MAKING SENSE OF UGANDA POLITICS

So if you jetted into Uganda and asked “What’s Going on?” depending on who you were talking to you would get two answers that broadly follow these lines.

In no order of preference.

Story One – The ruling NRM is facing an existential threat. Their unpopularity is growing. 

Honourable Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine is perceived as the lightning rod for this dissension and his challenge should be snuffed out. There is a critical mass of people who want a change away from the NRM and in this situation of growing inequality and economic sluggishness, is the time to strike.

Story Two – The opposition is scrambling for relevance. They need to create a state of tension literally or at least create the perception of it. Having failed to make political gains in the house or at the local government level this is their last ditch attempt. Bobi Wine committed a crime, his political importance or not, and he is not such a major factor nationally as the opposition wants us all to believe.

As you are chauffeured from the airport both narratives play out.

On the one hand you can see evidence of a poor country. The standard of housing. The unpaved highway. The small enterprises by the road side. The age of the cars, trucks and mini-vans. The street kids with their emaciated, supplicating hands once you reach Kampala. You wonder about all those gun totting policemen.

On the other hand you can’t help but notice the bustling energy of the people. The Entebbe expressway, while pretty standard engineering, the green that straddles it takes your breath away. 

Kampala city when you get to it seems organised. And thankfully you see little evidence of a personality cult being rammed down the people’s throats by the president of the day.

As with everything in real life the truth is a mixture of both. And is why we are where we are today.

"When history is written all we are going through now, the uncertainty and sense of confrontation will, if it makes the history books, be summarised in a sentence. Something to the effect that growing unrest in response to a slowing economy and long administration of the NRM set in motion  a series of events which led to blah, blah....

Or that in the third decade of the NRM administration protests intensified but were soon neutralised as the economy improved and the government focused on narrowing the economic inequalities by curbing corruption and increased investment.

Which of the two scenarios will play out history will tell.

The point is that we are living history, which while it will be abbreviated into a single line in the textbooks it will cost time, lives and property. Not forgetting reputations and ambition. We are in the forest, we can’t see the forest for the trees. We can’t see the broader picture because we are too enmeshed in the detail.

But if history is to be our guide and assuming prosperity and democracy are to be the end result, we probably aren’t even seeing the light at the end of the tunnel yet.

A lot of things still have to go right.

"The economy needs to shift more towards industry, which is our hope of employing more of the tens of thousands of youth flowing out of education system annually. When we have the majority of the population gainfully employed in the economy, our politics will change. It may not be that we will have the traditional stratification of labour versus capital, but hopefully there will be some cross cutting issues about the economy or environment that will transcend our tribes and religions, that will act as the bedrock of a new political order.

But before we get there the drama will continue fuelled from within and without, stocked by the political actors desire to remain or gain power. Depending on the economy the youth bulge will either peak in a decade or two or continue to mushroom, with real consequences for our politics.

Or it could all go wrong and we descend into a dystopian bleakness from which there is no return.

Only time will tell.