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UGANDA

History and Politics

Constitution & political system

HISTORY

Pre-Colonial History

A composite of four kingdoms and many tribes, Uganda was a focal point of European rivalry before being ceded to Britain in 1890.

In the 1 500 years before Europeans arrived in the area, the lake region of Africa, with its temperate climate and good soil, was a crossroad for invasions of Bantu agriculturists and Nilotic cattle herders. A fusion of these peoples occurred, and by the 15th century Bunyoro, the first of the great Ugandan kingdoms, had been founded. During the next two centuries its armies brought much of central Uganda under its control. These areas were ruled by governors subordinate to the great king of Bunyoro.

In the late 18th century, during a period of conflict, the governor of Buganda declared his independence, and the new kingdom quickly became the major lake state. Two smaller kingdoms, Ankole and Toro, also became independent of Bunyoro. Each of these, with variations, modeled its society and political system on the mother state. Buganda was ruled by a semi-divine king (kabaka) who was advised by a council of great nobles (lukiko), and the land was divided among the nobility and farmed by the peasants. Cattle were symbols of power and were owned by the nobility. The state was defended by a standing and conscript army obedient to the king’s desires. Although powerful, Buganda never completely dominated the other kingdoms and scattered Bantu groups.

Colonial History

The first Europeans to visit Uganda were the British explorers John Hanning Speke and James Grant, when they were searching for the source of the River Nile in 1862. They were followed by Samuel White Baker and Charles George Gordon, commanding Egyptian troops. The explorer Henry Morton Stanley, welcomed by Kabaka Mutesa (reigned 1852 – 1884), reported the king’s eagerness to understand Christianity. Soon both Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries were working in Buganda.

Within a decade the factions they created caused a civil war. Once isolated, the region, with its rich soils, had become by 1890 a major object of the European nations’ scramble for African territory. Britain, after securing German recognition of its rights, moved to secure Buganda. Frederick Lugard, working for the British East Africa Company, ended the civil disturbances, and his successors used the Bugandan army to help conquer the other kingdoms and tribes.

By 1896 a British protectorate administration had extended its authority over most of the region, and the name Uganda was adopted. Final details concerning the administration of Uganda were settled by a series of agreements in 1966, the most comprehensive of which guaranteed special status to Buganda, including the continuation of its social and political system.

Towards Independence

Britain’s almost 70 years of rule in Uganda was a centralized European bureaucracy superimposed on a federation of kingdoms and tribes. This worked relatively well until the independence movements of the 1960’s, when Buganda demanded separation from Uganda. Only after Kabaka Mutesa II was exited for two years in 1953 was it possible to proceed with developing a united government.

Post Independence

After much experimentation, a federal constitution was promulgated in April 1962. The Uganda People’s Congress won the elections, and Milton Obote became Prime Minister. Independence was granted in October. Dissensions continued, however, and in May 1966 Obote sent the army into Buganda and drove the kabaka into exile. Hen then proclaimed a new republican constitution, which formally abolished the kingships, and became Uganda’s first president of a unitary government.

Idi Amins Region of Terror

Bugandan recalcitrance, a fall-off in the economy, and charges of corruption led to an army coup in January 1971. Power devolved upon the army commander Idi Amin, who began eight years of terror and misrule. He increased the size of the army, murdered his political opponents, and began a reign of terror directed at the people of Buganda, Obote’s Lango tribe, and at their neighbours, the Acholi. It is estimated Amin ordered the killing of around 300,000 Ugandans. He also expelled more than 60,000 Asians, many of whom were entrepreneurs, from the country (1972).

By 1979 Uganda was bankrupt, in the grip of internecine warfare, and the government dependent on massive loans from Arab states friendly to Amin. After Uganda went to war with neighbouring Tanzania in late 1978, Tanzanian forces allied with Ugandan rebels drove Amin from the country early the following year and he was allowed to escape to and settle in Saudi Arabia.

