Uganda in Transition: Two Years of the NRA/NRM

Author(s): Mahmood Mamdani

Source: Third World Quarterly , Jul., 1988, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Jul., 1988), pp. 1155-1181
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3992287

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MAHMOOD MAMDANI

Uganda in transition: two years

of the NRA/NRM*

The second anniversary of the National Resistance Movement-led

government in Kampala fell on 26 January 1988. January also brought
into sharp relief the possibilities and limits of that government. On the
debit side, the working poor were experiencing the worst inflationary
spiral in recent memory-a combined result of artificially generated fuel
shortages following Kenya's closure of the border and lavish unplanned
expenditures during the government-hosted summit of the Preferential
Trade Area for East and Southern Africa (PTA) in December 1987. But
the long-term problem, I shall argue, lay in the failure of the government
to charter a new direction in economic policies. The economy represents
the single most important failing of this government.
And yet, though a bottle of beer on that day cost very nearly the
equivalent of a month's minimum official wage, 26 January 1988 did not
turn out to be just another officially decreed holiday; rather, it was
marked by a wave of popular celebrations. Wherever there was public
space, such as in the city square or the taxi park or in an assortment of
market places in the suburbs populated by petty traders, artisans and
workers that ring Kampala in a semi-circular arc, crowds of people sang
and danced into the early hours of the morning. What were they
celebrating? Peace and security, agreed commentators in the Kampala
press, by far the freest in East Africa.
This achievement cannot be appreciated without analysing the social
origin of the soldiers, the internal organisation of the army and the wider
political framework in which it functions. Neither can the achievement
be taken for granted.
In any Third World country, it would be a mistake to generalise from
the capital. This is particularly true of Uganda, a country torn asunder
by active civil war as recently as just a few months ago, where the Nile
represents not only a geographical but also a political divide: to the east,
according to the political pundits, lies the 'Nilotic North' and to the
west, the 'Bantu South'. Like most generalisations, that of the 'Nilotic
North' stretches reality, for the population east of the Nile is not
* This article, which was commissioned by Third World Quarterly, was delivered as a
public lecture at Makerere University, Kampala, on 3 March 1988.

TWQ 10(3) July 1988/ISSN 0143-6597/88. $1.25 1155

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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

exclusively Nilotic; the term was really a catch-phrase for areas t

strongholds of Milton Obote's Uganda People's Congress (uPc).
In the political 'South' lies the home of the National Resistance Army
(NRA): the land of its political baptism, the Luwero Triangle, was the site
of the five-year guerrilla war against the second Obote regime. But on
the other side of the Nile, in the political 'North' where it pursued fleeing
and marauding soldiers of previous regimes, this same NRA ran into
unexpected but stiff opposition from what resembled more of a medieval
social movement than a modern military formation. This movement-
the Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) of Alice Lakwena-mobilised the
commitment and energies of thousands of 'Northern' peasants against
the NRA, but perished in the face of popular peasant opposition the closer
it got to the waters of the Nile.
I shall argue that the social character of the Holy Spirit Movement
was different from that of the rest of the rebel groups that opposed the
NRA, and that it was a political failure of the NRA not to have recognised
this distinction, and worked out different tactics in dealing with the HSM.
26 January 1988 is the mid-point of the four-year 'transitional' period
decreed by the NRA when it came to power. The closure of that period is
supposed to signal the blooming of a fully-flowered democracy in
Uganda. But what is to be the content of that democracy? Is it to be a
no-party democracy of Resistance Committees, from the village up to
the national parliament, overseen by the National Resistance Movement
(NRM), or is it to be a multi-party democracy where the NRM will vie for
power as a political party in an electoral contest that will include other
parties, particularly the Democratic Party (DP) and the upc? Clearly,
views diverge on this crucial political issue. But the debate is hushed, and
seldom surfaces in the pages of the press, reflecting both the extremely
sensitive character of the issues involved, and Uganda's history of
political detentions and even worse meted out to critics and opponents
by a host of unpopular regimes. I shall argue that, of all the issues
outlined above, this is the central issue, and its resolution-more than
anything else-will determine the future of Uganda in the years to come.
Security, economy, national unity and democracy, these then are the
key issues of public debate and private concern in today's Uganda. This
debate sums up the attempt by Ugandans, of different political
tendencies and divergent social positions, to come to terms with a
common past and with one another, in a world whose sympathy and
understanding we have learned not to take for granted.

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

Security

To the world at large, Uganda has become synonymous with state

terrorism. Over the past two decades, the decline in the security situation
has been so alarming that it would be no exaggeration to say that with
the Lutwa-Okello coup of July 1985, civil-military relations in Uganda
most closely resembled those in Beirut (where private armed gangs
control separate spaces) and in Haiti (where the army devours civilian
society).
It is the single most important achievement of the NRA to have arrested
this trend towards the repressive forces of the state dominating,
suffocating and choking civil society-even if this advance should turn
out to be temporary. It is this achievement more than any other that
working people in and around Kampala joined the regime in celebrating
in January 1988.
What explains the degeneration in civil-military relations towards a
Haiti-type situation over the past two decades? And to what extent has
the NRA succeeded in reversing this trend?
It has been tempting and easy for commentators to connect the
growth in state terror to the persons of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, and
then to explain the former by reference to the latter. Thus, much
discussion has focused on whether Amin or Obote 'actually knew what
was going on', and were therefore personally responsible for it or not.
While the question may be important for biographers, it is more
important for students of politics to focus on the changing organisation
and recruitment of the official machinery of repression, and on the
political milieu in which it functioned.
From this point of view, we can identify four different phases in the
development of the armed forces: the colonial phase coming to an end in
the aftermath of the Amin period; the second phase coming to an end
with the 'liberation' of 1979; the third phase closing with the
Lutwa-Okello coup of July 1985; and yet another phase opening up with
the victory of the NRA in January 1986.
During the colonial period, the Ugandan army was recruited from
peasants in the northern labour reserves who were then deployed to
maintain order amongst southern cash-crop growing peasants. Though
brutalised by involvement in the suppression of peasant revolts,
particularly in 1945 and 1949 in Buganda and then in Kenya in the
1950s, the colonial King's African Rifles remained predominantly an
army recruited from amongst peasants.

