Understanding The Men That Worked With Museveni In Toppling Notorious Ugandan Regimes

 There is something intriguing about this jaja Rt. Hon. Hajji Ally Muwabe Kirunda Kivejinja the 2nd Deputy Prime minister and minister of East African Community Affairs in the Ugandan Cabinet. First rubbed shoulders with him in 2012 on a Pan African engagement where I was one of the student mobilizers across different African countries for the event. 

Moses Nathan Muhangi rubbing shoulders with the 2nd Deputy Prime Minister of Uganda Rt. Hon. Kirunda Kivejinja

We had so many Pan Africanists from different parts of Africa in attendance. The president of our republic graced the occasion too. There were so many dignitaries on that day but he did stand out for two major reasons; 1. His ability to get amongst us and mingle and just be one of us. In away, he has not been consumed by power. 2. His knowledge of the African societal systems and struggles in general and for Uganda in particular. 

He will talk about Uganda from the British colonial times from its first colonial governor Captain F. D. Lugard to its last colonial governor Walter Coutes. He will take you through Uganda of Sir. Edward Luwangula Mutesa 11, Apollo Milton Obote, Idi Amin Dada, Kironde Lule, Godfrey Binaisa, Tito Okello Lutwa and Yoweri Kaguta Museveni as post independence occupants of state house and how they got into that house. 

He will explain how the colonial structure survived and flourished by keeping indigenous populations safely out of the system. Out of their government, their economy, and their military structures. He will talk about independence not based on what he was told in history books but based on what he saw happen and what he experienced as a young man during those times. He will explain how not until the 1970's the colonial government structure had not undergone any fundamental change since independence and how a structure which was designed to supervise the maximum exploitation of natural resources for export to cities in the capitalist world kept doing just that even after independence. 

He will talk about civil service just after independence and how it was organized by Europeans and maned by elitist indigenous educated technocrats who had been so trained that they learned not to have contact or develop problems with the people they were supposed to serve and he will explain in detail how commerce and industry were entrusted exclusively to the Asian community. The army, police, and prison services were stocked with exclusive ethnic minorities from the north. While the mass population laboured to produce cash crops like coffee, cotton, tea and others, successive governments used that income to acquire luxury goods from abroad to keep all those in the upper strata of society in step with the latest fashions in developed countries. From these peasants produce, the military was oiled to support successive repressive regimes. All these stratified colonial structures were mutually exclusive, possessing no lateral linkage whatsoever. 

While contact occurred between members of the armed forces and the educated elite and the general population because of cultural pulls and the demands of the extended African family, the Asian was a watertight component of society that had no dealings with the general population other than transacting of business. They visibly commanded the heights of economic activity, inhabiting the developed cities and towns into which the Africans poured in the morning and from which they disappeared in the evening to leave cool evenings to the relaxed economic royalty. This old man's account of Uganda through independence to the present times is not unique to Uganda only but it shows how the African states in general have been tuned till this day to play to the same old colonial structure.