THE CAMPAIGNS ARE HERE

There has been a flurry of political activity in the last two weeks that leave no doubt that battle lines are being drawn ahead of the 2016 polls.

First off Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Major General Mugisha Muntu took greater control of the party by ditching MP Nandala Mafabi as leader of the opposition in parliament. He later on shuffled parliamentary committee leaders.

Then the NRM caucus went on what was expected to be a routine retreat to Kyankwanzi and threw the cat among the pigeons by a unanimous resolution to have President Yoweri Museveni unopposed as party flag bearer.

There is still a lot of paper work to be gone through before Museveni is formally adopted by the party but a perception has been created and one other challengers will struggle to erode.

"Outside the party despite its internal issue, an NRM united in purpose so early in the game – it’s about 24 months before the elections, could be a nightmare to go up against....

With the presidential flag bearer decided for all practical purposes it will be interesting to see whether the party can resolve the MP nominations with such decisiveness, though one can expect the squabbling prior to the last election will replay itself this time around.

It is still early days but two major themes are likely to play out in the run up to 2016.

For the opposition and FDC in particular, can they build a national structure to deploy? As it is now the older parties the Democratic Party (DP), Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) are hobbled by leadership challenges and an inertia that has seen them falling out of public view since 2011. For FDC the recent moves suggest Muntu is creating a party in his image – quiet but calculating, unassuming but unafraid to take on the establishment. The days of bluster and grandstanding may be over, at least for the time being...

The issue of forming an opposition will come up and one can expect frenetic efforts in the coming months to cobble together a semblance of a coalition. However without a national network to counter the NRM’s we can expect the same results from previous elections.

In the NRM its longevity could be its greatest advantage and greatest liability. An asset because they can call on a time tested network, the 2016 poll will be its fifth election. The LC system maybe broken down but there are thousands of NRM “faithful” willing to throw in their lot with the yellow party, for a fee of course.

The challenge of the Movement and why acrimonious primaries for parliamentary are inevitable is that ever younger aspirants are coming through to challenge incumbents many of whom have held their seats for more than a decade. Everybody likes a winner and in many instances winning the NRM primaries is a sure deal for winning the parliamentary seat for the constituency.

"For the Movement too this will be a particularly vicious primary election because with Museveni winding down the clock – the constitution puts the ceiling on presidential candidates at 75, one has to be at the center of things to be considered when the transition is being massaged....

And finally one can expect the “senior leaders within presidential ambitions” – to quote the Kyankwanzi resolution, to slink off to lick their wounds but to regroup and try and make a last ditch attempt to be the parties torch bearer over the next two years.

If there was any doubt that the campaigns were on the events of the last week dispel any such illusions.

SETTING A MINIMUM WAGE GOOD FOR UGANDA ECONOMY

The government's announcement recently that it will set a minimum wage is good news for the economy and also for the worker, but not in the way they think.

As it is now

we have a minimum wage of sh6000 a month which was decreed in 1984, but inflation and an increasingly higher standard of living means the number is worse than redundant....

Our workers' union have been pushing for a revision of this number but the government has argued it's best left to individual employee employer negotiation, fearing that if they set a number investment in the country will become unattractive.

Both are right but for different reasons than they think.

Let us take it from the investors point of view. Investors like cheap labour if they are producing for a market that is not finicky about standards and one that does not consume much anyway. In such a market you can literally source your labour off the streets and not care about what value they are bringing to the operation other than their sweat.

Looking at the payroll the cost of this labour maybe cheap but the attendant costs of welfare - meals, health and labour laws, change this figure dramatically.

Imagine you start a backyard brewery for labour you can employ the children to collect water from the well, the wife to peel the matoke and you can all jump into the canoe to stamp on the bananas until they are a nice consistent mash ready for fermentation.

Your labour is inexpensive, need no highly specialized skills and are readily available. The market are your neighbours and at worst the village drunks on market day.

Imagine you wanted to scale up this operation to supply the sub-county, the district maybe even the nation.

