January 21, 2005

OPINION

THE CONSEQUENCES OF A RETURN TO MULTI-PARTY POLITICS IN UGANDA

In late last year when I visited Uganda on a similar mission, I wrote an article, which was published in the local dailies in Kenya and Uganda. In that article I argued against the revival of federalism in Uganda as was advocated by the current crop of Baganda political leadership. That article earned me the wrath of a section of Ugandans in the Diaspora, more so those Ugandans who were not happy with NRM's rule in the last two decades.

At the risk of facing a similar hostility, I feel it is my duty to discuss the salient issues facing Uganda today as the country prepares for the first multiparty elections in 20 years.

The challenges that will confront them in 2006 will more or less be the same challenges that neighboring Tanzanians and Kenyans faced in 1900 and 1992 respectively.

One other reason that compels me to write this article is the interest that I, as an East Africa have in a peaceful transition in Uganda politics. As citizens of this region, we are going through a meaningful and methodical process of integrating out three countries by the year 2013.

For us to succeed, our political systems have to be harmonized. The African Socialism of Nyerere, Obotte's Common Man's Charter and Kenyatta's Capitalism ruined our Community in the 1970s. We don't want to go that route again with discordant political systems yet pretend to be working towards regional political and economic integration. This is why Uganda's 2006 multi party elections must succeed for all of us in the region.

Under the National Resistance Movement, Ugandans have known relative peace and reconstruction after the destructive and violent period when Idi Amin and Milton Obotte ruled the country between 1971 and 1985. The only reason they have known relative peace despite the unending rebellion in the North is because the rest of Uganda was devoid of party politics. Like in Kenya between 1969 and 1992 or in Tanzania between 1967 and 1990, Uganda enjoyed the luxury of a one-party political monopoly.

In the Kenyatta and Moi eras, soon after absorbing the only opposition party KADU in 1964 and proscribing rebellious Jaramogi Oginga Odinga's Kenya Peoples Union in 1969, the ruling party Kanu held sway over the land. This meant that any person who wanted to participate in active politics whether at the local or national level had the only recourse, to join the ruling party Kanu. Because of this scenario there were no parties formed along ethnic lines like we have in Kenya today

In Tanzania, after the Tanganyika African National Union merged with Afro Shirazi Party of Zanzibar to form Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) that effectively established the political union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar to be later known as Tanzania under Julius Nyerere, the CCM's grip on power was unshakable.

Nyerere went beyond the call of duty as the founding father of the nation. He built a strong foundation for a united nation and gave a multiplicity of tribes in Tanzania one language that they speak to this day. In East Africa today, Tanzania is the only country where tribalism is scorned. In Kenya and Uganda ethnicity is a cherished political enclave, revered as a fertile breeding ground for future tribal chiefs masquerading as national leaders.

In 1991, at the height of the clamor for political pluralism, Kenya's former president warned that although we were agitating for multi-partism, the same multi-partism would usher in tribal politics of unmanageable proportions. He maintained that parties would be formed along tribal lines that would dangerously undermine the unity and peace that Kenyans had known for three decades.

We didn't believe him then. And even if we did, we didn't care one bit because we were simply tired of Moi, Kanu and their excesses in power. Today, all major parties in Kenya; Democratic Party, Ford Kenya, Ford Asili, National Party of Kenya, Liberal Democratic Party and even Kanu are seen and touted as tribal political parties.

As Ugandans gear up for the first meaningful multi-party general elections next year, they must be prepared to follow the path that Kenya followed if the political events in their country is anything to go by. Like Kenyans, they are a fractured nation to be polite.

In the words of one Conservative Party member in my workshop in Kampala recently, he had the courage to tell me to my face that Uganda was not a nation but a country. This gentleman had the honesty to acknowledge that Uganda was as divided as ever along tribal lines and that parties being formed now for next years' elections would fall in the same pattern. And to vindicate him, my Ugandan colleague and fellow facilitator at the same workshop challenged their party's national outlook when 100% of the men and women sitting in front of us were all from the same ethnic community.

Which takes me my next point.

As we struggle to build institutions of democracy and good governance in our three different states in the region, what do we do with our ethnic allegiances in Kenya and Uganda? Do we continue to pretend that we are tribe-less when in fact we live and breathe our ethnicity day in day out? Why don't we come to terms with our condition and accept the inevitable that we are a multiplicity of cultures and are in reality nation-states within a state?

If we did this we would be more honest with our selves and consciously build on the ideology of unity in diversity that our ethnic condition has availed to us.

Let us face it; we are no French, Italian, German or the English who have some semblance of homogeneity through a common language and culture. The closest we have of the French and the Italians in our region are our socially advanced brothers next door in Tanzania who set out to build a united state at the dawn of independence and succeeded.

The concept of unity in diversity has worked for and served the United States of America and Canada very well. In these two great nations, one is never ashamed of her or his ethnic origin. They are free to say they are African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Irish-Americans and Americans of Hungarian or German origins. This honest statement of fact has never let them down. Recent examples can be given of Arnold schwarzenegger, a Hungarian who migrated to the United States at the age of 15 but now Governor of California, the largest and most affluent state in the United States. Recently, Barrack Obama, an American of Kenyan origin was elected one of the fewest Black Senators to the US Senate after exploiting his Kenyan humble origin to its fullest. He wanted to prove to the Americans that America was really a land of opportunities for every race on earth.

Yes, Ugandans will go to the polls next year in a liberalized political environment under a very interesting scenario. It is so typical of Kenya that it doesn't even look funny.

If the elections are held in June 2006 as proposed, then the parties being formed and registered now have about 18 months to set up their structures, organize election machinery and raise funds. Like in Kenya in 1991, most of the political parties, save for the old Uganda Peoples' Congress, Forum for Democratic Change and the ruling National Resistance Movement have no offices to operate from.

In reality therefore, most parties being formed in Uganda will find a very hostile and bumpy playing ground where the moneyed and well-structured bigger parties will have a field day.

But even with the Forum for Democratic Change and the Uganda Peoples Congress, the real test will be how to match the endless resources and machinery of the incumbent.

The plot may thicken if President Museveni, commonly referred to as M7, decides to run for the third term despite the requirements of the present constitution. If he does run as a sitting President, he will disorganize and maul the rest of the parties one by one because he has the most visible brand image, a formidable grassroots network, the means and the where-with-all to do it.

Some of us will remember how in 1992 and 1997, Moi won two consecutive elections as a sitting president. And how did he do it? He legally used state resources to campaign for his party because he combined his campaign trips to the nation's provinces with his state duties as head of state and nobody could legally fault him for that. More importantly, he held the instruments of power and authority, therefore, wherever he went, he was the biggest news of the day.

A divided and fractured opposition, led by Jaramogi Odinga, Kenneth Matiba and Mwai Kibaki, no matter how popular, had no chance in a million as individual parties to defeat Kanu. It took ten years of multi-partism for Kanu to lose its grip on power, and only after the opposition came to its senses by accident, and united their numerical strength against Kanu.

As Ugandans go to the polls next year, is there a chance they will learn a lesson or two from their neighbors who have gone through the same process in the last fifteen years?

They have Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia to learn from. These are the neighbors that have managed the transition from a one party system to multi political pluralism through the ballot.


Jerry Okungu
Director
ACEMEPA - The African Center for Media and Political Analysis
Nairobi, Kenya

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