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Uganda: How I Survived Joining Luwero Bush War
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The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
11 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Yoga Adhola
Kampala
When the Amin coup took place I was at the University of Nairobi. The previous year I had had the distinguished honour of being the President of the Students Union, not an easy feat for a non-Kenyan.
This made me feel I might not be safe in Uganda. I therefore left for Dar es salaam.
I had been one of the most politically conscious students at the University of Nairobi. I had, for instance, read all that Julius Nyerere had published. However, on getting to Dar es Salaam, I found myself politically a bit out of place in political conversations with my agemates.
Ideologically, the difference between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam was like night and day. In any case the two countries were also that different ideologically. Both Tanzania and the University of Dar es Salaam were to the extreme left of Kenya and the University of Nairobi, respectively.
The ideology that informed courses at the University of Dar es Salaam were also left-wing. The University of Dar es Salaam was also teeming with all sorts of left-wing intellectuals. A sizable cross-section of the student-body, among whom was one Mr Yoweri Museveni, were also left-wing. They were reading and quoting the works of Fidel Castro, Che Guevarra, Walter Rodney, Franz Fanon, Regis Debray, Mao Tse Tung, etc
Realising that I had a handicap, I quickly began to do the necessary reading to catch up. I used to borrow books from the libraries as well as buy some. I soon caught up with my agemates.
Politically, my Ugandan agemates, including Mr Museveni, had embraced some infantile left-wing solutions to Uganda's problems. It is this outlook which eventually crystallized itself into Fronasa.
Before I went to Dar es Salaam, I had belonged to the Uganda People's Congress; however, as I read more and more and grew theoretically I came to the view that the road being preached by Museveni and his group was better for solving Uganda's problems. I therefore joined them and eventually became a member of the Central Committee of Fronasa.
However, as I continued to study, I eventually came to find the theoretical basis or the vision of Mr Museveni terribly inadequate to handle Uganda's problems.
Franz Fanon's writings had been inspired by the anti-colonial struggles in Algeria. That was a different struggle from what Uganda in the '70s was involved in. Fanon too had not discussed post-colonial struggles in any of his writings.
Fanon could therefore not provide guidance for the struggles in Uganda after independence. From Fanon, Museveni picked the theory of violence. Museveni even wrote an undergraduate thesis, "Fanon's theory of violence and its verification in Mozambique." I would urge every Ugandan to read this thesis. It is a great eye opener.
The problem with Museveni's embrace of Fanon theory is that Fanon never talked about the pre-conditions that are necessary for use of violence. While violence "is the midwife of a society pregnant with change" as other revolutionaries have argued, there have to obtain certain conditions before violence can play the role of mid-wife.
According to Museveni's vision, all you needed to do was unleash violence and revolution will follow. Well, revolution has not followed the violence in Luwero. The other theoretician who informed Museveni's thinking was Regis Debray. Debray (born 1940) is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and university professor.
He formerly engaged in Guevara's's activities, especially in Bolivia where he was arrested and jailed in 1967. In the 1960s he was professor of philosophy at the University of Havana, and an associate of Guevara. He later wrote the book, "Revolution in Revolution?" The book claims to analyse the tactical and strategic doctrines then prevailing in Latin America. It acted as a handbook for adventurists all over the world.
Debray's understanding of the Cuban revolution was erroneous, and he drew outlandish lessons from it. These outlandish ideas of his got transmitted to many budding revolutionaries with disastrous consequences all over the world. Many of these young people suffered or died in vain while claiming to be liberating their countries.
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Right here in Uganda we had our share of the disasters.
All the dressings of the so-called "fundamental change" will not change anything. I am glad I never joined the Luwero so-called war of liberation. I was saved by my studies, particularly reading "New Theories of Revolution," by Jack Woddis.
Mr Adhola is a former Editor-in-Chief of The People newspaper of Uganda People's Congress, and a leading party ideologue
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