Onyango Oloo Goes "Hodi! Hodi!" on our
Jirani's Mlango...
By the way, is it not amazing that even those
bastions of local reaction and repression, the chiefs and
their assistants are trooping to the NO rallies to take, perhaps for the
first time in their lives a democratic political stand against the Kenyan
government?
What do you say about a regime which has five of its own
cabinet ministers and several of its own civil servants and administrators
casting their lot with the opposition to oppose an odious dictatorial
constitutional subterfuge?
Do you call that regime desperate or
what?
I call it a
dik dik
caught in the jaws of an ingwe.
You know, the yelps from the
hapless Kivuitu may very well turn out to be a trial balloon by a beleagured
regime desperate not to face the ultimate humiliation of a resounding defeat at
the referendum polls. An observer in Nairobi that I correspond with recently
speculated that the Yes Team may actually be " rescued" by a friendly High Court
which may, at the eleventh hour decide to rule in favour of KANU and the LDP and
HALT the referendum- which of course would be a pyrrhic victory
indeed.
Incidentally, I feel for the banana vendors in Western Kenya and
and the orange juice hawkers in Central Kenya. Poleni. Personally, I think there should be a
Commission of Inquiry set up to unearth the braniac who came up with the idea of
using the two innocent fruits as volatile political symbols. The culprit if
found should be taken to Kamiti and... never mind, it was a
joke!
Yesterday evening I walked into a restaurant called Liban which is located a few doors west of the
Anishnabe Native Health Centre in the
Queen and Sherbourne neighbourhood of
downtown Toronto. The establishment, run
by a Somali woman, is named after her son
and is not to be confused for another Somali restaurant called Bilan on Dundas and Jarvis which the owner named after
his daughter. I had gone there to share a meal with a very good friend of mine,
a Kenyan who was born and raised in Eastliegh section of the Kenyan capital and is
one of the authentic Somali Sijui- his
first language is Kiswahili. My pal is
a long time Pan Africanist activist and
organizer who has some very wonderful links with various African, Caribbean and Latin American social
movements. He is also a reservoir of
knowledge on East African politics. For instance, it is his assessment
that no one should be surprised if a new, more vicious civil war breaks out in
neighbouring Somalia. The Nairobi installed
President and former war lord has provoked the ire of the Mogadishu war lords by
decreeing that the capital of Somalia should be moved from Mogadisho to Joha- a
move that is certain to be resisted vigorously and militarily by the militia
forces that control that conflict prone battered Horn of African metropolis.
Given his previous assesment of the region, there is no reason for me to
second guess him about this.
Reconnecting with my friend was also an
opportunity to learn a lot of new things about political developments in the
country that we Luos call "Piny Rabolo"-
the Land of Bananas, not because it is a
Banana Republic in the political sense, but because of its famed matoke, and may
add senene. Of course, I am talking about the country that gave birth to Kabaka Mwanga, John Akii-Bua, Major General Nyangweso,
the hip hop phenomenon Chameleon, Robert Serumaga, Okot p'Bitek, Yash Tandon,
Mahmood Mamdani and of course Idi Amin Dada.
Isn't amazing that
there are Kenyans just like myself, who
are so consumed by the soap opera about machungwa na ndizi, ndio na hapana, raisi mtendaji na
waziri mkuu, we are so absorbed in our collective Kenyan navel gazing as
to be totally oblivous of what is arguably a bigger story, a bigger political
drama brewing right next door in Uganda.
Here is a quick quiz. And please
do not cheat by googling. Incidentally I am NOT providing the answers at the
end:
1. Who is the Vice President of
Uganda?
2. Where is Kabale
located?
3. Who is the most prominent
feminist of Uganda?
4. What was the
Katikiro?
5. Which Ugandan President
hunted down the Mau Mau?
6. Which
Ugandan President used to sleep in Karachuonyo before he became head of
state?
7. Which Ugandan President
lived in Nairobi's East Lands?
8.
Chandaria is to Kenya as blank blank is to Uganda...
9. Shivji is to Dar es Salaam as dash dash is to
Kampala...
