WITHOUT MINCING WORDS
Andrew M. Mwenda
The Monitor
Poor donors! Grasp your role in Museveni’s Uganda
Since opposition presidential candidate Kizza Besigye was arrested and double charged in the High Court and in the General Court Martial, Uganda's "development partners" have looked confused. Their ambassadors, who turned up at the High Court to listen to Dr. Besigye's case, found themselves held hostage by the Black Mambas Urban Hit Squad.
And when the Danish ambassador, Stig Barlying, sought to attend the military court martial hearing of Besigye's case, he was rudely ordered out; his letter of "accreditation" literally thrown back into his face as "useless".
Mr. Barlying and all other diplomats who were locked out of the military court martial did not know that in President Yoweri Museveni's Uganda, civilian institutions are subordinate to military ones. A letter of "accreditation" to a military court martial from a civilian minister has no authority when a military general like Elly Tumwine is "in charge". Do these donors ever learn?
Suspension of aid
The Dutch have since suspended a small portion of their aid, and many others may consider this option. Will donors, who finance nearly half our budget, quit? Less likely! And if they do, will they meaningfully alter the tragic path on which Museveni has placed Uganda? Hardly!
The donors are caught in a catch 22 situation: if they cut and run, they will have removed the remaining source of restraint on Museveni, crippled their influence in Uganda and their "model" African economic performer will come tumbling down like a pack of cards - this time only faster!
Should they stay? A stay will delay, but cannot stop Uganda's descent back to its tragic past. On the contrary, their money will continue to be used to prop an increasingly nepotistic, incompetent, corrupt and brutal regime.
Every time they tolerate one macabre act by Museveni, they embolden him to do worse another time - and limit their capacity to restrain him the next time.
Initially, there was a convergence of different but compatible interests between Museveni, the people of Uganda and donors: Museveni needed money as a political resource to consolidate his power; Uganda needed stability and economic recovery, donors needed a country where they could pursue economic policies favourable to international capital, but which they also thought could produce an "economic success story" in an otherwise distressing African continent - and thereby shower-up a highly discredited international aid regime.
When he captured power in 1986, Museveni inherited a collapsed state and economy, and a country where violence and impunity were widespread. Most people either fought or avoided the state. To legitimise his rule, Museveni needed to establish stability in the south and stave off armed insurgents in the north.
He also needed to ease acute scarcities of basic essential goods and deliver basic social services. In other words, what was good for Museveni to consolidate his power was coincidentally good for Uganda, but also good for the donors who were searching for an African success story.
Thus, Museveni gave donors almost complete control of the economic policy making process, and in return the donors allowed him a free hand to pursue his preferred political and security machinations like banning political party activities in the country and pursuit of military adventures at home and in the region.
It was the perfect division of labour. Here is the paradox: by giving donors unlimited control of the economic policy making field, Museveni found himself in a more favourable position financially and diplomatically to pursue his preferred political and military agendas.
What we have been witnessing since 1996 is an increasing divergence of needs. What Museveni needs to stay in power today - increased patronage, more repression and corruption - is not necessarily what Ugandans need to sustain the reform momentum on the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it is certainly not what donors need to sustain the illusion of an African success story.
In other words, what is good for Uganda, or the donors is no longer what is good for Museveni and the National Resistance Movement.
Consolidating power
This is my point: whatever compromises he made, whatever appearances he faked, and whatever donor arrogance he put up with, Museveni's objective was to win one strategic objective - power.
During most of this time, Museveni's position at the helm of the state in Uganda was not under any serious challenge - and whenever it did like in northern Uganda, his propensity to depict military muscle was always on display. Among many examples is the brutality with which then Brig. David Tinyefuza handled Operation North in 1991-92.
Museveni wants to continue consolidating his position in power. Should the donors stand in his way to this goal, their role in Uganda will come to a sad end. The same applies to a significant section of Ugandan society which wants continued economic progress and democratisation.
So, dear donors, this is just to let you know that your historical function under the NRM regime was not so much to develop Uganda; that was your own fancy. It was to consolidate Museveni's position as President. Should you threaten that goal, your role will no longer be needed in this country. I wish you a good weekend!
Urbane Analysis: Okay, time for some movie references to help everyone get on the same page. Donor nations, journalists and NGOs might want to head down to Blockbuster and rent "The Grifters" - because despite all your intelligence, sophistication and goodwill - you have all been "played" by Museveni. The sad part is that most of you haven't yet realized the grift - and it has been going on for decades in Africa. The tragic part is that even those of you that have, won't do a damn thing about it.
