2,000 Stolen Years (Part 4): Of Museveni Jiggers, And Fruits Of Pain
From The Monitor, Dec. 22, 1999
By Charles Onyango-Obbo
And so we come to this fourth and last part of the 2,000 stolen years" series, in which we have explored Africa's disastrous performance this century and the passing millenium.First, one little story; then a question.
In 1997, a fine American woman Hillary Kammerer, who had come to Uganda with her partner applied to The Monitor for a job as an editor. She had previously edited on a newspaper in Laos and Jordan.
She was taken on for a year as a sub-editor. One day I wrote in my column about jiggers. She came to me looking confused; "Charles, the usage of the word `jiggers' in your article is wrong. I couldn't find jiggers which attack feet anywhere in the dictionary", she said.
I was puzzled, and asked to look at quite advanced newsroom dictionary she was holding.
She was right. The word jigger exists alright, but is no longer used to refer to that awful bug that infest feet. The jigger has long disappeared in most parts of the world, and the word has long ago changed usage - except in Africa.
That was quite a loud statement about just how primitive conditions are in Uganda, because at the time of writing, there was a jiggers epidemic in Pallisa and Mukono districts, and schools had been closed because of it.
In Pallisa it was quite pathetic because in the jigger row that broke out between school authorities, parents, and government officials, the headmasters were being blamed for, of all things, neglecting to smear the classroom floors with cow dung thus allowing dirt and dust to pile up, and give sanctuary to jiggers!
Fancy that, in this day and age, you have a school under the government whose floor is still "cemented" with cow dung.
I remember this episode last week when I was re-reading president Yoweri Museveni's collection of speeches, What Is Africa's Problem?, where he notes, quite correctly, that one indication of how backward Africa is, is that we are still harassed by jiggers.
Yet reading that book itself raises serious questions about this continent's future. If you strip it of the partisan rhetoric and self justifications, What is Africa's Problem? is a very good book, and it reflected the Museveni of old, grappling with a problem without emotion, and careful to underpin his work with a lot of research and figures.
The book is a gold mine of critical numbers on Uganda's social, political, and economic indicators of years 1962 to 1992.
Yet seeing the actions of president Museveni today, and the corruption that has become legion in his government, his single minded march toward an authoritarian one- party government, and the squander of national wealth in questionable military adventures abroad, it is difficult to imagine that it is the same person who authored the book.
This disjuncture between what we preach and how we act has been the source of a lot of pain in Africa.
A highly educated and apparently sensible man comes to power on a high sounding platform of democracy, then turns oppressor once in office.
A very learned medical doctor performs successful heart surgery on a patient at mid-day, and at midnight takes his childless wife to a witch doctor to help her get pregnant.
Which is one reason, I was totally frightened after "2,000 stolen Years (Part II): Slave Trade Took Our Best, Left Us Chaff", The Monitor, Dec. 08), by the responses of many people. I was frightened because it confirmed to me that I had been more right than I had thought! Emotion and blinkered vision prevented some from pursuing in a rational cold way the simple argument made there: It's true the slave traders were not looking for scientist in the African jungles. They couldn't have, because they didn't imagine that Africans were that smart. They were looking for muscle and healthy bodies, yes. But that is the point; in Africa then, as today, good health and bodies are predominantly a function of some relative degree of privilege. In the villages, the children of richer peasants are healthier and smarter (due to their more stimulating environment) that those of the poor ones. In the cities and towns, the middle class kids are healthier and smarter than the children of the slums.
Therefore while the slave trader wasn't looking for brains, by deciding to take away the healthy-bodied, he also (inadvertently) robbed Africa of its best minds because the skewed allocation of social, economic, and political resources on a relatively small percentage of the population on the continent has resulted into a concentration of good health and brains in that same small group, and a shortage of it outside the privileged classes.
