----- Original Message ----- 
From: Chris Opoka-Okumu 
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 11:19 PM
Subject: Marx is Dead, Long Live President Museveni's Daughter



Opinion - East African - Nairobi - Kenya 
Monday, October 6, 2003  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PHILIP OCHIENG 
Marx is Dead, Long Live the President's Daughter
President Yoweri Museveni's activities remind me of how, when I worked in Dar es Salaam, in the early 1970s, the story used to be repeated throughout Tanzania that Julius Nyerere's wife constantly nagged him to send his children to England for higher education. 
He always had the same powerful retort: "How can I possibly do such a thing when I am the very person pushing all other Tanzanian children to attend collectively-funded Ujamaa schools?" The story was no doubt apocryphal. But it illustrated the uniqueness of the person. No post-colonial African head of state has ever been so humble, so upright, so honest - the epitome of self-abnegation and abstemiousness. 

At one time, a Swiss bank wrote to advise him to open a personal bank account in Switzerland, explaining that, Africa being what it was, Mwalimu might soon be overthrown in a coup and would have nowhere to turn. The president was beside himself with fury. He passed the letter to us and we, in The Daily News, published it in full with a stinging editorial on the Swiss bankers' "lecherous" designs in Africa. 

To my knowledge, V.I. Lenin was probably recent history's only other head of state for whom it would been unthinkable to take advantage of his extraordinary power to enrich himself and his family at the public's expense. I bring Lenin into this story deliberately. Like Nyerere, he killed ruthlessly when necessary. After all, as Marx had admonished, "a revolution is not a tea party." But, in his personal life, Lenin was extraordinarily selfless. 

 In my Dar es Salaam days, Yoweri Museveni was among the most ardent admirers of both Nyerere and Lenin.  

When I first went to Dar in 1970, Museveni had just graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam, where he had been chairman of a student body that invoked Lenin's name every time (which was all the time) it spoke of "revolution." 

 To be a socialist was to serve the people. This required at least two gifts. One was knowledge of the science of revolution and the other was personal integrity of the highest order. Looking back on it with the wisdom of hindsight, we can now see where the difference lay. Lenin failed because, although he had both the science and the moral commitment, he had no help. Only a negligible number of his Bolshevik colleagues were fully committed. 

 Nyerere failed because, although he had the moral commitment, he didn't have the science and, therefore, objectively played into the hands of the very imperialist enemy he was trying to uproot. 

 Museveni failed because, although he knew the science, we now know that he didn't have the moral commitment and, therefore, never really tried when he at last had the power. His is the story of all my "Marxist" colleagues of the 1970s, many of them now in Kenya's parliament. 

 They were deeply learned in the letter of the classics, liberally quoting Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao and Castro. Yet they were so completely lacking in its spirit that, when Marxism was forced into a full political retreat with the fall of a fake Marxist regime in the Soviet Union, they dropped it like a hot potato. 

 They were not alone. I remember a time when Tony Blair and Jack Straw were dragged into police stations almost every week because of violent activities in the name of the British proletariat. Both are now "poodles" - in Neil Kinnock's phrase - of the global hangman of the proletariat called George Bush. 

 At a Nairobi seminar one day in 1999, when I asked an activist who is today a prominent NARC minister what had happened to him, he dismissed me with a wave of the hand: "Oh, those were ideas of the 1970s. They are no longer relevant."  

Apparently, then, their "relevance" depended only on the existence of Soviet Stalinist power. An honest answer would have been: "Mine was just youthful exuberance. I never grasped the moral content of that teaching. To tell you the truth, I have never really been committed to social justice." 

Museveni admits as much in the field of real life. True, the Marxist idea of grabbing power through putchist or guerrilla methods mesmerised him, even though, divested - as the Movement was - of any proletarian content, it was thoroughly unMarxist. 

True, too, the NRM originally used its power positively, to rebuild Uganda's industrial, communication and transport infrastructures, and it had the sense to set the economy on a sound basis before launching its own attack on it. 

But Museveni did it at the immense expense of popular sovereignty by offering himself as the blue-eyed boy of imperialism's grand designs on the entire Great Lakes region. Under the George Bush (senior)-Bill Clinton-Thatcher-Blair continuum, he was seen as the leader in situ of an elaborate plan by Washington and London to bring not only the rule but also the exploitation of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Zaire and the Sudan under one political roof in Kampala. 

When they spoke of him as "Africa's only hope," those familiar with Anglo-Saxon double-talk understood perfectly. They meant that he was the only hope in Africa through whom such new-fangled transnational stratagems as Agoa could succeed. 

That was why Washington and London exempted Kampala from such demands as multipartyism, liberalisation and privatisation. Why insist on a structural adjustments programme if the goods can be delivered directly? 

Even as they launched a virulent attack on the Moi regime for corruption and highhandedness, the IMF and the World Bank maintained a profound silence as corruption - much more sophisticated, much more thoroughgoing and, therefore, much deadlier than under Idi Amin - began to be perpetrated by favoured individuals in Museveni's army, Cabinet and immediate family. 

The report last week that Museveni had commandeered a public jet and spent millions of the Ugandan taxpayer's shillings to rush a daughter to a German hospital to give birth was, therefore, probably only the tip of the iceberg. 

Grotesque family privileges of this kind are now being talked about openly throughout Uganda. Having watched Museveni's development since we were boys, a deeply disturbing question rises in my mind... 

How can such mundane cupidity and callousness be the outcome of so many years of idealistic teaching, personal risk and heroic deeds? I don't know. I do know that Nyerere and Lenin are turning in their graves. 

Comments\Views about this article 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~