The source of the Movement's democracy

By Odrek Rwabwogo

Last week, we completed the key lessons learnt from the three men who planted the ideological seed of the Movement; The late Julius Nyerere, Samora Machel and the man who finally brought the idea to life in Uganda, Yoweri Museveni . Now we would like to move the reader from the theory to the practice.

There are three stages we extrapolate from the history of all developed nations. Each nation took these deliberate steps to overcome insecurity, poverty and take her place in the world through these measured steps. These steps are the scaffolding on which to build the socio economic and political fabric of a nation. They are the expression of an idea on which change and development is based. If you imagine these steps as those on ladders and they are placed on a wrong wall, a nation can't easily reach for what is ahead. The nation, just like a human being, will fall.

In this installment, we would like to deal with step one:

It is called a political revolution. As indicated in our opening to these series, this was the beginning of the Movement in Uganda. A Movement is a spontaneous awakening of a people to liberate themselves from social, economic and political servitude, change their thinking and create a better society.  Britain went through her own revolution in 1688 and got a bill of rights that granted power to Parliament. This begun the process of a modern constitutional monarchy the country has today. It also gave rights to ownership of land to citizens who previously had been disenfranchised.

France in 1789 removed a centuries old monarchy with a string of unproductive nobilities. France established a republic with her own bill of rights sealing it with liberty, equality and fraternity, as a rallying standard. America in 1776 freed herself from British rule and established a new nation.

The communist party in China which begun the resistance in 1922, eventually took power in 1949 starting a remake of China.

Uganda achieved her own revolution in 1986 when the sons of peasants, old and young men, women, the disabled, students, leading a people's army, won the war of resistance. This war had been 14 years in the making since 1971 Idi Amin's carried out a coup d'état. Through a political revolution, guided by good teaching and a strong ideological stimuli, a people identify their fundamental, legitimate and common interest; interest that unites them such as freedom and prosperity.

There are three key elements that are achieved by a people under the political revolution:

First, they reclaim their lost democratic right. People come to the full knowledge that they are the masters of their own destiny at an individual level and collectively as a nation. They recognise they have an inherent God given right to choose those who govern them and replace them, if they fail in their (leaders) duty. They realise there is no authority other than that of their creator, that is more important than themselves.

This realisation is key in building democracy because it breaks the unfounded trepidation and fear of the common man by those who govern him. This allows a citizen to question the manner and type of leadership provided by those he has put in power.

Our own history shows just about 27 rifles in the hands of a committed group of people in 1981, most of them peasants with no prior military training, were able to overthrow a well-paid standing army of 60,000 men and massive weaponry. A people so liberated from the unfounded fear of those in authority forms a bedrock of inquiry even in such areas as science and technology.

Let us take an example to illustrate this fact:  Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding leaders of America, like many people of his time, had no formal education but because he challenged colonial rule, this spirit of resistance led him to further areas of inquiry. In 1752, he discovered the properties of lightning, trapped it and made it a source of electricity. Freedom from misgovernance, therefore, has a multiplier effect on the ability of a common citizen to strengthen his match to progress even in other ways not originally intended.

This is where the Movement gets its principle of democracy. That the common person is our basis for existence as an organisation is key to understanding the roots of the Movement. There are nations in the world where, if an army captures power, it sees no reason to subject itself to a popular vote. The NRM after a successful five year protracted peoples war asked the population to write a new constitution as a basis of governance. The Movement leaders then locked away their military uniforms and ranks and sought the consent of the common person as their basis for legitimacy.

The second element a political revolution grants is a translation of the gains from freedom and unity into the creation of two important 'tribes' that drives a nation to modernity. The first tribe is called 'producers of goods and services'. The second is 'consumers of goods and services'.  In our modern world, these two tribes have superior capability to create wealth than the natural affinity to one's ethnicity or religious beliefs. Those who produce goods and services or find work in factories, shed off the narrow vertical thinking of ethnicity and religion. Neither religion nor tribe in their raw form can make a 'staircase' on which a modern nation matches to sustained progress.

Ethnicity and religion are diversionary and an inferior way to build a democratic society. They are disruptive to the natural growth of society when used as a basis for governance and access to public office. I suppose it is the reason colonialists introduced religious bigotry in our politics for they knew very well that it would keep Africans, who were already divided on clans, further apart. Raising a people's level of political consciousness builds a sense of nationalism and diminishes the scourge of sectarianism based on tribe and religion.

It even ends wars of aggression between communities because insecurity is ideological. Political consciousness unites people who, if one bases their external judgments simply on perception, are supposed to oppose each other.  Perhaps, I should pose a question drawn from the Movement history in order to help the reader understand the value of political consciousness. Why did Haruna Kibuye, Abbas Kibazo, Zubairi Bakari in 1971, expected to serve a sectarian government under Idi Amin on account of their being of the same faith with Amin, instead chose to be the fulcrum on which the Fronasa underground Movement turned, from 1972 onwards?

