By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
When they -the NRM -captured the instruments of power 36 years ago, they sold the idea of Individual Merit Approach to Politics. This transmuted into Individual Merit Approach to everything. The hidden agenda was to disintegrate the communities of settled peoples, in which everything was driven by the communal approach which subordinated the parts to the whole, the individual to the community. One may say with confidence that 36 years of NRM rule have been years of war against the community and its communal approach to existence, survival and well-being.
Indeed all laws, all policies and all strategies of Government have, since 1986, been designed to show disdain for community and raise the individual over and above the community. Call it individualization of society.
Those in cattle-keeping areas were already practicing the individual approach to existence, survival, and well-being because it had been integral to their pastoral nomadic . So they could not feel the full impact of individualization of society.
Actually the main implementers of the process of individualization of politics and society were from the pastoral-nomadic communities of Western Uganda some of whom were refugees who now called Western Uganda their home. They were the main military, political and technical actors in the new governance setting, that promised to hurt the settled communities of mainly Bantu and Luo.
The pastoral-nomadic governors, most of whom traced their origins in Rwanda, had suffered a lot of ridicule when they lived amongst the settled communities. They were refugees who found themselves easily absorbed into the communities of settled communities of especially Buganda and Eastern Uganda, but also Northern Uganda.
They were angry about their past when they were treated like subhuman species of animals and made to perform menial jobs for the settled people and/ or communities. They picked coffee and cotton and harvested groundnuts. They looked after cattle as the settled people enjoyed themselves. Some slept with their daughters and wives and sired children without seeking permission from them.
So when they captured power they first pronounced that they were bringing fundamental changes. They later outlawed what they called Sectarianism, so that the settled communities would be committing a crime if the talked against discrimination by them., if they talked against unfairness, injustice or oppression by the few people n power that tended to belong to a few families and the same ethnicity.
This way, a fearful, docile and silent population was created over decades across all social strata, and even in the university. There is nothing the new governors could not do or access as the settled people were cornered into fear, docility and silence by law.
If they talked of fundamental change this legally achieved silencing of whole communities legally was a fundamental change. It is what has enabled three decades of conquest, domination and deprivation of the settled communities both legally and illegally.
For example, the settled communities have lost land to their pastoral-nomadic governors, either by claims that land was being taken for government projects, or by government first impoverishing the people while empowering individuals of their king financially to be able to buy the poor and needy among settled communities off their land. Or else the people of military and political power have arrogantly grabbed the land of settled people with the full protection of the publicly sustained instruments of coercion: the Army and the Police.
The determination of the governors to own or possess everything and all money explains the girth and chain of government-initiated approach to growth and development, based on the now decades-old individual merit idea.
Projects such as Bonna Baggagawale, NAADS, Operation Wealth Creation (OWC), Emyooga and the Parish Model of Growth do not, and have not targeted whole communities, but individuals selected by ruling party functionaries. More often than not , the individual selected belong to the ruling party, and those who run the project belong to families that belong to the kinship either in power or closely connected to power.
A lot of taxpayers money have been pumped into these projects, but there is little to show on the ground in terms of development, transformation and progress. In virtually every District the socio economy of communities has meteorically deteriorated as a few individuals misappropriate public funds to build their individual economic empires.
All associated projects have collapsed because they did not target communities but individuals. They are white elephant projects. The most capitalized of them – OWC – is still in place, not because it has been successful but because it is directly connected to power and, therefore, can easily and conveniently siphon off money from the national treasury into the pockets of those in power or connected to power – more than individuals in the communities meant to benefit from it.
Because the much touted Parish Growth Model is the latest scheme in the individualization of society and destruction of community, it is already a failed project before it is launched by the President. It will achieve exactly what the earlier individual-targeting projects achieved: enriching individuals and impoverishing communities.
Indeed all these individual-targeting projects have played a pivotal role in building the tower of corruption in Uganda, and keeping the country miles away from becoming a middle income country. Individuals, through the projects, have become stinkingly rich as the country has become increasingly poorer.
The much touted high and rising Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Uganda is contributed mostly by our corrupt and favored economic actor. Our communities continue to be marginalized and to contribute insignificantly to the GDP.
The more the governors continue to replace failed projects with potentially far led projecting targeting individuals interested in community development, transformation and progress but their own stomachs, the more the communities of indigenous Ugandans will continue to be marginalized from development and to retrogress from their economic power of thec1960s.
For God and My Country.
The Writer is a Ugandan Scientist and Environmentalist
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