Diplomatic piracy!
Jul 07, 2006
UGANDA’S No1 COLUMNIST.. INFORMED, CONTROVERSIAL AND PROVOCATIVE<br><br>When I was in my late teens, 50 years ago and newly arrived at then Makerere University College (tied in with London University) I got hooked on Western movies. Not “western†in the modern sense, meaning an amorphous gro
UGANDA’S No1 COLUMNIST.. INFORMED, CONTROVERSIAL AND PROVOCATIVE
John Nagenda
When I was in my late teens, 50 years ago and newly arrived at then Makerere University College (tied in with London University) I got hooked on Western movies. Not “western†in the modern sense, meaning an amorphous group of mainly capitalistic Countries of the West, come together to fight Commies and Reds Under the Bed but westerns of the Red Indian and Cowboys variety.
How we loved them! I am not even necessarily referring to classics like Shane and High Noon, but the ordinary run of the mill type where farmers and cattlemen were at odds, fighting for territory, and of course for white women, a rare commodity in them there hills. But depend on it, the Indian, be he chief or otherwise (remember the phrase, “Too many chiefs, too few Indians�) was always present in the background.
The menacing bass note preceding the usually brief battles fought as the Indian threw himself at the gunned stockade of those who had usurped his land. You knew the (Red) Indians were on their way when smoke signals puffed in the sky, followed by hoops and blood curdling yells, and then men in feathered headdresses advancing on incredibly fast ponies to their doom. Some sagacious cowboy or other white would intone: “The Indians are on the warpath again.â€
Believe it or not, the whole of the foregoing was so that I could use this sentence; but in ironically opposite sense to the fate of the Red Indians above! Uganda’s Dear Donors (UDD) are on the warpath again. The menacing drumbeats have started. On Thursday The Monitor warned us: “Donors warn of more aid cutsâ€. According to its source, many donors are not satisfied with Government’s choice of priorities in the Annual Budget.
One of their beefs (cheap pun: Uganda’s beef smells and tastes far better than theirs!) concerns the admittedly vast cabinet, presidential advisers, and parliament itself. But, as Monitor accurately put it, “Museveni has refused to budge, saying the bloated government bureaucracy is the cost of democracy as he struggles with the need to balance the country’s plethora of ethnic groups.â€
Cast your mind back to Berlin towards the end of the 19th century recalling the heartless (and mindless) fashion in which Africa was carved up to start this “plethora of ethnic groupsâ€. None of the players in the UDD is of the age of Shakespeare’s “puking and mewling infantâ€, so what ails them? Could the answer be, plain as the nose on their face, that in the case of the Wretched of the Earth, the UDD would rather not get historical headaches like the Scramble for Africa? Not wholly dead today! Britain was first off, announcing on Monday that it would decapitate by 20 million British pounds, its budgetary support to Uganda for the financial year 2006/7. Wham Bam Thank You Mam! My tummy went liquid with terror of the unknown. I reached for my (Chinese) calculator. Divide the 20 million by 28 million, reputed to be the current population of our lovely land. You get a figure of just less than six British pence per head of population per calendar month; admittedly bigger in Ugandan shillings: 202. Hmmm! The stratagem is to deeply infiltrate sovereign states at minimal cost.
***************
The New Vision followed a slightly different tack on the UDD. On Thursday its headline was: “Donors to meet over LRA.†It was in reference to the hot news that President Museveni, at the end of his tether (rope) had promised total amnesty to the unspeakable Kony, head of the repulsive Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Apparently, the UDD were to meet in Kampala to hammer (surely not Dr Besigye’s) out their position on the matter.
Museveni, the last man on earth to do so, had reached his decision, as he has succinctly put it, because he had no serious partners with whom to continue the better action; to get Kony from where he was hiding in Garamba National Park in D R Congo.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) safe in its Geneva tower was reported to have announced, more or less, that it would hold Museveni to blame in going against its ruling that Kony and his four top dogs should be arraigned and posted to it. I suggested on the BBC that the ICC should do the little grab job itself! Kony is not in Uganda. If he were, Uganda would get him for the ICC, or Kony would perish in action. Certainly there would be no need to talk amnesty.
Congo, which has the sovereign powers to let Uganda, Southern Sudan and anyone else with the capacity to neutralise Kony on its territory, refuses to do so. The UN departments, specifically MONUC, will do nothing to encourage this either. But let Uganda move a foot into Congo, and everyone, UDD to the front, will be yapping at its heel. Could this be the hammer in their anvil of next week? Dwell for a moment on what happened in Iraq when the USA had its hand around Saddam Hussein and let him go. They had said they would surround him and kill him. In confused areas of that kind, it is deemed preferable to let the confusion continue, for the easier management of the area from outside.
