DR OLOKA ONYANGO: Uganda Needs More Civil Society ‘Jiggers’

They say we have never stood for public office so how can we have any knowledge about what the ‘common people’ think? Sometimes they call us ‘elites’ out of touch with the ‘grassroots.’ What they consider the most damning accusation is to say that we are simply a front for one opposition political organisation or another.

At the end of the day, and even though they will never admit it in public, if the views of civil society are presented articulately, with persistence and with force and clarity, the government is forced to take them into account.

This was clear in the debate about the White Paper and the subsequent discussion of the amendment to the 1995 Constitution (the so-called kisanja debate) when government changed its position in pushing for a referendum on the issue, to accepting that Parliament was the right forum for resolving the matter. My short point is that civil society can be abused and dismissed, but if it is persistent enough, it cannot be ignored.

In this sense, one could describe civil society as a ‘jigger’ in the feet of officialdom. Before you accuse me of using abusive language, consider it a compliment in the sense that the work of a jigger is to cause as much irritation and discomfort to its host until the host is forced to take account of its presence.

The host can react in two ways; it can extract the jigger and go back to walking barefoot (in which case it will attract more jiggers). Alternatively, it can protect its feet. The role of civil society and the media should therefore be to force government to take account of our views and to comprehensively address them; whether we are talking about human rights abuse; the conflict in Northern Uganda, or the destruction of the environment.

Uganda’s civil society

To appreciate the roots of civil society, one needs to have an historical perspective, because civil society is not a new thing, and by drawing comparisons with the past we will be able to consider how much things have changed and indeed, what has remained the same if anything.

In the struggle against colonialism, a host of civil society actors arose within the frameworks of organisation, association and expression that were permitted at the time. For example, one recalls the early trade unions that organised protests and boycotts over the racist economic and labour policies of the time.

There were also the local newspapers that were the main conduit and mouthpieces for anti-colonial political activity. Cooperative unions and societies brought together thousands of peasant farmers united around issues of an economic nature, but also addressing the main social and political questions of the day. The most prominent characteristics of these civil society actors or social movements were:

(a) They were closely and organically linked to the pulse of the people (what we call the ‘grassroots’ today);

(b) They operated shoe-string budgets, which were essentially raised internally (there were no ‘donors’ and certainly they got nothing from the government of the day);

(c) They addressed issues which were not simply of a socio-economic nature, but also directly political. In other words, they were not afraid of politics-partisan or otherwise, and

(d) They were extremely effective.

After independence, a lot of the civil society actors were either transformed into state agencies (such as the cooperatives); nationalised (as with the trade unions) or banned (as with the newspapers). By the time Idi Amin came onto the scene Ugandan civil society had been severely crippled. Amin completed the task by exterminating what little was left of it through executive decrees and orders.

Since 1986, we have seen a revival of civil society activity, in part a reaction against the repression of the past, but also the product of a regime that was more ‘benevolent’ than its predecessors.

The NRM government also realised that allowing the operation of civil society (within limits) was strategically important and useful, not only in terms of allowing middle class frustrations to find a non-violent outlet, but also to appease the international community and the ‘donors’ who are a very influential part of it.

Besides, given the state of collapse of the state at the time, it became very quickly obvious that government would not be able to do all the things it previously could, particularly provide social services. Ugandan civil society is thus a product of the social, economic and political conditions existing in 1986, and the developments we have witnessed thereafter.

What is the dominant character of contemporary civil society?

(i) The vast majority are into service provision, or some kind of ‘developmental’ activity;

(ii) The most prominent of our actors are donor-supported (I will not say donor-driven, although the line is extremely fine);

(iii) Many of us are ‘retrenchees’ or escapees from the civil service or privatised parastatals (one local translation of the acronym ‘NGO’ is “nekolera gyange â-oe olusi”, I do my own thing â-oe sometimes);

(iv) We are distanced from the local communities, even as we profess to be closely connected to them;

(v) In part because of our immediate history, but also on account of the concrete conditions existing in the early years of the NRM government, civil society adopted a ‘softly-softly’ approach to the government, particularly after government detained Lance Seera Muwanga of the Uganda Human Rights Activists;

(vi) We claim to be non-political but have ended up being highly apolitical, and,

(vii) As a consequence of all the above, I would say that we have been only minimally effective.

The most serious criticism of civil society in Uganda today is that we have somehow managed to remove the element of ‘activism’ from our function as activists and to pretend that the work we are doing is the furthest thing from politics imaginable.

