Our brains are oval and therefore multi dimensional. The number of dimensions is infinite, but we can mention the cultural, ethical, moral, social, economic, political, emotional, psychological, financial, intellectual, technical, scientific, environmental and ecological dimensions.

When we say we have to develop as individuals, then development must be experienced along all the various dimensions, and much more. One may be developed in one or two dimensions but underdeveloped in others. This reflects our largely disciplinary education that makes us expert in one but not in other dimensions. Thus, many different types of development and underdevelopment exist and we can define them, but this is beyond the scope of this article. If you are interested, you can choose any, define and research on it.

Likewise, when we say we have to be literate and numerate as individuals, we do not only mean being able to read and write. We mean far more than that. We mean being ethically literate, morally literate, socially literate, economically literate, politically literate, emotionally literate, psychologically literate, financially literate, intellectually literate, technically literate, scientifically literate, environmentally literate, ecologically literate, computer literate, internet literate and much more. Thus, many literacies exist and we can define each of them, but this is beyond the scope of this article. Again, if you are interested, you can choose any type of literacy and research on it.

My interest in this article is to focus on political underdevelopment and political illiteracy and relate them to failing governance, with the increasing use of money and religiopolitics to undermine democracy, freedom and justice in Uganda.

What is political underdevelopment? How is it proceeding in Uganda?

Underdevelopment’ refers to a state where certain regions or countries lack adequate economic, social, and political development compared to others, often due to historical, institutional or structural factors.

According to Moore (2001) the political underdevelopment that is characteristic of much of the ‘South’ largely results from the ways in which states have been created and political authority shaped through interactions with the wealthier ‘core’ countries in the context of global economic and political systems.

Political underdevelopment stems, to a large degree, from low levels of dependence of state elites on their own citizens. Poor world states are relatively homogeneous in their formal organisational characteristics. The heterogeneity in the actual functioning of states stems largely from wide differences in patterns of state-society relations. The degree of dependence of states on citizens is the most significant element in this pattern. Low levels of dependence of states on citizens are found in three main types of circumstances. These circumstances overlap a great deal in practice but are separable for analytical purposes (Moore, 2001).

In Uganda, underdevelopment is exacerbated by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime’s choice of “pursuing” development of rural communities through, initially individual merit politics, which separated individuals from their communities and raised them over and above those communities, making the whole communities dependent on them for any necessary social, economic, health and educational changes in them. However, in the last 38 years of NRM rule, the individuals were themselves denied, and continue to be denied, political development by an overbearing President who made himself the beginning and end of everything), unleashed what are now called Resident District Commissioners (RDCs) or Resident City Commissioners (RCCs) to proliferate the presidentialism of Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni. They have recently been given the power and authority to sack civil servants who absentee themselves from duty. This means that any civil servant who tries to express his or her political development against President Tibuhaburwa Museveni and the NRM is a candidate for sacking by the RDCs and RCCs. So are those who have personal problems with the RDCs and RCCs.

Ultimately, the aim is to undermine democracy, freedom and justice in Uganda for the political gain of the President, his supporters and the NRM at the expense of the political development of Uganda and her citizens.

As Moore (2001) correctly observed, the state elites in the poor countries in general enjoy strong external financial and/or military support even when they are in conflict with many of their own citizens. In Uganda all guns and/or military might are directed at the alternative leaders far more than at the country’s borders. Relevant examples are the military kidnapping of civilian members of the breakaway Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) from Kisumu and Dr Kiiza Besigye from Kenya, ultimately accusing them in treason, detaining them and committing them to  a military court.

One school of thought believes that, in this way, the NRM regime in general and President Tibuhaburwa Museveni in particular, is applying non-political methods to deny alternative leaders their right to political development and to govern and/lead the country. What is happening politically and militarily is to sow seeds of silence and fear in the alternative political leaders, their political organisations and the populace so that when the militarily-organised elections come in 2026, a silent and fearful Uganda leadership and the citizenry are either engaged in fear in or excluded from effective participation in both the political processes and the electoral process, giving NRM and its leadership the leeway to declare themselves victorious.

The continuing political underdevelopment process is set to be sustained in the country well in the future by a characteristically one-man rule. The preference of the regime in power will continue to be, as it has been over the last nearly four decades, purchasing for military force with the proceeds of sales of valuable commodities such as coffee on the global markets (e.g. Moore, 2001) at the expense of meaningful and effective development, transformation and progress of the country, in terms of education, health, agriculture and infrastructure.

