Recently, yours truly, returned to Uganda, after a 10-year absence. For some reason Uganda, like Kenya, feels just like home to me. In the streets of Kampala, just like in the streets of Nairobi, I see so many people who I could swear I have seen before. I have seen them in Soweto, Gugulethu, Kwamashu and Thohoyandou. I had the same eerie feeling in the streets of Salvador in Brazil. It is very tempting to speak to them in Zulu or Shangaan. But alas, each time I try, I realise that Kinyankole is not the same as Shangaan and Luganda is very different from Zulu even though they are all supposed to be Bantu languages.
It must be the landscape of Uganda that makes me feel at home. Aaahh, the fresh and delicious fish and the beer I had on the banks of Lake Victoria! Maybe it is the food — the strong vegetarian slant of the food. Perhaps it is the traffic chaos in Kampala, reminiscent of peak traffic in Alexandra? You should see me with my Museveni hat, sitting on the Ugandan taxi — the “border-border” — a scooter taxi that zips dangerously through the thick Kampala traffic. Or is it the music of Ugandan rap and house artists such as Richard Kawesa, Jose Chameleon and Bebe Cool, which have hints and traces of the South African sounds of Bongo Maffin, Malaika and Yvonne Chaka Chaka? The latter by the way, remains a musical icon in Uganda whereas in South Africa she is more well-known for her smile.
The beautiful Ugandan sunset welcomed me to Entebbe from where I headed straight to the upmarket suburb of Ggaba — location of the conference where I was going to speak about hope — of the desperate kind. The kind that one finds in much of Africa. Hope against hope. The hope that sees Africans return to the election polls every five years to vote without choosing — voting politicians into power without actually choosing leaders, let alone a future. The sick hope we have that Mugabe will one day fade away harmlessly and innocently. The hope that before we die, there will be roads, health and education for all. Though we physically live in one Africa, in and through our hopes we occupy another — an Africa of democracy, peace and no violence against women and children. Are Africans not prisoners of hope? Indeed our problem is not the absence of hope but the presence of too much hope — desperate hope that somehow, mysteriously “everything’s gonna be alright”. But will it?
Everywhere I went in Kampala, Ggaba and Entebbe, I saw the election billboards, the smiling face of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in his trademark hat with the words “Nominated” written above it. Not to be outdone by Jacob Zuma’s trademark song about machine guns, Awuleth’uMshini Wami, Museveni has come up with his own song thanks to the creativity of music producers in Uganda. Reciting Runyankore rhymes from his childhood Naatema akati (I cut a stick) and Mp’enkoni (give me the stick) at an election rally, Ugandan musicians have turned this into rap to the (initial) delight of Museveni and his campaign team. Now “give me a stick” is a slight improvement on “give me my machine gun” don’t you think? Give me a stick or a vuvuzela anytime. They are much lighter than a machine gun. They are easier to learn how to use and their usage has a lot more benign consequences. Unless the “stick” in question is a metaphor for a more ominous weapon.
The definitive line in Museveni’s song is “do you want another rap?” To which the music engineers have orchestrated a loud answer from a massive artificial crowd saying “Yes, sevo!” and “Yeah!” and “Whoah!”. Will Ugandans in the forthcoming election respond with a “Yes, sevo”? or will they respond with a “No Thanks”? Do Ugandans want another five-year rap from Museveni, which can and most probably will be followed by an infinite number of other Museveni raps? After all, the constitution allows for it. Here is a man who has been in power for 25 years — the first 10 years, before the advent of democracy — plus three democratic five-year terms. Ugandan youngsters have known no other president and now they also know him as a rap artist. Admittedly, he has been credited with having brought about economic stability and what has been touted as the most successful HIV/Aids-prevention strategy in Africa. Yet Museveni’s role and choices in the conflicts of the Great Lakes region has also left a lot of questions. He seems incapable of solving the problems in the North of Uganda. But must Museveni rule forever? What does it say about the country? How will Ugandans ever know what they are missing unless they give themselves a Museveni-less five years?
I am reminded of what a Cameroonian taxi driver once told me in Yaounde. With my big mouth and my rusty French I had asked him why Cameroonians had allowed one man — Paul Biya — to stay in power for more than 20 years. Cameroonians preferred him, said the taxi driver. I was dumbfounded. But how could they prefer the same man for more than two decades? At that point my taxi driver disabused me of my newly found South African freem arrogance — as he called it. “What do you want,” he asked? “We know that the present government is not perfect. We know that Paul Biya is probably corrupt,” he said carefully while lowering his voice. “But the people waiting in the wings are also corrupt. Would you rather we opened up our country to a new band of corrupt leaders every five years?” he asked me. Better the devil we know seemed to be the moral of the story. But he was not finished. “We would rather be ruled by a python whose stomach is so full he can hardly move so he can do no more damage than to open the floodgates for a new pack of wild dogs every five years,” he concluded. At that point I had no words.
Is that what democracy has come to mean in Uganda, South Africa, Cameroon and elsewhere? What a sad story we live in! Yet the referendum in Southern Sudan — a matter in which Uganda has a huge stake — plus the street revolution in Tunisia gives me hope — of the inspirational kind.
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