{UAH} Part 4 of inside Museveni's mind: what Buganda gained from the constitution

Inside Museveni's mind: What Buganda gained from new constitution

SUNDAY, 25 MAY 2014 20:49 WRITTEN BY OBSERVER MEDIA LTD 0 COMMENTS
In part IV of these series, President Museveni addresses Resistance Councillors (RCs) from Buganda region on what he believed Uganda's largest ethnic group gained from the 1995 Constitution.

He  made the speech on September 16, 1995 at Mpigi district headquarters. Below is an abridged version of the speech:

The National Resistance Movement has been like a political doctor trying to solve the problems of Uganda. In order to treat a disease, however, you must first of all diagnose the illness. Uganda has been going through a political crisis since 1962 when we attained independence.

Although we normally speak of 1966 as the year in which the crisis in Uganda started, that year was actually the boiling point of the crisis which had started in 1962.

Social and economic underdevelopment
In my view, between 1962 and 1966 the crisis was characterised by two problems. There was the problem of sectarianism, with divisions according to tribe and religion. Those of you who are old enough know the problems of Buganda vis-a-viz the north of Uganda, and also with some other parts of Uganda; you know the problems of religion – the DP trying to use the Catholic religion; and the UPC trying to use the Protestant religion to gain

political power. You should know those problems very well – if you don't, then you are not serious. The second problem was social and economic underdevelopment, a problem which is not always properly understood in many parts of Africa. Many people in Africa do not know that the structure of our society is very different from the structure of European societies.

To give an example: in Europe, there are no longer people like my father, Mzee Kaguta. Who is Mr Kaguta, and how does he live? First of all, my father managed to learn to read the alphabet through the church, and he can only read the Bible with a lot of difficulty. However, he is slightly better than many other people in the village who cannot read or write at all.

These people who cannot read or write; who live on small plots of land; who do not produce fully for the money economy, but mainly produce what they eat and are only marginally connected with the money economy: these are the majority in our country. In political science, we call them peasants, although we have no appropriate direct translation in our local languages.

Sometimes we call them abalimi in Luganda, meaning farmers; but that is not very accurate because Mr Kaguta and I are both farmers, although our farming methods are very different. The peasants constitute 92 per cent of the population of Uganda. In Europe, peasants lived there about 300 years ago; but that social class no longer exists.

In the Europe of today, there are basically two social classes. There are big businessmen, like our Mulwanas and Sembules here. The second class is the skilled working class, who are 46 per cent of the population and two per cent are the upper class, the aristocrats.

Between 1962 and 1966, therefore, the second characteristic of the political crisis in Uganda was the fact that our society was still at a pre-industrial stage. Our country, and others in Africa, are still heavily reliant on manual labour, whereas in Europe they use brain and machine power. That is a very big difference indeed.

This problem has existed since colonial times and it continued up to independence. However, none of our leaders ever addressed it.

Two new problems in 1966:
When the crisis deepened in 1966, two additional problems were introduced. The first of the two new problems was the disenfranchisement of the population: the vote was removed from the people and Ugandans were ruled by the gun.

The second new problem was the over-centralisation of power: all power was removed from all other levels and brought to the central government. Therefore, by 1967, the political crisis of Uganda now had four elements to it.

Therefore, before we come to the question of Buganda – Buganda efunye ki mu Constitution? Baatuwa byooya bya nswa.... meaning: "What has Buganda got out of the new Constitution? We were supplied with air ..." as some people in Buganda have been saying. I thought I should first state for you the original problems of the country to find out whether or not they have been properly addressed.

Money has no tribe!
Right from its inception, the NRM had an answer to each one of these problems. Our programme was specifically designed to answer them. As you know, we do not believe in divisions along sectarian lines. This is because the world has now changed.

Countries which are ahead of us in development depend on industrial production for their livelihood, while we are still largely a subsistence economy dependent on a few crops and a few domestic animals. However much you grow potatoes, you cannot become as rich as if you had a factory.

To take an example, British American Tobacco (U) Ltd gives us 40 billion shillings in taxes. All the taxes from our beloved Mpigi district taxpayers will this year amount to only four billion shillings. Therefore, it will take you 10 years to collect the amount of money BAT pays as tax to the Treasury in one year! As for Moroto district, they only collect three million shillings per annum.

