Rwakakamba's analysis has two major flaws

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By Odrek Rwabwogo

There are two major flaws with the Morrison Rwakakamba’s criticism of the training and ideological mentorship we do with the leaders of the Movement at the districts and institutions of learning.

I assume he based his understanding on newspaper reports that are often inaccurate.

First, security and prosperity aren’t ideology. They are bi-products of a good ideology. There is no government or political organisation I know of in the world that is against security or the prosperity of her people. Even the most brutal dictatorship lays claim to these two attributes.

 To understand the ideological base of the Movement, one has to necessarily first answer the question of who was the struggle fought and victory delivered for? Where does the fundamental interest of the struggle lie? In the Movement, it is the people. The answer to this question in 1971 helped decide the nature and type of struggle for liberation that eventually came 1986.

As an example, not to use short cuts to victory, such as assassinations or military coups and instead execute a protracted peoples war, means that in the Movement, the people, their participation in their own liberation, the rising of their political consciousness is a fundamental tenet of our ideology. A mobilised and highly conscientised population delivers itself out of poverty, defends itself from all forms of attack and raises the quality of its leadership.

The common person and not necessarily the elite raised and nursed the Movement in its infancy. As an example, between September 1983 and June 1984, the people of Wakyaato and Ngoma in the then Luwero Triangle, gave 21,000 head of cattle to the NRA fighters for food. Earlier in June 1981, when the head of the resistance left the bush for six months for a foreign mission, he returned in December to find the number of fighters had increased from 200 to 900 and guns from 60 to 100. Where did all this human and material support come from? It came from an engaged and conscientised people. This is why it bothers me very much that our structures today are less engaged at a time when we are supposedly stronger than when the Movement was in its infancy and vulnerable. In the Movement, people are our first strike capability.

As in the army, they are the first weapon available to us in changing our country because they participate in and own the struggle. Someone might ask, is there a political organisation that doesn’t base its mission on the people? The answer is ‘Yes’. Some parties are formed solely to secure power and fulfill narrow interests or be lackeys of foreign interest. The alliance of UPC and Kabaka Yeka in 1961 is one such example in the category of narrow and vertical interests of a minority.

 People are the scaffolding on which all other aspects and programmes of the Movement that Rwakakamba instead calls ideology, hang strong. If we don’t teach this to the young generation, they will confuse tenets of an ideology and the outcomes of it just like Rwakakamba is doing. It is on this scaffolding that we hang other values such as self-reliance, a disciplined and professional army and broad-baseness (which Rwakakamba thinks should be replaced by competition without first understanding that the former is not opposed to the latter. In a young country whose social formation is still a work in progress, continuous broad involvement of all segments of society is, in fact, a healing balm for many narrow frictions and a platform to deliver change consistently).

Second flaw

The second flaw in Rwakakamba’s criticism is the failure to establish the borderline between the struggle and its leadership.

The Movement, in my opinion, is the awakening of the people to defend their rights and change their social and economic status. That awakening goes beyond individual leaders and generations. For example, when both kings Kabalega (Bunyoro) and Mwanga (Buganda) were defeated militarily, it took another 50 years for a new spontaneous awakening to happen. It was led by Ignatius Musaazi and the farmers’ federation in 1945, initially demanding fair prices for their crops, ending the monopoly on cotton ginning by the Asian middlemen and the right to representation in the colonial Parliament.  This broad Movement was later diverted by UPC’s manoeuvres in 1961.

However, a few young men kept up the struggle to involve the population in their own liberation. These included Kirunda Kivejinja, John Kakonge, Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, Kintu Musoke and many others. This group, though springing from a weak position, kept the idea of a Movement burning even under the UPC early dictatorship.

By 1971, a new group of younger people including Rait Omongin, Eriya Kategaya, Maumbe Mukwana, Valeriano Rwaheru, Kagulire Kasadha, Wukwu Kazimoto, Akena P’Ojok, Zubairi Bakari, Martin Mwesiga and Yoweri Museveni, emerged.

This new generation then took the struggle to a higher level. They understood that a gun is the highest form of political debate when all sense had failed. Just like Musaazi before him, Yoweri Museveni led this group but this time, to a decisive victory.

Now, to secure enduring victory for the Movement, each generation working with the people, has to apply itself anew to this idea for its own time. When, therefore, we say we should teach ideology, all we are saying is that we stand on the shoulders of giants who have worked with the people, in order that we can extend this very idea of promise and freedom to a new generation.

We do not, in any way, seek to demean the role of people who have gone before us or the work they have done as Rwakakamba seems to suggest. We simply call on some of the armchair pundits who specialise in criticism to join us in the battlefield for securing the ideological space of this generation. As the Bible says in Luke 10:2 “the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few”.

Finally, let me clarify the undertone in the criticism about my role and that of my colleagues in the starting of the Youth Venture Capital scheme.

In September 2009, when youth riots rocked Kampala over the refusal by Police of the Kabaka’s visit to Kayunga, we understood clearly that a number of youth who had been arrested weren’t Kabaka loyalists.

Some came from faraway places as Kisoro where there are no known kings. We knew this unemployment was causing problems. Instead of complaining, we chose to take action. We went round the country and invited 50 youths from each district and spent a week in Makerere training and mentoring a total of 6,500 youths in entrepreneurship skills.

We held this training under a vehicle called the Uganda Youth Convention. The result of this huge gathering was the coming together of both public and private sector opinion to start a Uganda job stimulus programme that saw support of the business process outsourcing (BPO) programme commence. Together with my colleagues, we crafted what eventually became the Venture Capital Fund (VCF), the precursor of the current Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP).

That word ‘venture’ isn’t known or used regularly in government lingua. If, therefore, anybody is dismissing this work or wants us to be quiet about it, that person isn’t very helpful to the struggle. I would expect new ideas for this scheme not criticism.

This is the reason I seek a platform so as to make a compelling case for these ideas we have in the past generated but haven’t been able to campaign for publicly. Every time we try to stand strong on these issues or teach in villages, the question of who are we to do this and what authority do we have, is asked. We would like to decide this question with my candidature for the position of vice-chairperson western region.

Thank you.

The writer is aspiring for NRM national vice-chairperson for western region