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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

From the Amin coup of 1971 to the fall of Lutwa in 1986, we can trace
two major negative developments that account for the degeneration of
this army. The first was a shift in recruitment from peasants to lumpen
(bayaye) and semi-lumpen elements; in other words, to those removed
from the world of labour and central to the world of plunder. Second
was a factional division of the army into increasingly independent armed
gangs. In turn, these two developments reflected a wider failure to forge
a programme around which to unite a majority of Ugandans. These
developments can be traced from regime to regime.
The first significant change in the social character of this army
followed the coup of 1971. Then, in the teeth of sharp internal factional
rivalry, Amin turned to the urban poor as the easiest and quickest
available source of manpower for recruitment into the army. The most
dramatic public example of this was in 1973 when about 7,000
unemployed were gathered in City Square in Kampala, applauded by
Amin as 'volunteers' who had registered to go and fight alongside their
'brothers' in the Middle East and in South Africa, and immediately
recruited into the army!
The 'liberation' war of 1979 accelerated the tendency to recruit
soldiers from the residue of society for the following reasons: despite its
name, the 'liberation' war was really an inter-state war between the
Tanzanian army and Amin's soldiers; contending middle-class factions
rushed into the political vacuum created by Amin's defeat at the hands
of a foreign army. (The majority of these factions were hastily brought
together through a conference at Moshi in March 1979 and immodestly
baptised the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF), an arrangement
which disintegrated just as hastily and indecently following Amin's
defeat. The subsequent rivalry between these factions focused mainly on
recruitment for and control over the new Uganda National Liberation
Army (UNLA), and as each contending faction tried to recruit to the
maximum to outstrip rival factions, it turned to the one group readily
available for an armed venture, the bayaye.
The failure to organise an internal struggle against the Amin regime
was at the root of the failure in the post-Amin period to gel together a
coalition of forces around a programme that could inspire and sustain
popular support. A string of regimes followed-four in under two
years-one on the heels of another, signifying successive attempts by
diverse middle-class political factions to seek a wider and stable base of
support from a population which they only succeeded in dividing and

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

re-dividing into hostile camps, along lines of nationality, region or

religion.
In the wake of fleeing soldiers of Amin's army-but also in the teeth of
the factional struggle-the new repressive apparatus of the post-Amin
regimes was organised. The result was that the factionalism inside the
dominant classes-even more so than during the Amin period-was
almost mechanically reproduced inside the repressive organs of the state.
There was not one but several armies; not one but several intelligence
services. Each responded to a different centre of power. No one in the
state could have any idea of the combined numerical strength of these
forces.
The national army was thus no more than an arithmetic summation of
various competing semi-private armies. As their numbers were built up
in competitive fashion, these armies drew increasingly from the residue
of urban, semi-urban, and peri-urban society. The result was a
plundering and looting state power, its personnel using their arms less to
silence political opposition to the regime, than to settle factional or
personal scores, and to accumulate private wealth, whether through
regular nightly raids on civilian houses or through day-time road blocks
which were in fact semi-official toll-gathering stations.
It was the factional struggle within this army that produced the
Lutwa-Okello coup that toppled Obote in July 1985. One ethnically
organised faction (the Acholi) accused another (the Langi) of enjoying
the fruits of power while turning the Acholi into cannon fodder to fight
the fast-expanding guerrilla army in the Luwero Triangle. The
Lutwa-Okello group thus came to power on a peace programme.
The Lutwa-Okello regime wanted both power and peace! But its social
base was too narrow; it could not have both. It had to choose. To keep
power, it was willing to unite with all forces-whether organised
politically (DP) or simply as armed gangs-and to allow them to
maintain their organisational autonomy. From the partial autonomy of
armed factions in the nominal national army of the Obote period, the
Lutwa-Okello coup of July 1985 gave Uganda totally liberated and
autonomous armed factions. As the regime was transformed into a
coalition of independent armed gangs, Kampala increasingly came to
resemble Beirut, with each faction controlling its own territory.
The end of the Lutwa-Okello regime saw a bewildering array of armed
gangs at large in the countryside. The victorious NRA was confronted
with the immediate question of how to relate to them. Should it demand
that each disarm and demobilise, thereby risking opposition and thus a

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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

protracted struggle on various fronts which would drain time, energy

and resources? Or should it try to incorporate these factions into its
ranks, thereby risking the poisoning of its own army? Or should it follow
the example of the Lutwa-Okello regime, uniting with all armed factions
while allowing each to maintain its autonomy, but thereby also giving
each the time to prepare for a bid for power sometime in the future?
In practice, the NRA seems to have proceeded by trial and error. On the
side of error was its early relationship with the Uganda Freedom
Movement (UFM) and the Federal Democratic Movement (FEDEMO), both
of which at that early stage appeared to have retained their separate
leadership and organisation inside the NRA. It was the conduct of these
battalions in Kitgum, their rape and plunder of the civilian population,
that set the stage for the success of Alice Lakwena's Holy Spirit
Movement in the subsequent period.
On the side of success was the incorporation of Moses Ali, Amin's
former Minister of Finance, and his troops into the NRA. In this instance,
by all accounts, the NRA succeeded in separating the head from the body,
keeping Moses Ali content with a ministerial position while taking over
the leadership, training and reorientation of his troops. It is this success,
exemplified in the discipline and coherence of the multi-ethnic troops
that now guard Kampala, that the city population celebrated during the
second anniversary.
Yet, the coin also had another side. The NRA had gone through
significant changes in a short period of time. It had not only absorbed a
variety of armed factions of predominantly lumpen origin, but had itself
perhaps tripled in size since coming to power. Though itself a response to
the need for numbers to contain rebel forces in the north-east while
simultaneously safeguarding politically volatile borders, this expansion
did trigger off a discussion on the type of army the country needed.
Should the new army retain all the lumpen elements it had absorbed and
thus be as broad-based as the government it was supposed to defend, or
should the integration of recruits be far more selective, not only
absorbing the best but also discarding the worst?
Should the new army be a small, centralised and disciplined force
complemented by a decentralised people's militia, or should it be a large
army that would not only become a major financial burden but
also-because of its broad base character-would risk continuing
Uganda's history of translating political differences in civilian society
into a conflict between armed factions, with each step of these

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

continuing feuds being punctuated by a coup or a rebellion? I shall

return to this question later.

