It is well over a decade now since Uganda, once a “no-party democracy” in which political competition happened among individuals seeking office and not among political organisations, reverted to multiparty competition.

Years before, soon after it became independent and for some years thereafter, it had experimented with multipartyism. That was before the then ruling party, the Uganda People’s Congress, succumbed to the temptation to monopolise power and turned Uganda into a de facto one-party state, and before UPC, increasingly numerically dominant but ideologically incoherent and institutionally weak, was thrown out by the military.

The military dictatorship was felled by a determined insurgency that Tanzania supported enthusiastically, led by an exiled political elite that were organised in a range of groups with very little in common and lots of different, often contradictory, agendas for post-Idi Amin Uganda.

It was that insurgency that first introduced most Ugandans to young and restless and, according to some who knew him then, power-hungry Yoweri Museveni.

Soon enough, the lack of harmony in the insurgents’ agendas, inexperience, and the simple assumption many had embraced, that the biggest problem for the country was Idi Amin, and that once they were rid of him everything else would be sorted out, plunged the country into renewed chaos.

A few years later, their organisational superiority, a clear sense of purpose, and common aspirations enabled a group of young insurgents to seize power from a government whose leadership and supporters had given in to the pleasures of being in power and neglected the imperative to remain focused, build consensus, and engage in collective action.

I was reminded of all this recently as I pondered the goings-on within Uganda’s two major political parties, the ruling National Resistance Movement, and its offshoot, the Forum for Democratic Change.

One feels a certain sense of déjà vu simply from watching the two groups evolve, and from listening to or reading about the conversations and arguments that go on among their leaders and supporters.

At the time it came to power, the NRM was a truly impressive outfit.

First, it had a leader in whom all of its members believed, with conviction.

Then it had a clear, believable agenda around which it had recruited cadres from among some of the brightest young and not-so-young minds the country had at it disposal, and around which it amassed goodwill from a very large number of Ugandans before and after the war.

Today, however, there is a certain feeling among its detractors and its more thoughtful supporters that the party has degenerated into something of an empty tin generating more noise than substance.

Aggrieved members whose motivation for joining up was to contribute to building an outfit that would make a real difference to the lives of the majority and stand the test of time as a party of principles, now complain of their organisation having become a refuge for a wide assortment of crude self-seekers.

Well, for a long time now, detached observers and political opponents have been saying these things. NRM cadres preferred to argue or pretend they were not true.

The change may have come rather late in the day, but that it has come is in itself a remarkable development. Now some party activists who feel it is harmful to stay silent or to hide their concerns from the wider membership and public have joined the fray.
Writing in a leading daily, one has identified “political, ideological, leadership lethargy, lack of creativity, dishonesty, intrigue and greed” as threatening the party’s wellbeing and its capacity to retain support.
Museveni, its chairman, has decried the party’s invasion by ideologically disoriented, careerists, opportunists, and jobseekers.
How times change. Only a few years ago the party decided to get rid of (kwejjako) members who, driven by principle and a sense of duty, stood up against what they saw as unprincipled internal manoeuvres by their leadership.
Perhaps those who see the NRM as in terminal decline and incapable of withstanding a well-co-ordinated and focused opposition have a point? If only Uganda had an opposition with such potential.
Which takes me to the Forum for Democratic Change. It is the one party that, for some years, large numbers of Ugandans who wanted to look beyond Museveni and the NRM saw as suited to the task of edging it out and putting right what they believed had gone wrong.

They, too, truly believed that they had what it would take to, as some liked putting it, help Ugandans “get our country back.”Those were the days. Today, however, the FDC seems to have been bitten by something pretty poisonous. Whatever it is, it has made it resemble the mother party in important respects.

If it was once cohesive, with its leadership and members pulling in the same direction, that was then.
Today they spend as much time fighting internal wars as they do in fighting the NRM. Suggestions by some of its members that it could break up before the year is out proves that starting a party is the easy bit.

Running it successfully is quite another. And so here we go again, back to the brand of party politics we believed we had left behind for good.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]