By Winnie Byanyima
Nov 4, 2003
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President Yoweri Museveni�s Political Assistant Moses Byaruhanga should have some humility, honesty and seriousness about what he calls �a vision for Uganda�. I know that he is a Johnny-come-lately in the Movement, but let him get off his high horse and read through the original National Resistance Movement (NRM) ten-point programme. He should read carefully about the envisaged role of the state, and particularly about nationalising banks and insurance companies and then reflect on how Uganda Commrcial Bank was sold while Parliament kicked and screamed. Byaruhanga should then tell us when this new �vision� of neo-liberalism was reached. And while at that, he can tell us which processes this �vision� went through to become a Movement and eventually national vision. Byaruhanga cannot have forgotten the NRM�s disastrous barter trade deals with Cuba and former Yugoslavia in the late �80s. Is this the same economic �vision� he is talking about, or did something change along the way? I was an NRM activist then and I know that our strategy at the time did not work. Can Byaruhanga accept that the Movement has got it wrong sometimes? Who dismantled the co-operative movement and is now trying to put it together again, having realised that agriculture cannot be modernised without a structure for farmer�s collective empowerment? Is it not the NRM that scrapped community development structures in the first phase of public sector reforms, only to realise later that the structures were vital for channelling poverty reduction interventions at the grassroots? When the final evaluation of the World Bank-funded Nutrition and Early Childhood Development project has been done, we shall be told what we always knew � that the project was well-intentioned but in the absence of vibrant community development structures, the delivery mechanism chosen (in-experienced, unaccountable and corrupt NGOs) was weak. Community development structures were started by the colonial administration and were expanded and strengthened by the first Uganda People�s Congress government. For many women of my age, most of our mothers learnt how to read and write, provide household sanitation and hygiene, nutrition and child care, income-generation and modern farming skills through largely voluntary community development networks supported by the UPC government Byaruhanga likes to bash. I am not an admirer of UPC and I still have painful memories of what happened in the past. But I would probably not be a committed feminist if in the �60s my mother had not recruited us, her daughters, into her village women�s club to play and work with the women she led. I have always loved to work with women and believed in community action, thanks to a UPC �vision� of community empowerment. I invite Byaruhanga to be honest and humble about his and other organisations� contribution to nation building. Yes, Universal Primary Education was introduced by the Movement. Another government will improve on it. When Byaruhanga is slamming UPC for lack of vision and �interfering� with the private sector in the late �60s, he should be cautious or he may make the gravest mistake by embarrassing his boss, who was at the time a dyed-in-the-wool UPC ideologue, working for the notorious General Service Unit. I know this first-hand because I remember him vividly as a khaki-wearing, hard-line Marxist talking about �The Move to the Left� with the same conviction that he talks about �private-sector led growth� these days. He was fond of calling those who disagreed with him �unpatriotic� or �traitors� just as he does today. In those days the traitors were people who doubted his radical brand of socialism and these days it is those who doubt his radical brand of capitalism. Are all these African, Asian and Latin American countries copying his master�s �vision� and implanting? Byaruhanga mixes up vision and strategy. Ms Anne Mugisha mentioned some aspects of the Reform Agenda�s social and economic strategy articulated in the Besigye manifesto. Manifestos are short and usually capture political strategies and policy intentions. Byaruhanga has responded by describing the neo-liberal economic strategy Museveni adopted in the early �90s. He strangely does not add that neo-liberalism has dominated development thinking since the �80s and the Movement is only a new convert who joined the class of 1992. RA is not in any major disagreement with the international financial institutions in their latest shift of development paradigm. We are honest enough not to claim any major discovery on our part! More importantly, what Byaruhanga misses is that even before a vision is there, an organisation (Yes, in Reform Agenda we are trying to build a shared vision not a vision of the master to guide all members) must have an ideological framework within which to define problems and their causes. Then, it is within an ideological framework that visions for change, and strategies and solutions for transformation are developed. Can Byaruhanga honestly and accurately tell us the ideological position of the Movement? He cannot because sometimes the Movement has an ideology (usually articulated by its chairman when he talks about �our struggle since the sixties�) and sometimes it is multi-ideological depending on what argument he wants to win. For constitutional purposes, it is multi-ideological. When Museveni wants to stand tall among distinguished Africans, the Movement