{UAH} PTHE POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL CRISIS IN UGANDA*p

*THE POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL CRISIS IN UGANDA*.

Understanding the Social, Political and Economic crisis in Uganda and the national question can't be discussed without understanding our history.

Uganda was never a country; there were no boundaries, there was no Central government, there was no national army and others, what we had were independent states of Bunyoro, Toro, Lango, Kigezi, Teso, Bugisu etc.

The process of putting these states together into a country called Uganda was a very violent one that involved wars of conquest, capture and deposing of leaders and where it was not violent, it involved threats which finally led to subjugation, no where was it a free and fair process based on consent.

Therefore, the formation of what we call our country today was never in the interest of the indigenous citizens but in the interest of those who fought the war of conquest and maintained superiority in managing the weapons of war.

In serving the interests of those who conquered Uganda, the local people were forced to abandon their own interests and livelihoods and to a larger extent work in the interest of those who conquered them. 

Economic activities like collection of hut tax, growing of cash crops as opposed to food crops, building of infrastructure like roads and railways lines were all done in the interest of the colonial masters and enforced through violence and threats of arrests and murder if one did not comply.

When Independence was attained in 1962, the colonial masters did not handover state power to the people of Uganda, what they did was passing over the same coercive status quo to a few Ugandans who marched on with a coercive strangle-hold over the citizens; what happened at independence was not change of gun rule but instead gun rule was transferred from the white man to the Blackman.

 

Unfortunately to some, when Uganda gained what they call Independence, they thought  power was now in the hands of the people but to their rude shock, the events that followed after Independence prove that it was those who had the weapons of war that had power and not them, the common citizens.

In as much as I am looking at the crisis from a Political perspective, politics doesn't go alone, it goes with the economy, The guns have descended to the economy and caused economic patronage. All those who have controlled the guns have also had a suffocating control on the economy. Obote had his own business men and women, Amin had his own, the same is with Museveni; therefore for anyone to have money and business, they must be gaining from the state and this is always a very small group of people that as other citizens are being milked and paying taxes through the nose, these groups I am talking about are able to export and import without paying tax causing loss of revenues and therefore stagnating our country; it is only in this country where pallets of money come from Germany to Uganda and you hear that they are owned by business men; when you cross-check, all these business men are connected to the state. More than 70% of our people work in Agriculture however their contribution to the GDP is 24%, this means majority of our people work where there is no money while a few about 20% continue to gain from the state and work in the money economy, even for the agriculture that we are talking about, it has been hijacked, it's not for the local people, we have heard that Uganda has excess milk for exportation and government tells us that milk is in surplus; they lack market for milk that is why we saw them at the Dubai expo trying to advertise lato milk; how can you say you have surplus milk when our children are dying of kwashiorkor, they are malnourished, they are stunted; this means even the agricultural products are not for our people but for the political elites and this is what the People's front is working to stop.

When the politics and the Economics fail, then you can't talk about the social part being fine. Actually those in power lack the moral authority to lecture us on some of these matters, let me give an example; all countries in the world have opened education institutions, the children of those that have locked the education institutions study abroad this therefore means education apartheid has been committed and we are about to create a country where the rulers are educated and the ruled are ignorant, the ignorant rued are being mismanaged and they don't even know that they are being mismanaged, this is why we must join the red card front to end this crisis; this discrimination cannot go unchallenged.

As a leader, I cannot forever rant, having understood the problem, I must create a solution;

a)      Making the citizens know that there is a crisis in this country.

b)      Making sure that those that comprehend the situation, disseminate and mobilize.

c)       When we all eventually have the knowledge and we are organized, we shall fight and uproot the rotten system.

We must take it up on ourselves to organize our people, to reach out to every corner of this country and speak to them about what our country should be like. We must organize house by house, street by street, community by community and district by district, conscientize the people of Uganda so that we can move together as a people and resolve this crisis.

This will be different from other regime change mechanisms because everybody will be engaged, we shall therefore not hear the narrative of where were you when we were fighting because everybody will have fought.

Country Women and Men, the quicker we join the Red card front, the better.

*Nyanjura Doreen*

bikodoreen@gmail.com

#RedCardFront

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