Let us appraise China’s transformation critically
Jun 21, 2009
<b>By Kintu Nyago</b><br><br>Prof. Augustus Nuwagaba’s article ‘China, the Shining Example of Transformative Leadership†which appeared in The New Vision of May 20, was based on a wrong premise. The article suggests that Africa does not have tran
By Kintu Nyago
Prof. Augustus Nuwagaba’s article ‘China, the Shining Example of Transformative Leadership†which appeared in The New Vision of May 20, was based on a wrong premise. The article suggests that Africa does not have transformative leadership. It also contained factual errors.
The writer presented a rosy picture of communist China’s transformation and this calls for a critical response.
It is wrong to stereotype the entire African political leadership as inept and unwilling to qualitatively transform their societies. For instance, Mauritius and Seychelles have recently transformed much faster than China, resulting into their citizens enjoying a higher per capita income.
Candid observers would appreciate that the political leadership in Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, among others, are transformative, despite the enormous challenges these countries are faced with.
Apart from South Africa, all the others are small countries and economies, whose long-term viability is in question. Three are landlocked. Uganda and Rwanda are in one of the world’s most geo-politically unstable regions. Despite these challenges, over one million Africans have joined the middle classes in South Africa since the African National Congress assumed power in 1994, this in addition to the creation of two million jobs.
Uganda’s economy has increased five times, under the NRM, compared to 1971 before the Amin coup, an era considered by some to be the ‘golden period’. Our economy has also grown eight times compared to the 1986 levels. Nuwagaba should remember that President Museveni and the NRM inherited a collapsed economy in 1986.
Uganda’s currently robust and more diversified economy illustrates visible signs of transformation. It grew last financial year at an average of 7% despite the global recession. A development not due to divine intervention, but rather due to prudent political and economic management.
Currently, agriculture’s share of GDP has dropped to 15.1%. With the rest being contributed by the service sector (51.2%) and industry. However, even our agriculture sector no longer merely depends on coffee and cotton.
Transformation is not merely economic. It has political and social facets. Our democratic constitution and governance institutions, right from the local government, illustrates transformation.
We also see social reforms with gender being mainstreamed, and ordinary people empowered to elect their leaders. Or the peace the entire Uganda is enjoying for the first time in 30 years, without any insurgency, or organised cattle rustling.
Social transformation has manifested through the introduction of universal education. This is in addition to the establishment of more than 25 new universities. The introduction of programmes that offer safe water to the population.
Nuwagaba errs when he states that chairman Mao Zedong and the Chinese communist party captured state power in 1959. This was achieved a decade earlier, on October 1, 1949, when Mao made his famous Tiananmen Square speech. Nuwagaba praises Mao’s legacy. Agreed, Mao played a pivotal, though very bloody, role in the creation of modern China. He ensured its sovereignty, established a national (communist) economy and effective state. However, Mao also made enormous, inexcusable mistakes. His political economic policies did not and could not transform China into an industrialised first world nation. He found and left China largely a poor, peasant-based society.
Furthermore, Mao was obsessed with the very power politics Nuwagaba criticises in African leaders, but ironically praises in him. This led him to establish a personality cult. This is what informed the politics of the infamous ‘Cultural Revolution†and not “the values of hardwork, self-determination and national pride†that Nuwagaba wrongly cites. Through the “Cultural Revolution†Mao transformed himself into a feudal despot whose paranoid views became official dogma. Free critical thought was stifled.
With views contrary to Mao’s being banned, resulting into the Chinese intelligentsia and communist party being purged off its most critical and talented minds.
The great reformer Deng Xiao Ping was a victim of this purge. He got rusticated in some rural hamlet with his own son getting paralysed in the process after being pushed from a storeyed building by Mao’s red guards. But Deng was lucky. Many, including former President Liu Shao-Chi, were killed.
I am also critical of the Chinese Communist party’s coercive family planning policies, involving the “one child†policy and forced sterilisations, which Nuwagaba is all praises about. My view is that the educating of the girl child and the further empowerment of women to make informed choices about their sexuality, rather than some ‘big brother’ deciding on one’s family size, should be the best way forward.
To argue like Nuwagaba that Uganda has no senior political leaders with “unquenchable thirst for poverty reduction†is, in my view, laughable. How about President Museveni, whom even Oxford University recognised by establishing an economics Professorial Chair in his name, focused on poverty eradication. How about Tumusiime Mutebile, the brains behind Uganda’s PEAP, which was later adopted globally by the World Bank. Or Vice-President Bukenya and his highland rice programmes, or Dr Suruma and Gen. Saleh, among others, with Bonna Bagaggawale and the SACCOS?
Nuwagaba erroneously suggests that “it is this economic performance†that has earned China international influence, and made it a permanent member of the UN.†The fact is that China first became a permanent member of the UN Security Council with the formation of this organisation in the 1940s.
Major lessons for Africa and Uganda from all this are that our transformative experience should be informed by our own circumstances and history.
Our development should be informed by democratic governance anchored in the rule of law. Our development programmes should be pro-people and humane. Africans, including our peasants, should never be turned into veritable guinea pigs to be subjected to all manner of bizarre social engineering.