Economy

Be it in the realm of security or of the economy, every post-1979 regime

in Uganda has had to live in the shadow of the Amin regime. The Amin
regime was the only post-independence power in contemporary Uganda
that had the capacity to carry out institutional changes in a society that
others were simply content to inherit from the colonial period. This is
why, its record of state terror notwithstanding, it was the only regime
whose claim to being anti-imperialist was taken seriously by the
population at large.
It is necessary to appreciate that, from the point of view of the popular
classes, independence hardly ushered in any significant institutional
change. While an accelerated programme of Africanisation did create
some room at the top, its practical significance was limited to the
educated middle class.
In sharp contrast, and with a single blow, the Asian expulsion of 1972
destroyed the dome of local privilege that had crystallised over decades.
Entire towns were cleared of their propertied residents, and shops and
small industries of their established owners. With that expulsion,
Uganda became-in the popular mythology that evolved over the
years-the land of opportunity. Even the smallest man in a remote
village had heard of someone, a distant relation or neighbour, who had
made it somewhere up the ladder of success in the town. The higher up
the social ladder, the more real the land of opportunity became. The
social class over which this ideology had the firmest grip -because it also
reflected in a real way some of their changed circumstances since
1972-was that of small proprietors.
The institutional change ushered in by the Amin regime also had its
negative side: it in no way liberated labour in Uganda. Its real purpose
was to liberate, or rather to create, Ugandan capital. But the capital it
did succeed in creating was by and large speculative, not productive. It
could not lay the basis of growth. In the absence of economic
development, then, the only way the ideology of the land of opportunity
could be sustained was by a periodic repeat of the 1972 expulsion.
In this sense, it is true to say that every regime in the post-Amin era
has tried to repeat the 1972 expulsion, though on a smaller scale each
time, to recapture what the Amin regime came to consider as its moment

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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

of glory. This attempted repetition has taken two forms: on the one
hand, every regime has re-appropriated the properties that were
confiscated from the expelled Asian owners and redistributed them to its
narrow circle of supporters at the summit; on the other hand, every
regime has organised an expulsion of opponents and an appropriation of
their properties-usually land and cattle and household effects, as in
1979 (of Muslims) in Bushenyi, 1980 in West Nile or 1982-83 in
Bushenyi and Mbarara and Rakai-for distribution to a broader circle
of supporters at the base.
The tragic legacy of the Amin era has thus come to haunt Ugandans
with every new regime. As a result, not only those with property, but also
those without it, have come to experience and thus to believe that you get
rich not through investments that create new wealth but through a
transfer of already created wealth; in a word, that the quickest way to
wealth is through political power. The zero-sum character of political
competition, that loss of political office is akin to a total loss, has given
political struggles a life-and-death character; in turn, the recognition of
the ephemeral nature of political power has turned extreme plunder into
not only the quickest but also the most rational way of acquiring wealth.
With each succeeding round of transfers, internal division and violence
have intensified as Ugandan society seems to have turned in on itself.
It is this legacy, in addition to the distortions that normally
characterise neo-colonies, that President Yoweri Museveni must
contend with. His determination to establish law and order and
bourgeois legality is nothing but an attempt to bring to a close the Amin
era. And this attempt is bound to have a contradictory outcome. On the
positive side, but in the medium-term, it will create the necessary legal
environment for a functioning economic system where property titles
have legal validity and can be the basis for acquiring mortgages for
investments; this long-run security for property, no longer limited to the
lifespan of individual regimes, will also create the basis for relative
political stability within the propertied class.
But on the negative side, and in the short-term, this same reform will
appear to the popular classes-but especially to that mass of small
proprietors in and around urban centres-as a setback, a closing of the
great opening created by the Amin regime with the 1972 expulsion and
kept open-however clumsily-by every subsequent regime. The
thousand-and-one ways in which men and women of substance in high
positions could avail themselves of an opportunity for advancement to a
distant relative or clansmate will have been closed. To them, the reform

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

may appear as an attempt to fortify privilege with legal sanction,

something no government since Amin has dared to do. The land of
opportunity will be no more. How will they respond?
The only possibility for this change not to evoke a negative popular
response is if it is accompanied by further institutional changes that do
not simply redistribute wealth from one set of hands to another, but
actually liberate the energy of millions of peasants who are the producers
of Uganda's agricultural wealth.
It is here that the major weakness of the present government surfaces.
For in the two years since it captured political power, there has been no
indication of any substantive shift in the socio-economic programme of
the government. Ever since the deterioration of the economy became
marked in the mid-1970s, the bureacracy has acknowledged the arrival
of new regimes by presenting the same package for economic salvation
under different names. Thus, there is no substantial difference between
the 'Action Programme' under Amin, the 'Rehabilitation Programme'
under Obote and the 'Recovery Programme' of today.
Economic policy has been far too narrowly focused on monetary
policy, and monetary policy has tended to revolve around the single axis
of the exchange rate of the Uganda shilling. In turn, exchange-rate
policy has been swinging like a pendulum for the last two years,
beginning with a sharp devaluation and a dual exchange rate, returning
to a revaluation and a unified exchange rate, and then back to yet
another steep devaluation as the old currency was replaced by a new one.
Thus, the first Finance Minister, the late Mulema of the DP, was
ostensibly chosen because of his public criticism of Obote's International
Monetary Fund (IMF) programme of 1981-84. Yet Mulema ended up
introducing the sharp devaluation and the dual exchange rate of March
1986. Faced with a steep rise in the price of the dollar, large
proprietors-including government parastatals-responded by raising
the prices of commodities under their control; the result was
simultaneously a steep inflation and a devaluation in the price of labour.
Mulema was replaced by another anti-IMF appointee, this time from
within the ranks of the NRM, Dr Kiyonga; the shilling was revalued as the
exchange rate was re-unified. But in no time-and this time in response
to almost openly orchestrated pressure from local and international
monied circles, complete with recommendations from a wholly
Canadian-financed and largely Canadian-staffed economic team
assembled by the International Development Research Centre
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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

(IDRC)-the pendulum swung back to an even steeper devaluation as the

currency was demonetised.
The only sense an observer can make of these shifts, and of the
absence of a comprehensive economic policy, is that state policy is
simply responding tQ pressures, moving in the direction where they are
strongest. As the consequences of a particular policy become manifest,
policy-makers recoil and the pendulum swings to another extreme.
More sympathetic observers have seen in this see-saw a pragmatic and
much-needed reconciliation with reality. But the other side of this
pragmatic reconciliation is that the NRM-led government cannot boast of
having ushered in a single major socio-economic reform in the past two
years. In its reconciliation with reality, and with those corporate powers
such as the IMF that are the custodians of this reality and that cajole and
pressure governments towards 'Structural Adjustment Programmes', the
government has also reconciled itself to those landed and commercial
interests that consolidated themselves during the era of Amin.
The fact is that the 'structural adjustment' that the IMF demands is
highly inappropriate in a country where existing structures are very
much part of the problem. The need of the hour, therefore, is not for the
adjustment of these structures to changes in the international economy;
it is for institutional change in these structures themselves.
At the minimum, such a change would have three dimensions. First, it
would address those peasants in the 'South' who have historically been
plagued by insecurity of land tenure, and who have thus looked to
trade-rather than agricultural production-as the safest outlet for their
savings. In what later became the key export-producing regions,
landlordism was first introduced in 1900 by the British, but was then
substantially reversed by a land reform decree (of 1928) implemented by
the same colonial power in response to a peasant movement and the
decline in peasant export production. Landlordism and land-grabbing,
however, received a new lease of life from Amin's Land Reform Decree
of 1975 which withdrew security of tenure from every peasant, in the
name of promoting development. Since then, no government in Uganda
has dared repeal the 1975 decree and guarantee security of tenure to the
producer.
The problem of absentee landlordism has become acute with the rising
inflation of the past two decades. With rising prices, but stable rents,
landlords have tended to lose out to merchants. The response of
landlords, especially since the NRA brought peace to the 'South', has been
to speculate and sell their lands to merchants, in spite of the fact that

