Uganda under Musevenism seems to be reinventing the abominable apartheid system of governance because politically, economically, socially, ecologically and environmentally. Increasingly, indigenous Ugandans are being pushed to the margins of nature to etch out a living under deteriorating ecology and environment largely caused by the excesses of power and those connected to power.

As Museveni entrenches his family and a cabal of friends into Uganda’s body politic, a few questions arise:

1. If apartheid governance did not last in the USA and South Africa, to what extent will apartheid-style governance last in Uganda?
2. Isn’t it a wastage of time. energy and money to pervert modernity into a political tool of discrimination of a people in modern times?
3. Isn’t reinventing orthodox capitalism by hyping a small ethnic group economically, socially, politically, ecologically, environmentally and culturally, simultaneously with sowing of the culture of money in a few ethnically related hands, a recipe for violence sooner than later?

We see people with exogenous roots penetrating the biocultural landscapes of indigenous peoples through land grabbing, displacing traditional communities and forcing them to become landless and foreigners in their own country.

We also see people of exogenous origins dominating administration and business. Both despondency and discontent are on the rise among the indigenous peoples. We do not know when the two coincide enough to cause socio-political chaos beyond the capacity of security organs to contain.

In 1972 President Charles de Gaulle of France – the Second World War hero – had formidable military and police but failed to contain a combined uprising of university students and school children and the general populace.

The widespread uprising resulted in his removal from power. The same was true of Omar al Bashir of Sudan who, despite having formidable security organs and militias he erected against each other so that he would emerge the island and only source of security, was removed from power.

However, while de Gaulle’s and Bashir’s security organs were dominated entirely by nationals, in Uganda it may be difficult to change the guards because the security organs are mostly in the hands of people of exogenous origin who now cast themselves as citizens or dual citizens.

In his article Uganda’s Pursuit of Modernity of May 2022, Andrew Mwenda wrote:

“Whatever its critics say, capitalism remains the most consequential system (and ideology) of organising human affairs in history. Born in Western Europe, it has spread across the world, as Karl Marx predicted, through the continual process of destruction and replacement of precapitalist social structures. Except for North Korea that is holding out against its power and allure, the rest of the world is hooked onto capitalism – including Cuba that is now embracing it, albeit slowly. Of course, in many parts of the world, some traditional structures have proved obdurate”.

Mwenda’s article came a bit belatedly but was necessary since President Tibuhaburwa Museveni had made modernisation an electoral issue, although at one time he had admitted that modernisation had failed in Uganda.

At budget reading in the Parliament of Uganda in 2019 the President preached the new religion of modernisation. He appealed to leaders throughout the country to preach the gospel of modernised farming and skilling for the country to realise socio-economic transformation.

To President Tibuhaburwa Museveni, there could be no development, transformation and progress in Uganda without commitment to modernisation, especially in agriculture. He abhorred people sitting around trying to observe culture instead of working and urged the MPs to sensitise people about the fact that this is the modern world. He did not only despise culture, but in his mind there was nothing like “cultural approach to development, transformation and progress.” It was only modernisation that was the magical tool to development, transformation and progress of Uganda.

His thinking about culture could have been influenced by the fact that economists tend to narrowly define culture as “customary beliefs and values that ethnic, religious and social groups transmit fairly unchanged from generation to generation” as defined by Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales in 2006.

Yet development, culture and development are connected and interrelated. Indeed, on December 10 the World Economic Forum (WEF) asserted that culture has a role to play in development. Earlier in 1997, UNESCO in its “World Decade for Cultural Development innovated what it called A Cultural Approach to Development Planning Manual: Concepts and Tools. One thing is for sure.

Development, transformation cannot take place in a cultural void, and one cannot import the culture of another socio-culture in another ecological-environmental setting to effect development, transformation and progress. If that happening failure in development, transformation and progress will result.

Just before the Covid 19 pandemic struck, the president had made “Securing your Future” his electoral slogan for the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2021 without change in attitude towards modernisation, modernity and capitalism.

Throughout his reign from 1986 when he captured the instruments of power through the barrel of the gun, he had persistently pronounced that he wanted to change Uganda from a peasantry and precapitalist society. His original commitment to barter trade for almost 18 months, reflecting his anti-capitalism stance, did not promise much in terms of changing Ugandan society from peasantry and precapitalist society to a modern society.

Perhaps the change of attitude towards modernisation and modernity would. Surprisingly as a former student at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, he knew the failure of modernisation but still sold it to Ugandans.

Andrew Mwenda defines modernisation simply as “the process of becoming “modern” and adds that “to be modern is to look like “the West” – a term that refers to Western Europe and her offshoots in North America and the Oceania (Australia and New Zeeland).

I have already shown that President Tibuhaburwa Museveni had already gone far to embrace globalisation as the way forward to development, influenced the African Union to adopt globalisation as the way forward for African development, and moved to integrate Uganda in the WTO. The two are capitalist ideas.

In fact, at the beginning of the new millennium government functionaries such as former Vice-President Specioza Naigags Kazibwe, used to make a clarion call to the people of Uganda to embrace globalisation, arguing that those who would not embrace the Western idea, must get ready to be left behind, or even to be phased out, although the absolute majority, including many leaders, never understood its essence.

Africa hoped to benefit from globalisation by solving the perennial problems of food shortages and hunger by spurring agribusiness. Indeed, globalisation has allowed agricultural production to grow much faster than in the past. However, globalisation has allowed the stealing of Africa’s seeds and their storage in gene banks abroad.

Land grabbing by governments for corporate agribusiness farms has reduced the land available to locals to settle on and grow their indigenous food crops. Besides, it has promoted flooding through largescale agriculture and damming of large rivers, and ensured the proliferation of genetically modified organs (GMOs) and education and training for popularisation of GMOs and foreign trees suitable in cold and hot deserts in the Northern and Southern hemispheres of the globe.

• A Tell report / Opinion / By Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a retired professor of political science and environment at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.