Mr. Yoweri Museveni has a background of good education. A calm and well exposed man. Straight thinking and intelligent. His grasp of contemporary world affairs, including some quite complex stuff, is commendably firm.
For years he burned his young energies battling vile governments. Narrowly escaping death on occasions, he showed resolve, sacrifice, devotion to his people and a deep abhorrence for oppressive leadership. Sure. This man had no shortage of good qualities.
And yet, to the astonishment of history, Mr Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has still failed us. 20 years at nation building have produced incompetence so shocking that some think a psychopathic illiterate, Idi Amin, did better work.
Uganda has been fairly stable long enough. The conditions for an economic takeoff have been there for 20 years. Mr. Museveni has enjoyed generous goodwill from nearly all the world's rich governments. Their largesse has poured in ceaselessly and in hefty amounts.
Uganda should have taken off. We haven't. We're stuck. And so is Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Eritrea, Malawi, Congo Republic and pretty much all of Black Africa, excluding the region's sole economic power, South Africa. This led me to pose a question to myself: can Black people build prosperous societies?
Just about every reason-from slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism to inequitable world trade rules-cited for the backwardness of Black African nations has been so debunked by time that it has now become necessary to look beyond the realm of such contemporary explanations. The maddening inertia of Black people and the mystical forces that keep tamping down our nations, in fact, seem to have their roots deep within us, not from without as has been argued for decades.
Just about everywhere you look, evidence abounds. Vietnam suffered a war of colonial conquest and it was eventually subdued by France in 1884. For almost a decade, it again fought a devastating independence war until France was vanquished in 1954. And then came the epic battle of 1965 to 1973 with US military and its allies, seeking to squelch the North Vietnamese communists.
By Elias Biryabarema.