Uganda is heading for a conflagration (again), and you want to feel bad about it. Well sorry, the people there don't have time for your emotions. They need your action: to get off your comfortable G8 fundaments, and get your mechanicals of democracy working in Africa. "Hotel Uganda" may soon be open for business, some World Bank analysts have predicted as much.
What to do? Easy. Donor nations should end all general, budgetary and military support for the Museveni regime. Now. They should only operate with trusted on-the-ground agencies working directly with people in need (in Uganda, that is more than half the population of 25 million).
Private sector, right? As in transparent and accountable.
You NGOs should be ashamed for having turned a blind eye to this problem for so long. You should immediately hold a donor summit - and via an umbrella organization - start reporting on those stories which for so very long have been talked about (and, increasingly, blogged about) from your own employees, volunteers and contractors. The stories that tell what really is going on in Africa.
The world needs to understand that the "Hotel Rwanda" genocide in Rwanda and Burundi didn't really end: 1995 was the boiling over of a simmering stew of hatred that continues to bubble up in ethnic hatred and "informal" systematic killing.
The world needs to understand that throughout this decade almost a million people per year, on average, have died in the Congo - in a horrible hell-on-earth existence for the people there. A situation that makes every leader in the West as complicit as King Leopold's nineteenth century courtiers - by their mutual silence of a hundred years.
The world barely understands the nature of the Darfur crisis in southern Sudan. Darfur-Darfur-Darfur: they hear the word on NPR and a few specialized programs on cable news. But the systematic displacement, isolation and leaving to desert ravages of hundreds of thousands of people - systematically and purposefully by the government there. Is a holocaust. It is evil as learned from the Balkans - in other words, the purveyors of this madness have learned how to do just enough to get people efficiently killed - without attracting satellite trucks.
And then there is Uganda's own bit of the Devil's Kingdom: the situation in the north - which continues to worsen. And is something that the government in Kampala, mysteriously, cannot seem to improve one iota. Yet the goverment in Kampala can use it to scapegoat every problem with which they also cannot seem to grapple. One U.S. Embassy official in Kampala told me that the LRA "problem" suits the needs of the Museveni government perfectly - it draws attention away from the its failings, over-reaching and corruption - even as the situation allows the government to play the role of victim to western donor nations.
And that, quite simply, has to stop. The long-standing, Cold War inspired Euro-American view of Africa must rapidly evolve and mature. The abject failure of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is all the proof needed that what we are doing there does not work.
It is unacceptable to opine that Africa cannot be our focus - that the war on terror supercedes our ability to focus on Africa. First of all, the western powers are far too rich, developed and capable for that excuse to hold validity. But more importantly, if "Blackhawk Down" taught us anything - it was that it is far cheaper to win wars economically, socially and politically. And quite frankly, nigh-on impossible to win them militarily.
Africa security expert Kurt Shillinger, himself from South Africa, warns in this essay that the same folks throughout the Muslim world cheering for Islamo-facists would like nothing more than Africa, with all its numbing poverty and disease - to become the next battleground against Euro-American ideals. It is vastly in the selfish interests of the West to see that democratic institutions (like an independent judiciary, a responsible military, a transparent and accountable civil service) are empowered - and despots like Museveni are outed, investigated, recalled from power by their own people, and prosecuted with fairness - then punished if warranted. In order to head off widening fronts in the war on terror, it is vastly in the selfish interests of the West to deliver on the dream of life without poverty to people in Africa. And in order to deliver on prosperity (or even the hope of prosperity), those who care (donor governments, news media, NGOs and churches) must also deliver on requiring accountability, transparency and democracy by those who govern. They can no longer sit back and see what happens in Africa. The stakes are simply to high. Those who care must risk, sacrifice and be outspoken.
If the socialist Europeans' darling boy Museveni is allowed to take his country down with him, their blame in it will be matched by U.S. State Department intransigence - in the face of overwhelming evidence about his regime - with evidence spanning several decades and going back to even before he seized power.
But quite frankly it is the news media who deserve the most criticism, for caring so little about Africa that they have allowed the western powers to be "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" for so long without even the slightest curiousity. It is time for the media to look at the real situation, at what a growing number of Africans want to do about it, and what complicity the media shares in allowing this to deteriorate without comment or coverage.
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