Trending in Uganda

In 2009 I published the first part of an interview with Ali Mazrui. It was
conducted in his hotel room at the Kampala Serena while he had sat waiting
for a short-notice dinner with President Yoweri Museveni. I was a
beneficiary of the President’s legendary problem with time-keeping this
time. Initially the dinner was I was informed supposed to be in Entebbe.
Several phones back and forth with the State House switchboard (and I
believe grumbling about keeping the old man waiting) eventually led to a
late dinner at State House Nakasero. Mazrui’s health was failing I could
tell and needed a wheel chair. I was to meet him again only once at the
political science association meeting in America. You can read the first
part of the interview HERE. I have great admiration for Mazrui and his
heyday, the changing tides of the 60s but I begun by asking him here about
his relationship with his dinner companion, Uganda’s President Yoweri
Museveni.

 

 

Izama:  I imagine you have met President Museveni? Did you know president
Museveni before he was president?

 

Prof: Yes. Yea. In his leftist days.

 

Izama: When he was still a rabid socialist?

 

 

Mazrui: Yes. Absolutely. And he regarded me as a wishy-washy liberal
[laughs] and therefore bourgeoisie.  So I knew him before and even once he
invited me to a private dinner, private dinner with his dear wife in
Entebbe, State House and in the course of the dinner he said “Professor I
hear you have moved to the Left. He is saying that to me. I said Mr.
President “ there are rumors you have moved to the Right  [Laughs]

 

Izama: What was his reaction?

 

Mazrui: Well he rationalized it. He said no, no, no he said he begun to
take modernization, technology more seriously than he did in his more
simplistic leftist days.

 

Izama: He still considers that it’s only tactical. If you see the character
of his regime, he is still willing to announce large programs. Of course
they are not always properly implemented. Like free primary education,
secondary education, social programs like Prosperity For All, sounds very
Chinese, and grand. I think he considers himself at some level as a
socialist

 

Mazrui: Yes. Well as you said earlier he is definitely one of the most
significant political figures in Uganda’s history. He has harbored a big
chunk, slightly longer time than the other two [Milton Obote and Idi Amin]
and there are things he can be given credit for, outside the North,
stabilization of Uganda. Secondly I know you do not think you are an open
society but you are. You are much more an open society than you had been
for a long time in Uganda and you express dissent in the media at a level
unheard of in the last few years of Obote and in much of the time of Idi
Amin. So he restored relative openness and considerable stabilization
except for the north, which has remained dangerously neglected if not
provoked over a couple of decades. So he has a lot to his credit but
normally we don’t like giving governments in power much credit [Laughs],
which is also healthy. It’s a good idea. We just attack them, say what
lousy performance they are [laughs]. We can be more generous after they are
gone.

 

  

Izama: You know you have studied both cultural and political trends. We
used to watch the television documentaries you did a while back. Now in
your twilight years if you could predict the political direction of this
country where would you put it on a scale having lived through most of the
game-changing times?

 

 

 

Mazrui: I am still worried what happens after Museveni steps down, or
retires or is taken away by nature because really believe he has not done
enough to make himself dispensable. Not indispensible. Dispensable. This is
not unique to him because most leaders would rather opt for the belief that
they are indispensible then act on proving to history and to themselves
that the society can’t do without them. So he [Museveni] did not opt for
that particular way of dealing with institution building within Uganda. So
that is one of my main concerns and like I said in fairness to Museveni
it’s not unique to him but he has become somebody who you worry whether
when he is gone, things will disintegrate. Now I would like to believe that
won’t happen but Uganda was a relatively fragile political system before he
took over power. I am sure he has done enough to institutionalize stability
in the country.

 

 Izama: I myself don’t know what can be done under the circumstances
because countries evolve quite differently. What about Uganda’s experience
with corruption? There is a similar problem in Kenya.

 

Mazrui: Oh yea, though Kenya is worse [laughs]. Sometimes you don’t know
who is worse than whom with corruption. My position is that you can never
end corruption. You can only try to minimize it just like you can never end
crime. There will always be criminals. But we must assume it’s capable of
being abolished and act as if it was possible. Neither Uganda nor Kenya has
done enough. And as you know there is a lot of crime in the United States.
With regard to corruption there is also lots of corruption in the United
States. It just takes grander forms and involves bigger amounts of money
than anything we attempt here.  In Britain some of the forms of corruption
are relatively cheap like members of parliament being bought by
millionaires. So I belong to the school of thought that we must fight
corruption even if I believe it can never be abolished just as we must
crime, we must fight murder, robbery as if we could end it for all time
when it cannot happen.

 

Izama: But does corruption have a special place in as far as political
stability or evolution is concerned in African countries?