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

these lands are occupied and cultivated by tenants. The result has been a
marked spread of insecurity amongst tenants in the region that is the
leading producer of export and food crops in the country.
The question of appropriate land tenure policies is central, not simply
because production in our country. is predominantly agricultural, but
more so because it is carried out mainly by small peasants. Even in those
countries that are today put forward as show-cases by the IMF, such as
South Korea in Asia or Ivory Coast in Africa, vital institutional changes
were necessary for the economy to grow. In South Korea, a land reform
gave 'land to the tiller'; in Ivory Coast, state policy declared that 'land
belongs to the person who brought it under productive use' at a stroke
dealing a death blow to both absentee and clan tenure. Without the
institutional reform that will give security of tenure to peasants in this
area, the price reform so fondly championed by the IMF cannot have the
desired effect.
Second, in the historical labour-reserve areas of the 'North', where
land is still relatively plentiful but where the capacity to bring it under
cultivation is limited, both because of the dearth of numbers and of
implements, co-operation in labour has been customary. But its further
development has been stunted because state policy has generally tended
to favour individual initiatives by 'progressive farmers'; at the same
time, it has tended to ignore indigenous forms of production-based
co-operation while promoting colonial-style marketing co-operatives
controlled by these same 'progressive farmers and traders'. It is no
exaggeration to say that state agricultural policy has concentrated on
chanelling small peasant surpluses to large proprietors through the
import and subsidised sale of tractors and exotic cattle; and yet, unlike
neighbouring Kenya, capitalist farmers and ranchers are really marginal
to agricultural production in Uganda, and more so today than twenty
years ago, since it is small peasant crops (coffee) and not plantation
crops (tea) that survived the intervening economic crisis.
What is needed in these areas of peasant production which are free of
landlordism is a reversal of existing agricultural policy. State financial
subsidy, legal protection and institutional encouragement need to take
into account the fact that the solid base of agricultural production in
these areas is the small peasant, the middle and poor peasant, not the
so-called progressive farmer. State policy thus needs to encourage the
development of small peasant-based co-operatives, not simply in
marketing but in production proper and not as a negation but as a
development of conventional forms of co-operation.

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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

Third, there is the necessity for structural reform in the state sector in
general, and the parastatal sector in particular. Uganda historically had
one of the most efficient parastatal sectors, its centre-piece being the
Uganda Development Corporation. Following the Asian expulsion of
1972, however, a rapid and haphazard expansion was forced on this
sector, leading to disorganisation and ultimately gross financial
irresponsibility. We now seem to have reached the point at which Zaire
found itself in 1977, when President Mobutu characterised corruption as
'a Zairois sickness'. Today, it is almost the official view that corruption is
as Ugandan as matoke or millet, and that therefore the only way to solve
the problem is to look beyond Uganda towards foreigners for a solution.
The President openly complains of a lack of honest and trusted cadres,
and the people have come to view the entire official machinery of
implementation-the civil service-with suspicion and derision. What is
the way out?
Once again, as with every key issue, there is an alternative. The answer
of the IMF is, in a word, 'privatisation': trim the state sector by selling off
loss-making, corrupt parastatals to profit-conscious private
entrepreneurs, as is supposed to be done with Custodian Board
properties. It is an answer deceptively simple and therefore attractive.
But 'privatisation' will simply deliver state-controlled resources
primarily into the hands of foreign capital and secondarily into those of
local capital whose orientation is primarily speculative. What is the
alternative?
In my view, the alternative is two-fold. First, it is necessary to admit
that the remuneration system in effect in the public service today, the
system of payment of wages and salaries, is totally counter-productive.
Instead of encouraging hard work and dedication, it discourages it. Even
the government has now evolved two reward systems for the same work:
a realistic system of payment for foreigners, but a nominal system for
locals. Never before in our history have state employees been penalised
so severely for being Ugandans!
We need to beware of, the consequences. While most people still
manage to make ends meet, the form of income of government
employees is predominantly either illegal or anti-social. My point is that
the government has made it literally impossible for its employees to live
with any degree of self-respect. For the system of official renumeration
has the consequence of putting on sale public employees to the highest
bidder. And yet, it is the same government which then turns around and
blames the people for being corrunt!

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How are we to get out of this situation? My answer is two-fold. It is

imperative to introduce a remuneration system, whether through a direct
increase in wages and salaries or through a system of allowances, which
will make it possible for the majority to live honestly and with
self-respect. Without that, it will be impossible to fight corruption, to
identify and isolate those corrupt who grow fat at the expense of society.
And then, and only then, is it necessary to introduce a democratic
system of accountability in all parastatals. The only system of
accountability that has existed in all our public institutions has been a
system of bureaucratic accountability, where you are responsible to those
above. What we now need is a democratic system, where every official
must also account to those below. To make this possible, it is necessary
to establish at parastatal work places structures of accountability like the
Resistance Committees that today exist in residential areas only.
Today, in spite of public talk of 'fundamental change', no institutional
change has been forthcoming; on the contrary, 'Structural Adjustment'
has taken priority over structural change. The result is that on the
economic front, this government has little to show as a way forward to
inspire either the people of Uganda or of Africa. This is indeed a tragedy,
for in 1986 Uganda was one country where there was a practical
possibility of transforming popular political enthusiasm into a
productive force. To do so, however, requires institutional changes. It is
the failure to usher in even limited 'fundamental change' in the arena of
socio-economic relations that must be counted as the single most
important failing of the NRM-led government.