10. What is the name of
the woman who is currently acting Chairperson of the main Ugandan opposition
grouping?
11. How many
Gikuyu-Ugandans do you know? How about Kalenjin-Ugandans? Swahili-Ugandans?
Somali-Ugandans?
12. In which town do
you find the headquarters of the Uganda Manufacturers'
Association?
How well did you do?
Please give up your
Kenyan kipande if you got less than four right.
It is amazing isnt it-I
mean the abysmal ignorance that Kenyans have about Uganda.
As a Dholuo
speaking Kenyan I always laugh at my fellow Jengs who claim that they cannot
speak "Oswayo" ati because we are "Nilotes"-plus or minus our six missing or non
missing teeth. You know, even though the TZ people say that " Kiswahili was born
in Tanzania, died in Kenya and buried in Uganda" it is startling to find that in
Uganda, in terms of ethnic groups with a facility for the Kiswahili language,
one finds the northern Luo speaking communities of the Acholi, Langi, Padhola,
Alur and others who are fluent in the language and the Bantu based Baganda,
Banyankole, Basoga etc struggling with Africa's most widely spoken indigenous
language. Part of this I am told has to do with the colonial British legacy
where, unlike Kenya it was the Ugandan Luos and other northern and eastern
ethnic groups who were recruited in the police and the armed forces where
Kiswahili was the lingua franca and the southern Bantus, especially the Baganda
assimilated into English because the British was intent on grooming them as
junior to mid ranking civil service functionaries.
Where am I going with
this?
I am looking for an excuse to start yapping about the
FDC.
Every Kenyan should learn all about
the FDC because in my opinion the FDC is likely to mushroom into the
ANC of East
Africa in terms of sophistication of
political organization, extensive mass base, strong international links and
serious impact on the regions geo-political contestations.
What is
it? Or rather, who are they?
Well, for me, pictures are usually more
eloquent than words, so why do we start with a few that I lifted off the FDC
website:
WE PATRIOTIC
UGANDANS, living within the country and abroad, who love our Nation and
desire and seek peace, harmony and the best future for our country and
People:-
UNITED AND ACTING as
members of this new, patriotic, nationalistic, enlightened, non-sectarian and
ideologically all-embracing party- the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), and
desirous to see all political forces of goodwill working together for the
salvation and good of our beloved Uganda.
CONSCIOUS of the historical reality that, since
its independence in 1962, Uganda has lived through cycles of national progress
followed by chaos due to constitutional and political instability, and
determined to break this stagnating cycle and move the country to a new plane of
socio-political emancipation and progress.
RECOGNIZING the enormous socioeconomic
potential of Uganda and the successes that the country scored in the 1980s and
early 1990s when governance by the Movement leadership was based on the
principles of openness, all-inclusiveness, honest consultations, consensus
building, selflessness, sacrifices and patriotic participation in national
affairs, and also on the goodwill of we Ugandans.
BUT FURTHER RECOGNIZING the drastic change in
trend towards national stagnation and even decline, arising from deliberate
undermining of the countrys democratic ideals as enshrined in the 1995 National
Constitution; increasing reliance on individuals rather than national
institutions; dominance of monologue over dialogue; intolerance of alternative
views; use of bribery, sectarian divisions and sycophancy in key political
processes; greed and wasteful deployment of national resources; and unpatriotic
and increasingly debilitating focus on self and petty self-interests rather than
on the nation and its well-being.
DEEPLY
PAINED by persisting abuse of the fundamental human rights of Ugandans,
particularly their rights and freedom to hold and express divergent political
views; the false accusations and arrests of people, and incarceration based on
trumped up treason charges, illegal detention in ungazetted so-called
safe-houses; unleashing of violence against perceived opponents of the Movement
(NRM-O) using security organs and illegal paramilitary groups, such as Kalangala
Action Plan (KAP) and Popular Intelligence Network (PIN); and the shameless
manipulation of parliamentarians and the rigging of electoral processes and
elections.
