Transcript of Final Speech

AR-20 Sub-Saharan Africa Andrew Rice is a Fellow of the Institute studying life, politics and development in ICWA Uganda and environs. Transcript of a speech delivered at the Members and Trust- LETTERS ees meeting of the Institute of Current World Affairs, Monmouth, NJ, June 5, 2004 Since 1925 the Institute of Current World Affairs (the Crane- By Andrew Rice Rogers Foundation) has provided Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening. long-term fellowships to enable outstanding young professionals You know, Ugandans are crazy about greetings to live outside the United States and salutations. A friend of mine once told me a story. and write about international He bought his father who lived in a rural village a cell areas and issues. An exempt phone. There’s hardly a square foot of Africa that’s operating foundation endowed by not covered by one cell phone network or another these days, and Africans, being the late Charles R. Crane, the big talkers, have embraced the technology wholeheartedly. Institute is also supported by contributions from like-minded Anyway, after a few months, my friend went back to the village to visit his individuals and foundations. mzee, as respectful young Ugandans call their elders, and found that he had given the phone away. “The thing was useless,” the mzee told my friend. He had tried using it to call his friends, but their traditional greetings went on so long… TRUSTEES Bryn Barnard “Hello” Joseph Battat Steven Butler “Hello” Sharon F. Doorasamy William F. Foote “How is the day?” Peter Geithner Kitty Hempstone “We are surviving, somehow.” Katherine Roth Kono Cheng Li … and so forth … Peter Bird Martin Ann Mische …that they never had time to get to their point before the damn phone ran Dasa Obereigner out of minutes. Chandler Rosenberger Edmund Sutton So, I’m not going to put you through the kind of elaborate introduction a true Dirk J. Vandewalle Ugandan homecoming speech would entail. I notice that you neglected to buy a goat to slaughter in my honor, anyway—a grievous oversight the spirits of my HONORARY TRUSTEES ancestors are unlikely to overlook, Peter. David Elliot David Hapgood Let me just say, though, that I am happy to be home, to be standing before Pat M. Holt you all tonight, and to have the chance to tell you about Uganda, a country that is Edwin S. Munger at once terrible and beautiful, cruel and kindhearted, calcified and wondrously, Richard H. Nolte bumptiously alive. Albert Ravenholt Phillips Talbot It is a country that, for two decades, most of the world had given up on: A place of coups, buffoonish dictators, unspeakable sadism, famine, disease. It was Institute of Current World Affairs among the world’s worst in every category in which a country would want to The Crane-Rogers Foundation excel—income, infant mortality, life expectancy. It was the first place in the world Four West Wheelock Street to experience the full force of the AIDS epidemic. It was, in short, a basket case. Hanover, New Hampshire 03755 U.S.A. Foreign correspondents ransacked their thesauruses for words dismal enough to describe the depths of the country’s misery. at the local watering hole, the Kasambya Pub. I had a group of Ugandan friends there, all young profession- Journalist David Lamb wrote in his 1982 book, The als—the vanguard of the Museveni generation. They Africans: “Uganda no longer exists today as a viable na- were just old enough to remember the days of war, and tion. It has disintegrated into a cluster of tribal states. Its yet they were forever complaining about the government cities have become frontier towns, terrorized by bandits that had given them peace. They railed against their lead- who will kill for a Seiko watch. Its government is a col- ers’ corruption and incompetence. They ascribed the lection of outcasts and misfits serving only themselves. darkest, most Machiavellian motives to any Museveni Most of the bright young Ugandans who came home af- initiative. Like many Ugandans, they were forever pre- ter [Idi] Amin’s overthrow already have returned to ex- dicting that the country was about to collapse into civil ile. There is nothing left to rebuild. The economy, the gov- war, and always seemed a tad disappointed when it failed ernmental infrastructure, the spirit of reconciliation had to implode according to their predictions. all been destroyed. The Ugandans have committed na- tional suicide.” Many’s the time, after a few tall bottles of Nile Spe- cial Lager, that one of my Ugandan friends would boozily Knowing the Uganda of today, it is hard for me to declare: “Museveni is worse than