The answer to this question clearly separates the quality and ideological superiority of the Movement from other groups. The answer is that the Movement preached the message of unity that transcended narrow religious differences and challenged the establishment thinking of the time that made tribe and religion the basis for judging peoples political choices. Zubairi Bakari and his colleagues were called 'Abawejere', who were worked in the markets of Katwe and Kibuye. They had become disillusioned with the lack of commitment of the elite groups they had been following in the fight against Amin.

When the young leaders of the Movement made contact and delivered a new narrative to the struggle that went against the traditional dictum of tribe and religion, the Abawejere listened. The young Movement leaders made a case for putting the common man at the centre of his own liberation.  They espoused the gun as the highest instrument of political debate to answer Amin's brutality while the elite groups in the city at the time, instead gullibly debated a way of 'working with Amin to change his thinking from inside the Government'. The young leaders were willing to lead from the front both in ideological mentorship and execution of the battles of liberation. The broader 'tribes' called 'producers and consumers' of goods raise the quality of the struggle and build firmer foundations than ethnicity and tribe. This can only be achieved under a political revolution that raises the consciousness of a people to liberate themselves.

The third element realised under the political revolution is the understanding that the strength of a nation is incomplete unless all her neighbours or all those a nation with whom it shares some commonality (border, values, people etc), are united and speaking from the same script. It is called Panafricanism as a principle in the Movement. There are two ways to demonstrate this.

Let us take an example of an investment in a fast food restaurant in Uganda and compare it with a similar investment in China. An international fast food retail outlet such as MCdonald giving out a franchise in China would require, even with differing food tastes and preferences, less than five years to break even. However, in Uganda, where language (English) and tastes for potatoes is more known than in China, an investor in a similar opportunity would need to wait much longer, sometimes well over 10 years to break even. This is because of the size of the markets available to an investor in these two different markets. China has 1.3 billion consumers against Uganda's 35 million people for each product put on the market. To open opportunities for market access and prosperity in Africa, a nation having overcome problems of internal disunity under a political revolution, would have to necessary look to her neighbours to expand opportunities for her people through trade and to end poverty.

Regional trade between African nations is less than 10% of its total trade, the lowest in the world. Europe and America all stand above 40% of trade within their regions. This is even not enough for them as we have seen recently. The EU and the US, very big  and rich blocks already, are now trying to create a large transatlantic trade zone to expand their market further and block out the emerging nations of China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa. To overcome this dysfunctional behaviour in Africa, Panafricanism is so essential.

The second way to demonstrate the necessity of this element is to look at the space race. The US alone has over 1,300 satellites giving it ability to control most space aspects such as aviation, telecommunication, travel, weather and modern computer based weaponry.  

China, by sheer economic and population numbers and in co-operation with Russia, has consistently challenged America's drive to keep its four dimensional military dominance (space, air, land and at sea). Space domination isn't about a legitimate right of a nation. It is about a nation's sheer economic capability on which to base its science and innovation.

Recently, China tested its space capability by launching their own drone, the Caihong 4. It was sold to the Iraqi government, making China the world's third largest arms exporter after the US and Russia. The Caihong 4's research, production and launch infrastructure simply shows the power of co-operation with neighbours (Russia) about minimising and eventually neutralising space domination by one super power (US) and the numbers of the Chinese people in determining the future of battles on our planet. The world has been used to US drones with such names as the predator and reaper. Now the world has to listen to new names from China. China and Russia are now working closely to establish a universal credit rating agency; have helped create a development bank (BRISCA), the first outside the West and are crafting an eventual parallel international system for financial clearance.

These are lessons for Africa. Who will guarantee the future of Africa if everybody in the world is working hard to be the best and dominate the weak?  Pan-Africanism is about building capacity for Africa to participate in the debate about the future of our planet. We can't win this battle as simply small Balkanised nations states. Even the small European states have their guarantor in the US strength. This is what NATO is about. We need unity in Africa if we have to defend the survival, let alone the Integrity of the African and stop a real possibility of being recolonised by the powerful. We need to jointly invest in technologies and raise a new generation of young people interested in securing the future of our continent. This realisation is evident under a political revolution.

Out of the political revolution, therefore, grows three key principles of the Movement, namely democracy, nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Let us picture the Ugandan political soil before 1986 as that in a thick forest with a huge canopy that stops the sun from reaching the ground. Less sunlight on the ground makes the forest soil attain a high level of alkalinity. No trees take their roots down. Trees look large but fall easily under heavy winds. Likewise, Ugandan political soil was infested with acidity of tribe and religion. It is only the NRM that introduced new fertilisers of democracy, nationalism and Pan-Africanism, thus making our nation stronger. We got to keep it strong by ensuring no return of acidity of religion and tribe into our changed politics.

Next week we will look at how the gains of the political revolution are expressed by a community through new found freedoms.

Thank you

The writer is a farmer and entrepreneur