ALSO DEEPLY PAINED by
the persisting hemorrhage of national resources through rampant corruption,
political patronage, reckless ventures and administrative laxity and ineptitude;
and by the wanton destruction of youthful lives in numerous local and
cross-border conflicts that have brooded through neglect and mismanagement, have
engineered or have involved ourselves in-- particularly the Congo conflict, the
now ended Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) insurgency in Western Uganda, and the
Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency and cattle rustling in Northern and
Eastern Uganda.
KNOWING that all
the various negative activities and trends have undermined the faith of our
people, locally and in the Diaspora, in our democracy, governance, politics and
the authenticity of political leaders; is threatening harmony among our people
and communities; has grossly undercut the image of Uganda and its people and the
respect enjoyed by them internationally; is perpetuating insecurity and
political instability internally and in the Great Lakes Region at severe cost to
the development of the country; and is scaring away investors and long-term
investments critical to national transformation.
ALSO KNOWING that all these things prevent us
from maximally exploiting, for the benefit of all our people and the rapid
transformation of our land, the great gift of nature, cultural diversity, and
uniqueness and industriousness of our people that the Good Lord so generously
bestowed upon us and our country.
BUT
ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that recommitting ourselves, purposely uniting and
working selflessly together, and standing ready to make all necessary
sacrifices, we will set a new mission based on a shared national vision, stop
the decline, and collectively take ourselves and country to new heights of
peace, unity, harmony, achievements, development, transformation, greatness, and
international standing and admiration.
NOW THEREFORE, AND WITH GREAT HUMILITY, present
to Ugandans and all who wish our country well, this FDC Party Platform which
encapsulates the challenges facing our country and what we seek to do to
overcome them and move our people forward; and as a rallying call for us all to
stand up and be counted, to unreservedly unite and offer ourselves and all that
we have for the common good and the future of our people, and to finally banish
from our country dictatorial tendencies, sectarianism, political instability,
violence, insecurity, rule by cronies and all those elements and forces that
have persistently undermined democracy, peace, happiness, national cohesion and
dignity and our socio-economic advancement.
VISION:"One Uganda, One People United for Peace, Progress
and Prosperity".
As Uganda
transitions from the Movement governance under President Museveni and his
overbearing dominance of national institutions to a new multiparty political
dispensation, utterances by NRM functionaries, actions by some organs of the
State, increasing assault on the Judiciary, and disregard of the rights and
freedoms of opposition political actors provide clear evidence of difficult
times ahead. It is the conviction of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Party
that the country must once again pause and take stock of where it is heading,
and collectively define and agree on what we all must do to protect the
democratic and socio-economic gains we have made and to break away from the
recurrent cycle of progress followed by chaos and decline.
Without a
doubt, it is again time for a new beginning in our beloved nation; a time to put
our country back on a steady path to peaceful transition to democratic
governance, national reconciliation and broad-based economic
development.
FDC takes the position that there are indispensable rights
that are preconditions without which democratic governance is impossible, and
which any government is obligated to respect and fulfill: civil and political
rights, economic and social rights, and the right to peace and security. The
fundamental elements of these rights are freedom of association, freedom of
speech and access to information, the provision of basic needs, and peaceful
resolution of conflicts.
The above
convictions underpin the FDCs Vision for leading Uganda forward: One Uganda,
One People United for Peace, Progress and
Prosperity.
Click here for the
FDC Leadership
Team.For more information
browse
the website yourself, OK?
The
Forum
for Democratic Change in Uganda has obvious echoes to Kenya's own
Forum for the Restoration of Democracy in the
1990s or the
National Rainbow Coalition,
in the sense of being a broad based convergence of national democratic and
patriotic forces.
On closer examination, one sees this resemblance as
superficial.
In the Kenyan context, the original FORD was a loose
conglemeration of respected nationalists like
Jaramogi, Muliro, Matiba, Shikuku, Nthenge at
the top with a very mixed bag of wananchi at its base. The National Rainbow
Coalition was/is a temporary electoral marriage of convenience that brought
together 14 political parties with the express purpose of running a single
Presidential candidate and pooling opposition resources in order to defeat Moi
and KANU at the 2002 polls.