For starters your labour has to change, initially in terms of quantity and eventually quality. Now you will not only be peeling the odd bunch of matoke but probably truckloads. What was a small loss occasioned by the temporary lack of focus by the wife in which she peeled off more banana than peel becomes a much bigger deal when it happens with a few thousand bunches. The workers in tying to beat the system by collecting 18 liters at the well instead of the 20 liters that a full jerrycans holds will cost you as well. And finally ensuring quality control across 100 mashing canoes is a whole different ball game than when you could lord over the wife and kids to step some more in your single canoe operation. And finally you will need a more advanced skill than your seasoned tongue to ensure the standards across your product is good to ship out to market.

If the government raises the cost of labour, your first instinct will be to cut staff. Initially you may cut numbers and pay the remaining workers a bit more. But the market demands that you step up production. But getting more staff will kill your margins, so what are you to do? Mechanize!

"The one off cost of plant and machinery maybe daunting but the running cost of these machines, which can be worked more than the stipulated eight hours a day, over the life of the machine makes more sense when viewed against the stress and cost of maintaining a work force....

In addition with increased production -- you have to sweat the machines to pay for themselves, you will have to step up your marketing, word of mouth just will not do going into the future.

"Uganda workers are the least productive in the region and its not because they are lazy, it's because the capital injected into their work process does not match regional standards...

Think about it you and your family combined cannot churn out as much beer in a year as a single worker in Uganda Breweries can in a week.

So the workers will be paid better, but the kind of worker who will be required is not that who can mash banana underfoot but one who can, using chemistry, manage the fermentation process of thousands of liters of beer. The worker required will not be the one who can carry four crates at a go but one who can man a forklift. The worker required will not be the one who has to grin and bare the hot sun as he sells beer in the market all day but one who can understand the market and design marketing campaigns that will lead to greater sales.

So yes the minimum wage is good for the economy in that it will force us to inject more capital into our processes, boost production, improve efficiencies and pay the worker better, not just any worker off the street, a more educated and skilled one...

MAFABI AND THE CHANGING TONE OF UGANDA’S OPPOSITION

The replacement of Nandala Mafabi, MP Sironko West as the leader of opposition in parliament last week marked the final shift of opposition politics away from one of rabble rousing and confrontation to one of quiet and calculated machination. 

FDC boss Major General Mugisha Muntu replaced his nemesis with first time legislator Wafula Ogutu.

One of the most enduring images of Mafabi from the last election is of him atop a double cabin pickup, his spindly legs sticking out of white khaki shorts and his arms raised in clenched defiance. 

The picture was taken on Election Day, the story being that he was resisting attempts to steal his vote during the polls.

With this image in mind subsequent pictures of him in suit and tie caused a kind of cognitive dissonance.

Political rivalry aside Mafabi’s sideling may be one of a series of attempts, starting with the urbane Mugisha Muntu assuming the helm of FDC, to change the face of the opposition in Uganda.

The political thinkers must have worked out that bashing their political heads against the entrenched position of the NRM nationally is a losing strategy and are looking to use a more subtle approach to win their way....

In the last ten years or so since the lifting of political party activity the opposition has had two major challenges, a clumsy transition from the geriatrics of yesteryear to a younger, newer leadership and a dwelling on past glory by the old leadership, which bore no resemblance to the new political landscape and as a result found themselves out manoeuvred at every turn.

FDC unburdened by the baggage of history, has been raised to its current pre-eminence by sheer force of will of the founding president Kizza Besigye.

Besigye continues to pursue an openly confrontational stance against the government, a situation one may argue has been forced upon him. But

after the dust has settled, the tear gas has dispersed and the cameras have stopped rolling, FDC and the opposition have been found wanting in structure and presence across the country and unable to make a credible challenge at the polls....

In a political environment where superiority of numbers at the polls and not whining before the media determine the victor, those tactics had their limitations.

This is the challenge the retired-Major General and his new lieutenant will have to address if the party is to make any serious dents in the NRM’s stranglehold on the country’s politics.

The NRM has its weaknesses, most recently captured by the fallout with the “rebel” MPs but observers will not have failed to notice that the party seems to emerge more coherent from such “crisis” than when it went in.

The opposition will do very well to take from the Yoweri Museveni’s own playbook. 

In 1981 going up against the government with only the mythical 27 at his back, Museveni knew that a head on approach against the better equipped UNLA would be suicidal.  So the NRA used hit-and-run tactics, choosing their battles carefully, minimising losses while sapping the enemy’s morale and resources.

