This is beautiful reading. >From: uga749d <[log in to unmask]> >Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list ><[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: *** Marx is Dead, Long Live President Museveni's Daughter >Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 23:18:00 +0200 > >----- 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! 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