 54 cabinet ministers.

In Tanzania  following the late president John Pombe Magufuli's reelection in the 2020 he unveiled his new cabinet of 23 ministers yet Tanzania is about 4 times bigger than Uganda.

President Museven has the tendency of hoodwinking Ugandans by showing that he has got the spirit to spirit to improve things yet the on the contrary the reality is completely the opposite.

As we speak, Museven has got more advisors than any known president on earth with 139 of them siphoning state resources with impunity.

YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO THIS;

In January this year the Office of the President of Uganda reported a funding gap of sh5.1 billion to enable the purchase of vehicles for the newly recruited presidential advisors that included new ones like former prime ministers Hon Amama Mbabazi , Ruhakana Rugunda and former vice presidents Edward Sekandi and Prof Gilbert Bukenya. Another sh4.23 billion was also needed to facilitate investiture ceremonies and procurement of medals, while sh7 billion has been budgeted for construction of office space for Resident District Commissioners (RDCs.

According to research we found out that the NRM government deployed a total of 146 RDCs and 107 of these are renting, 15 are in government-built houses and 24 are in houses owned by districts. Some of the government constructed houses are in the districts of Lamwo, Abim, Amuru, Kiryandongo, Kamuli, Buhweju, Bundibugyo, Lwengo, Rubirizi, Butaleja, Adjumani, Butambala, Otuke and Luuka.

According to reliable sources the office of the President constructs only one office accommodation each year. This implies that it would take the Office of the President 110 years to construct houses for all RDCs!

With all this, you don’t need a rocket scientist to show you were Ugandan tax payers money is being wasted.

THE WAY FORWARD

 Ugandans should interrogate what president Museven is doing with 146 RDCs, 139 advisors, and 83 cabinet ministers?

Before he postures to rationalize and merge government agencies he should first justify the cost of administration in regard to officials that work directly for him.

Fred Daka Kamwada Is A Policy Analyst, Researcher And Blogger

kamwadafred@gmail.com

 

 

THE BANYARWANDA CONUNDRUM; The Banyarwanda-Phobia Sentiment Is Generated By Haters, Weaponized By Opportunists And Believed By Complete Idiots

 

THE BANYARWANDA CONUNDRUM; The Banyarwanda-Phobia Sentiment Is Generated By Haters, Weaponized By Opportunists And Believed By Complete Idiots

·        Ugandans should not succumb to tribal blackmail that was also imposed on the Acholis by labeling them as killers

 

For the last forty years the issue of the Banyarwanda has been one of the most contentious in this country. It’s the most delicate issues on the landscape that evokes very serious emotions. But when subjected to sober analysis, you will find it to be very simple and straight forward. It’s a classic case of tolerance clashing with intolerance.

One of the most dangerous sentiments that has gained currency in the recent years has been the suggestion that the Banyarwanda are an endangered race that faces direct persecution in the region, well as not. While it has led to the creation of M23 in Congo, it’s growing slowly in this country.

The Rwandese have a unique but turbulent history behind them that started in 1959 when Gregory Kayibanda toppled king kigeri that precipitated the influx of Rwandese refugees to Burundi, Congo and Uganda. As a result of this, many of them settled in Uganda and managed to integrate freely in parts of Ankole and the Buganda sub region in south western Uganda.  

When they settled in, they managed to inter marry with most of the Bantu speaking tribes mostly in south western Uganda and even made efforts to forget their background by taking names and clans of the indigenous Ugandans.

At that time and mostly before 1959, only extremely wealthy Ugandan men could manage to marry a Rwandese woman because they of their beauty. It became a tradition that every Muganda chief had to marry a Rwandese woman to prove his worth in the community. In fact Buganda kings including Kabaka Muteesa and even the current Kabaka are known to have delivered children with them. This same trend has continued to spread to most parts of Uganda.

Throughout that time towards Uganda’s independence and beyond President Idi Amin, there was no problem between Ugandans and the Rwandese. In fact there are serious allegations that Gen Idi Amin had so many Rwandese in the various government departments.

In fact, no single Ugandan was known to mention the word Rwandese in a derogatory manner because they were living in harmony with all Ugandans.

OBOTE’S ANTI-RWANDESE SENTIMENT

But everything changed after the fall of President Idi Amin and the emergence of the UPC government of president Apollo Milton Obote who started to orchestrate a hate campaign against the Banyarwanda by asserting that they were refugees who had to go back to their country.

Obote’s anti-Rwandese sentiment was orchestrated by two factors.

One was that Obote believed strongly that the Rwandese had worked in Gen Idi Amin’s notorious security agencies like the state research bureau for the 8 years he was in exile in Tanzania. Incidentally Amin had managed to recruit so many non-Ugandans from Zaire, Rwanda and with the majority from southern Sudan in the Ugandan security agencies.

When Amin was overthrown by the TPDF, a whole chunk of Zairians like the notorious Brig Maliyamungu, and a whole bunch of the Sudanese all fled the country, but the Rwandese did not leave the country. Obote was of the view that they had to also leave the country just like the Sudanese and the Zairians.

