A Dictionary definition of a failed state is “a state whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control”. However, this definition assumes that the only systems of importance are the political and the economic ones.  

This is misleading. Any state has many interconnected systems, including the political and economic that may structurally and functionally be in a state of decay and collapse. The process of decay and collapse of systems when simultaneous and meteoric is what justifies characterising a state as “a failed state”.  

The systems are many and diverse. They include sociocultural systems, bioecological systems, environmental systems, bioecological systems, ecological systems (ecosystems), bioethical systems, agricultural systems, agroecological systems, land systems governance systems, administrative systems, health systems, water systems, river system, educational systems, geological systems, et cetera. All these, therefore, cannot be reduced to only two: political and economic.  

A sensible and convincing description of a failed state must include a statement that includes the different states of all the systems. This means the statement must be as broad as possible and thus all-encompassing.  

Everything is connected to every other thing and in many ways all things are interdependent. Likewise, all systems are interconnected and interdependent. Therefore, if there is decay and collapse in one system, there will be proliferating decay and collapse in all the other systems.  

That is why it is important to have a holistic approach to governance and leadership, so that when using resources – human and non-human – to effect development, transformation and progress, let alone change, narrowness is avoided as it is likely to have widespread deleterious impacts on the whole state, straining and stressing it in diverse ways. The leaders and governors will end up responding to the decay and collapse by trial and era.

The problems they confront will be new to them, complex and wicked enough to confuse and expose them as failed leaders or governors. Thus, a failed state is a reflection of the quality of leadership and governance. When leadership is of low quality the governance is also of low quality.  

Leaders and governors will just occupy position of leadership and governing, consuming resources, without being qualitative enough to deliver quality and efficiency to the interconnected systems. They will avoid ensuring complexity of the systems through entrenching interconnectivities and interdependencies and sway into simplifying systems instead, usually for shortsighted individual political, economic and social gain.

In any case behind every problem is the problem of leadership and, by extension, governance. The decisions the leaders and governors take or do not take, the choices in governance that the governors prefer to apply in governing a country and its resources (human and non-human); how they govern ecological-environmental systems on which all other systems depend for their structures, functionalities and futurities; and the administrative style and practices they employ to ensure and deliver services to the people, communities and populations will determine the boundary between the success and failure of a state.

When they fail to maintain the structures and functions of systems, we say leadership, governance and ultimately the state have failed.

When, therefore, one wants to know if a state is functioning, one must look at all the indices of a functioning state. One can also look at to what extent leaders and governors pay particular attention and respect to constitutionality, justice, human life, wild life, land, human rights, wildlife rights, land rights, climate rights, food rights, democratic rights, constitutional rights, associational rights, the right to work and earn a living, the right to a clean, safe and secure environment, the right to freedom from slavery, the right to belonging, the right to health, the right to education, the right to development, the right to freedom from displacement and dispossession, the right to culture, the right to choice of leaders and governors, the right to have organs of the body intact, ecological rights, environmental rights, and the rights to a future, to name but a few.  

If all these rights are constantly, persistently and continually violated and eroded in and by the state, then the phrase “failed state” will apply. It is for reasons like these that Uganda and many other states in the underdeveloped world have been characterised as failed states. However, when a State also

relies heavily on foreign aid to pay salaries for its teachers, nurses, doctors, lecturers and administrators it qualifies to be called a failed state. Failure of the State will also be sought in its capacity to control population growth, or manage of resources in such a way that they can sustainably support the population in all aspects of life.

In this article, I want to look at failed state, leadership and the crisis of population explosion in Uganda by evoking the situation in Busoga.

In 1962, when the British colonialists supposedly gave political independence to the colonial entity they first called the Commonwealth Ream of Uganda on October 9, then Uganda on the first anniversary of independence on October 9, 1963, Uganda had a population of 7.7 million people. The fifth post-independence population and housing census of Uganda stated that there were 2.96 million people of whom 2.4 million lived in the rural areas and only a little over 550,000 lived in urban areas.

The numbers have been rising supersonically since that census, and the area is said to be the third in numbers of people after Buganda and Ankole, and also the second ‘richest in poverty’ after Karamoja. However, we now know that Busoga is naturally rich in terms of minerals and has the richest deposits of gold in the whole of the Great Lakes Region. So in terms of gold, Busoga is richer than Congo.

