Uganda’s hopes have turned to ashes

Press, 31 March 1980, Page 8

Uganda’s hopes have turned to ashes

By Dan Van Der Vat, of “The Times,” through NZPA Kampala

Nine months after noeration from the tyranny of Idi Amin, Uganda appears as far away as • ever from a national rebirth. The country remains economically prostrate and politically impotent, and in many areas its' people go to bed at night to. the sound of gunfire which is seldom, if ever, explained. The Tanzanian liberators are increasingly -y disillusioned, and their desire to extricate themselves from this mare’s nest understandably grows by the hour. The military victory which followed the sacrifice of men, money, and material to bring relief to 13 million Ugandans, has long since turned to ashes.

The expeditionary force of 20,000 Tanzanian' troops, still the main bulwark against total anarchy, has already begun to reduce its presence. President Julius Nyerere is threatening total withdrawal by September in an attempt to inject a sense of urgency into the destructive and selfindulgent factionalism which passes for politics in Uganda today. While this is no idle threat, it- is recognised in Dar-es-Salaarn, that implementation may-have to be delayed. There are no politics in any of the normally accepted senses of the term in Uganda. There is much politicking, jockeying- for tion, corruption, conspiracy, alliances which break up as soon as they are formed, tribalism, and violence. The concept of collective governmental responsibility is lacking because Ministers tend to work against each other. The passionate desire for stability (and for the early departure of the Tanzanians, now seen not as liberators but as ’ reminders of their own helplessness)' shown by ordinary Ugandans is seldom reflected in the attitudes of most of. the unelected interim Government and Parment. where the dominant mandate, seems to be every man for himself." . The only legal -political party, the Ugandan National .Liberation Front, is not *

party at all, but a alliance which had its raison d’etre, the removal of Amin, at the very moment the Tanzanians were able to give it power. It purports to encompass everybody from monarchists to Marxists via the military, as well as elements of the pre-Amin political parties which are divided internally as well as against others under the .. ramshackle U.N.L.F.-umbrella. This- means that, should President Godfrey Binaisa go the way of his immediate post-liberation predecessor, Professor Yusufu Lule, and fall before an election is held, there are at least seven men among the 125 members of the National Consultative Councii (thq quasi-* Parliament) who are regarded or regard themselves as candidates for appointinent at the third interim Head of State since June, 1979. Who would emerge in such circumstances, is anybody’s guess. That leaves President; Binaisa in a position'which',- to render confusion worse confounded, is both weak and strong at the same time. He is weak because the N.C.C.. mindful of the authoritarianism of the first president of Uganda, Dr Milton Obote, still waiting in the wings ’ in Dar-es-Salaam for a second chance, and the Hitlerian excesses of Idi Amin, seeks to limit his freedom of action at every turn and constantly threatens to pass _ vote of no confidence in him. st He is strong because that threat has not been'carried out. There is no sign of its being realised, and there will not be so long as there is no obvious substitute or one on which enough N.C.C. members could agree.This calculation ' was undoubtedly a factor behind his announcement of the

pasf few days that he was in favour of holding Presidential and Parliamentary elections as soon as practicable,- in October or November rather than close to the deadline of June, next year. His’ chances of getting an electoral mandate would he fir better if he were the incumbent.

■ Assuming that an election, Uganda’s first since the independence poll of 1962, is not pre-empted by a coup, the President’s chief rivals outside the N.C.C.,; both abroad at present, ‘iwould be Dr Obote and Professor Lule. Tn a country more: beset by tribal rivalries thah most in Africa, Dr Obote . enjoys the distrust of many for his association with the martial tribes of the north and east, notably of the largest.’tribe, the Baganda, for using Idi Amin, then his army commander, to bring down the Kabaka. The Baganda took to the streets in protest when President Binaisa was appointed in a palace coup by a minority of the N.C.C, because he had been Solic-itor-General under Dr Obote and was therefore classed by them as a “traitor.” He now appears to be gaining ground among them at the expense of Professor Lule. The most pressing precondition for future stability is a solution to the problem of the rival private armies which helped to overthrown Idi Amin and are still wholly or partlv in being. The U.N.L.F.’s militarv wing, the U.N.L.A., is rapidly being expanded into the core of a “national” armv and recently attained e trained strength of 10.00° with the intention of reliev ing some of the Tanzaniam But it is hardlv national yr in that;only 500 to 750 B?gan'da have been recruited. The level of banditry ar 1 armed raids in the ‘jiorth o the country by bands of so ! - diers formerly loyal to Idi Amin, Turkana’ tribesmen from Kenya, and others remains very serious;, compounding the famine‘in the region caused by a recor<> drought . About 500,000 people are thought to be starving. Uganda in its present con-

dition offers the observer an acutely depressing, picture ot a state, and a society which broke down . before they really got started. It would take the' most sanguine of optimists to predict an ‘early recovery,' and the least melancholic of pessimists to predict that there will not be one.