Uganda after Amin

Three provincial presidents served before elections under a new constitution were held in December 1980. Obote’s party won amid widespread reports of electoral fraud, and he became the president once again. Uganda, however, had changed fundamentally. Once thriving, the nation had suffered prolonged economic disaster, with an inflation rate of more than 200 per centt no consumer goods, few jobs, rampant crime, famine in the north, and no effective government in the countryside.

In 1982, after Tanzanian troops had been withdrawn, anti-government guerillas became active, bloody internecine feuds (a legacy of the Amin period) flourished, and thousands of young men were arrested, suspected of being guerillas. Thereafter, Obote’s regime became as murderous and autocratic as Amin’s. More than 100,000 Ugandans were killed or starved to death over the next three years.

The Museveni Government

In July 1985 a coup overthrew the government; Obote fled the country and settled in Zambia. The National Resistance Army, led by Yoweri Museveni, formerly a Marxist, which had been fighting to overthrow Obote since 1981, continued the fight against the military regime which gusted him, and after four days of fighting in Kampala took over the country in January 1986. Among its first priorities was the re-building of a nation state from a country reduced after 15 years of misrule and violence into feuding factions. By involving all ethnic groups in the government, as well as most of the main political parties, the pragmatic Museveni largely succeeded in this. Peace was restored to almost all the country, except the northern border area near Sudan, where small revel groups concentrated, and where arms were readily available from the civil war in Sudan.

With the assistance of large-scale foreign aid, efforts were made to rebuild the economy and infrastructure. Former Asian residents were invited to return, and a programme of economic liberalization introduced to bring the budget under control, encourage agricultural production, and attract foreign investors. During 1993 and 1994 debate began on a new constitution, as the first stage in a process of returning the country to a democratic government.

The constitution, which allows for a referendum in 2000 on the future introduction of a multi-party system, came into force in 1995. IN the 1996 presidential election Museveni was returned to power, having won 74 per cent of the popular vote. In the 1990’s Museveni grew in stature as an African statesman.

In the late 1980s relations with Rwanda worsened following the infiltration of Rwanda by some 4000 Ugandan-trained Rwandan rebels; in August 1992 a cooperation agreement between Uganda and Rwanda sought to improve border security.

Tensions between Uganda and Kenya, and between Uganda and Sudan, regarding the sheltering of each country’s rebel forces have resulted in border raids and invasion threats which continued in the later 1990s. In March 1997 the matter reached crisis levels when the northern border with Sudan was closed. Sudanese support for Ugandan extremist Christian rebels in the north displaced some 200,000 people. In November floods in eastern Uganda made hundreds homeless.

CURRENT POLITICAL SITUATION

Multipartyism

The president, Yoweri Museveni, has appointed a committee to consider the re-establishment of political parties, which were suspended in 1986. In view of Mr Museveni’s adamant opposition to a party system in Uganda, this was a surprise move, and it is probably due to the growing pressure to which he has been subjected, especially from foreign donors. He has also been made aware of a growing body of opinion within the Movement in favour of the multiparty cause. The first deputy prime minister, Eriya Kategaya, threw leading Movement politicians into turmoil when he stated, at a public function, that the Movement should free Uganda’s political parties and compete with them on an equal footing. Mr Kategaya is not only minister of internal affairs and once of Uganda’s most respected politicians, but also one of President Museveni’s oldest political allies, going right back to the National Resistance Army and the bush war against Milton Obote. His views will clearly matter to many grass-roots members of the Movement. His statement drew an immediate and very mixed reaction – rejection from the hardliners of the Movement secretariat and support from liberals. Hardliners, such as the director for information at the secretariat. Ofwono Opondo, reminded the membership that the electorate had overwhelming voted for an extension of the Movement government in a referendum in 2001, and the nobody, however eminent, could be allowed to destabilize the country. He said that the correct procedure for dissenters was to seek a constitutional amendment. The minister of state for local government, Kahinda Otafire, said, bluntly, that the country was not ready for political pluralism. Support for Mr Kategaya came from a number of moderates within the Movement, including James Wapakhabulo, minister of foreign affairs and a former political commissar who has already declared himself a candidate in the presidential election in 2006.

