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What happened to the NRM revolutionaries? Tajudeen A. Raheem Daily Monitor, Wednesday, December 3, 2008 What happens to revolutionaries when they get into power? This familiar question haunted me all of last week when I was back 'home' in Uganda (I lived in Uganda from 1992-2005 and still hold a Ugandan government diplomatic passport). We were having the Africa retreat of the UN Millennium Campaign at the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel in Entebbe. We were with MDG campaigners from 16 countries across Africa to celebrate this year's Guinness-record breaking Stand Up And Take Action in support of MDGs. The guest of honour was a long term comrade, a 'historical' member of the NRM, a Pan Africanist and controversialist public figure, a man who fished me out of very dangerous life threatening situations twice. He was not disappointing in raising a lot of controversies about MDGs and how they can be achieved in Africa but some of his conclusions were most disappointing. As an NRM ideologue, he displayed the kind of gross insensitivity to the ordinary citizen and ideological retreat that has characterised President Museveni's long term hegemony over the Ugandan state and society. They have stayed so long in power that they have all forgotten their previous jobs, values and visions. >From heralding 'fundamental change' they have become apostles of 'no change'. >They have become reactionaries, tired revolutionaries exhausting the country >they claim they have liberated. The challenge now facing Ugandans is similar >to what is facing Zimbabweans, Ethiopians, Eritreans and other post-liberation >societies; how to liberate themselves from their liberators. The liberators have become establishment reactionaries blocking future changes. My good comrade reduced the attainment of the MDGs to 'putting money in the pockets of individual African.' I have no problem with Africans becoming richer and having more money in their pockets. But can we all make money like ministers? He went further to state without any sense of decorum that 'my children do not go to UPE schools' adding that if he was sick he would not go to Mulago, the national referral hospital. If ministers do not use the services provided by the government of which they are members, why should the public trust those departments? My comrade minister was being honest but that honesty also reveals how far the NRM oligarchy has travelled in the opposite direction of the fundamental change they promised. They are no longer changing the system because they are the system. The burden of change is now squarely on the shoulders of another generation. They are no longer part of the solution but very central to the problem. The following day we had a public forum at the Grand Imperial on how Africa can achieve the MDGs by 2015. The consensus was that the MDGs may not be achieved not because there are no resources but for lack of political will by African leaders for goals Number One to Seven and the political leaders of the rich countries who are not delivering on the Goal 8 commitments. The discussion was even more passionate. A participant who is a senior bureaucrat from the Ministry of Health of Uganda earned a well deserved opprobrium from the audience when he suggested that the meeting was just about noise makers shouting the usual taunts about governance, accountability, corruption, etc and saying less about the 'how question.' For a senior bureaucrat supposedly appointed as a qualified technocrat to go to a public meeting for 'the how question' raises doubt about his qualifications. But his dismissal of the governance issues raise even more questions in the context of Uganda. A senior official from a ministry that is overwhelmed with corruption charges that led to the censure and sacking of ministers is the last person to be so pompous as to dismiss public outcry. But his attitude represents what is wrong with the NRM regime: contempt for the ordinary citizen. They have stayed so long in power that they behave as though they are monarchs. Many of them have hope of remaining in power for as long as President Museveni is there. This is why Museveni/NRM does not have any exit strategy. They can't remember not being in power and can't contemplate not being in power, whatever the citizens may think. Dr Tajudeen is a Pan-Africanist
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