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On The Mark
With Alan Tacca |
Can Buganda betray Museveni?
April 25 - May 1, 2004
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The Luweero District (LCV) chairman, Hajji Abdul Nadduli, can sound completely rational; like on days when he defied his more strict fellow Muslims and argued that he was a political leader in a multi-religious community; and that he would support a scheme to distribute piglets to non-Muslim peasants who had no objection to the eating of pork, or to earning an income from rearing pigs. On other days, he is not in such form, throwing about his theories on fertility, population distribution and tribal clout with such reckless enthusiasm that only a comic interpretation can redeem his vision. But so vocal is the Luweero chief that it was almost inevitable he would spell out clearly his position on President Museveni�s �third term� project. And he has done just that, but in the process coming very close to appropriating Buganda�s conscience (see: Baganda can�t betray Museveni �Nadduli, The Monitor, April 17). Addressing Kawempe Movement leaders, Nadduli claimed that Mr Eriya Kategaya, Mr John Ruzindana and Mr Amanya Mushega, Mr Museveni�s erstwhile allies from Ankole region had �betrayed� their �brother�, presumably because they were opposed to Museveni�s perceived desire to prolong his reign beyond 2006. The Baganda, Nadduli presumptuously says, would not commit such betrayal, because in Buganda it was abominable to bite the hand that feeds you. �The fact is that nobody can divert us from Museveni. We shall not push him before his time is up,� he said. Unless his speech carried more substance on this issue than was reported, it appears that Nadduli�s overriding interest is food. Food in the sense that the Ugandan crowd refers to political �eating�. His logic is very simple: If he and the other Movement leaders were being stuffed with goodies by Museveni�s administration, then the status quo was the best of all possible worlds. Those opposition politicians who have prospered under the regime and are �changing cars like clothes�, but remain in the opposition, must be �self-centred � and � power hungry�. Actually, Nadduli need not avoid the word often used by other correct-line ideologues. Unless they are jobless paupers, the people in the opposition are usually called �traitors�. Now, Mr Nadduli has fallen in one of President Museveni�s traps. If Museveni did not deliberately set it up as a trap, then he is lucky, because it has worked like a trap; at least with people of Nadduli vintage. This is the formula: Baganda are the largest, and geopolitically the most central, ethnic group in Uganda. Even a ruler who resents Baganda to the edge of hell has to find some form of accommodation with them, if he wants to move around on his official duties without passing crowds of people who have clipped their noses. If the ruler can find love in the region, so much the better, of course. I think that Museveni has a love-hate relationship with the Baganda, working for their good in about the same measure as for their frustration, and he has found people like Nadduli to peddle the lie of inviolable love. The president has set a sizeable portion of the fa�ade of the regime with Ganda features, and his speeches will forever be laced with tales of his war in Buganda�s bush. But wait a minute. It was all right�perhaps even something to be proud of �as long as that association was with a regime that had quite solid support across most of the country. But what happens when the regime has degenerated into a machine so obsessed with self-preservation that it has no qualms about using fraud, naked injustice and cynical coercion as genuine options? Demand your ten-year pension arrears, your court award against the State; demand your salary review, your relief from the yoke of the tax collector; go for the nearly impossible; brave the bureaucratic nightmare; you will find all the eyes turning to those of a Muganda finance minister. Why are all the laws connected to the political transition ridiculous? Why do all the new government bills reek with the spirit of repression? Who is so vociferously pushing for a sham Shs 30 billion referendum�and perhaps a second 20-billion one�when the government has failed to honour its pledge to pay clonal coffee seedling suppliers their Shs 6 billion? Oh�er �the person�and a lady at that�the enemy is an honourable minister from the Buganda region. And those laws; are they all being implemented? Sometimes, to the most resented laws, there is defiance. But we have an enforcer. I mean, the chief. He is a highly�a once very highly � respected general. He has an anti-riot squad, and it breaks bones. Will he see to it that the referenda�ridiculous as they are�and the elections are not unduly disrupted? Well, really, sir, and madam, that question goes to the chairman of the Electoral Commission. He also happens to come from Buganda. You don�t care where all the chiefs come from. But this layer of fascism was not supposed to be there. Someone must explain. You turn and look. Then you find the smiling face of a venerable professor standing there. The prime minister. Er�a person�and a gentleman at that�from Buganda region. You can physically destroy a region�like the north�by instituting a permanent state of war. But you can also politically destroy a region�like Buganda�by luring its people to abandon their conscience and alienating them from their fellow citizens. The main reasons why Uganda deserves another dispensation in 2006 sometimes seem obvious. Contrary to Nadduli�s propaganda, to betray Museveni is to blind him to this reality. Likewise, those who genuinely love Buganda and its people must exhort the Baganda to hold fast to their conscience; for every regime finally comes face to face with questions about our finer, greater shared humanity. And, ultimately, it does not matter so much if Nadduli as an individual gets stuck at the gravy train. |
� 2004 The Monitor Publications
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