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Those who
have persistently articulated the quest for federalism under President
Yoweri Museveni�s regime have over the years been treated more or less
like restless youngsters. How has Museveni�s strategy worked? First, you
must assure them that they are among your best friends; that you will do
almost anything to make them happy. And most important, that you are the
only person on earth who will go that distance.
Two, while
they should never be allowed to stop hoping, they must be kept guessing
what or when your next move will be. Three, when it comes to policies on
which you intend to make good, it helps to delay and draw out each
delivery for as long as public patience can hold. Remember that if you
give ten sweets to a child all at once, they will be finished in a day,
and he will ask for more. If you hand out one sweet every Sunday, they
will last several weeks. So every Sunday the child will have to (if
grudgingly) acknowledge that you deliver.
This kind of
benign meanness keeps many sons and daughters under otherwise leaky
parental roofs for several years. And that is how the country (apart from
the north) got its sleep from the Movement. That is how traditional rulers
were restored, albeit without any power. Plus the 1995 constitution and
the �democratic�� 1996 elections.
Then the 2000
referendum that seemed to give the Movement yet another lease of life;
that is, until the judges said all the time keeping was wrong.
How many
years have gone by? Oh, eighteen! Well, that is also the way you will get
your multi-party system, making it twenty.
I believe
that federalism was programmed to be President Museveni�s joker, the trump
card to crown all concessions, coinciding with his quest for yet another
stretch of years in power.
But to give
some powers to the regions means to surrender those powers at the centre.
Museveni, a control freak, would live a nightmarish life devising ways of
retrieving the powers so given away.
The Odoki
report presented Museveni with a problem; the majority of Ugandans wanted
a federal arrangement. But the report also opened an opportunity; the
support for federalism was significantly stronger in Buganda than
elsewhere. If that difference in the levels of fervour could be nurtured
to appear to be a conflict in positions, making federalism a concept that
Buganda had to �sell� to other regions, then the president was well
advanced in the design to keep his turf.
Isolate�
isolate� isolate them. Even demonise them. As recently as last Sunday,
after forces from various regions appeared to close ranks with Buganda,
Museveni moved very quickly. And Mengo officials slipped into the same old
trap and accepted an invitation to attend a hastily arranged meeting at
State House to discuss their concerns and grievances with the president on
their own.
The result
was entirely predictable: one inch of progress, which can be reversed
whenever it is expedient for the president to backtrack, and a good
measure of irritation among Mengo�s �new�� allies, the sting of which has
prompted Mengo to improve on its footwork.
Look at the
president�s meanness towards Kampala mayor, Ssebaana Kizito, who against
so many odds has tried to make some improvements to the city. It is
difficult to see Museveni appreciating the work of regional governors, who
might after all usefully reform service delivery in areas where the
present myriad of LC councillors and chiefs have become little more than
partisan parasites sponging on an impoverished populace.
But one must
have some sympathy with the president. If you have been used to blessing
or kicking anyone around for so long, in any corner of the country; and
you have gamblers, conmen and investors pretending to be under the spell
that you are the only god this side of the earth, and you are in a year
when your Cabinet�s idea of constitutional reform was to give you even
more power, you would not cede any of that so easily.
And that must
be one reason why Museveni, who lectures and offers wisdom on every topic
under the sun, has never committed chalk and time to explain to his
peasants how federalism works. If he did, they would probably be wiser on
the holes in the blend of his philosophy of bigger regional blocks, his
dismissal of federalist aspirations and his fragmentation of the country
into unviable postage stamp-sized districts.
For now,
their ignorance is his strength, especially if they are encouraged to
confuse federalism with monarchism, and to increase the tint of ethnic and
tribal sentiments in their attitude instead of emphasizing
�developmental�� concerns.
This
ignorance has even become respectable. It would be fine to be opposed to
the system, but a good number of our legislators now actually claim to be
too potato-brained to understand the main features of federalism!
Before they
built their mansions in Kampala, the NRA/M lords used to mock their
predecessors as �primitive��. And yet these new brilliant men and women
cannot see beyond Buganda�s dated glory songs, nor beyond their obsession
with the charms of this little metropolis called Kampala, with its
car-jammed winding tracks masquerading as streets.
They cannot
visualize the emergence of new centers; new institutions of learning,
research, industry and health care powered by the engines of federalism,
tapping the huge reserve of human potential out there; the growth of new
cities; cities which would make posterity wonder what the fuss about
Muteesa I�s dusty town was all about.
And they
can�t see in that distance because they are totally self-regarding. They
are now very rich, but in spirit they are �hand-to-mouth�� gatherers and
predators. They cannot invest their faith in communities and cities that
would reach their splendour after they are dead or have left
power.
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