 

Mazrui: Yes. More vulnerable are some many forms corruption and more
obvious ones. I mean the Americans start a war and make a lot of money out
of it and it doesn’t appear very obvious but there were enormous profits
out of the Iraq War and certainly when Bush was in power they played games
with American people while they made millions if not billions of dollars.
So ours because we are relatively smaller political systems and more
obvious in our corruption we do play a part and there has been some debate
whether there are positive aspects of corruption which makes things done
when they wouldn’t otherwise be done. Thirdly because corruption is also a
form of income distribution that, hijack resources and then you are
followed around by thousands of your ethnic compatriots wanting their share
[laughs]. All that so all these are things we have to study but we should
do much more to take people to court, to imprison them, you see, because
just to say you are against corruption and nobody is ever punished is
nonsense.  So we must find ways in which the guilty are in fact punished.

 

 

Izama : I have always been curious who in your life time has made the most
impression on you in shaping your like career in academia your academia and
so forth.

 

Mazrui: Hmmn. That’s a much harder question [Laughs] because you know some
are members of family, some are teachers at earlier age of education, some
are teachers at university, and then some are colleagues in my professional
years. It harder to determine who has been specially influential. But whose
affected my life? Sometimes negatively like Nkrumah affected my life;
positively in a sense that he inspired ideas, how to interpret Africa, how
even to interpret him and even how to point out his limitations.

Idi Amin had a much bigger greater impact on me than almost any other one
because he just dislocated me from East Africa not just from Uganda because
the consequences of my leaving Uganda.

So my making it impossible for me to operate in Uganda then I had to leave
but I didn’t have to be in the United States so the most obvious thing was
to go to Kenya which I applied to the University of Nairobi and the Vice
Chancellor of the University of Nairobi at the time took me to Norfolk
Hotel. He said they had a high opinion of me but they had no intention of
hiring me. Later on when I was in the United States I tried again with
Nairobi I said hey so it wasn’t possible to higher me full time can I be
hired part time so that I spend half the year in the United States and half
the year in Kenya, which Americans are used to that, its not a problem. You
can have dual appointments across vast distances. And it turned out that
Nigerians can cope with that because in the end when Kenya turned me down I
had a job with a Nigerian university that I could combine with an American
university. But the Kenyan situation; I drew a blank.  So the consequences
of Idi Amin have been considerable. Mainly negative by uprooting me not
just from Uganda although primarily from Uganda but because Kenya wouldn’t
have me either because of my life in Uganda. Kenya’s reason was that
because I was debating heads of State publicly, they regarded me as a risk
on relations between the university and those in authority. So they
regarded me very unusual relationship with Milton Obote where professor and
head of state engaged from time to time in exchanging insults, Kenyan
academics regarded that as something dangerous to have so they wouldn’t
hire me.

 

Now there are pluses of my being outside East Africa and certainly outside
Moi’s Kenya. There are things I have been able to do abroad which I would
have been inhibited doing if I worked in Kenya. The most surprising was
that the chances are that I would not have able to do the television series
“The Africans. Triple Heritage” because even after I had done it from
outside Kenya did not show it until Mwai Kibaki came to power. So that’s a
plus side of Idi Amin’s indirect impact.

 

Mazrui: One last question?

 

Izama: It would be about Uganda’s recent oil discovery. Of all the things
we have talked about the one with the potential to influence the future is
the oil.

 

 

Mazrui:  Yes. Absolutely. Well, we are all excited we think the two
projects of Ali Mazrui Chair and Ali Mazrui Center of Excellence [ at
Makerere] stand a chance when Uganda’s oil begins to be commercialized. So
its not there yet. I used to say where there is sand and there are Muslims
there may be oil. I am told there are Muslims where it has been discovered
but they are not sure there is sand [Laughs]

 

I hope Ugandans learn to cope with oil wealth in creative ways because it
can be very damaging. It can create forms of laziness, forms of corruption,
damage to agriculture although if you do it creatively you can overcome
some of those problems. So they should look at other African countries that
are oil rich and avoid their pitfalls.

 

ENDS

I am still worried what happens after Museveni steps down, or retires or is
taken away by nature because really believe he has not done enough to make
himself dispensable. Not indispensible. Dispensable. [Internet photo]

 

  

The Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control in the internal affairs ministry has set a 2015 target for the roll-out of electronic passports using information gathered from the national identity cards

Comedian Anne Kansiime Tuesday at the Queens of Comedy show came out on why she has failed to conceive.

Black Eyed Peas singer and Hip hop artists Will.i.am has finally unveiled the smart "cuff" he has been working on for over two years with his consumer electronics company, i.am+. It is called the P...

The former Forum for Democratic Change party president has warned sacked Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi of state hostility ahead if he dares launch his anticipated presidential bid while still serving in the ruling NRM party