With all due respect, I would
argue that the Forum for Democratic Change in Uganda is a cut above, slightly
more sophisticated and advanced outfit than either of the two Kenyan political
formations. Part of this has to do with the very dynamics of Ugandan history-
which has undergone three military coups, at least three guerrilla wars, and two
decades of this unique experiment with "no party government". The Ugandans have
learned from their own history, from what has been happening in Kenya, Sudan,
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambqiue, and
through their diasporic and exiled members- Canada, the United States, the UK,
Scandinavia, continental Europe and elsewhere.In one sense
therefore, the Ugandans are both our teachers and students in terms of political
organizing- having seen our own pitfalls and forging new models for democratic
mass mobilization.
One can see that the
Forum for Democratic Change, while clearly an
electoral machine hoping to implement political pluralism after the
2006 elections, also has clear elements of a
more stable, extra- parliamentary national social and political
movement.
To the extent that the FDC has consciously decided to eschew a
clear ideological program in favour of the big tent approach, they are making
strides in transcending narrow sectarian and parochial preoccupations. At the
same time, we know that failure to define in very concrete terms how the Forum
for Democratic Change looks at Uganda, the East and Central African and wider
contintental and global context will have a very direct impact in terms of the
long term sustainability of the FDC because we do know that international
finance capital has a long standing tradition of coopting, neutralizing and
circumscribing national democratic processes by coralling them within the
confines of a neo-colonial box wedded to a neo-liberal paradigm.
I recall
talking to the
late Claude Dusaidi, one
of the founders and key leaders of the
Rwandese
Patriotic Front who for a long time based out of a certain basement in
the North York neighbourhood of Toronto. He used to talk very casually about
"going down to Washington to talk to the State Department" and I did not take it
seriously. Today, the imperialist designs on the Democratic Republic of the
Congo using Kagame's Rwanda are very clear to all.
Having seen how people
like the billionaire currency speculator and
Open
Society head honcho
George Soros have used NGOs
and civil society organizations to unleash synthetic "revolutions" in
Georgia, the Ukraine
and other parts of Eastern Europe; having followed, for almost twenty years the
machinations of both the National Democratic Institute and the National
Republican Institute as well as its sisters like the
National Endowment for
Democracy(NED), it is pretty clear to me that the political organizations we
launch in
Kampala, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam,
Asmara, Addis Ababa, Khartoum, Juba, Kigali, Bujumbura, Kivu, Goma,
Kinshasha and elsewhere are not immune to the interference and
manipulation of surrogates of the C
IA, the MI5,
CSIS and the direct state authorities in Ottawa, Washington, London, Paris,
Stockholm, the Hague, Oslo, Tokyo you name it.
James Petras has spoken of "
neoliberalism from
below" when referring to the nexus between NGOs (often populated by
ex-Marxists) and imperialist linked funding organizations.
That is why one must openly posit the possibility of
either direct infiltration from imperialism or an even more direct flirtation
from the inside by local players trying to parley their outfits to the
international monopoly capital by pledging future economic and political
stability predicated on a continuation of the same noxious fumes of imperialism
downloaded in the local context as this or that "bilateral or multilateral
cooperation pact".Knowing next to nothing about the
Forum for Democratic Change of Uganda, I will
of course NOT rush to sit in on judgement on them, preferring instead to take my
time to get to know the movement and its leaders a little bit better.
Fortunately, at least in the Toronto context, some of these Ugandan patriots may
already have very close links to their Kenyan neighbours, a country many of them
passed through during the
Amin, Obote, Okello
and of course now Museveni years on their way to Canada.
It is far
too early to suggest collaboration between the FDC and Kenyan patriots and
democrats, although this does seem like an inevitable and natural development
once we get to know each other better.
In the meantime, the
Forum for Democratic Change may offer a glimpse
of how we Kenyans can go about building something that I called for a few months
ago:
A Broad based
Mseto
Moto Moto.That is all I wanted to say today.
Onyango Oloo
Toronto