President Museveni Remains Opposed

The emergence of groups with differing political views within the Movement was always likely, and has become increasingly apparent during the last year or two, culminating with the decision if Kizza Besigye to stand for the presidency in 2001. Kr Kategaya’s statement has brought the issue into the open again and revealed the polarization of opinion within the Movement. It will give the campaign for multiparty politics a fresh momentum, and the president may be compelled to give his assent to the Political Organisations Bill which was passed by parliament in mid-2001. The president is opposed to the section in the bill that would allow political parties to operate at the district level. He believes that Uganda’s political parties are trained by the country’s violent past and that they could revive the ethnic rivalries and hatred that caused the violence. He may be right. Morever, although there has clearly been an upturn in the fortunes of the old parties (in the recent parliamentary election, for instance) the solid support given to the president and the Movement by much of the population suggests that his views are widely shared, especially by rural people.

The Presidential Succession is now a Live Issue

A number of moderate Movement politicians, including such stalwarts as Mr Kategaya and Bidandi Ssali, have also publicly opened up the question of who will succeed Mr Museveni. President Museveni himself is clearly unwilling to enter into a debate about this at present, preferring to delay the matter, and looking ahead some 18 months to a report expected from the Constitutional Review Commission. He has said that Ugandans will choose his successor at the right time, though he does not say when that will be. However, a number of senior politicians, including Mr Kategaya, believe that Uganda should follow the approach adopted in South Africa, where Thabo Mbeki was chosen as the next leader well in advance of the retirement of Nelson Mandela. President Museveni rejects this approach, and his reluctance to discuss the matter will fuel the suspicion felt by some people that he has not yet completely rejected the idea of arranging another term of office for himself.

General Kazini becomes Army Chief

The promotion of Major-General James Kazini, to replace Lieutenant-General Jeje Odongo as army leader, on the eve of the talks between President Museveni and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda in November in London, will do nothing to improve relations between the two countries. General Kazini was in charge of Uganda’s Congo operations until recently, and his activities there received much criticism from Rwanda. General Kazini’s promotion is only one of a number of recent changes in the army high command in which President Museveni has surrounded himself with trusted members of his own Hima ethnic group. The others involve Salim Saleh (the president’s brother, who was supposed to be in retirement from the army), Elly Tumwine ahd David Tinyefuza. These changes may be an indication of the seriousness with which the president views the current military situation, and his concern that his ultimate power base, the army, should remain totally loyal.

The Government Rethinks its Karamjong Strategy

The authorities have admitted that the government’s ambitious plan for disarming the Karamojong has been an failure. The US$2m scheme was launched in February 2000, mainly for constructing small dams to enable cattle to be watered during the dry season, but only two dams were built before the money ran out. The Karamojong are pastor lists, and the availability of grazing and water, not just for the Karamojong but also for neighbouring farming communities, is often the cause of the Inter-tribal warring that has caused so many security problems in the north-cast of the country. The government’s plan amounted to a cultural re-education of the Karamojong, but it needed time and resources if it was to succeed. It also needed close cross-border collaboration with the authorities in Kenya and Sudan, where similar problems exist, but none was forthcoming, Most of the aid agencies working in the region confirm that weapons can be purchased easily and very cheaply (an Ak-45 rifle costs around US$100), especially from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. One security source has estimated that there are between 150,000 and 200,000 weapons in the Karamoja regiona alone.

The government has now decided on a more confrontational approach to the problem, involving the “voluntary” surrender of weapons at a series of disarmament centres, to be manned jointly by the army and local kraal leaders. Disarming the Karamojong warriors was a campaign pledge made by President Museveni in March 2001, and the president apparently intends to set up camp in the region to supervise the operation personally. Although inter-tribal fighting has always been central to Karamojong culture, guns have only been used widely for about 20 years. The Karamojong have genuine security worries which the authorities have not adequately addressed, and it is unlikely that the new scheme will succeed. On a recent visit to the region, President Museveni made it clear that after a period of time allowed for handing in weapons, anyone found in possession of an illegal gun would be arrested (in late December the deadline was extended to February 15th from January 2nd). He also said that UPDF soldiers would be deployed along the borders with Kenya and Sudan in order to protect the Karamojong communities from attacks. The general lawlessness of the region has been identified as the main reason why Kidepo National Park receives so few visitors in comparison with some of the other parks, despite its outstanding natural beauty and the presence of relatively rare game animals.