You calculate for yourselves how many years it would take them to collect up to the level of BAT!

Therefore, when you realise that a modern economy must depend on industries rather than on a few goats, chicken and potatoes, what does this mean? It means that you must have a large market. Since the NRM wants to transform the socio-economic base of our country, you can see why we have always been against sectarianism.

If you are sectarian, you are dividing up the market for your goods. Money has no tribe! You cannot have a modern society organised on a sectarian basis. In order, therefore, to develop in a modern way, you need as big a market as possible. The bigger the market, the better. Sectarianism, therefore, impedes our aspiration of building a big market. That is why we fight it.

I want Mr Kaguta to be the last uneducated person in our family. Even if we, in our family, continue keeping cattle, I want us to keep them using modern methods. We would like the peasantry to be transformed into a productive middle class. How shall we do this? There are two ways: the first is to create an atmosphere in which it is easy to do business.

The government and its worker should not get in the way of Mr Kaguta if he wants to trade and transform his socio-economic status. The second instrument is education. From next year, we shall start a programme of universal, compulsory primary education. That is the NRM's answer to the second problem of social underdevelopment.

Restoring the vote
On the third problem of disenfranchisement, you already know what we have done. When we came into government in 1986, we found that all the district councils were nominated by the minister of local government. We said: "No, everybody must be directly, or indirectly, elected by the people."

In 1989 we expanded the NRC through elections, and in 1994 we amended the Constitution to ensure that we had elected delegates to debate and pass a new Constitution. Previously, the Constitution had said that the Army Council and the existing NRC should write the Constitution.

However, we decided that the people should have the power to elect their own representatives. By so doing, we removed one of the pillars of Obote's dictatorship, which had been to abolish voting.

Devolution of power
The other pillar of Obote's dictatorship was the over-centralisation of power. Through the Decentralisation Statute, the NRM took power from the centre to the rural areas. Even before the new Constitution was completed, the NRM had already broken the two pillars of Obote's 1966 dictatorship, that is, disenfranchising the people and over-centralising power.

One of the consequences of this dictatorship was the abolition of traditional rulers, who were not removed through a popular or democratic process. Therefore, even before the Constituent Assembly, the NRM had already destroyed all the pillars and effects of the crisis which had boiled over in 1966.

When the CA came, it was just to discuss some of the things we had already done. Therefore, when I hear some people in Buganda saying that NRM gave them byooya bya nswa (that the NRM "supplied air" to the Baganda), I don't know what to them is the real thing.

Could they tell us what they regard as the real thing (enswa, the white ant), and what they regard as "air supply" (ebyooya, the wings of the white ant). If the Kabaka is sitting on his throne, the Namulondo, is that the real thing, or is that air?

What has Buganda gained?
The Kabaka is the Namunswa, the king of all the ants! So how can you say that the NRM has "supplied Buganda with air", or with byooya bya nswa? When we remove power from the minister of local government and bring it back to the people, either to Mpigi or to Mengo, is that real or is it air?

Had you ever seen an RC5 chairman, the people's elected representative, during the time of Obote? Is that air? Therefore, the debate over whether power should be at the regional or district level proves that the NRM has already done its duty.

Having seen the foregoing, may I now sum up by saying the following: First of all, the CA has confirmed what the NRC had already done, which is that the areas of Uganda which want traditional rulers are free to have them.

Secondly, all the powers, apart from those dealing with defence, immigration, foreign affairs and the national currency, have been devolved down to the local level. What the CA did was to apportion this power saying: "This portion is for the district, and this portion is for the sub-county. The remaining portion may be put at the regional level."

It seems that some people wanted all the power to be put at the regional level – but the CA did not support that arrangement. The CA delegates wanted to be sure that people in the rural areas really had power at their level. The CA also wanted to make sure that Buganda did not stick out from the rest of the country, as it had done in the 1960s.

As your proverb says: Enkoko enjeru teyekweeka kamunye, meaning that a white chicken sticks out from the rest of the brood and is, therefore, vulnerable to attack by kites. Some people said that the NRM had betrayed Buganda, and that the devolution of power to the district level had "wiped Buganda, as an entity, off the map".