With that in mind, do you find it so very difficult to understand the games powers such as the UDD play?
Lucky Uganda, with its oil gushing to the surface, should start doing its sums and borrow against the coming harvest. Naïve? Better than the receiving end of diplomatic piracy!
John Nagenda
When I was in my late teens, 50 years ago and newly arrived at then Makerere University College (tied in with London University) I got hooked on Western movies. Not “western†in the modern sense, meaning an amorphous group of mainly capitalistic Countries of the West, come together to fight Commies and Reds Under the Bed but westerns of the Red Indian and Cowboys variety.
How we loved them! I am not even necessarily referring to classics like Shane and High Noon, but the ordinary run of the mill type where farmers and cattlemen were at odds, fighting for territory, and of course for white women, a rare commodity in them there hills. But depend on it, the Indian, be he chief or otherwise (remember the phrase, “Too many chiefs, too few Indians�) was always present in the background.
The menacing bass note preceding the usually brief battles fought as the Indian threw himself at the gunned stockade of those who had usurped his land. You knew the (Red) Indians were on their way when smoke signals puffed in the sky, followed by hoops and blood curdling yells, and then men in feathered headdresses advancing on incredibly fast ponies to their doom. Some sagacious cowboy or other white would intone: “The Indians are on the warpath again.â€
Believe it or not, the whole of the foregoing was so that I could use this sentence; but in ironically opposite sense to the fate of the Red Indians above! Uganda’s Dear Donors (UDD) are on the warpath again. The menacing drumbeats have started. On Thursday The Monitor warned us: “Donors warn of more aid cutsâ€. According to its source, many donors are not satisfied with Government’s choice of priorities in the Annual Budget.
One of their beefs (cheap pun: Uganda’s beef smells and tastes far better than theirs!) concerns the admittedly vast cabinet, presidential advisers, and parliament itself. But, as Monitor accurately put it, “Museveni has refused to budge, saying the bloated government bureaucracy is the cost of democracy as he struggles with the need to balance the country’s plethora of ethnic groups.â€
Cast your mind back to Berlin towards the end of the 19th century recalling the heartless (and mindless) fashion in which Africa was carved up to start this “plethora of ethnic groupsâ€. None of the players in the UDD is of the age of Shakespeare’s “puking and mewling infantâ€, so what ails them? Could the answer be, plain as the nose on their face, that in the case of the Wretched of the Earth, the UDD would rather not get historical headaches like the Scramble for Africa? Not wholly dead today! Britain was first off, announcing on Monday that it would decapitate by 20 million British pounds, its budgetary support to Uganda for the financial year 2006/7. Wham Bam Thank You Mam! My tummy went liquid with terror of the unknown. I reached for my (Chinese) calculator. Divide the 20 million by 28 million, reputed to be the current population of our lovely land. You get a figure of just less than six British pence per head of population per calendar month; admittedly bigger in Ugandan shillings: 202. Hmmm! The stratagem is to deeply infiltrate sovereign states at minimal cost.
***************
The New Vision followed a slightly different tack on the UDD. On Thursday its headline was: “Donors to meet over LRA.†It was in reference to the hot news that President Museveni, at the end of his tether (rope) had promised total amnesty to the unspeakable Kony, head of the repulsive Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Apparently, the UDD were to meet in Kampala to hammer (surely not Dr Besigye’s) out their position on the matter.
Museveni, the last man on earth to do so, had reached his decision, as he has succinctly put it, because he had no serious partners with whom to continue the better action; to get Kony from where he was hiding in Garamba National Park in D R Congo.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) safe in its Geneva tower was reported to have announced, more or less, that it would hold Museveni to blame in going against its ruling that Kony and his four top dogs should be arraigned and posted to it. I suggested on the BBC that the ICC should do the little grab job itself! Kony is not in Uganda. If he were, Uganda would get him for the ICC, or Kony would perish in action. Certainly there would be no need to talk amnesty.
Congo, which has the sovereign powers to let Uganda, Southern Sudan and anyone else with the capacity to neutralise Kony on its territory, refuses to do so. The UN departments, specifically MONUC, will do nothing to encourage this either. But let Uganda move a foot into Congo, and everyone, UDD to the front, will be yapping at its heel. Could this be the hammer in their anvil of next week? Dwell for a moment on what happened in Iraq when the USA had its hand around Saddam Hussein and let him go. They had said they would surround him and kill him. In confused areas of that kind, it is deemed preferable to let the confusion continue, for the easier management of the area from outside.
With that in mind, do you find it so very difficult to understand the games powers such as the UDD play?
Lucky Uganda, with its oil gushing to the surface, should start doing its sums and borrow against the coming harvest. Naïve? Better than the receiving end of diplomatic piracy!