UG AT 60; President Museveni Has Failed To Acknowledge That President Obote Was Superb With Social Services Infrastructure and Gen Idi Amin A Hero For Indigenizing The Economy
In fact he
openly suggested that the first 24 years of Uganda’s independence from 1962 to
1986 should be considered ‘wasted years’ and insisted that the country
experienced real progress from 1986 when he took over the reins of power.
He went on
to describe the nature of the Ugandan economy starting from the British
policies that included the introduction of (the three Cs) cotton, copper and
coffee as the bedrock foreign exchange earners of the economy which reverted to
the tree Ts of tobacco, tea and tourism before they capsulated into oblivion .
He was
categorical in his indictment of the past leaders and the senior economists who
he said, have failed to introduce an economic plan that can propagate the
country into economic prosperity.
FORENSIC
AUDIT
Despite of
the lamentations of the Ugandan president, we need to interrogate what has
really happened in the last 60 years of our independence and look at the
respective contributions of each leader that got the opportunity to rule this
country.
A forensic audit of what each leader has
contributed will help us understand where the current NRM leadership stands
vis-à-vis the past leaders of the first 24 years of Ugandan independence and
what obtains for the future of this country.
And it’s
worth noting that although Museveni points accusing fingers to all the past
leaders, it’s worth noting each leader managed to make a constructive contributions
to the overall good of this country.
There is overwhelming
evidence that suggests that president Obote was superb with social services.
When Ugandan
got independent in 1962, titular president Frederick Muteesa shared power with
executive prime minister Apollo Milton Obote and their reign saw the foundation
of social infrastructure upon which major hospitals, schools, banks, housing
estates, police stations, prisons, etc were built.
Major
physical infrastructure like roads, power lines, water delivery were also laid
around the country
During that
short time of just four years from 1962 to 1966 when the UPC-Kabaka yekka
alliance collapsed, they built major hospitals like Mulago hospital, managed to
build the bank of Uganda headquarters, and managed to switch the capital city
from Entebbe to Kampala. All these achievements were attained in a period of
just four years, and are still influential assets to the country.
When Obote
managed to conspire and eventually remove president Muteesa from power in 1966,
Ugandan was at the same GDP level as South Korea and Singapore.
President
Obote actually deserves credit for having laid the foundation for the cooperatives
society that was spread around the whole country and construction of the Uganda
commercial bank which had branches throughout the country.
This UCB managed to help farmers to deposit
their savings and access credit/loans at low interest rates and managed to ably
play its cardinal role as the people’s bank in the country.
The cooperatives societies were central in
helping Ugandan farmers’ access high quality seedlings, high breed animals,
veterinary services, storage facilities like granaries, farming tools like hoes
and tractors and even assisted in offering transportation and marketing
facilities.
Indigenizing the economy
When
president Obote was overthrown by Gen Idi Amin in 1971, Ugandans got the chance
to run their own economy when the new president made the decision to expel the
Indians in what he termed as the economic war in 1972.
Although
this indigenization of the economy had the draw backs of retarding the economy
in the first years, it had the long-term effect of introducing Ugandans into
the business of running their own economy.
In fact,
it’s fair to say that Amin’s decision to expel the Indians still remains one of
the most fundamental economic decisions that has ever been made in the 60 years
of Uganda’s independence.
It still
remains the pivot around which the Ugandan economy is revolving and remains the
foundation upon which the current leadership is trying to anchor its policies.
It’s the one
upon which the government can make adjustments to push the citizens from
subsistence to commercial farming.
If the
Indians were still running the show, it would have been imposable to talk of
converting the citizens from the subsistence lifestyle because it’s the Indians
who would have been running the commercial sector of the economy.
You can even
say that Gen Idi Amin‘s decision makes him a hero because its exactly what the
ANC needs to do but has failed to do in south Africa, where the South African economy
is still run by the whites while the blacks wallow in abject poverty.
It’s the
same predicament that obtains in Kenya where the Kenyan economy is run by
whites while the blacks scramble for political power. What
is the use of having political power for some few political elites while the
majority of the indigenous Africans are spectators?
If the Indians
had remained in charge of the Ugandan economy the GDP would have been high but
the net incomes of the indigenous citizens would have been shamefully terrible
to warrant a discussion.
But today, Ugandans can proudly discuss and
brainstorm polices because they are the major players in the economy thanks
largely to the heroic decision of President Idi Amin dada.
Therefore
President Yoweri Museveni needs to acknowledge some of these contributions from
the past leaders to the extent that without their decisions Uganda would have
been very difficult to transform.
CONTEXT VS PRETEXT
Of course Museveni is getting an easy ride of
trashing the past leaders because of the political events that transpired where
Obote abolished multi -party democracy and adopted a one party state that run
the country on a pseudo democratic path and Amin was heavily involved the
violation of human rights of Ugandans in what has globally come to be known as
the worst dictatorship the world has ever seen.
They say
that history repeats itself, but it only does so when fools easily forget the
repercussions of those mistakes committed in the past.
It’s worth
noting that Museveni himself has almost repeated the same political mistakes
that Obote committed during his time in power.
For instance
in 1966 Obote attacked the Lubiri forcing Muteesa to flee into exile and its
exactly Museveni did when he attacked the palace of the Mumbere of the
Rwenzururu kingdom and hundreds were butchered to death in Kasese by the UPDF.
Obote
thrived through a pseudo democratic dispensation which included suppression of
the opposition, embarking on a one-party state and rigging elections.
The Ugandan
courts have on two occasions declared that the NRM has rigged elections, and
suppressed the rights of the opposition to an extent that Uganda is now a known
violator of human rights almost close to Amin’s Uganda.
Therefore
president Museveni’s 36 years in power may not necessarily amount to much
praise since the good works of the fast 24 years of independence created the
foundation upon which the NRM has used to launch its own policies.
Today the Uganda railway which the Britons
built in 1899 is no more, the UCB and cooperatives which were built by Obote
are no more, while the economy is reverting into the hands of investors invited
by Museveni, a clear contradiction to Amin’s heroic plan to indigenize the
economy and place it in the control of Ugandans.
In fact it’s
worth noting that since 1986, President Museveni has replicated most of Obote’s
mistakes and copied and pasted Amin’s dictatorial tendencies
In our next episode we shall analyze
president Museveni’s economic policies and look at their net effect on the
Ugandan citizen in the last 36 years.
The author Fred Daka
Kamwada is a policy analyst, and researcher; kamwadafred@gmail.com
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