Power was, first of all, devolved to the lower levels, and secondly,  it was stipulated that districts which so wish could unite for certain purposes at the regional level. I went to the CA and told them that even though the federalists had been given the key to the fridge so that they could open it and get themselves a drink of soda, it looked as though the process of opening the fridge was too much of a strain for them.

They wanted us to open the door for them; get out the soda for them; put it on a tray; and open it for them so that they could drink it. Owing to my friendship with the traditionalists, I agreed to all those demands. I had a tough battle with the CA delegates trying to convince them that we should do all this for the federalists  (traditionalists).

Therefore, a provision was put into the Constitution that  although the rest of Uganda had been given keys to their fridges, and they had accepted them, for the Baganda we had got the soda out of their fridge and served it to them.

All they had to do was to drink it! It is now up to the elected district councils to decide what powers they want to take to the regional tier, that is, how much of their soda they would like to pour out to the Mengo regional tier. The people who are going to decide this are all elected by you, the councillors – they are not nominated by government.

People who are going around saying that Buganda got byooya bya nswa out of the new Constitution are not interested in developing Buganda – they are interested in something else. As far as the NRM is concerned, and as far as, me, Museveni, is concerned, we are no longer going to listen to these types of people.

Such people demoralise us, the workers. Although we are workers (strugglists), our morale needs to be boosted by remuneration – there is no worker who is not remunerated. How can people say that we are supplying Ugandans with air when we have shed our blood; when we have wasted all our youth trying to solve the problems of this country?

These problems were, in the first instance, sometimes created by the very people who are saying such things. The political crisis of Uganda started when I was in senior two, and I have spent my life trying to solve problems created by other people – and then you hear somebody saying: "This is byooya bya nswa."

We are not at all pleased with this kind of behaviour. Yet, when you ask those people who are saying such things: "What did you do to fight against the dictatorships of Obote, Amin and Okello?"

The answer is that they did absolutely nothing, except insulting people who have wasted their lives trying to solve the problems which had been created in our country. In my view, Buganda has got everything that it needed in order to correct all the wrongs of 1966 but, of course, with modern adjustments.

Some of the other problems can be solved administratively. For instance, the issue of the municipality of Mengo. The government has powers to create this municipality and give it to the Kingdom of Buganda, with compensating adjustments between the borders of Mukono, Mpigi and Kampala districts.

When the regional tier becomes operational, if Mengo maintains a harmonious relationship with the central government, the central government can always support them with additional funds because it will always have more money than local governments. This is because the central government taxes the consumption of all Ugandans, which is where much of the tax revenue comes from.

Therefore, if the Mengo tier does not create conflict with the central government, certainly it will get resources because we need implementers for the country – we don't have enough, reliable implementers yet. In my view, it is important that when you come to elect representatives for the Mengo tier, you should choose people who will not create conflict between Mengo and friends of Buganda, like myself.

Do not isolate Buganda
If I may go back to 1979, when we were fighting Idi Amin, we held the Moshi Unity Conference to choose a leader for Uganda after Amin was overthrown. We chose Professor Yusuf Lule and the three people who were most involved in putting his name forward were: President Nyerere of Tanzania, who had given us the largest contingent of soldiers for the war against Amin; the late Bishop Festo Kivengere; and myself.

When we got back to Uganda after the overthrow of Amin, however, the Baganda started claiming Lule as their own", calling him Lule waffe!, meaning "Our Lule". During this period, the late Sam Sebagereka invited me to Kayunga, in Mukono district, to celebrate his return from exile.

During the function, I took the opportunity to warn the people who were claiming Lule as their own and driving us, the people who had chosen him, away from him. Robert Ssebunya, who is here today, and who was a deputy minister of Information during that government, is my witness.

I told the people at Kayunga that they had no idea how Lule had emerged as President of Uganda, but since the Baganda were claiming him as their own, we would leave him to them because we did not want to be engaged in an unseemly tug-of-war over him.

That is exactly what we eventually did – we left Lule alone with his Baganda. Therefore, when you are electing representatives to Mengo, I would advise that you to choose people who will
not alienate Buganda from its friends.