The reason why the Rwandese couldn’t leave was because the majority of them had intermarried with the Ugandans and secondly they had been a few ‘lucky ones’ who had worked for Amin’s government. Unfortunately for them, Obote couldn’t understand the dynamics of their continued stay in Uganda because he considered them as traitors who had worked with Amin.

The second bone of contention had also arisen from the fact that during the struggle to oust Amin, Obote had a military faction known as Kikosi Maluum which was bitterly opposed to another an anti-Amin military faction known FRONASA led by a young man called Yoweri Museveni.

Although these two military factions were not necessarily a threat to Amin but they were putting up a fight to remove him from power. Since they had no military capacity to overthrow Amin by force of arms, they luckily co-opted Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere in the direct fight against the Ugandan dictator. During that war from 1972 up to 1979b when Amin fell , they were competing for attention from president Nyerere.

Because Fronasa was led by Yoweri Museveni who had co-opted some young Rwandese boys in his ranks , Obote made a blanket accusation by accusing Museveni of being a Munyarwanda who had to leave the country , the same way the Sudanese and Zairians had done after the fall of Amin.

Museveni himself had been part of all the post Amin UNLF governments led by president Yusuf Lule And Godfrey Binaisa where he served as minister of defense and later on rose to become the vice chairman of the military commission that was led by Paulo Muwanga that eventually oversaw the 1980 elections’. Ordinarily, unverified sources claim that Obote’s kikosi maluum had to share power with Museveni’s Fronasa, but obote declined to consent to that arrangement.

President Museveni actually writes in his book The Mustard Seed that most of his Fronasa boys like the late fred Rwigyema , Paul Kagame and others were disqualified from the army and denied a chance to go for further military training on grounds that they were not Ugandans.

When Apollo Milton Obote managed to maneuver the 1980 elections and assume power, he embarked on the grand scheme to first of all dismantle Fronasa by disarming them completely. The late Gen Elly Tumwine revealed that the reason why they attacked Kabamba in 1981 was to retrieve the guns which had been removed from them by Obote’s UNLA.

 The second mission was to expel all Rwandese from Uganda and assigned this heinous duty to one of his most trusted minister by the names of Chris Rwakasis and another one called peter Otai. Rwakasisi actually managed to purge Banyarwanda from most parts of Ankole before he attacked the Luwero triangle to enforce the same mission.

President Obote did not know that these xenophobic attacks were going to cost him the power that he loved the most.

Meanwhile Yoweri Museveni who was his arch enemy had gone to the bush the declared war on Obote’s UPC government in 1981. This development of the Museveni bush war compounded matters for the local Banyarwanda because they all became branded rebels who had to be hunted down and most of them were killed in the process. As matters degenerated from bad to worse, most Rwandese in the Luwero triangle areas had no option but to join Museveni’s rebel group in the bush war against Obote.

When the war was going on these Rwandese boys excelled in the fight against the UPC government and assumed powerful military positions.

As time passed by, it was inevitable that these boys had to fight the Rwandese government which had expelled their parents in 1959.

So they eventually organized an attack on Rwanda in 1990 which culminated in their victory in 1994. But before they could achieve victory the Hutus had orchestrated genocide on the Tutsis that horrified the world in 1994 genocide where an estimated million Tutsis were killed by the Hutu extremists.

During the promulgation of the 1995 Ugandan constitution, the constituent assembly legislated the Rwandese as one of the tribes of Uganda, mostly due to the historical connections we have labored to explain in these pages.

Now as things stand, some opportunists are trying to create a rift between the Rwandese and Ugandans who have lived in harmony for very many years. These opportunists are hawking a suggestion that the Rwandese are being targeted violently by other Ugandans, something that is diabolically not true.

Meanwhile another set of opportunists are playing a hate card similar to that of president Obote by claiming that the Rwandese have mismanaged their country , Uganda , and should therefore return to their motherland. These opportunists groups are making the diabolical mistake of linking these Rwandese to the NRM government and president Museveni in general.

 

THE REALITY

All these two versions are being spread by a set of haters and being advanced by complete idiots. Some Rwandese may be enjoying positions in government but it doesn’t make all of them NRM or Museveni enthusiasts.

In fact most of the NUP supporters who were kidnapped in the aftermath of the 2021 elections were Ugandans of Rwandese origin.  These heinous tribal sentiments must be resisted by all right thinking citizens.

This Rwanda-phobia is being advanced by haters, weaponized by opportunists and being spread around and believed by complete idiots. It’s the same tribal sentiment which had been imposed on the Acholis by inciting other Ugandans to regard them as killers, well as it’s not true at all.

It’s not true at all that ordinary Ugandans are against the Rwandese and Ugandans shouldn’t succumb to such tribal blackmail.

Fred Daka Kamwada is a researcher, policy analyst and a blogger; kamwadafred@gmail.com