The Shareholder Roles All People Have Toward Africa: Lessons From The Museveni Neo-realism

The entire world has roots in Africa but in using the term 'Wananchi,' Museveni is identifying the roles Africans have to play to ensure that Africa is a fully sustainable and an ecologically sound continent.  There are those with the tasks to look after and care for Africa. After all, too many cooks spoil the broth.

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Museveni is one such African leader one can give as an example of a reminder-leader. In using the term 'Wananchi,' the people are reminded of the role they play as the lever in order for democracy, security, and development to prevail in Africa.  Western colonialism had disempowered the African people through the 4 D's that is,  dehumanizing, debasing, denigrating and demonizing. 

The tools to regain dignity or the means to produce dignity are people the land, liberty, life, language. The historian Joe Kearns calls them the 4 L's. 

Nationalism in Africa is the effort to reclaim the 4 L's. I want to add a fifth L which is legacy. The present generation of Africans are called upon to hand over a sustainable continent to the next generation.

However, the people need a compass to guide them to such goals and grand aspirations. In Uganda, Museveni refers to people as ‘Wananchi’ and sometimes as the ‘masses.’ This is in contrast to how the colonialists had defined Africans. Museveni, is one of those guides. 

‘Wananchi’ is an all-encompassing connective and referent endearment which in English means ‘the people.’ It also reflects the relationship people have with the land and other means of production. It has legal, political, dominion, spiritual, cultural and corporate connotations. 

In the term ‘Wananchi’ one reads share-holder roles and a return to the inviolable humanized dignity of Africans. It empowers the people and calls upon any leader to regard them as capable of land-ownership, livestock-ownership, wealth, educational attainment, occupation, income, and membership to a given culture, subculture or a social network. ‘Wananchi’ has citizenship implications in that it can mean any person staying in Uganda for a short while or permanently. 

With Museveni as a referent it may also define the character of loyalty to him. Some examples of the different categories of people are the army, the NRM historicals, the NRM-party members, those who are ambivalent or have remained loyal voters of Museveni, the investors, the rentier class, the rising middle-class and the rest. The term ‘Wananchi’ is invoked as a stabilizer against any currents sending tremors or seismic quakes to state security and government plans. These tremors or quakes are read differently by the State House, President’s Office and the Security organs. 

Museveni does not hesitate to use military means to quell threats that come in form of violence, strained internal diplomacy, threat to governance and disruption of state structures. However, this has a downside too. 

The heavy-handed martial altercation includes Bishops being pepper sprayed, cultural gatherings foiled, culprits being beaten, tortured and subjected to humiliation even while in custody. This goes against the ‘Wananchi’ doctrine. 

Ugandans aspire for a peaceful country. They participate in protests to show this will. The state retaliates by showing a warrant. Some of the culprits have died due to the ruthlessness and brutality subjected to them. There is hope that the cultural institutions and courts will be the recourse instead of the pipeline to maximum-security incarceration facilities some of which are never disclosed.

 

Museveni publicly first used the term ‘masses’ as an ideological narration showing his detest for leaders who made it a point to overstay in power. It was at a fundraising event for the Patriotic Movement when he said that “Africa is tired of leaders who cling to power against the wishes of the masses.” Museveni painted a transformation road map for Uganda after a long period of under delivery by governments before 1986. 

His subsequent 35-year leadership is a value-added longevity. It can be characterized as a much-needed rehabilitation and reconstruction process for Uganda. It is a healing from the 1962-1985 events that disrupted what it takes to define Ugandans. Uganda was a breast-feeding child forcibly weaned and whose growth milestones were not provided the right progression.

 

In using the terms masses or ‘Wananchi,’ Museveni is also applying a balm to the wounds of the post-colonial policies and the global economy shocks whose devastating adversity Africa still faces to this day. The West and East implemented policy measures to contain the crisis, in Uganda Museveni is combining both economic Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. There are processes in the Ugandan economy and the society that sustain both so well.

 

 

Whether the people are referred to as 'masses' (invoked ideologically) or ‘Wananchi’ (invoked benevolently), it is hoped that Museveni will see fit to fully invest in and facilitate in nationalistic, democratic and governance institutions which will build among other things, purchasing power, freedoms and a culture of checks and balances. This will provide an algorithm for a developed progressive Uganda where targets such as end to hunger or gender development parity are met.

Museveni and many other African leaders, are guides. They cannot solve all of Africa's Colonial wounds. Museveni has  shown how Ugandans need to support him through their inalienable intuitive share-holding role to co-facilitate progress. In the 2020 campaigns, Museveni’s vanguard standard bore the slogan “securing the future.” It promises a period of a Museveni ecumenism in which security will share with nationalism, democracy and governance the same unconditional regard. There are lessons for other African nations too.