Part II: Uganda’s Recovery and Aid in the Museveni Era

Chapter 2. Political Context and Developments⁴

1986 – a new departure?

2.1 Political conditions in Uganda today have to be understood in the context of Ugandan history. Post-independence politics were rooted in sectarian divisions that owed much of their influence to the structures and dynamics of British colonial rule. Uganda has proved an exceptionally difficult country to hold together, and both Idi Amin’s dictatorship and the “Obote II” era which followed were marked by exceptional brutality and strife.

2.2 Britain fashioned the protectorate of Uganda out of a diverse group of kingdoms and communities representing more than 50 ethno-linguistic groups. Proselytisation created distinct Catholic and Protestant communities; there is also a Muslim minority. The people and the territory were also distinguished by modes of livelihood, the centre and west being predominantly agricultural, and the north and east mainly pastoral and agro-pastoral. Colonial development exploited these differences, bringing people from the centre and west into commerce and employment in the administration and using people from the north and east mainly as labour and in the army. This laid down a pattern of inequality between a poorer north and a richer centre that persists today, aggravated by unresolved internal and external conflicts.

2.3 After independence in 1962, Uganda was governed by a series of civilian and military regimes. In general, each successive regime ruled through exploiting internal divisions and by force. Between 1971 and 1986, the Amin and Obote II regimes were marked by gross human rights violations and economic mismanagement. An estimated 600,000 Ugandans were killed in politically-inspired violence and Uganda was reduced to a subsistence economy. In 1986, after a five-year bush war, Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) took power.

2.4 After the atrocities of the previous regimes, the NRM’s commitment to national unity and development was widely welcomed by the Ugandan public and the international community. The NRM brought a new approach to state-building that gave primacy to establishing security throughout Uganda and to giving all Ugandan citizens a political and economic stake in the country. The political template that the NRM laid down for this (no-party politics, the devolution of power and poverty reduction) remained largely intact throughout the period under review. The NRM’s approach to devolution and poverty reduction prefigured concepts of good development practice that emerged during the 1990s and won wide donor support.

Constitutional Developments

Constitution-making and elections

2.5 Almost the first decade of NRM rule was taken up in Constitution making (see Box 2.1 for key events). A constitutional commission was established in 1988. Following public hearings throughout the country, the commission completed a draft constitution at the end of 1992. Elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in March 1994 and the new constitution was promulgated in October 1995. Three Presidential and parliamentary elections have been held; the first two under the NRM’s “no-party” system, the most recent (2006) allowing party political competition. President Museveni has been returned to power on each occasion. Local government elections have also been an important democratic outlet.

Decentralisation

2.6 An important element of the political structure was the introduction of a system of elected local governments. The Ugandan model of decentralisation is very much a ’home-grown’ initiative and one that chimes well with donor perceptions of the role of devolution in building more inclusive and representative political systems and ensuring the efficient provision of basic services. The NRM based its model on the Resistance Councils (RCs) that it set up during the armed struggle against Obote. After 1986, the RC model was extended throughout the country and formalised into a five-level structure of councils at village, ward/parish, sub-county, county and district levels.⁶ The 1997 Local Government Act gave local councils responsibility for delivering basic services and aimed “to ensure democratic participation in and control of decision making by the people concerned”.

Conflict and human rights

Internal conflicts

2.7 Uganda’s social cleavages have presented obstacles to the unification of the country for every pre- and post-independence government. Museveni’s strategy for this was to try to give all Ugandans a political and economic stake in the country. However, the NRM has not yet been successful in redressing the political grievances of the north or the mar-ginalisation of the pastoral north-east. Insecurity and conflict in both areas explain the vast disparities in health status, education levels and other welfare indicators between these regions and the rest of the country.