Amin!” comprehend how these words could ever have been true. The Uganda I know is a place of boisterous people, of a Of course, this was absurd. As Museveni’s support- booming economy, of boundless promise. In the time I ers are fond of pointing out, anyone saying such nasty lived in Kampala, skyscrapers have popped up, and west- things in Amin’s day would have been whisked off by ern-style movie theaters have opened. There is a fancy men in dark sunglasses to be killed and fed to the croco- new shopping mall, which possesses Uganda’s first esca- diles in Lake Victoria. My friends are too young to re- lator. There is always a cluster of nervous Ugandans member Amin, so they don’t really know how bad it was. standing at the foot of the strange moving staircase, gin- The history of Amin’s regime is rarely taught in Ugan- gerly lifting their feet to climb aboard—reluctant, but nev- dan schools, in part because Museveni’s government is ertheless trusting that the curious contraption will con- reluctant to stir up latent tribal resentments, so young vey them safely upward. people don’t hear how good-hearted people disappeared, for any reason, or no reason at all. Living in Kampala, in this world of relative affluence and comfort, of eternal 80-degree days, it would be easy Sitting in the audience tonight is Duncan to think that Uganda, too, is destined to ascend forever. Muhumuza, whose father was one of the thousands of President Yoweri Museveni, a former rebel leader who people who disappeared under Amin. Those of you who took power in 1986, certainly encourages this view. Un- have been reading my newsletters no doubt know the der Museveni’s leadership, Uganda’s economy has grown story by now: In September 1972, soldiers kidnapped a at one of the fastest clips in the world. For the most part, local chief named Eliphaz Laki from his office, forcing the country is at peace—though a long-running, low-in- him to drive away in his prized Volkswagen Beetle. He tensity civil war, which I will address later, continues to was never seen again. Thirty years later, Duncan discov- bedevil the country’s north. Tribes that once warred with ered a clue which led him to two men who confessed to one another have reconciled—or at the very least, they killing his father. Those two men, plus the general who have agreed to disagree peacefully. The vicious cycle of allegedly ordered the killing, were arrested and put on an eye for an eye, a coup for a coup has been broken. The trial. I became fascinated with the story of Eliphaz Laki birth rate is booming: More than half the population is because I thought it offered a fascinating window on under the age of 18. This younger generation, the Uganda’s history. Equally interesting, however, was what Museveni generation, has never known war or tyranny, it told me about Uganda’s present-day politics: The trial or the experience of having men with guns come to your was, in every sense, a fluke. For the most part, the people village at night, to rape the women, kill the men, pillage accused to taking part in the killings of the 1970s and the fields, and burn down everyone’s huts. Little won- 1980s have gone unpunished under Museveni’s regime. der, then, that in the last presidential election, Museveni’s campaign slogan was “No Change.” If you’d lived in Uganda’s government has decided that seeking jus- Uganda through those days of the 1970s and 1980s, you’d tice is less important than keeping the fragile peace probably want to keep everything just the way it is, too. among the country’s once-warring tribes. The past isn’t talked about much. Misinformation is rife. Ugandans to- So why is it, I wonder, that so many Ugandans today day are apt to hear—as a friend of mine recently re- seem unhappy? And why is it that the people who seem counted one evening at Kasambya Pub—how Idi Amin most discontented are the affluent, the educated, the once insisted on meeting with a British diplomat in cosmopolitan elite—the very people who have most ben- thatch-roofed hut, which was specially designed to make efited from Uganda’s peace? the white man kneel as he entered it. Or they’ll hear the stories about how Amin kicked out some 40,000 Ugan- Many evenings during my time in Uganda, I’d walk dans of Indian descent, confiscating their property in the down the dirt road outside my house for an evening drink name of creating “black millionaires.” But when it comes 2 AR-20 to the 100,000 to 300,000 Ugandans Amin is accused of Xiaoping,” and anointed him, and I quote, “the model murdering, rationalization or outright denial is common.

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