The writer is a member of the Presidential Committee on the Promotion of Patriotism
Prof. Augustus Nuwagaba’s article ‘China, the Shining Example of Transformative Leadership†which appeared in The New Vision of May 20, was based on a wrong premise. The article suggests that Africa does not have transformative leadership. It also contained factual errors.
The writer presented a rosy picture of communist China’s transformation and this calls for a critical response.
It is wrong to stereotype the entire African political leadership as inept and unwilling to qualitatively transform their societies. For instance, Mauritius and Seychelles have recently transformed much faster than China, resulting into their citizens enjoying a higher per capita income.
Candid observers would appreciate that the political leadership in Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, among others, are transformative, despite the enormous challenges these countries are faced with.
Apart from South Africa, all the others are small countries and economies, whose long-term viability is in question. Three are landlocked. Uganda and Rwanda are in one of the world’s most geo-politically unstable regions. Despite these challenges, over one million Africans have joined the middle classes in South Africa since the African National Congress assumed power in 1994, this in addition to the creation of two million jobs.
Uganda’s economy has increased five times, under the NRM, compared to 1971 before the Amin coup, an era considered by some to be the ‘golden period’. Our economy has also grown eight times compared to the 1986 levels. Nuwagaba should remember that President Museveni and the NRM inherited a collapsed economy in 1986.
Uganda’s currently robust and more diversified economy illustrates visible signs of transformation. It grew last financial year at an average of 7% despite the global recession. A development not due to divine intervention, but rather due to prudent political and economic management.
Currently, agriculture’s share of GDP has dropped to 15.1%. With the rest being contributed by the service sector (51.2%) and industry. However, even our agriculture sector no longer merely depends on coffee and cotton.
Transformation is not merely economic. It has political and social facets. Our democratic constitution and governance institutions, right from the local government, illustrates transformation.
We also see social reforms with gender being mainstreamed, and ordinary people empowered to elect their leaders. Or the peace the entire Uganda is enjoying for the first time in 30 years, without any insurgency, or organised cattle rustling.
Social transformation has manifested through the introduction of universal education. This is in addition to the establishment of more than 25 new universities. The introduction of programmes that offer safe water to the population.
Nuwagaba errs when he states that chairman Mao Zedong and the Chinese communist party captured state power in 1959. This was achieved a decade earlier, on October 1, 1949, when Mao made his famous Tiananmen Square speech. Nuwagaba praises Mao’s legacy. Agreed, Mao played a pivotal, though very bloody, role in the creation of modern China. He ensured its sovereignty, established a national (communist) economy and effective state. However, Mao also made enormous, inexcusable mistakes. His political economic policies did not and could not transform China into an industrialised first world nation. He found and left China largely a poor, peasant-based society.
Furthermore, Mao was obsessed with the very power politics Nuwagaba criticises in African leaders, but ironically praises in him. This led him to establish a personality cult. This is what informed the politics of the infamous ‘Cultural Revolution†and not “the values of hardwork, self-determination and national pride†that Nuwagaba wrongly cites. Through the “Cultural Revolution†Mao transformed himself into a feudal despot whose paranoid views became official dogma. Free critical thought was stifled.
With views contrary to Mao’s being banned, resulting into the Chinese intelligentsia and communist party being purged off its most critical and talented minds.
The great reformer Deng Xiao Ping was a victim of this purge. He got rusticated in some rural hamlet with his own son getting paralysed in the process after being pushed from a storeyed building by Mao’s red guards. But Deng was lucky. Many, including former President Liu Shao-Chi, were killed.
I am also critical of the Chinese Communist party’s coercive family planning policies, involving the “one child†policy and forced sterilisations, which Nuwagaba is all praises about. My view is that the educating of the girl child and the further empowerment of women to make informed choices about their sexuality, rather than some ‘big brother’ deciding on one’s family size, should be the best way forward.
To argue like Nuwagaba that Uganda has no senior political leaders with “unquenchable thirst for poverty reduction†is, in my view, laughable. How about President Museveni, whom even Oxford University recognised by establishing an economics Professorial Chair in his name, focused on poverty eradication. How about Tumusiime Mutebile, the brains behind Uganda’s PEAP, which was later adopted globally by the World Bank. Or Vice-President Bukenya and his highland rice programmes, or Dr Suruma and Gen. Saleh, among others, with Bonna Bagaggawale and the SACCOS?
Nuwagaba erroneously suggests that “it is this economic performance†that has earned China international influence, and made it a permanent member of the UN.†The fact is that China first became a permanent member of the UN Security Council with the formation of this organisation in the 1940s.
Major lessons for Africa and Uganda from all this are that our transformative experience should be informed by our own circumstances and history.
Our development should be informed by democratic governance anchored in the rule of law. Our development programmes should be pro-people and humane. Africans, including our peasants, should never be turned into veritable guinea pigs to be subjected to all manner of bizarre social engineering.
The writer is a member of the Presidential Committee on the Promotion of Patriotism