becomes a nationalist liberation movement with a leftist tendency like the African National Congress and other groups which most of us honour for their historic contributions to Africa and humanity. What set of values underpin Museveni�s vision of economic transformation? For example, does the Movement believe in equality of all people? Is equality a goal that the Movement pursues or is it just a means to achieve other goals? This is an important question of vision and strategy. If equality is an end in itself, how is it reconciled with the contradictory impact of economic re-structuring policies that increase the work burden of poor women? A recent study showed that poor Ugandan women work almost twice as many hours as men. Is social justice a key value in the Movement�s vision of transformation? If so, how does its stand on social justice translate into policies, say on international trade? The Cancun, Mexico meeting exposed the Movement, and Museveni, as ideologically dishonest and as an unreliable partner in the struggle for economic justice for the South. Byaruhanga tries to tell us that the current economic strategy is the Movement�s own innovation. That is why he should not be allowed to get off the hook before telling us how and when this strategy came to be a Movement strategy, where it is interpreted, evaluated and legitimised, which vision it relates to and what ideological underpinnings it has. We might take the South African case as an example of how in a democracy, a national vision and strategy is arrived at. The ANC�s program for growth and transformation does not read like a World Bank approved PRSP! It fits within the ideological framework of the tripartite alliance of the ANC, the Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. It is a strategy developed through broad consultations and its interpretation and translation into policies is a subject of continuous and intense debates within the structures of the ruling alliance. Let Byaruhanga say in which political structures is this so-called vision continuously interpreted into policies and programmes? And I mean political structures not the bureaucratic policy and budget-making processes. Byaruhanga, in typical Musevenisque disdain for others, dismisses Mugisha as being engaged in �neo-colonial talk� and in �idle talk�, and claims credit for his boss for recent trade concessions from the North. But averagely informed readers know that the debate on trade and aid pre-dates Museveni. �Trade not Aid� was a buzzword in international circles in the �70s. The first Lome Convention between African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and European countries was signed in 1975. By the time the Movement came to power three versions of Lome had already been signed. These agreements sought to give support to ACP countries to achieve �comprehensive, self reliant, self-sustained development� by opening up European markets to ACP goods. Note the similarity in language between Lome and the NRM ten-point program. (�an independent, integrated, self-sustaining national economy�) reflects the dominance of underdevelopment and dependency theory, popular in the �60s and �70s, and which the Movement had bought into. But Byaruhanga would probably have us believe that it was all NRM originality and vision. If this is not pseudo-intellectualism, then what is? The struggle for fair trade practices was neither started, and nor will it be concluded by the Movement. It is part of a wider and more complicated struggle for global justice involving many governments, civil society groups and individuals. It is about democratising and transforming global institutions of governance. It is about sustainable lifestyles and about advancing human rights. Interestingly, Byaruhanga does not tell us why African countries, such as Kenya which had �the vision� of private-sector led growth and which developed tourism and courted international capital well before the Movement came to be, and which have enjoyed stability have not made it. Perhaps, the answer is too hard to live with. Perhaps it takes more than a good strategy and good policies on paper, to actually transform society. Where in Byaruhanga�s �vision� are such old-fashioned things like commitment, moral authority, legitimacy, accountability, honesty, solidarity and compassion? In RA we believe that they are as important as a good strategy on paper. Our position has been stated many times and it is now well understood, even by some of those who opposed us most aggressively in 2001. The Movement, under Museveni is less and less able to implement its stated policies, however impressive they may seem. It is trapped in its past mistakes and its lack of empowered institutions to mediate political interests transparently and democratically. It is a corrupt and inefficient system of patronage where there is very weak accountability and no checks and balances and where most decisions are taken on a personal and ad hoc basis. It is incapable of pursuing any vision at all except the vision of keeping itself in power for as long as possible. And that may not be for a very long time because its individual members do not have faith in it. They loathe and fear it and are waiting to denounce it the very minute it loses power. The Movement is tottering on the edge of collapse. Ms Byanyima is MP for Mbarara Municipality and senior member of Reform Agenda |
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
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