By denying Ugandans access to resources and opportunities and allocating them to a small ethnic group in power, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni is affording the small group the exclusive opportunity to meaningfully develop politically thereby escaping political underdevelopment, while the rest of Ugandans are submerged in political underdevelopment. As if this is not, NRM and/or President Museveni are tearing up the opposition parties into antagonistic meaningless parties so that they can waste their time, energy and money into fighting each other rather that seek to meaningfully participate in the political development of the country and the citizenry. This way political underdevelopment is being achieved through political institutional death, leaving the NRM as the only political whole in the country. Since its government organises the elections, it can easily claim victory by stating that the general and presidential elections were free and fair.

However, this may not be the case since there are plans by the NRM government to have the next presidential election of a president of Uganda elected by the new members of parliament rather than by universal suffrage. One school of thought is that President Tibuhaburwa Museveni is very interested in hereditary politics, and hence, his son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, inheriting the presidency from him by using the parliament dominated by his party to elect him, thereby saving him from facing the electorate.

Otherwise, we can also blame the colonial regime (1894-1961) for sowing the seeds of political underdevelopment by supersonically promoting economic development at the expense of social and political development. For a long time during the colonial times, the political elite organised politically only clandestinely while leaving the rest of the population in a deepsea of political underdevelopment.

The immediate post-independence leaders discouraged alternative political organisations, preferring crossovers from opposition to the ruling party, giving those who crossed big jobs and responsibilities at the expense of the original members of the ruling party.

During the reign of Idi Amin there was virtually no political development as political organisation and political organisations were banned. Many political leaders were killed or escaped to foreign countries. What obtained during the Idi Amin era has more or less spilt over to the Tibuhaburwa Museveni era. However, except for Dr Lutakome Kayira who was murdered in cold blood in 1987, I do not recollect any other high-profile politicians who have been murdered during the reign of Tibuhaburwa Museveni. What have been more common during the reign of Tibuhaburwa Museveni  are kidnapping, incarcerating and arraigning alternative leaders in police cells, military cells and prison cells.

Besides, for almost 40 years since President Tibuhaburwa Museveni captured the instruments of power through the barrel the gun, alternative leaders and their parties have not been allowed to organise nationally, address rallies, recruit members or develop them politically. choosing to take everyone and sundry to the NRM’s so-called Kyankwanzi political-ideological school. Money is used to buy people and leaders from alternative parties or to form splinter parties from within the Opposition parties. Even political leaders are bought with money and jobs sucked into NRM but retain their leadership roles in their deflated political parties.

Last but not least, political development has been depressed in schools and institutions of higher learning by discouraging political education and encouraging only nonpolitical debates in schools; and erasing the culture of intellectual debates in the Universities. At Makerere the vibrant political debates, which used to be very much part of the academic and social political environment in the 1990s and early millennium have been completely erased in favour of pure academicism and/or scholasticism. Those are recipes for continuous political underdevelopment in the country. To these, we should add the recent moves by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni to to cause his government to underpay scholars in the humanities and social sciences in favour of the natural scientists, who do not usually disturb the status quo intellectually and politically like the academics in the humanities and social sciences do.

It is impossible to have intellectuals leading the country into political development from the university Campuses, which was the case in the past. Universities have thus become integral to the underdevelopment process in Uganda by pollical design.

What is political illiteracy? How is it proceeding in Uganda?

At the beginning of this article I stated that there are many types of  literacies. Therefore, if there are many types of literacies (see Kalantzis, Cope, Chan and Dally-Trim 2016), there are also many types of illiteracies. Here I want to focus on political illiteracy only.

Bernard Crick, the writer of the Crick Report, defined political literacy as “learning about and how to make themselves effective in public life through knowledge, skills and value”. Therefore, according to the report, if one lacked the knowledge, skills and value to learn how to make oneself effective in public life, then on was politically illiterate. Bernard Crick, asserted that “politics is not merely a struggle for power among groups whose aim is to control the state”.