If you persist in sending friends of Buganda away, they will surely go away eventually, but Buganda will have lost the contribution those very friends would have made towards the development of your area.

Therefore, those Baganda who are abusing us, the people who have worked very hard to reinstate the institution of the Kabaka, are going to create a huge chasm between Mengo and the central government.

There is another campaign by those same people: they are saying that Museveni has taken everything to Ankole - riches, jobs, everything. These are people who want to create enmity between the Banyankore and the rest of the people of Uganda. When we came into power, we united all the people of the country from the west, from Buganda, Busoga, Bugisu and from the rest of the country.

We had some problems with some people from Lango and Acholi, who did not immediately join our movement. This  job  we did, of uniting all these people, has given us strength and enabled us to maintain peace for these 10 years. Since independence, there has never been a government in Uganda which has lasted 10 consecutive years: ours is the first one. What has helped this government last this long is the unity of the different people.

Those who want to divide the people are seeking to create enmities amongst the people. Who gains anything in such a situation, except the opportunists?

In Buganda, there is still the problem of leaders who misguide the people and cause them to concentrate on issues which are not essential to their lives. Issues like federo, and other issues pertaining to the Buganda kingdom, are used to mislead the people, who do not fully understand them. In Luganda, you call this okuguumaaza, in Runyankore we call it okuhuzya.

This is pre-occupying somebody, through diversion, in order to damage his real interests. To tell people that all the wealth is being taken to the west is to misguide them. If you want to measure the level of development in Buganda compared to Ankole, you will realise that Buganda is more developed.

Take the example of the tarmac roads in Buganda: Kampala-Gayaza road, Kampala-Mubende road, Kampala-Luweero-Gulu road, Kampala-Busunju road, etc. Those who claim that Ankole is more developed should go there and calculate the number of kilometres of tarmac roads in Ankole and compare them with Buganda.

There should be no argument about this because the roads are there and they can be measured! The central part of Uganda is the source of electricity and telecommunications: it has the airports and running water – this is all part of the infrastructure.

This is in order because a country is like the human body. When you bathe, you normally start with the head and eventually bathe the whole body. Due to historical circumstances, Buganda became the head of Uganda. It is, therefore, in order that elements of the infrastructure should radiate from Kampala. The problem is that some members of the Buganda leadership do not conceive of this as an asset.

The other important factor is that Kampala has the biggest single market in Uganda. There are many consumers – the one million people who live in Kampala and its outskirts, and who do not grow their own food, provide a large market.

This is very important because, for example, farmers in Rwakitura get only 200 shillings from a litre of their milk, whereas the farmer near Kampala earns 500 shillings per litre in normal times.

During times of scarcity, the price goes up to 1,000 shillings. This is why your leaders should not misguide you by emphasising issues like federo, to the exclusion of development. Federo is no good on its own: it will not help starving people.

Too many politicians...
Fortunately, when we were still students in the 1960s, we started a progressive movement with people like Eriya Kategaya and it formed the nucleus of the National Resistance Movement. As evidenced bythe CA elections, we thoroughly defeated the old politics of people like Tiberondwa. Those leaders had destroyed Ankole.

Their removal has created room for tremendous development in that area. There is no more sectarianism and no more religious divides: the only talk there is talk of development. The problem with Buganda is that you still have leaders who practise the old divisive politics and they are misleading you.

The fact that Buganda is lagging behind can best be seen in an aerial view: from Kyankwanzi, to Bukomero, to Busunju, the whole area is bush, save for a small farm at Bukomero, and Mulwana's farm at Busunju. The banana plantations are a miserable yellowish colour until you get to Mzee Kisekka's farm. From Kisekka's farm, the next big farm is Nsimbe Estates.

That kind of development is like a badly-washed human body with water trickling only on some parts of the skin. The word for it is enkulukuse in Luganda, (entanani in Runyankore) and that is the pattern of development in this area.

The first job I did as a young man in 1967 was to teach my people to rise up and work for profit, rather than just for subsistence. Buganda now needs grassroots community leaders, not just politicians. We have too many politicians and too few community leaders. When I started community work, I was a student at university.