The East African Standard of July 27 2022, revealed, in its headline article “Trillions in Busoga gold? How about we bank oil billions first?”, that Busoga gold is worth $12 trillion. However, one time President Tibuhaburwa Museveni one time told the Basoga to forget about gold and concentrate on farming. Indeed, his government has socioeconomically promoted the growing of sugarcane, which has spread throughout Busoga as if it will make the Basoga richer far more quickly than gold would.

The rapidly rising youth population is being attracted to work on sugarcane plantations, instead of studying. It is as if all of a sudden sugarcane has become the new green gold of Busoga.

Meanwhile many youths who have graduated from our universities and cannot find work domestically are compelled by the poverty of their families and themselves to flee to the Middle East to work as slaves. Sugarcane in combination with poverty is actually the reason many young girls are getting prematurely pregnant. They are giving birth to babies predestined to be poor and whom we don’t really need.

Besides, there are no suitable health facilities to take care of the health of the babies and their underage mothers. They are just stressing their parents who are themselves wallowing in poverty and whose only ‘wealth’ is the searing poverty. As if this is not enough, people from elsewhere with no cultural, historical, ecological, social, environmental, biological, moral, ethical, psychological and moral links to Busoga are grabbing land, displacing families and communities and forcing people to move to towns and cities.

Just as the youth are being affected by sugarcane and poverty most, it is the youth, but also the elderly whose land is being grabbed, that are suffering the consequences of the inhuman act and the displacement. Ancestral lands and their sacred places of great cultural and spiritual value are being destroyed by people who are behaving like the vandals of Europe during the Mediaeval Times who ransacked everything they came across.  

Ironically there is what is called Kyabazinga’s government, which is a cultural but not political institution. It has a cabinet led by Dr Joseph Muvawala who manifests as the Prime Minister (Katikiro) of Busoga and Executive Director of the National Planning Authority (NPA). He is torn between the two.

However, his planning aspect is not being felt in Busoga. It would have been felt politically but the political perspective of the Kyabazinga was removed from the institution by the stroke of the pen that produced the Constitution of Uganda 1995 and erroneously thereby making the Kyabazinga just a cultural head without political powers.

The Kyabazinga, his Katikiro and cabinet ministers cannot take decisions of a political nature – individually or collectively. It is not like in the 1960s when we had a politically powerful Kyabazinga, a politically powerful Katikiro, a politically powerful cabinet, a politically powerful speaker of the Busoga Parliament (Lukiiko) and politically powerful Saza Chiefs that would make political decisions that benefited the Basoga and provided public services that made Busoga great.

They spent time, energy and money in burials, festivities, weddings and the like, which they take as part of culture.

All political decision-making for Busoga were constitutionally consummated by the Office of President of Uganda. That is why when our population is being depleted of the youth into modern slavery in the Middle East, when the elderly are being left helpless by their children, when land is being grabbed, when the environment is being destroyed, when the subregion is being bantustanised into numerous meaningless and unviable districts, which are disconnecting the Basoga, there are no meaningful and effective programmes to develop and transform Busoga for the 21^st century and beyond.

It goes without saying that there are no meaningful plans for Busoga to ensure that the Basoga benefit from their vast reserves of Gold in terms of development, transformation and progress, and revive the past glory of Busoga for prosperous futurity of the subregion.  

There is need to rethink the Constitution of Uganda to re-empower Busoga politically so that the Kyabazinga, his Katikiiro and cabinet can take ecological environmentally, socioeconomically, sociopolitically and socio-culturally effective decisions for Busoga and Basoga. There is no genuine region why the Basoga are made to go on in poverty as if they do not have what can quickly enrich them. Instead, we hear Busoga is targeted for oil palm.

A re-empowered Busoga can quickly negotiate what percentages of gold proceeds will go to central government of Uganda and the subregional Government.

So, what do we see? The youth who would otherwise work in the gold subsector are being forced to increasingly seek livelihood in slavery or sugarcane labouring, which is degrades the youthful humanity. People from elsewhere are grabbing land where the gold has been established to exist.

Mostly what we have seen happen in the oil region of Bunyoro will happen in the gold-rich Busoga: people from the gold-poor Ankole area will get all the gold related contracts and jobs and their children will be the ones to be trained for various jobs in the gold industry. Of course, this is unfair and unjust but it has happened in the oil region. The precedent has been set. It is also possible it has been set in the area of atomic energy.

The question is: Should the Basoga allow the injustices in the oil industry and atomic energy be repeated on their soil as they wallow in financial poverty when they are so rich naturally? If they allow, then they will be contributing to the rise and rise of the failed state of Uganda described in this article.

For God and My Country.

• A Tell report / By Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a former professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Makerere University, Uganda