As we contemplate the next millenium, it is mostly our thinking that we have to fix. Education is only part of the solution. While the majority of school-going children in Uganda go to school after UPE was introduced, the global picture in Africa is horrifying. Just about 12% of school going children are in school, and just a few years go illiteracy rates in the continent were 75%. It is projected that when the numbers are added after the new year, 60% of the continent will still be illiterate.
Take South Africa. As the 1980s closed, the country was still in the grip of apartheid rule, and the whites had all the privileges. The Whites, who were about 10% of the population and quite educated, owned 72% of all South Africa's vehicles then. The predominantly illiterate black South Africans, who were just over 80% owned 12% of the vehicles. However they accounted for 63% of the road deaths! The Whites who had the bulk of the vehicles accounted for just 21%.
Why are Africans more given to passing on blind curves; and driving at out of control speeds than their Western counterparts? You can have an unsophisticated answer that the African doesn't conceptualise a problem the way a Westerner would, for example. The European would say `if I do A, B will be the result'. Not your average African.
Or you could have a more scientific one; that the car has been available to the mass of Africans for less than 35 years, and therefore they have not internalised the technological culture to avoid committing mass suicide with it.
The same mindset plagues our views about democracy, the lack of which I believe remains the single most important explanation for Africa's backwardness.
Museveni's What Is Africa Problems? for example, sounds enlightened in several respects except in its conception of democracy where, as is his wont, he attacks "Multiparty" democracy as unsuited to a non-industrialised society like Uganda because it will only result in old divisions along religion and tribes, instead of classes.
He sprinkles the book with his admiration of people like the recently deceased former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, who popularised the theory that, after all, multiparty democracy is "unAfrican" because unelected elders and chiefs used to sit down under a tree and resolve issues for people without regard to their political affiliation.
Agreed, democracy is not about form, but essence (substance). But what is this substance? In old Africa, it did not matter that the chiefs and elders were unelected. What was important was that the people, even those who thought someone else should be the chief, consented to their rule. In Uganda, for example, it doesn't matter fundamentally really whether it's the movement or multi-party which wins out as being democratic. It won't make a difference unless all Ugandans, particularly the losers, consent to Museveni's rule if he is re-elected in 2001.
Today, as one journalist observed, elections in Africa (be they multi-party, Movement, one-party and so forth) are too easily manipulated and stolen, and in many cases end up doing more harm than good; allowing dictators to wrap themselves in a new aura of legitimacy.
I find hope for Africa in an very unlikely source. The wars, genocides, famines, and all forms of pestilence have forced millions of Africa to flee to neighbouring countries and to leave the narrow confines of their villages. They have been exposed to extreme difficulties, and they and their children will eventually become convinced that the way forward is to restrain the excessive powers of their rulers and their armies. They have seen large expanses of unfarmed and unsettled land as they flee, and compared them to the barren little plots they owned in their villages. They will understand now that there is life beyond the hill.
They are mixing with new communities, learning the habits of accommodation and shedding off their backward customs now that they have escaped the authority of the high priests and other "cultural guardians" back home.
Unfortunately most of us might not be around when that happens; it is going to take 50 or so years.
(A lot of the facts and figures in this column - and the four parts of the series - have been come from several sources. However, to make reading easy, they have not been directly attributed in the body of the article. The author wishes to acknowledge particularly Peter B. Evans, "Predatory, Developmental, And Other Apparatuses: A Comparative Political Economy Perspective On The Third World" (Sociological Forum); Dani Rodrick, "Getting Interventions Right; How South Korea and Taiwan Grew Rich", (Growth Policy); Ramkrishna Murkherjee, "Uganda: An Historical Accident? Class, Nation, State Formation"; Adam Seftel (Ed.) "Uganda: The Blood Stained Pearl of Africa"; V.Y Mudimbe "The Invention of Africa; Gnosis, Philosophy And The Order Of Knowledge"; Blaine Harden, "Africa; Dispatches From A Fragile Continent"; Mort Rosenblum, "Coups & Earthquakes").
�2000Charles Onyango-Obbo & Worldwide EP. All rights reserved.
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