On Friday June 14, 2024, the African National Congress (ANC) party of South Africa signed a deal to form a coalition government with the predominantly white main opposition party called the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the late Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
This marks a seismic shift in the politics of South Africa heralding an era of ending black dominance which had ended white dominance 30 years ago.
Ever since Nelson Mandela walked from his island jail and won the first non-racial and non-sexist democratic elections on April 27, 1994, the ANC had dominated South African politics so much so that it had become merely a formality to hold elections. For 30 years it was one ANC president replacing another (Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma and Cyril Rwamaphosa).
It was a shocking phenomenon therefore that the ANC- a party of great revolutionaries and an unblemished history of fighting on the side of the people- was now incapable of proving its relevancy to the new South African voters
Just a few weeks ago, the former liberation movement received a paltry 40% at the polls which meant it could not form a government alone without involving other parties.
These results came from the fact that the ANC had run aground the South Africa economy (rationing water and power outages; and their once proud airline-SAA- now a mere shadow of its previous self); paltry service delivery (RDP- Reconstruction and Development Program started by Nelson Mandela long abandoned); high unemployment (32.9% meaning that every three people, one is not employed) and institutionalized corruption (Zuma and the Gupta Empire were long replaced by another black gullible and shameless elite).
Does those sound familiar? Don’t look further in heaven because what is smelling is right inside your nose!
The glass ceiling was shuttered and now South African politics has started to get interesting. Added to the mix is the presence of a one firebrand politician who goes by the names of Julius Malema who is characteristically already calling the ANC a sell-out party.
Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party now have a five-year hiatus to drag ANC in the mad and to prove that, after all, may be, the taunted as a business-friendly DA wasn’t all that friendly especially to black folks. He will be assisted in this character assassination by an erstwhile comrade-turned-foe and turned- ally again called Jacob Zuma who surprisingly eclipsed EEF and became the third popular party in South Africa.
One negative from the emergency of Zuma’s uMukotho we Sizwe (MKV) party is the exhibition of failure by South African voters who nearly booted out the ANC on account of corruption allegations and instead nearly brought back a leader- Jacob Zuma- who had stolen the nation’s resources without shame. Of course Zuma’s good performance is hinged solely on so-called Zulu Nationalism.
The Failure of Revolutionary Parties to Govern:
The ANC was holding South African voters almost in similar vice-grip like SWAPO (South West African Peoples Organization) of Namibia which has held power since March 1990; Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) in power since February 1977 or longer in 1961 when it was called TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) and Uganda’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) which has been at the helm for nearly 40 years. We can include here Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF.
In all these cases, it is single-party oligarchs albeit dressed in multiparty clothes confusing the masses. The situation here is “real wolves in sheep’s skins” as the Bible aptly defined two-faced individuals.
Ironically, these parties and their founding leaders have similar history and revolutionary credentials as to those of Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni. Except of course the fact that the other three parties have leaders succeeding each other and Yoweri Museveni often always succeeding himself. Even Robert Mugabe was finally removed from the ballot following his incapacitation then death.
It is true that Tanzania’s CCM cannot be defined as a ‘revolutionary’ party despite its name (Chama Cha Mapinduzi) suggesting so, but its founder, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere supported African revolution to the hilt. He was such a shorn in the neck of white supremacists in South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Namibia that some people forget that he was actually Tanzanian.
As our heading suggested, all these revolutionary groups and leaders from Tanzania, and under the tutelage of Mwalimu Nyerere, failed to govern their own countries.
Robert Mugabe and supported by his revolutionary folks called the “Brown shirts,” destroyed completely one of the most promising African economies. Everything bad about an African country and the failure of black leadership, Zimbabwe is the archetype.
Namibia’s SWAPO and Tanzania’s CCM, have governed and or continue to govern their various countries in a similar fashion. In both countries the ruling party took the mantle of stewardship from independence to date.
I often ask myself whether Tanzania and Namibia are true reflections of multiparty democracy? Is democracy in those countries entrenched enough that another party not named CCM or SWAPO capable of winning an election? I doubt that and there is no way we can find out.
For now, the unknown is what I have mentioned above. Ultimately, the known is that CCM will have Mama Samia Hassan Suluhu win the next election and with a high degree of accuracy, her current Vice President, Philip Mpango will succeed her.
Recently, Tanzania became a lower-middle income country perhaps because of its political stability; shunning of “Ukabila– tribalism” and no-nonsense tolerance to corruption. Their late President, Julius Nyerere then John Pombe Magufuli, left a well-oiled system that it will take years to be messed up by idiotic leaders.
It will be a similar story in Namibia where the current president, Nangolo Mbumba, who was the late leader Hage Geingob deputy, will vacate the seat and give it to current SWAPO president, Meme Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. She will definitely win the next election as SWAPO presidential candidate and go on to rule for two five-year terms and later succeeded by another SWAPO guy.
But these SWAPO fellows have built a model democratic country and tried to share the national resources equitably. You cannot therefore fault Namibian voters for often returning SWAPO into top leadership. Namibia has a white population which now believes that it is black and sings the national anthem with such gusto that a starving infant is left in the dust.