This has led to ‘inactive activists’ or a civilocracy in the same way as one would describe a bureaucracy. The main challenge we have is to change this situation and critically engage with ‘officialdom,’ which in my view is not only the State, but with all other institutions of power and authority with which we are familiar, whether it is the family, the community, the school, the local authority, the corporation, the opposition political party, or the government of the day.

We should not be deceived by the term ‘transition.’ Although the opposition is optimistic about winning this election or even causing a run-off, I highly doubt (and I am ready to eat my shoes if proved wrong) that President Museveni will lose the election next month. What is happening in Uganda today is simply a transition from Emperor Museveni IV to Museveni V, and we are seeing this scenario playing itself out.

No election is determined by the events on ballot day. All elections (everywhere in the world) are determined by what takes place well before. And in Uganda since 2001, many things have happened to seal this election in President Museveni’s favour, by hook or by crook.

Among them are the use of the state machinery to bribe, coerce and intimidate the voting population; the overlap between the Movement ‘system’ and the NRM and its influence on the structures on the ground; the absence of the necessary degree of demilitarisation required to ensure that the election is a civil (and civic) exercise, the legal regime which overly tilts the field in favour of incumbency, the technical incompetence and political partisanship of the Electoral Commission, and the misuse of state resources.

It is also a fallacy to imagine that we shall move into a situation of fully-fledged multipartism in the same way as it was foolhardy to have thought that because we enacted a new constitution in 1995, we would begin to enjoy the fruits of constitutionalism.

In other words, Ugandans at large, and civil society activists in particular should prepare for multiple parties without multipartism. The conduct of the primaries in all the parties should make this point clear; if none of them can exercise internal democracy, how can we hope that they will exercise democracy in the opened political arena?

Multipartism is not an event; it is a process that will invariably be marked by a good deal of struggle. Hence very little is going to change in the transition to a multiparty political arrangement unless we actively change it.

Civil society should also prepare for the most unlikely of events too; an opposition victory. This is because there is no guarantee that if the current opposition comes to power things will change fundamentally.

After all, politicians (like taxi-drivers) suckle from the same breast, and as yet, there is nothing to demonstrate that the politicians on the different sides of the political divide are actually very different from each other.

The most important point is that at all times, civil society must act to defend those without power against those who hold it and can abuse it.

Civil society in Uganda today is still largely silent about issues of a political nature. It sporadically speaks up, but its voice is neither strong, consistent or compelling. In this respect, civil society is like boiling milk; it froths and it fumes, but it settles down as soon as you turn off the heat.

Perhaps the lone voice assessing the political arena has been that of the media. However, since the Media’s main function is to produce profit, the extent to which the Media can be described as the ‘voice’ of civil society or of the people is debatable.

Needless to say, there is a lot that civil society actors can learn from the Media, including investigation (or research) publicity (or dissemination), and focus (or determination) e.g. the exposé on the case of the [Black] Mambas-turned-policemen.

Of all the groups that are out there, the DemGroup (a loose coalition of civil society election monitors) deserves some commendation because it has been consistently speaking out on the political problems that the country is faced by. However, (and I mean this with all due respect and admiration for the work they are doing) they need to be more forceful; more pro-active and to bring more civil society actors on board in order to create a critical mass of non-state actors interested in the deeds of those who control (or want to control) the state, and with the necessary vision and determination to do something about it.

I am particularly disappointed in both the women’s and the human rights movements in Uganda today. It is quite clear that the women’s and human rights movements need to forge closer alliances than they have so far attempted to. For example, how many mainstream human rights groups spoke out on the Domestic Relations Bill?

Conversely, how many times has a women’s group spoken up about a directly political issue? If there is any group that has been silent about the political transition it is women. It was only in the debate over the Vagina Monologues that several women’s rights activists came to appreciate that the lack of democracy within the state can have direct implications for the autonomy and free operation of their own movement.

Despite that experience, women’s groups have been silent about the vulgarisation of the women’s cause-particularly the claim that the state is interested in dealing with domestic and sexual violence-represented by the bizarre charges of rape currently unfolding in the Besigye trial.

On their part, virtually no human rights group has made an input on critical issues affecting the political status of women (such as the debate on affirmative action).

But let me not be accused of throwing stones from a glass house; the academic fraternity has singularly failed to be the voice of intellect; reason and analysis that it is supposed to be. Indeed, virtually the only cause that brings out members of the academy to speak collectively is if the issue for discussion is the living wage. If civil society voices are indeed speaking out, then I am afraid, I can barely hear them.

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This opinion was first run in The Monitor January 25, 2006 when Dr. Oloka-Onyango was the Director of Makerere University Human Rights and Peace Centre. This is an abridged version of his keynote presentation at the Reflection Dinner for the Programme Civil Society on Jan. 20.