Open Letter To President Museveni; If You Want To Build A Nation, You Kill A Tribe

Open Letter To President Museveni; If You Want To Build A Nation, You Kill A Tribe

president Museveni shakes hands with prince Charles Wesley Mumbere

Mr. President, I send my sincere greetings to you I particular and the people of Ugandan in general.

I must admit that the previous month of November has been a very tense one for you and your government. But most importantly November in particular and 2016 has exposed the wrong decisions you made more than twenty years ago.

Some of the horrifying mistakes you made in the early 90s include the following.

1.       The absolute privatization of the economy leaving Ugandans to the mercy of capitalistic forces

2.       The unilateral decision to restore traditional kingdoms without the consent of Ugandans.

The first one mistake of privatizing the economy has already proved to everyone that it was a fundamental mistake. Today the economy is limping because of that mistake.

You cannot abandon all economic activities to the private sector. A revolutionary government like yours that claims to have fought for the emancipation its people should have remained in charge of some critical areas of the economy.

While the principal of privatization was good in the beginning, the execution was fundamentally flawed. You shouldn’t have done it whole sale.

You cannot privatize institutions that are responsible for service delivery and claim to serve the people.

How do you embark on service delivery when you have sold the means of doing it?

Government should have remained in charge of a common people’s bank, to deliver low interest loans to stimulate economic growth (but you sold UCB). Government should have remained as a player in the transport sector by keeping the Ugandan railway in operation (but you chose to close the Uganda railway for reasons best known to you alone.

Government should have remained firmly in charge of electricity to make it user friendly to your citizens (but6 you chose to privatize its operation making it electricity very expensive and thus costly to stimulate industrialization.

And it’s a shame that while you brag about having surplus electricity, it (the unit cost of electricity) remains the highest in the region.

As a result of some of these small economic mishaps arising from your wrong decisions you made two decades ago, the economy has now slumped to its knees. 

It’s obvious that you need to get back to the drawing board to address these economic issues. Otherwise there is general perception that you have no grand economic plan for this country.

The Fundamental Contradiction

But as a matter of fact, my intention was not to address to you issues regarding the economy because it’s a wide subject--I will certainly dwell on the economy in another blog.

Today I thought we should discuss your blunder number two which I mentioned above-your unilateral decision to restore traditional institutions without the consent of Ugandans.

Mr. President, we know that you were a very big friend and admirer of former Mozambican president Samora Machel who once said that if you are to build a nation, you kill a tribe.

The late Samora Machel had a true perspective in regard to nation building 

By this he practically meant that a powerful tribe will always undermine or contradict the state.

That’s why most leaders who embarked on successful nation building, systematically destroyed chiefdoms and kingdoms.

In Tanzania where you did your university and spent almost a full decade in exile, there were so many chiefdoms and kingdoms. We also know that you were very close friends with Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere who is known to have destroyed tribes in Tanzania for the good of a united Tanzania.

What did you learn from Mwalimu Nyerere and Samora Machel in regard to the nation of nation building, if you went ahead and did exactly what they preached against?

Building a nation is not a simple game. You need to make very hard choices. You cannot make an omelet without breaking an egg.  For your case, you want to have an omelet and at the same time keep the egg!

Kaunda, Samora and Nyerere

In France, the 1879 revolution had to deal with the difficult issue of sorting out the French monarchy.

Russia gained its super power status after making the difficult decision of dismantling the Russian monarchy in 1914.

Ghana had the mighty Asante Empire, but nobody knows where it is at the moment. Nepal had the oldest kingdom on the globe, but the people decided to disband it completely.

You cannot build a nation and at the same time glorify tribes like you are doing at the moment.

Today Uganda is more divided than it was during president Idi Amin’s reign of terror.

By the time you made a decision to restore traditional leaders, you must have done enough home work.

But you unfortunately took it upon yourself to restore them without the absolute consent of Ugandans.

There are credible rumors that some patriotic Ugandans led by Col Serwanga Lwanga opposed you and briefed you about the repercussions, but you overpowered them.

By doing this, you took Uganda 50 years backwards.  We are back to square one. uganans are gettign killed for something that had been buried fifty years ago.

Yes, President Apollo Milton Obote had resolved that issue in 1966 by doing what you did to Mumbere’s palace last week. in fact your army killed more Ugandans in Kasese than Obote during the attack on lubiri in 1966 

At the moment Uganda is headed for a very uncertain future. The tribal groups that had surrendered their sovereignty to Uganda have now developed secessionist tendencies because you encouraged and empowered them.

The country is now divided into tribal cocoons. We need a nationalist to embark on a more vivid process of nation building because you seem to have failed to do it.
instead you have embarked on deliberate tribalization of the country by launching dictionaries for local languages , you even address the nation in vernacular etc etec..
This practically spells doom for the country. We expect to see more bloodleting than what happened in kasese because of your blind  tribal project.

THE WAY FORWARD

You need to get back to the drawing board by conceding that you made a unilateral decision to restore these traditional leaders.  You need to simply admit that Ugandans should participate in the continued stay of these kingdoms through a plebiscite.  

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a blogger and a passionate proponent of the THIRD FORCE

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