National unity

When it came to power, the NRA confronted an entrenched radical

tradition in Africa. This was the tradition of declaring unity under a
single party by administrative fiat.
The first of the radical single party regimes in Africa, such as the
Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) in Tanzania, legitimised
themselves by asserting that they were in fact the nation since no rival
party could lay claim to any significant popular support. Later
claimants, as in Mozambique, Angola or Ethiopia, claimed not only a
national but a vanguard status. Whether baptised as a workers' or a
Marxist-Leninist party, this self-proclaimed vanguard declared itself the
sole legitimate representative of the national interest. It thereby rendered
all other political tendencies illegitimate, eventually driving many into

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opposition. It only needed the welcoming arms of imperial powers to

transform these previously manageable and resolvable internal conflicts
into active civil wars that progressively reduced everything to ashes,
driving the country back to medieval status.
The attempts to create unity by decree had clearly failed. It is to the
credit of the NRA that, where concrete precedents on the continent were
lacking, it pioneered the search for an alternative. For the call for a
broad base was none other than an attempt to forge a viable united front
in a situation where the monopoly of political power in the hands of a
single tendency would surely have courted national disaster.
The fact was that in its exceptionally short stay of five years in the
bush the NRA'S military presence extended to no more than half the
country, and its political hold to even less. As a result, even though it had
sympathy in larger sections of the country, the NRA lacked an organised
base in over half the country. This fact not only dictated the necessity for
a united front government, it also called for an extremely creative
application of united front tactics if these were not to turn into an
unprincipled reconciliation with organised forces of the old order which
would hold back any attempt to usher in fundamental social change.
In retrospect, it is clear that the major problem with the broad base
created by the NRM iS that it was not organised around a minimum
programme, but around a distribution of offices. Had a minimum
programme been evolved, reflecting the democratic and patriotic
aspirations of the majority, and had allegiance to it been a requirement
for belonging to the broad base, it would have made possible a
differentiation of tendencies (eg patriotic/unpatriotic, democrat
undemocratic) inside the existing parties.
The stress on the distribution of cabinet and other posts, on the other
hand, was a direct result of a double failure on the part of the NRM: a
failure to articulate a minimum programme and a failure to offer an
analysis of existing political parties, instead of characterising them all as
nothing but 'sectarian'. Furthermore, just as it was erroneous to assume
that the existing parties were uniformly 'sectarian', so was it wrong to
argue that the NRM was uniformly 'anti-sectarian'.
This failure to distinguish contradictory tendencies inside parties by
presenting each with a minimum programme tended to compound
problems; its effect was to give the upper hand to the most opportunistic
of elements, those seeking offices at any cost, inside these parties.
With such a definition of the broad base, the NRA was in no position to
counter forces aggravating nationality contradictions in the country.

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For these-interests organised along sectarian and ethnic lines within

political parties as opposed to democratic elements organised within or
outside these same parties-were the very forces the NRA had put at the
centre of its broad base government. And since this centre stage tended
to exclude the political party that was the backbone of the Obote
regime-the uPc-it appeared that the nationalities which this party
claimed to represent had also been marginalised in the NRA-organised
political life of the country. It was against this background that the
divide on the two sides of the Nile became a lively political issue.
To grasp the significance of this issue, it is important to realise that the
divide is also embedded in historical differences, initially in the way in
which different parts of Uganda were incorporated into the colonial
political economy. The regions west of the Nile-the political
'South'-were by and large the home of export crop production,
whereas the lands to the east of the Nile-the political 'North'-tended
to function much more as labour reserves late into the colonial period.
As a result, there was also a difference in the character and tempo of
class formation in the two regions. Classes-particularly those sectors of
the middle class located in trade, administration and landed
property-were far more developed in the 'South' than in the 'North';
thus, when the Amin regime expelled Asian proprietors in 1972, the real
beneficiaries of the resulting property redistribution were by and large
from the 'Southern' middle class, even though the Amin regime was
considered a 'Northern' regime!
The triumph of the 'Southern' middle class seemed complete with the
victory of the NRA. So far as nationalities went, the colonial division of
labour was always that 'Northerners' controlled the army and the
government, whereas 'Southerners' were dominant in the civil service
and trade. But now, for the first time, 'Southerners' were dominant in
everything. The 'Northern' middle class was in a deep crisis! Did the NRA
have an alternative for them?
The answer then was no. It was this absence that created a political
vacuum in the 'North' into which many forces tried to enter. To discuss
the relative success and failure of these forces is to discuss the opposition
to the NRM-led government over the past two years.
This opposition has comprised three variants. The first comprises an
assortment of groups originating from the leadership of the previous
regimes, particularly from within the armed forces. The best-known of
these is the Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA). The reality of
Africa today is such that the elite jobs where only nationals will be

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employed are those in the repressive forces. Whereas their counterparts

in the professions and businesses can easily move to tap opportunities in
exile, this is not possible for army or security officers. An army officer
employed outside his country is not considered an expatriate, but a
mercenary-an indication that the only function African governments
can boast of having effectively nationalised is that of repression! For
these officers, their jobs are dependent on holding on to political
positions locally. Thus they must fight, either to keep power or to regain
it, if they are to remain in employment.
But in 'Northern' Uganda in early 1986, these cliques had been so
discredited that they totally failed to evoke any support or sympathy
from the peasant population. In their ignominious retreat from
Kampala, they had robbed and plundered these same peasants; in the
early months of 1986 many 'Northern' peasants looked to the NRA for a
way forward. Even in the ensuing months when FEDEMO/UFM troops
around Kitgum, faced with small organised rebel groups, unleashed a
reign of terror on the local population, UPDA and other rebel groups
organised by factions from previous regimes failed to translate peasant
disillusionment with the new government into support for themselves.
The opposition group that did succeed where feuding factions from
previous regimes had failed was of an entirely different type. This was the
Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Lakwena, distinguished from other
groups by the fact that its leadership came not from the middle class but
from the fringes of peasant society itself. This was, in other words, a
typical peasant movement under a peasant leadership. This fact
accounted for both its strength and its weakness.
On the positive side, the HSM was organised as a reform movement, to
cleanse Acholi society from within. Alice Lakwena demanded adherence
to a strict code of conduct. It is instructive that the first major battles
fought by the HSM were not against the NRA but against the UPDA over the
question of who was to lead the peasants of Acholiland.
On the negative side, neither this movement nor its leadership could
gain an understanding of the wider forces that shape the future of
peasant society. Like many peasant movements with a predominantly
peasant leadership-such as the Yakan cults against British colonialism
at the turn of the century in West Nile, or the Maji Maji resistance
against the Germans a decade later in southern Tanganyika, or the Mau
Mau of Kenya in the 1950s, or some of the Simba guerrillas in Zaire in
the 1960s-it took recourse to superstition and witchcraft.

