{UAH} Uganda is undergoing unofficial military coup

Uganda is undergoing unofficial military coup

Guest Writers

Thursday, 28 August 2014 21:27

Written by SHEILA KAWAMARA-MISHAMBI

18 Comments

As children, we were taught that agriculture was the backbone of Uganda's economy, and the country's main exports were coffee, cotton, tea and tobacco.

Each of Uganda's geographical regions had a cash crop or a mineral for export. Agriculture was a compulsory subject in secondary schools and a faculty of agriculture was established at Makerere University. For generations, it has produced some of the world's top agricultural experts.

There were cooperative societies across the country, organised by the local farmers and trained agriculture extension officers. Because of their professionalism, the agricultural sector remained the backbone of the economy, even when the country was run by the so-called 'incompetent managers'at State House.

The defunct Uganda Cooperative bank supported the cooperative societies while trade in agricultural produce was boosted by the Uganda Commercial bank.

All these are now historical memoirs. With the wars that ensued in the late 1970s and 80s and the subsequent takeover of the Museveni regime in 1986, the agricultural sector was flushed down the drain. Uganda cannot claim to be the celebrated agricultural economy anymore. Despite the excellent soils, good rains and sunshine all year round, we have been relegated to the mediocre agricultural producing countries.

Even with the much-hyped American Agoa dream, Uganda could only bring home a paltry $56,000 in a year, an amount that can hardly sustain President Museveni for half a day. We then moved away from the lucrative agricultural exports to experimental products.

Some poor, hapless and ill-informed peasants cut down their coffee trees and abandoned their cotton and tea plantations, to grow vanilla. Then came the silk worms, the rearing of rabbits and South African boar goats, the value addition to bananas, and the list could go on and on.

For each of these initiatives, there was market opportunity that had either been discovered by Museveni himself or some of his numerous advisers. Rabbits were a delicacy for the West and a ready market in the Sheraton hotel, yet not many Ugandans ate the little mammals.

As for the goats, it was said that there was a ready market for them in the Middle East, where 3,000 goats were required per week. Unfortunately, exporting such a number would mean making Uganda a goat-free country in less than a year.

Many peasants abandoned their beds and resorted to living as unpaid guards in their vanilla gardens, to protect the 'new gold'. Unfortunately, the gold never got to the goldsmith and I have not met any Ugandan billionaires that prospered from the rearing of the 'treasured silk-producing caterpillars' that were on 'demand' in the Far East.

Under Museveni, it is a fact that the agricultural sector lost all its glamour as one agricultural experiment after another miserably flopped. The once-prosperous cash crop farmers became paupers, begging for 'brown envelopes' from the president and MPs.

The once-proud Ankole cattle keepers became the hated, roaming, hunted Baraalo in Buliisa, Lira, Katakwi and in many other parts of Uganda. The Baganda, Basoga, Langi and Alur youths fled into exile, as economic refugees.The few Baganda that remained are Nsenene producers or hawkers of stolen vehicle spare parts.

Frustrated with all his failed agricultural initiatives and a growing disenchanted rural populace, Museveni summoned his miracle-making brother, the senior presidential advisor on defence and security, Gen Salim Saleh, to save the crumbling national economy.

With all loyalty to his big brother, Saleh, who is also the commander of the Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) project, quickly rallied the country's top military officers for a crash agricultural training programme at Makerere University. Days later, they graduated with a certificate in agriculture science.Now they are deployed as senior agricultural experts!

In their work, they are charged with improving planting materials, animal stock, promoting irrigation and, consequently, enhancing smallholder agricultural productivity.

Shamelessly,University Chancellor Mondo Kagonyera and his vice Ddumba-Ssentamu, who should have jealously defended the integrity of the university, meekly issued agriculture certificates to these (quack) officers.

The two professors know very well that soldiers cannot receive a week's training in order to become medical surgeons or veterinary doctors, and neither can doctors with a week's military training become army commanders. Therefore, I will not be dragged into a baseless argument that these officers can ably handle the agricultural sector simply because they have had a thorough induction to the subject. That is a complete hoax.

The reality is, by the time our debt-burdened MPs return to their constituencies, the military men will have taken over their constituencies in a bloodless coup, and the 10th Parliament would be constituted. Museveni will then be a happy and secure man in State House; and nobody will ever blame our genius for the military coup and complete overhauling of civilian institutions.

The author is a human rights activist and former member of EALA

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H.OGWAPITI
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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that  we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic  and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

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