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On The Mark
By Alan Tacca |
VP Bukenya�s poverty dilemma
Nov 9, 2003
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It has just occurred to me that people who have a very deep attachment to cows may also have a soft spot for humans who have attributes associated with cattle. Now, if you like cows essentially because they are docile, giving milk to the pigs with the same dedication as they used to give milk to Mr. Jones, you would probably wish that they did not get much smarter; just in case they start learning a thing or two about their tragic existence. Fallen revolutionaries, false prophets, conjurors and miracle workers are all more comfortable with peasants than with other social groups, because peasants generally do not have the training and experience to critically examine the actions and motives of dedicated �performers�. As far as their economic woes are concerned, they have not been taught enough arithmetic to grasp the nature of the conspiracy by which the rulers, the legislators, the tax collectors and the privileged middle and business classes operate. When a peasant sells his 10kg of beans, walks into a village store and pays Shs 2,000 for a litre of paraffin, he does not quite understand how he is helping the lords of Rukungiri, Mbarara or Soroti to build their palaces around the country and maybe abroad. He does not even realise that he is contributing to the five-digit dollar monthly obscenity for Kampala-based top dogs in the petroleum industry. Needless to say, the idea that he is helping American and European executives and shareholders overseas to change their golf bags sounds like a fable. The peasant�s expertise is in following the tracks of the guinea fowl that uproots his nuts, or judging that the state of the creeper at the edge of the forest indicates a mature but shrivelled yam two feet underground. But slowly, like he learned the tricks of the monkey that eats his maize, he is waking up to the tricks of the politicians. I suspect that you, reading this article, are not a peasant. Neither am I. So, you Hitherto, we were told that everything was fine. We mongrels, wolves and what have you; our feelings and our reflections were largely irrelevant, because the Movement (an euphemism for President Museveni) had millions of peasants at its beck and call. The vice president, Prof. Gilbert Bukenya, was probably dramatising a little during his conversation with the press this week, when he warned of a peasant revolt against the elite. But he was correct when he said that the peasants have reason to be disenchanted with the status quo. He confesses that �we� (presumably the princes of the Movement machine) have been practising the politics of �exciting people�, the politics of �blinding people�, the politics of �deceit�. He wants to change that, predicting that once �practical peasantry development� has started, most of the politicians (of deceit) will �fall away from the scene.� Will Bukenya be left standing? An intriguing question. For who are the politicians of deceit? President Museveni is the avowed champion of the peasants. What is more, the president perfectly understands the arithmetic that I said was a dark region to most peasants. That is why he often explains (as he did this week in the US) to Western audiences how Uganda is a big �donor�, selling to the West cheap raw materials for the benefit of their multinational processors, workers, tax collectors and governments. So, who are the politicians of deceit, the politicians who sing and sing but have refused or failed to sort out the plight of Uganda�s peasants and workers? Is it Kananathan of the AGOA fame? No. Kananathan knows what he is doing; handing out the exact measure of contempt he knows a morally confused political order will permit. Which politicians have made sure that the blindness of the peasants is preserved; that opposition politicians must not be allowed to traverse the villages to educate the peasants about the politics of deceit? Which politicians have turned the politics of deceit into a lucrative industry, instead of raising Uganda to a country that �makes machines which make machines�; the grand 1986 vision, which I am sure Prof. Bukenya now secretly acknowledges was the politics of �exciting people�? But Bukenya cannot eat his cake and also keep it. It is almost impossible to demand a radical departure without confronting the architects of the failure. Attempting this balancing act will probably leave the professor without sufficient intellectual crispness to persuade the elite. More important, he will also be useless to the peasants. For, to make any significant improvements in the lives or our peasants, the entire baggage of Movement decay and self-perpetuating prodigal waste that grew out of the early promise must be swept away. It is na�ve to believe that it will just �fall away�: the vice president�s preferred dream. But will the professor concede that to be taken seriously in frontline politics � his otherwise impressive CV notwithstanding � he must work for a more legitimate democratic condition, with dynamism aimed at banishing the peasant�s blindness? Or will he continue fidgeting with his contradictory thesis, constantly mindful that the president has a strong affection for cows? |
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
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