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

Popular support for the HSM came from two areas: Acholiland and
Teso. In the latter, too, the initial conditions for this support were sown
by mistakes made by the NRA. In the absence of previous political work
reflecting an organised political base, the NRA fell back on a 'natural'
base-migrants from western Uganda-thereby deepening instead of
healing divisions within Teso society. As these divisions led to
recrimination, including the confiscation of cattle, large sectors of the
population began to look elsewhere for political guidance and
leadership.
Lakwena's temporary success in organising peasant support, in spite
of a series of crushing military defeats at the hands of the NRA, iS
explained by two factors: it reflected a vote of no confidence by the
peasantry in its conventional leadership; and it illustrated the failure of
the NRA/NRM to arrive at a viable programme for the 'North'.
During this period, several of the commanders and leaders from the
cliques into which the old regimes disintegrated-such as
Lieutenant-Colonel Kilama or Professor Ojok-joined forces with
Lakwena. This was a result of the failure of these cliques to rally popular
support, in contrast to the success of the HSM in that same endeavour.
The joining of forces was in most instances opportunistic, as individual
commanders or leaders hoped to join the only movement with popular
support, and use it later to realise their own ambitions. From all
accounts, though, every time these individuals tried to assert their
independent leadership, they failed.
Lakwena lost not because she was finally outwitted militarily by the
NRA; her forces never did have military superiority over those of the NRA.
Lakwena lost when she lost political superiority over the NRA; and this
happened the minute her forces stepped into territory where they had no
political support. Without the peasants behind her, the disintegration of
her forces was just a matter of time.
The duration-however short-of the Holy Spirit Movement should
really be seen as a failure on the part of the NRA to provide political
leadership to the 'Northern' peasantry at a time of deep internal social
crisis when it had lost faith in its conventional leaders and was
desperately looking for an alternative. At that time, for the NRA to
confront the manifestation of this crisis and this failure-the HSM-as
nothing but a military challenge was surely the sign of a political failure.
For residents in Kampala, the most graphic illustration of this lapse was
the series of reports that appeared in the government-owned press about
repeated confrontations between ill-armed and ill-trained cadres of the

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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

HSM and well-armed and well-trained soldiers of the NRA, leading to the
death of the former in hundreds, and on an almost daily basis. The
resulting military victory of the NRA must be considered a political
failure for the policy of constructing a broad, nation-wide base.
This issue has an even more far-reaching significance. For, given the
extremely uneven development of the political economy of Uganda in
this century, the formation of classes has also tended to have a
regionally-specific character. Propertied interests are concentrated in the
'South' which was historically the focus of export production, school
education, administrative and commercial development. It is these
southern propertied interests that dominate the leadership of the DP and
predominate in the NRM'S current broad base. But it is these very
interests that can be expected to counter in the most vigorous manner
any attempt at fundamental change.
In contrast, the 'North' has at most individual occupants of office with
individual interests to protect; it has yet to develop a class of large
proprietors. Any movement wanting to reform the inherited structures
of Ugandan society is far less likely to find organised resistance to such a
change in the 'North'. And yet, given the relatively backward
development of commodity relations and therefore the relatively strong
grip of clan ties in the 'North', no movement can expect to organise the
'Northern peasantry' except through the mediation of a cadre base
recruited from the educated middle strata of the 'North'! But it is
precisely this group that the NRM has shunned by substituting the offer of
a few jobs for sustained political work.
The third type of opposition to the NRA-organised broad base came
from small groups of intellectuals looking for a better deal from the
NRM-led government. The best known of these are the remnants of the
UNLF, now organised in London as the Uganda National Liberation
Front: Anti-Dictatorship (UNLF-AD). First organised on the eve of the
Moshi Conference of 1979, an event that catapulted them straight into
the post-Amin regime in Kampala, the UNLF-AD has never outgrown its
political baptism. It continues to hope for a political miracle, a repetition
of the Moshi Conference whereby it may step into yet another political
vacuum in Kampala. Hence its call for a 'roundtable conference' of all
organised groups to decide on the future government for the country.
But 1986 was not 1979. The political vacuum of 1979 was created by
the presence of a foreign army on Ugandan soil. In 1986, there were no
foreign soldiers in Uganda; instead, there was a new army forged in the
course of an internal struggle against the Obote regime and its

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

continuation. With radically changed conditions, the call by the UNL

for a 'roundtable conference' could evoke support only from similar
marginal groups.
At the second anniversary, the NRA could claim to have crushed the
most significant of the organised military opposition and to have
established military control over most of the country. But this military
fact, including the defeat of the HSM, will not solve the political problem
in the 'North'. Neither can that problem simply be solved by handing
out positions and jobs to prominent individuals from the 'Northern'
middle class. It is difficult to see a way out of this dilemma without a
definition of democracy that would break out of the narrow,
elite-controlled political life of Uganda. Such a definition would bring
hitherto unorganised elements into the political fold around a
programme cutting across the national and sectarian divisions that have
conventionally been considered natural forms of organising political
activity. On this issue centres the political debate on democracy in
today's Uganda.

Democracy

When the NRA came to power in early 1986, it ushered in what it believed
was a new and revolutionary concept of democracy: participatory, grass
root and popular as opposed to representative, elitist and parliamentary.
Against the conventional practice of democracy which was limited to
holding elections at the summit, the national parliament, it upheld the
alternative of organising every village community into a Resistance
Council and creating on this base a hierarchy of Resistance Committees
(RCs) right up to the National Resistance Council. This alternative, it
claimed, was far more democratic; it extended democracy from the elite
to the mass of working people, while allowing them to hold officials
accountable at all times.
The institution of RCS was born in the course of the guerrilla war. In
order to draw on popular support to counter and to survive state
repression, every movement has historically had to broaden the extent of
popular participation. The introduction of RCS by the NRA was no
exception. The RCS were the first attempt to crack the regime of
dictatorship introduced by the colonial power into village society at the
turn of the century. This was the regime which had created out of the
traditional chieftainship an absolute institution, without any check or
balance from countervailing institutions, as provided, for example, by
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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

clan authority in former days. In the village, this regime of dictatorship

was symbolised by a peasant facing authority fused in the person of the
village chief, who acted as the sole source of law, its arbiter and its
executor. A change of regime brought, at most, a change in the person of
the chief, not in the relationship between peasants and the chief. Surely,
in such a context, the introduction of a village council and a committee
that could hold this chief accountable was a noteworthy development.
But the context in which RCS were formed no longer obtains. The NRA
is no longer a guerrilla army, it is now the state army; the NRM is not part
of the opposition, but the leading element in government. In this new
context, new questions have arisen about the role and the status of RCS.
But these questions can be answered only in the context of a wider
question: which institution is to play a leading role in Ugandan society?
Or, to put it differently, what forces must organise and lead the effort to
change Ugandan society?
To this question, there is no single answer, not even in the circles of
NRA/NRM. While discussion on this issue is circumspect and hushed, one
can discern at least three different tendencies within ruling circles.
The first tendency argues that it is the NRM which will change society.
To understand why this position is not widely shared, it is necessary to
grasp the relationship between the NRA and the NRM as it evolved during
the guerrilla struggle. During the bush war, the NRA was not simply a
military organisation; it was simultaneously a political organ. Its cadres
were at the same time military and political. Conversely, the NRM was not
the political arm of the NRA; it was its external wing. It resembled far
more the UNLF of 1979, a loose coalition of small middle-class groups,
brought together more often than not by the promise of position and
privilege.
That is why the NRM headquarters established in Kampala in early
1986 were led by personnel from the NRA, and began to work as though a
wholly new organisation was about to be established. In this top-down
exercise, key emphasis was put on cadre-building, and the key institution
created for the purpose was a cadre school. In the pragmatic,
experimental, trial-and-error method that has become characteristic of
the NRM'S style of work, the cadre school has gone through a number of
phases in its orientation.
The first question faced by the cadre school was of where to obtain the
raw material for cadre-building. In the first phase, the doors of the
school were thrown open to anybody who wished to enter it. The result,
given the widely-held belief that the school was about to train the agents

