{UAH} Mbu Kabaka Survives At Museveni's Pleasure - Kalyegera

The Museveni-Buganda agreement: A Memorandum or a Misunderstanding?

From MONITOR NEWSPAPER

 

L-R: Herbert Ndiwalana, Katikkiro Charles Mayiga, Museveni, Prince David Wassaja, Attorney General Peter Nyombi and Apollo Makubuya at State House, Entebbe, last week. PPU PHOTO 

By Timothy Kalyegira

Posted  Sunday, August 11   2013 at  01:00

 

IN SUMMARY

With Museveni being booed at the coronation event at Mengo, Baganda could be headed for more disillusionment. The picture of Museveni and Buganda officials also tells of a 'not so serious pact'

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Last weekend, the Buganda Kingdom commemorated the coronation anniversary of Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II. The main celebrations were at Lubiri, Mengo. But it is the unexpected news that broke the day before that has since got Baganda, the news media and the political class, commenting with a mixture of cautious hope and outright fear.

On Friday August 2, 2013, it was announced that the central government had agreed to return several properties (ebyaffe) that it had not yet returned to Buganda since the decision in April 1992 to restore the traditional institutions.

The agreement was contained in a Memorandum of Understanding, the MoU, as it is now being referred to. "Museveni returns Buganda properties", was the accurately rendered headline in the next day's government-owned newspaper, the Saturday Vision, for that's what it was --- Museveni the person and Museveni the president agreeing (or claiming to agree) to return some of Buganda's remaining properties.

Photograph story
The group photograph of the occasion told the bitter truth of what Buganda has yet again got itself into. The Katikkiro with top kingdom officials and Museveni with only the Attorney General Peter Nyombi in attendance.

When it is a real and historic treaty or agreement in question, the group photo usually tells the story. It should have had the President, at least the minister for culture, possibly the one of lands, the head of the government lands office and the geological survey at Entebbe.

After the four months of negotiations in Nairobi in December 1985, with a signing ceremony attended by two high-powered delegations from the Tito Okello Military Council government and the NRA guerrillas, Museveni still rescinded his pledges and just over a month later overthrew Okello's government.

Farce?
How then does Buganda imagine that a signing ceremony with only Museveni and his Attorney General present is something Museveni took seriously or will honour? 
There's no clear time frame within which the properties are to be handed back and of course there is no clause that explains what Buganda can do should the terms of this Memorandum of Understanding be breached. As Beti O. Kamya, president of the Uganda Federal Alliance, said on Radio One's Spectrum programme on Monday evening, August 5, it was Museveni who decided the Kabaka could not tour parts of his kingdom in 2009 and it was Museveni now deciding that it is okay for the Kabaka to now tour.

The Kabaka lives at Museveni's pleasure, not according to his individual rights and high status. Former Katikkiro Dan Muliika also expressed skepticism about the MoU, as did and as are many other Ugandans and friends of Buganda.

The FDC spokesman, Mr Wafula Oguttu, at the party's press conference urged Buganda to stop the habit of negotiating in private, with all short-sightnedness, with Museveni the man or any other individual leader, and start involving other non-Baganda Ugandans.
After all, said Oguttu and others later that day like Kamya, supposing Museveni were to leave power next month, who would guarantee this Memorandum of Understanding?

What a few of us, proponents of the Theory of Conspiracy, fear is that Buganda has once again fulfilled its historical role of being used as a means to other people's ends.

Museveni was booed almost continuously during the coronation anniversary event by the crowd of ordinary Baganda. Sources among the crowd spoke of even more negative comments about Museveni than the booing, the media cameras and microphones picked up. After the ceremony, as former Minister of Finance Syda Bbumba headed to her car, Baganda standing nearby heckled at her, with some calling out "Thief!" or "Have you seen this thief?"

Clearly, the common Muganda on the street and in the village has had enough of Museveni. Not after the fire at Kasubi Tombs (where Museveni was heckled), the year-long closure of CBS FM and other slights to Buganda. However, we suspect, the votes in Buganda in the 2016 General Election will be manipulated to show a Musveni win.

In reply to skeptics questioning how Museveni can win in Buganda given all the open hostility we see and feel these days toward him, the video tape of Museveni at Lubiri and the MoU will be used as cover for the rigging, quoted as having "won the day" for Museveni.

Boo
Furthermore, Museveni heard for himself the booing, to the extent that at some point he remarked "So you want to turn this into a political rally?" to the angry crowd. There were no aides to shield Museveni from the reality that even at a grand occasion in the presence of the Kabaka and other dignitaries, ordinary Baganda no longer care about their traditional politeness. These are the angry, hurting, frustrated ordinary Baganda without jobs, living in shabby slum conditions that turn into lakes whenever it rains and for whom everyday life is a bitter experience.

 

Being who he is, Museveni noted the booing and certainly did not like what he heard. This is where Buganda must now brace itself for months and years of disillusionments. Museveni will look at it this way: If the previous day he reached a major, supposedly good deal with Buganda and that was not enough to win him Buganda cheers on this coronation anniversary, why bother with honouring his part of the MoU?

 

With Museveni being booed at the coronation event at Mengo, Baganda could be headed for more disillusionment. The picture of Museveni and Buganda officials also tells of a 'not so serious pact'

  

Giving back these properties to an angry and ungrateful Buganda, the way Museveni will see it, will not only not win him political support, but the revenue from the returned properties could also be used against him, to support the increasingly militant Buganda-led opposition or even renegades like Gen David Tinyefuza. Official Buganda for the last 70 or more years has behaved much like the strange phenomenon we see a lot in urbanised Ugandan girls and women. Well-educated and normally professional and rational women (not all, but many), even when they know better and are warned endless times, will fall in love with a "bad boy" or "player" who cheats on them, humiliates them, breaks their hearts. But even after they recover from the hurt, will go straight on to the next "bad boy" and repeat the cycle of being cheated on and dumped, ad infinitum.

What government and Buganda agreed on

According to the memorandum of understanding signed by President Museveni and the Kabaka on Friday evening, the government agreed to return the kingdom property that include all counties' and sub-counties' administrative buildings and land, Jesa Farm on Mityana Road, Mutesa House in London, which was sold by the Milton Obote government, Plot 52 on Kampala Road which houses King Fahd Plaza, and all land belonging to the kingdom.

In addition, kingdom land which tenants have "illegally" occupied over the years is to be returned but Mengo and the central government will decide on the fate of those tenants. All markets belonging to the kingdom are to be retuned but those under construction or already built will be subject for further discussion between Mengo and central government.

The government will also renew all leases of property that had elapsed during the time the kingdom had been abolished. In addition, the government promised to pay more than Shs20 billion in accrued rent arrears to Buganda Kingdom in 2014/15 financial year, among others.

timothy_kalyegira@yahoo.com