Tension rises with Rwanda

Relations between Uganda and Rwanda have continued to deteriorate, and it is probably no exaggeration to say that a military clash would have occurred by now but for the mediation of the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and his secretary for overseas development, Clare Short. Such is the level of mistrust and hostility between the two sides, that almost any incident serves as a pretext for claiming that the other side is destablishing the situation. A low ebb was reached when details were released of a letter written by President Museveni to Clare Short at the end of August, asking for the support of the British government in Uganda’s request to increase its defence spending beyond the limits imposed by donors. In his letter, President Museveni claimed that Rwandan aggression threatened Uganda and referred to the “ideological bankruptcy” of the Rwandan leadership. Tension mounted as both countries traded accusations and counter-accusations. In October the Ugandan press reported that a Rwandan army of 100,000 men was massing near the border, and numerous Rwandans were arrested on charges of spying or attempting to infiltrate the UPDF. There was even a report alleging that Rwandan agents were planning to assassinate President Museveni at the Independence Day celebrations on October 9th. Some of the heat was taken out of the situation with the appointment by the two presidents of a joint committee to investigate both sides’ allegation of help for the other’s dissidents; army officers known for their loyalty were appointed to lead their country’s representatives.

London Meeting cools the temperature with Rwanda

For the meeting in London, Uganda prepared a dossier outlining Rwanda’s alleged recruitment and training of Ugandan dissidents into a new rebel army, the People’s Redemption Front, in six training camps, two in Rwanda and four in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The government claims that there are links between this rebel army and Kizza Besigye, the man who challenged Mr Museveni for the presidency in 2001 and (Mr Museveni believes) was supported by Rwanda. On November 6th President Museveni and President Kagame had a long meeting in London with Clare Short, after a brief input from Tony Blair; after which they signed an agreement to maintain and improve relations between the two countries. They committed themselves to relocating dissidents in their countries (and preparing an extradition treaty), to improving regional security and to work towards implementing the Lusaka and Arusha peace accords relating to the DRC. According to details of the meeting that where subsequently leaked to the media, the atmosphere was acrimonious, though it ended with a cordial hand-shake. According to the report, Clare Short told both men that they had become and embarrassment and a laughing-stock in the region, and that if the situation deteriorated into war both countries would loose British aid. The British government was reported to have agreed to monitor the situation, to ensure compliance with the agreements on both sides, though now there seems to be some doubt about the UK’s continuing role. However, the UK will facilitate the next meeting between the two presidents in February or March 2002.

Uganda regrets is withdrawal from the DRC

In the DRC, the renewal of tribal killings among the rebel groups, and the redeployment of units of the UPDF, show that the conflict is by no means over. The deployment of Ugandan troops was reportedly preceded by a letter from the new army commander, General Kazini, to the UN military observer mission in the DRC (MONUC), stating that areas vacated by the UPDF had degenerated into anarchy. Uganda’s military and intelligence officials now believe that Uganda’s withdrawal from some of the areas it controlled was premature. They are concerned because Rwandan troops, together with rebel forces allied to Rwanda, have been moving into these areas and there is a danger that they could become bases for dissident groups to launch attacks into Uganda. They are thinking, specifically of the People’s Redemption Front, which allegedly receives backing and support from Rwanda in six camps, of which four are located in the cast of the DRC. The UPDF is also worried by reports that Rwandan forces plan to occupy the town of Bunia, which is felt to be too close to Uganda’s border to be occupied by unfriendly forces.