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

and beneficiaries of the new regime, was that the most opportun
lumpen elements were among those attracted to it.
In time, this fact became clear and a change of policy ensued.
Realising that the short duration of the guerrilla war had not given the
NRM the opportunity to create an independent machinery of
implementation, and that it was forced to rely on the old and corrup
civil service, the NRM proceeded to draft layer upon layer of state
functionaries into the cadre school. For those who care to draw lessons
from history, there was an uncanny resemblance with the cadre school
established during the days of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana.
The point is that, with this change, the NRM cadre school ceased to be a
cadre school in all but name. Its purpose was no longer to train political
combatants for a political struggle; its objective now was far more
modest, to give a touch of political consciousness to state functionaries!
Cadres, on the other hand, cannot be created as if in a laboratory; a
cadre school must function as an adjunct to real struggles in real life, not
as a substitute for it. To function as such, however, a cadre school would
have to draw its personnel from the arena of democratic struggle in
society-workers' and students' strikes, movements of peasants and
women, and so on-and not from state functionaries. And these
products of the cadre school would then need to return to the mass
movements in order to build a movement in touch with reality.
Yet the NRM fears that if it organises an active body of cadres, spread
through the various segments of Ugandan society, organised by and
responding to a single centre, it will simply be turned into one amongst
several political parties, a development which will only serve to intensify
the internal division of Ugandan society. Thus, instead of welcoming
open political competition, it has put a ban on all political party activity.
What is the practical significance of this ban? Those who aim to
conserve the existing structure of society have no need to create new
institutions in order to do so; that need only exists for those who wish to
transform that structure. Kampala and other urban centres, after all, are
daily the site of religious rallies organised by fast proliferating
foreign-financed and even foreign-staffed evangelical groups. Are these
not political rallies under another name? The ban on political activity
surely, then, applies only to the NRM-or, more specifically, to those who
wish to bring basic change to Ugandan society. It does not apply to
existing political parties, nor to those who wish to conserve the basic
institutions of society.

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The second tendency argues that fundamental change will be brought

to Ugandan society by the RCS. It is this point of view which has
unleashed a debate on the role and status of the RCS in Ugandan society,
for there is no clear agreement on what this should be. The question, as
put in a nutshell by the recently-published Report of the Commission of
Inquiry into Local Government, is: are the RCS to be organs of the state,
of the NRM or of the people?
The bureaucratic point of view sees the RCS as no more than
appendages of the civil service, created to implement government policy
more effectively-in other words, as organs of the state. The democratic
point of view, on the other hand, sees the RCS more as popular organs
created to counter and hold in check abuses of the civil service and all
other state functionaries; as organs of the people, whereby RCS could
legitimately be the site of a healthy debate between points of view that
cover the whole range of ideological positions within Ugandan society.
The third point of view, which may be termed sectarian, sees RCS as
organs of one single political group, the NRM.
Judging from the developments of the last few months, the
bureaucratic point of view would seem to be gaining the upper hand. Of
particular significance are two recent measures. The first created a
Permanent Secretary in charge of RCS in the Ministry of Local
Government; in other words, RCS which are supposed to 'resist' civil
service excesses are now put under the control of a civil servant!
The second measure has turned District Administrators (DAS) into
civil servants, eventually to be hired, promoted and fired at the discretion
of the Public Service Commission. These measures are mutually
reinforcing. At their inception, DAS were supposed to be political
representatives of the NRM and as such were supposed to coordinate
district RCS, the building blocks on which was to be constructed the NRM
edifice. Now, it would seem that the tendency is to turn both the DAS and
the RCS into agents and extensions of the civil service, not the foundation
on which the NRM iS to be built.
But the NRM is itself a broad front, and includes under a single
organisational umbrella a diversity of views. Furthermore, in the
absence of an active and organised core of NRM cadres committed to
building an organisation, the NRM iS likely to become more of a passive
mirror reflecting existing tendencies in Ugandan society than an active
instrument for transforming that society. In that event, if RC democracy
is to be the occasion for extending the ban on party activity to a ban on
parties themselves-with the NRM as the sole political organisation in the

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

country-then the NRM may simply become a camouflage for the best
organised party within the broad base-today, none other than the DP.
Could we then not have a parallel with the Kenyan situation where the
old Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) today reigns supreme, but
under the banner of the Kenya African National Union (KANu)?
The third tendency sees neither the NRM nor the RCS as the institutional
leadership of the new Uganda; rather, this role falls on the shoulders of
the army, the NRA. Such a point of view reflects a vote of no confidence in
civilian society and its institutions; it indicates both a sense of despair
about creating new civilian institutions to organise new civilian forces in
the interest of transforming society, and a failure to do so.
But if the army is to dominate and direct civil society, shall we not
perpetuate the crisis of Ugandan society, where rulers are tempted to
deal with opponents militarily and not politically, where opposition has
become synonymous with sabotage and criticism with treason, and
where each successive regime has simply consolidated the official
machinery of repression in the name of guarding the national interest
and thereby further intensified the crisis of civil society?
A serious consideration of Ugandan history, in my view, would
conclude that the salvation of Ugandan society lies in the opposite
direction, in the strengthening of civil society vis-ac-vis state institutions
For this to happen, it is necessary to implement a comprehensive
programme of democratisation that goes far beyond the multi-party
democracy at the summit championed by the legal opposition to Obote,
the DP. This would mean a democratisation of the base, by transforming
chiefs into civil servants accountable to RCS as organs of the people, and
by introducing forms of workplace democracy. It would mean
upholding the right of organisation, thereby guaranteeing the existence
of autonomous mass organisations independent of the state. It would
also mean a consolidation rather than a trimming of the free press that
Uganda enjoys today. Finally, it would mean the freedom of political
organisation, thereby removing the ban on party political activity, and
calling for open political activity by all parties, including the NRM.
I believe the NRM is today caught in a contradiction: on the one hand,
it wants to be a home for the reconciliation of all tendencies in Ugandan
society, but on the other hand, it also wants to change that society. But
you cannot do both. Not all political tendencies are reconcilable; if you
try to move in all directions at the same time, the only result will be
paralysis.