I was only 22 years old and I was nowhere near parliament or power; but I realised that my people were badly off and I decided to educate them. My involvement in politics began with community leadership, and not in trying to gain power for the sake of power. The present leaders of Uganda should do the same.

When I commence my visits to the counties in Buganda, I will teach the people the means of how to raise their incomes (enyingiza), and how to plan (embalirira). There is a word in Luganda called okulembeka, which means trapping of rainwater after a downpour. What plans do you have to kulembeka at this tarmac road passing here? How will you trap money from this tarmac road?

There should be no poverty here with the tarmac road so near, unless there is something else missing, i.e. leadership. I will talk about these things in detail at each county on how
to engage in the politics of development, and not the politics of okuguumaaza.

I would like to end with two or three points. First of all, politicians want to involve our Kabaka and other traditional leaders in politics. We condemn this idea because the Kabaka should be above politics. There is a saying in Runyankore which goes as follows: Karasha: ngaboimurasha.

It means that if you throw stones at someone, he will throw those stones back at you. The Kabaka should not involve himself in the partisan politics of stone-throwing! The politicians should be the ones to engage in political competition. I appeal to the Baganda not to involve the Kabaka in political controversies which should be left to people who can be dispensed with.

UPC-DP unholy alliance
The second point concerns the UPC-DP alliance. This is very good because it proves what some of us have always said: that the DP is no different from the UPC, but that it has never had the chance to be in power and make the mistakes the UPC made.

When we talk of UPC and DP, however, do not confuse the ordinary membership with the leaders. It has always been the leaders of these parties who have caused the problems. As you know, when the NRM went to the bush, we inherited the membership of all these parties. The NRM of the bush was made of members of the DP, UPC, UPM end CP who were fed up of the actions of their leaders.

All these people joined us and supported us in the bush, after their leaders had proved incapable of solving Uganda's problems. This UPC-DP alliance is, therefore, not a new thing, and it is good that all the bad people should gather on a winnower (orugari), because then it becomes easy to throw all of them out.

In 1985 they gathered on the rugari and we removed them using armed force: now you have to use the vote to throw them out, since they have congregated on the rugari of opportunism.

Land issues
Someone mentioned that tenants (basenze) were worried because their position had not been clarified. This fear is unfounded. The issue of mailo land was addressed in the following ways:

1. The new Constitution has given security of tenure to the musenze. He cannot be evicted by anybody and he will not pay busuulu;

2. Meanwhile, the mailo landowner will retain his ownership in the form of a freehold title to the land;

3. Within two years, the new Parliament will pass a new law resolving this matter once and for all. The law will regulate the relationship between the landlord and the musenze. The Constitution provides that this law will provide for the acquisition of registrable [interest] in the land by the occupant.

Therefore, a Constitutional basis has been laid to resolve this matter. All this is contained in Article 237 of the new Constitution. My own view is that this paralysis on land in Buganda should be removed once and for all.

This paralysis should be resolved in the following way: provided a musenze has stayed on a kibanja for a long time, say a period of up to 20 years, he should be assisted with a government loan to kwegula, (payoff the landlord) so that he can get a land title. The landlord will thus be able to get capital from the sale of his land.

This will trigger tremendous development in the Buganda area because the musenze and the landlord will have become empowered – the one by acquiring legal tenure to the land he occupies, and the other by acquiring capital from the sale of that land.

Conclusion
To answer the original question of "What has Buganda gained from this new Constitution?", I will conclude with four points.

First of all, the Kabaka is now on his throne, surrounded by clan leaders and all the people who matter to the institution.

Secondly, power has been removed from the centre and is now at the district level to be shared between the districts and the third tier.
Thirdly, when we realised that the Baganda were unwilling, or unable, to open the door of the fridge to get for themselves the soda we had provided, We opened the fridge for them, got out the soda and put it at Mengo for them. That is the third tier of government which was put in place for Buganda.

Finally, the people of Buganda, like the rest of the people of Uganda, have been enfranchised and their destiny is now in their hands through the exercise of regular elections, using the secret ballot.

So everything is on the table and there is no longer any debt owed by the National Resistance Movement to the people of Uganda. We have given you the key to self-governance, that is, the power to change your leaders through a secret ballot vote held at regular intervals.

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