Two reports were published in November about the accusations of looting leveled against the foreign armies operating in DRC. An interim report from Uganda’s own commission of inquiry, headed by a British judge, David Porter, exonerates President Museveni, together with members of his family and UPDF officers, from Involvement in exploiting the DRC’s natural resources. However, a second report from the panel of experts appointed by the UN maintains that the allegations are justified. Moreover, the panel says that illegal exploitation “continues unabated”. The panel puts the blame on Colonel Kahinda Otafiire, formerly President Museveni’s adviser on Congo affairs. General Kazini, formerly overall commander of military operations in Congo, and the president’s brother, General Saleh. It claims that they are continuing to advance their business interests by using Congolese affilates. The government will take comfort from the fact that the UN report acknowledges Uganda’s security interests in Congo and clears the government of direct involvement, preferring to place the blame on individuals. The government is also pleased that the UN report accuses other countries of similar activities, especially Zimbabwe and Namibia, as well as the government of the DRC itself. The UN report stops short of recommending punitive measures, as did an earlier report, but it does propose a moratorium on imports of gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt, timber, coffee and other commodities from rebel-held areas of the DRC.

OUTLOOK FOR 2002/03

Domestic politics

The two main political issues will be the legalisation of multipartyism and the choice of a successor to President Yoweri Museveni as leader of the Movement and therefore, probably, as president. The next referendum on political parties is not due until 2005, but the public statements in favour of legalisation by a number of President Museveni’s staunchest supporters, together with strong donor pressure, have added urgency to the debate. As the Movement is now clearly split between hardliners, who are determined not to relax the restrictions on party activity, and the moderates, who favour legalisation, the scene is set for a prolonged national discussion. President Museveni has bowed to the pressure by appointing a committee to study the issue and has arranged for Movement members who favour multipartyism to put their views to the national executive committee. President Museveni is still firmly against multipartyism, but he is likely to come under additional pressure to look for a compromise, not least from the donor countries which have been urging a change of policy on him for some time. With a good number of his oldest supporters now openly ranged against him, he will find the pressure harder to resist, though he is unlikely to given in on (to him) such a matter of principle without a fight. The first skirmish will come with the Political Organisations Bill. If the president does not show some flexibility over this, he is in danger of becoming isolated.

The issue of who will succeed President Museveni as head of the Movement is one that will not go away, however much the president himself would like to postpone it. He has made it clear that he has no intention of seeking another term of office beyond the two permitted him by the constitution. However, some believe that he might try, and the longer he obstructs discussion, the more those suspicious will grow. Furthermore, the views of any prospective successor on Uganda’s political system will be crucial to his changes of winning the succession. Whether President Museveni likes it or not, therefore, the succession is now very much a live issue. James Wapakhabulo, who has already declared his interest in the presidency, is probably the early front-runner because of his range of high-profile jobs in government and with the Movement, though as a moderate he cannot expect the backing of the president. New hopefuls will emerge during the coming months.

International Relations

It remains to be seen whether the much-publicised meeting held in London between President Museveni and President Kagame of Rwanda will lead to an improvement in the strained relations between the two countries. The promises that were made have been made (and broken) before, and tension is expected to remain fairly high owning to a combination of personal rivalry, historical mistrust and conflicting interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, as both sides appear to be happy to accept the mediation of the UK government, and another meeting of the presidents is due in a month or two, relations are unlikely to deteriorate seriously. The souring of relations with Tanzania that followed the expulsion from Tanzania of 3,000 Ugandans is not likely to cause long term damage to relations that have historically been warm, as long as Tanzania can distance itself from Uganda’s disagreement with Rwanda.

Far from coming to and end, the conflict in the DRC appears to be boiling up again, as rebels allied to Rwanda take control of areas vacated by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF). This situation, together with new frictions within the Uganda-backed rebel group, Front de liberation du Congo (FLC) have already compelled the UPDF to send additional forces back into the country, albeit discretely. Despite strong objections from the West against this move, Uganda will insist on defending what it sees as its legitimate security interests, as it is allowed to by the Lusaka agreement. Uganda’s strong military presence in and around the Rwenzori Mountains will also be maintained. A recent UN report into the legitimacy of Uganda’s involvement in the DRC, which appears to offer some comfort to the government, proposes a moratorium on third-party trade in products originating in the DRC. However, this is unlikely to have much impact because most of the trade is illicit.


Last updated January 2003