Macharia Gaitho
27 November 2007
opinion
UGANDA IS BACK ON ITS way to reclaiming its mantle as the Pearl of Africa. There is no doubt that under guerilla leader turned President Yoweri Museveni, the country has come a long way in the last 30 years.
Kampala, over the last few days, has been nothing but "chogam", a word that rolls off everybody's tongue and a highly successful event that allowed President Museveni to push his vision before fellow Commonwealth leaders and the rolling camera of the world's media.
It is going to 30 years since Mr Museveni shot his way to power in Uganda, and the man shows no signs of slowing down.
I think he was easily the longest-serving leader at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) he hosted in Kampala and a nearby resort in Munyonyo, and as he used the opportunity to press his vision for Uganda and the entire Third World, one got the impression he will have to reign as long as Queen Elizabeth before he can realise half of it.
It is a vision of breathtaking depth. President Museveni aims at a grand experiment on social engineering where peasants will disappear and the predominant classes will be a skilled middle class.
"Peasants should not exist in the modern world", he says, reeling 0ff figures to illustrate the stark differences between Africa and the developed world.
In his vision, Africa's salvation lies in the transformation of society from manual labour to intellectual labour, from the use of muscle to the use of technology.
He talks of Africa being still stuck in the pre-industrial age and a need to move fast to develop as a modern economy.
To illustrate his point at a press conference, he looks up into the battery of lights reflecting off his forehead: "Look, you have not seen me removing my handkerchief to wipe off the sweat".
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief to demonstrate a fanning motion. "You have not seen me doing this. We are being cooled by machines. We don't have to waste time doing this (the fanning motion). I want even the Karamoja (one of the country's most remote communities) not to have to waste time cooling themselves like this."
It will probably be a long time before the Karamojong can employ air conditioning. And President Museveni might want to be around to see it happen.
It will be no easy task doing away with inefficient and wasteful peasant agriculture and a feudal economy, and adopting a modern skills - and technology-based economy; from an economy where agriculture is the primary occupation and source of livelihood to one where industry, technology and the service economy reign.
A bold, audacious vision towards a complete transformation of society is, of course, what makes great leaders.
MY WORRY IS THE EASY MANNER in which words like "primitive" and "backward" roll off President Museveni's tongue in reference to economies in which peasants and unskilled manual workers predominate, in reference to Uganda and the rest of Africa.
That gets me thinking that if society will not be transformed fast enough simply by education and industrialisation, there might be much faster and more efficient ways to "eliminate" the primitive and backward classes who might be holding back development.
Sometimes there could be a thin line between bold vision of societal transformation and a megalomania that might try to realise the objective through drastic means.
President Museveni, to be sure, is on to a good thing. The theme of the Commonwealth Conference was "transforming societies to achieve political, economic and human development".
The Kampala Declaration that came out of CHOGM covered pretty much the themes that President Museveni has repeated relentlessly throughout the week, the move towards modern economy, but consciously avoided the kind of language and terms he has been employing.
No one can argue against a fast push towards industrialisation, embracing technology, building skills, providing infrastructure in terms of roads, communication networks, water supply and energy. And of course there is need in Africa for social services such as health, education and support for the disadvantaged.
It is also true that we need to tackle the mindset that locks some people into a perpetual dependency on the State, and the refusal to look forward to modern ways.
In Kenya, for example, there is still need to do away with the obsession about owning land, even if it is an unproductive and barren piece that is of absolutely no economic value.
I find it ridiculous that we have even assumed that it is the Government's duty to provide us all with a piece of land to call our own. So at election time, the President will be all over the place dishing out title deeds to the so-called landless.
And then we destroy even what we have by, for example, parcelling out forests and sub-dividing big ranches into useless little individual pieces.
Yes, we need to change, and rapidly, if we are to take our place on the world stage. But I would draw the line at dismissing societies as primitive and backward and thinking about how they could be eliminated.
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