As the case with Tanzania; can Namibians welcome another leader who is not from SWAPO? The answer is no therefore democracy- multiparty democracy- hasn’t taken a firm grip in that country.
We already know the story of the ANC where it took power in 1994 and continued to hold it up to this day. Those are 30 years with one party calling the shots and of course, mismanaging the country. Unlike CCM and SWAPO, the ANC will soon collapse from internal contradictions and lack of another ideology. Its former leader, Jacob Zuma, now has own party as is its former Youth League president- Julius Malema- leading another hardline party.
WITHER UGANDA:
In January, 1986, a 42 years old Yoweri Kaguta Museveni matched his rag-tag force of “Kadogos– young people” and threw away all the other forces of reaction and hate. He established a model leadership style disguised as a democratic system but, in all intentions and purposes, a single party oligarchy. It is this government he has led for almost 40 years; the same years Prophet Moses (Musa) spent looking for the Promised Land!
Unlike Prophet Moses though, Yoweri Museveni did find his ‘Promised Land’ a land so fittingly baptized as the “Pearl of Africa” by the master of the English language Sir Winston Churchill.
This Museveni fellow “Neyigiira ensolo yange– hunted down my animal” so all other aspirants must keep away. He has been voted in by Ugandans starting from 1996; 2001; 2006; 2011; 2016; 2021 and likely, with a very high probability, to be voted in 2026. His son, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba (MK) is likely to rule by proxy from 2031!
Like we have observed with the other revolutionary parties, President Museveni is like this mechanic who put “Emipiira emikadde– used tires” on the car but has not taken a road-test to see how worthy they are.
It is all beautiful and fair when he still the president but what comes after, is a big unknown. For instance, he has a well-trained military son and a brother- Gen. Salim Saleh- who wield a lot of power and are loved by their peers in the army. How the Wanainchi voters will react if one of them is on the ballot paper; is a completely different story.
It’s true that Ugandans have not lost their love for President Museveni but how they will react to his heir-apparent is a complete uncharted territory.
President Museveni is like this rich man who sent his children to overseas schools and none was taught about the business which paid their expensive fees. It is therefore likely that outsiders- the non-family workers he trained- will one day own that business. And President Museveni’s ‘untrained’ workers are the NRM cadres and Bobi Wine’s NUP and other opposition parties are preparing themselves to take over the family business and enjoy the fruits undeservedly!
President Museveni is doing exactly what the departing colonialists did to our countries as one of my favorite philosophers, retired Tanzania High Court Judge Sserukuuma Mujulizi, whom I often quote here, sums up this conundrum:
“African leaders were duped at independence by the former colonial
masters. It was like they were put into a plane and flown to a remote
island and abandoned there by the pilot. The plane was stocked with
wines, hard liquors, beautiful air-hostesses indeed first-class amenities.
There was one problem: our leaders could not fly the plane back!”
This is exactly the same trap President Museveni has prepared for us. Judge Mujulizi even suggested that if the colonialists had not abandoned us on land, “we would have dropped like ripen mangoes off a tree or even drown in the seas!”
But the colonialists are now a distant thought and Africans have their destiny in their own hands. And leaders like Museveni are neither white people nor colonialists meaning that they have to think about their down-trodden people.
BY WAY OF CONCLUSION:
It has taken Ugandans 40 years to figure out how to handle Mr. Museveni but, every day, they get further away from the truth. He conquered all the armed groups (1979 to 1986) and erased prominent Ugandan politicians off the map (1986 to 2026). Mr. Yoweri Museveni and his NRM party will eventually collapse weighed down by heavy baggage it is carrying from stale thinking and staying for too long on the dance floor (Obuchupa bujja!).
Revolutionary parties like the ANC and NRM often invoke past emotions to win sympathy voters but “nakaabiira nyina amala naava kumalalo– you cannot stay on the grave of your dead mother forever!”
Likewise, if you habitually steal from the poor, a day will come when the same poor are at your doorstep with begging bawls. This is already happening to Europeans and Americans who uses their privileged access to our resources and skirts them away without adequately compensating us. A few years down the line; we get passports and head to their shores chasing those same resources.
Actually Julius Malema of EFF said after the recent election in South Africa: “I am happy that we won from most of the polling stations in and around tertiary institutions!”
He forgot to mention that most ‘educated’ black South Africans voted for the white party called DA. In the main, they’re flabbergasted by a black elite which is shameless and largely unschooled!
Kudos to President Museveni. Now majority Ugandans are educated (UPE and USE failures not withstanding) therefore capable of understanding the difference between politics based on ‘issues’ and one of grandstanding.
Mr. Yoweri Museveni and his cahoots will be hard-pressed to convince Ugandans that they’re still on “mulwamwa– plans” to kick poverty and end hunger with the level of wastage and institutionalized corruption engulfing the country. Perhaps his new efforts to deal with the corrupt might bring back some sanity in his leadership. Is intelligence even telling Mr. Museveni the source of the vast amounts of money currently being used to build apartments and mansions?
Like in South Africa, Uganda is entering an age of enlightenment. It will never be politics as usual and the ambivalent opposition also stand warned.
LAST WORD: “One day in the life of a wise man is worth a fool’s entire life!”
- South African Proverb
Adam Kamulegeya
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