Instead, Crick identifies three parts in politics: deciding who gets what, when and how; the exercise of power; and ensuring the welfare of whole communities. In Uganda, it is not institutions, but President Tibuhaburwa Museveni who decides, who gets what, when and how. He appoints the chief justice and all the judges in Uganda; He appoints the vice president, the prime minister, the ministers and all top commanders of the police from top to bottom; all the Army commanders from top to bottom and all top commanders of the Uganda prisons. He appoints all heads of institutions in Uganda. And it was him who fast-tracked his son through the ranks in the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) until he appointed him to the topmost post in the UPDF: Chief of Defense Forces..

Denver and Hands (1990) defined political literacy as “the knowledge and understanding of the political process and political issues, which enables people to perform their roles as citizens effectively.” In the field of political science, there is no agreement on whether interest in politics and media exposure is enough to qualify one as politically literate.

One writer said, “Talking politics often feels like a personal health hazard. Unless we can learn to understand our own roles in a dysfunctional system, there’s no chance of fixing it “Apparently most of us are politically illiterate from top to bottom. We have many politically illiterate Ministers, judges, legislators, teachers, lecturers, professors, leaders of institutions, medical doctors, RDCs, RCCs, and community leaders to name but a few.

. In Uganda, there is more talking about politics than making politics deliver social services and social goods to the communities. And everything, including projects and/or programmes, are conceived and implemented for the political gain of power. Besides, politics is oriented to deny the people democracy, freedom and justice or to manipulate some segments of the population towards thinking, believing and being convinced that they are benefiting from certain actions of power.

Illiteracy, political or otherwise, is not just abou t how you and me think politically; it’s about what I do and how I act in everyday life. The more one is aware of one’s political ignorance the more one can begin to ask important questions such as What is democracy? What is justice? and What is freedom? and begin question the choices of power and begin to demand them. An adroit leader or ruler will act to make sure that few, even among the intelligentsia and the political elite ask these questions. He is happy when just follow commands, follow or take things for granted. Indeed most of our shared political illiteracy is caused by power for the sole interest of dominating the political space and the population, and retaining power at all costs.

Politics as the means to ensure the welfare of communities is no more in Uganda. As a result anger, despair, fear, frustration or ignorance have infused the politics of Uganda around everyone, and denied everyone personal peace and improved political literacy. Some individuals are using their anger, despair, fear, frustration and ignorance to hurt others through various forms of criminality. The popular and easy means, at high public cost, in terms of money and life, has been for power to respond in terms of militarisation of society and strict control of everything, thereby eroding the collective peace in the country that is tor power all peace is military peace.

As one writer put it, “until we can better understand how politics works, including our own parts in its dysfunction, there is no chance fixing it”.

We jointly do not escape from the causes and effects the dysfunctionality of politics in Uganda. Of course, many are suffering the dysfunctionality of politics in Uganda more than others are.

There are many causes of political dysfunction in Uganda currently, including: party realignments, mass sorting, generational changing, changes in parliament every five years, media fractionation, residential homogeneity (urban versus rural), increasing role of money, increasing role of ethnicity, increasing role of the military, Luwero Bush War ideologies and entitlement, increasing refugee numbers, refugee economy, political domination by former refugees, decreasing quality of education, et cetera.

All these require urgent research by academics and academic institutions as well as Nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and some private institutions.

 For God and my country

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

 About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).

For further reading

Bochel, Hugh (2009). Political Literacy. Chapter 8: Political Literacy”. In McManus, Mike; Taylor, Gary (eds.). Active Learning and Active Citizenship: Theoretical Contexts (PDF).

Moore, M. (2001). Political Underdevelopment: What Causes Bad Governance? GSDRC Applied Knowledge Services. https://gsdrc.org/document-library/political-underdevelopment-what-causes-bad-governance/ Visted on 9 December 2020 at 7.29am EAT.

Kalantzis, M, Bill Cope, Eveline Chan and Leanne Dally-Trim (2016). Literacies. Cambridge University Press.  https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/literacies/B4B928754E894A62478F012C3979E1C4#overview Visited on 9 Dember 2024 at 8:13 am EAT.

Stark, T., Osterberg-Kaufmann, N. & Pickel, S. Dysfunctional democracy(ies): characteristics, causes and consequences. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 16, 185–197 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-022-00537-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12286-022-00537-5#citeas Visited on 9 December 2024 at 13:10 pm EAT