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Woe unto you if your leaders do not work with the people

Thursday March 30 2017

Why do countries succeed? I once heard someone put this question to the president of an African country which features among a small number on the continent that are seen as having done rather well.

I do not recall the exact words he used in answering it. However, summed up, his response captured the importance of people working together.

He was referring, on the one hand, to the political elite. It is upon them, after all, that falls the responsibility of preserving necessary tranquillity and stability and cultivating a general sense of togetherness and commitment to common goals and aspirations.

On the other hand, he was referring to the same political elite and the people they lead, who tend to look up to them for orientation and inspiration.

The more I have reflected on this, the more I have wondered about what constitutes “success” in the life of a country, especially a poor African country. I have come to the conclusion that it really depends on the country one has in mind, but that failure is more easily discernible and doesn’t require much thinking.
That said, some African countries have done well in matters political and then pretty badly when it comes to domains such as economic management, that require more than mere political savvy on the part of their leaders, to make it work.

At the level of politics, countries that can justifiably be said to have been successes are those that have enjoyed peace and political stability since they became independent, and where, on leaving power, political leaders have not fled in search of refuge.

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Not all of them have preserved stability and a sense of unity to the same degree. However, they have all at least managed to preserve sufficient amounts of it to avoid generalised descent into prolonged turmoil. In this region no country typifies this more than Tanzania. And no country typifies failure in domains outside politics than the same Tanzania, at least until Benjamin Mkapa ascended to the presidency, according to a number of analyses of the performance of the country’s economy prior to that.

Among countries that have done rather well across the board historically, Botswana and Mauritius come to mind most easily.
And then there are countries that, for many years after Independence, did rather badly across the board, then experienced a certain rebirth in the past two to three decades, putting their houses significantly in order in political and other arenas, and qualifying as case studies in post-war reconstruction and renewal. Uganda is one such country.

Close scrutiny will reveal many warts. And there are indications that increasing numbers of Ugandans are getting rather frustrated at seeing the same faces in public office.

However, in general terms, the country has come a long way since the days when decrees could be issued abolishing, not political parties, but politics itself, as Gen Idi Amin once did, and when even the most mundane of consumer goods had to be imported.
Remarkably, the same political elite who have brought the country this far have also presided over a certain disconnectedness between different levels of government and between government and society.
They have also allowed destructive individualism, sloppiness, dereliction of duty, disregard for standards, and fecklessness to take hold within public life and society at large.
There are many examples but two will suffice. Consider this one: It is well over a year since Uganda got a new minister of education in the person of Janet Museveni, the president’s wife. Ms Museveni, according to some sector specialists, has turned out to be a rather engaged minister.

Recent media reports indicate, however, that the good lady does not know the number of primary and secondary schools in the country. And that is not for lack of interest. She has been asking whoever ought to give her the information, but in vain.

Simple logic would suggest that such information ought to be collected routinely and if not, it should be made available fairly quickly in a country with a decentralised administrative system whose attributes ought to include easy flow of information. The problem, it seems, lies in the ease with which anyone can set up a school, primary of secondary, and start teaching tomorrow, without reference to the authorities, and without the authorities reacting to the illegality or members of the public asking questions.

And now this one: According to studies, Uganda loses about 200,000 hectares of forest annually. This explains why forest cover has dwindled from 45 per cent of the country’s land area a few decades ago to roughly 10 per cent today.

That is alarming. More alarming, however, is that a significant portion of deforestation has occurred in “protected areas,” where illegal cutting down of trees is rampant. Now Uganda has a National Forestry Authority whose mandate includes ensuring that unauthorised persons do not carry out illegal activities in “protected areas’.”

Clearly the NFA has been missing as forests have been encroached on and chopped down. So have local leaders who, we were once told by decentralisation experts, would act in the public interest.

Clearly, where leaders and the led do not work together, countries do rather badly.

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

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