2.8 Insurgency in the north began almost immediately after Museveni took power in 1986 and has continued with increasing ferocity ever since. The Districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader⁷ have experienced a secular increase in human rights abuses since the leadership of the insurgency passed to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in 1994. The LRA has killed, tortured, mutilated and sexually abused civilians and has abducted an estimated 25,000 children, forcing them to serve as porters, ’sex slaves’ and child soldiers. Between 1.5 and 2 million people (an estimated 94% of the population in the most affected Districts) have been displaced from their homes and into IDP camps. Chronic violence and the displacement of almost the whole population has caused the collapse of the local economy. Despite reassurances to the contrary, and some attempts to negotiate a settlement, the government failed to bring the conflict to an end during the review period.⁸ Some observers contend that there are military and political interests in maintaining the status quo (Barkan et al., 2004).

2.9 The origins and nature of insecurity and conflict in Karamoja⁹ are rather different. Karamoja suffers the geographic and social isolation typical of all pastoral regions. This correlates with the political marginalisation of the Karimojong and with an absence of government agencies able to provide them with either services or effective security. This marginalisation can be traced to a fundamental lack of understanding of pastoralism among government officers and policy-makers. First, there is a ready supply of small arms from the collapse of the Amin and Obote regimes and from the war in southern Sudan and other regional conflicts. Second, and associated with young men’s access to guns, traditional authority in Karamoja society has largely broken down. As a result, the tit-for-tat cattle raids between pastoral groups (in the Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya borderlands), which were previously managed through traditional ’rules of engagement’ with few casualties, are now carried out with automatic weapons, and involve significant fatalities and other injuries including a high incidence of rape. The resulting insecurity in Karamoja contributes to a cycle of a shrinking government presence – apart from that of the military – and to increasing poverty and isolation. There have also been spill-over effects on neighbouring districts.

External conflicts

2.10 Uganda has also been affected by turmoil in neighbouring countries, particularly the conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Uganda’s intervention in the DRC, and associated looting and military corruption, have been especially contentious issues between the Ugandan government and its aid partners.

2.11 Uganda’s involvement in Zaire (later the DRC) was sparked by President Museveni’s belief that President Mobutu was providing support to rebel forces in the west of Uganda. In 1997, this was used to justify the Ugandan intervention, in collaboration with Rwanda, which helped to overthrow Mobutu and install Laurent Kabila. Ugandan military forces remained in occupation of the north-east of the DRC until 2003, their presence being justified by reference to continuing insecurity. There is a widespread belief, however, that the UPDF deliberately provoked insecurity as a cover for Uganda’s involvement in the illegal exploitation and export of minerals and other resources from the area. The army’s privileged position in Ugandan society has allowed army officers involved in these and other corrupt practices to go unpunished.

2.12 Similarly, it has proved difficult to control budgetary allocations to the military. While official defence expenditure has declined since 1994, intra-budget reallocations have been made in several years since then. In 2002/03, a substantial increase in defence spending after Parliament had approved the budget provoked a major crisis with Uganda’s development partners, with several donors either delaying or cutting disbursement.

Implications for human rights and governance

2.13 The record of the Museveni government on human rights has been a major improvement on that of the governments that preceded it and for much of the period under consideration Uganda’s human rights record has been considered satisfactory. More recently, human rights issues have become matters of greater concern to donors, particularly the government’s failure adequately to address rights violations arising from the conflict in the north of Uganda.

Present perspectives

2.14 By the end of the period under review, much of the early enthusiasm for the NRM government had been eroded, with both public and donors concerned that Uganda has become a de facto one-party state and with highly personalised presidential power. Associated with the Movement’s monopoly on power, Uganda has come to appear like other patrimonial states with high levels of corruption and the use of public resources to buy support. The creation of new Districts in areas supportive of the Presidency is a conspicuous example of this form of patronage.

4) For a more extended treatment of the topics discussed here, see Background Paper 2 in Volume 3 of this report.

5) See Appendix F for a more comprehensive chronology.

6) See Volume 4, Thematic Paper 5 for fuller discussion.

7) See maps at the back of this volume.

8) Renewed cease-fire talks were under way as this report was prepared.

9) Karamoja corresponds to the districts of Kotido, Moroto, Nakapiripirit, Abim and Kaabong as shown on Map 2.