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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

If the NRM wants to remain true to its promise to bring 'f

changes' to Ugandan society, it must chart a programme of action and
organise to implement that programme of action, no matter what its
pace. It must stop trying to be a pale reflection of various points of view
within Ugandan society. Rather, it must champion a far more consistent
point of view and an active political role, with the accent on struggle and
transformation and not just on harmony and reconciliation.
But, if it is to do so, the NRM must allow the same freedom of
organisation and activity to all those who disagree with its own
programme. Thus, if we are to have a political order that is both
democratic and progressive, there is no escape from the freedom of
political organisation at this stage in our history.
This point of view is, however, most unpopular within the ranks of the
NRM. The emphasis there is far more on reconciliation than on
transformation. I believe this is because of the weakness of the
Movement vis-a`-vis other organised political tendencies. Because of this
weakness, there is a strong tendency within the NRM today to try and
create national unity administratively.
This tendency argues that since political parties are 'sectarian', the
way to fight 'sectarianism' is to ban political parties and leave the
political monopoly to the NRM. First, the view that political parties are
'sectarian' is erroneous; both the DP and the upc contain within their
ranks not only undemocratic but also democratic elements. Second, the
view that the NRM, too, is homogeneous-'anti-sectarian'-is also
erroneous; for the NRM also includes within its ranks contradictory
tendencies.
But more importantly, I believe it is necessary to draw at this stage
certain lessons from our post-independence history. This experience
demonstrates not only the urgent need for national unity but also the
dangers involved in trying to declare this unity administratively, by a
decree.
The NRM resisted this temptation in 1986; it must continue to do so in
1989. All previous attempts to achieve national unity administratively-
by Obote in 1969 and the UNLF in 1979-have failed; why should a
similar attempt succeed in 1989? If you outlaw sectarian organisations,
sectarian interests will not disappear. They will only stop organising
openly until they are strong enough to do so. It is always better to have
your enemy operate openly rather than underground, in the legal arena
rather than in the bush, honestly rather than under camouflage.

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

There is nothing unusual about a regime calling upon the nation to

unite-behind it! If that is all that were required to create national unity,
nowhere in Africa would it be a problem today. The way to unity is not
through an administrative decree but through political activity, through
arriving at a programme that reflects the interests of the majority in
society, and through organising that majority to implement that
programme. And, let me stress once again, the key question is not that of
pace, of moving fast or slowly, of being patient or impatient; the
question is of direction and method.
I have tried to establish what could be the basic elements of such a
programme for today's Uganda: security of tenure and a programme of
voluntary and state-assisted cooperativisation for small peasants;
realistic remuneration for all employees, state or private; structures to
ensure democratic accountability at all levels of society, including at
places of residence and places of work; freedom of political activity,
including organisation. But, whatever be this programme, my point is
that it must be arrived at and spelt out. Both the ranks of the NRM and of
all political parties must be confronted with that programme, so that
acceptance of the programme is a precondition to accepting office.
If we fail to build a broad base around a principled programme, we
shall end up building the sort of 'sectarian' broad base that is written
into the constitution of Lebanon, where the president must be a
Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the Supreme Court
judge a Shia Muslim.

Conclusion

In the analysis of African politics, it has been customary to put primary

emphasis on the character of leadership. From this point of view it is said
that Museveni-like Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings of Ghana and the
late Captain Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso-represents a new type
of leadership on the continent. New not simply in that they come from a
new generation, but also in terms of their honesty, orientation and
determination. Though they came from the middle-class intelligentsia,
each was also a product of a national crisis, and each is in turn seen as
the mover and guide of a national rejuvenation.
To stop there, however, would be to put all emphasis on intentions
and none on capacities. It would be to leave the realm of politics and
move into that of morality. For the almost divergent paths traversed by
Museveni's contemporaries, Rawlings and the late Sankara, indicate

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 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

more a clash of intentions and capacities than simply a difference of

intentions.
To put it differently, is it really possible to read the record of a
particular regime and then see in it simply a record of the success or
failure of a particular leader, or even of that particular regime? Is it also
not the case that those in power must in the medium-term respond, not
as much to their own likes and dislikes as to the interests of the best
organised forces in society? The question of transforming society is
therefore first and foremost a question of changing the balance of forces
in society, organising those forces in whose interest it would be to
transform society, rather than simply a question of getting the 'right'
leadership.
A leadership will be held accountable only by those organised to do
so. The real question then is far more complex than simply that of
leadership; it is, rather, that of the relation between leadership and
organisation, leaders and followers, principles and capacities.
Engels once wrote that the worst thing that can befall the leader of a
party advocating fundamental change is to be compelled to assume
power at a time when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of
the class he represents. Such a leader must find himself in an insoluble
dilemma. What he ought to do cannot be done given the immaturity of
the forces he represents, and yet what he can do will contradict all his
previous actions and principles. What happens in that event? Either
reality will triumph over principles, and the leader will step by step come
to embrace the dominant forces in society, even becoming their
custodian; or, the clash of principles and reality will not result in
reconciliation but in confrontation. It can be said that the former
happened in the case of Rawlings and the latter in that of Sankara.
Is there a third choice? Is a transitional programme possible in a
situation like that of Uganda, where the existing balance of forces both
domestically and internationally is bound to resist any attempt at
fundamental change? The assumption that has inspired this article is that
there is indeed such a choice, and that it lies primarily in the realm of
politics, a politics whose purpose must be to recast the balance of forces
in society through methods that will gradually organise the disinherited
and disorganise the privileged.
Other historical examples suggest that to do so has required at the
minimum the forging of a political organisation whose growth is directly
tied to bringing previously unorganised popular forces into the arena of
organised political activity. Furthermore, this has only been possible

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 UGANDA IN TRANSITION

from the standpoint of struggle and not privilege, around a concrete

programme that reflects the interests of a majority and not through
abstract calls for unity, in the heat of political competition with other
political tendencies, not from the illusory comfort of a political
monopoly attained by an administrative decree pronounced from the
summit.
If we do not grasp the opportunity available, future generations are
far more likely to look at this transitional period as more of a last line of
defence of the old order than the first line of attack of a new order.

Bibliographical Note
There is very little published material on the Museveni regime, either in the form of
books or scholarly articles. The commentary on the Museveni government is far more
conjectural, and is found by and large within the pages of magazines and newspapers.
Within Uganda, the most critical and informative of the material could be found
within the pages of Weekly Topic (Kampala) and Foward (Kampala). I have tried to put
together some of this material in a single article entitled 'Background to the capture of
state power by NRA' and published in Forward 8 (1-2), 1986.
Of the comments published outside the country, probably one of the most insightful
was a short piece entitled 'Year of Peace' by Yusuf Hassan in Africa Events (London),
January/February 1987, upon his return from Uganda.

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