Mafabi’s side lining points to a shift in strategy based on a realisation that the opposition needs to go beyond grandstanding in front of the cameras and work more in building networks countrywide.

One tends to think that Oguttu was appointed to appease eastern Uganda, where Mafabi is a leading light. The suggestion is even that he might make way for a more seasoned politician with a better feel for the kind of political manoeuvring that will be required in coming years.

"It would be full hardy to expect the NRM to look on as the opposition roll out into the countryside and that is where the mental flexibility and cunning of a quieter operator may prove useful...

The vehemence and bluster of a Besigye played a critical part in building the FDC’s profile and reshaping the political opposition, the future will belong to the backroom operators, those intent on building structures, recalibrating what constitutes victory as they go, not harking after publicity but confident that the painstaking work will pay off eventually.

However one should not assume that the FDC and the opposition as a whole have lost a taste for running streets battles with the police, it’s just that they may used more judiciously and intermittently.

As for Mafabi the temptation for his bruised ego is to break away and form his own party, there will always be praise singers on the sideline who would encourage such a mover. 

But FDC still remains the dominant opposition party and the NRM is not going anywhere soon, in breaking away he will have doubled his work in getting to state house. At 48 he has to wonder whether he has the time to go it alone.

KENYATTA CASE EXPOSES THE ICC’S WEAKNESS

At the time of writing, the International Criminal Court (ICC) case brought against Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta is tottering very badly on the brink of collapse.

The case comes out of the 2007 post-election bloodletting in Kenya, where it is estimated that as many as a thousand people were killed and tens of thousands more displaced.

The now allies Kenyatta along with his deputy Willima Ruto stand accused of masterminding the conflict from opposite sides of the political divide.

In a strange twist of affairs that can only happen in politics, five years later the pair stood as running mates and leveraged their then brewing challenges with the ICC as an imperialist ploy meant to shackle Kenya.

As Kenyatta ascended to the presidency a determined diplomatic effort kicked off to have the case dropped by the ICC despite protestation by Kenyatta and Ruto that they would respect a pledge they made during campaigns that they would cooperate fully with ICC including availing themselves to the court in the Hague.

"Kenyatta’s new found reluctance not to cooperate is understandable not only because the stakes are extremely high for him personally but also once he became president of Kenya his personal pledges are secondary to his responsibility as President...

The way it looks is that Kenyatta may have dodged this bullet as may his deputy eventually.

The two major losers out of the events would have to be the ICC and the victims of the violence.

In principle the ICC was set up out of eh reality that some of the worst human right abuses are carried out by leaders against their own people, safe in the knowledge that they are protected from prosecution and even if they weren’t who would prosecute them in their respective countries?

That an outside party will ferret out such leaders was always going to be a tall order. It did not help that in trying to get Uhuru-Ruto off the hook the impression has been permanently planted that the ICC is only out to get Africans.

Of the 36 publically indicted by the court since its inception all of them are Africans. There is a lot going wrong in Africa – as Africans themselves can attest, but so too around the world. Around this point it has been easy to mobilise opposition.

Figures vary but it is widely believed that at least 1,000 people lost their lives, a few thousand more were injured and up to 600,000 were forcibly displaced.

The Kenyan authorities – coming to almost a decade later, have shown no appetite to bring the perpetrators to justice, understandable because for violence on such a scale to have taken place must have the active or succinct approval of high ranking politicians on both sides.

"The problem cannot be wished away. Once the ICC has been “dealt” with it does not take a prophet to see that Kenya will have to face up to the issue and resolve it one way or another.
Most African countries have signed up to the Rome Statute which gives the ICC its jurisdiction. Clearly they signed on for reasons other than that the chicken will come to roost at their door steps.
One can expect that if the Uhuru-Ruto case falls through the ICC will be scrambling to get some prize scalps if only to maintain their relevance...

The truth is that in a world where some people can run rough shod over the rest of us, no one really holds the moral high-ground to bring others to book.

The sustainable thing is to have the justice systems in this country working efficiently. Going by the history of justice even in western democracies we can expect that it will not take a decade or two.