By Sam Mayanja
On Sunday January, 26, 1986, the National Resistance Army (NRA) fighters under the leadership of sabalwanyi Yoweri
Museveni, overran the country’s capital, Kampala, and took it.
The liberators contrasted sharply with the Uganda Army (UA) they had just defeated. The NRA soldiers were young, disciplined and friendly. Signs of the hard life they had endured in the bush were visible from their thin bodies and torn clothes, reflecting the costs of the just war, they had just won. Unlike past changes of government in Uganda, there was no looting, since looting was not allowed- a result of the NRA’s internal discipline and control.
Writing in the March 1986, DRUM magazine of South Africa stated, “Yoweri Museveni has taken over Uganda. We at DRUM wish him well. Perhaps no country in Africa has so failed to live up to its real and true character since independence. The responsibility that lies before Yoweri Museveni is not just for Uganda, but for the good name of all Africans”.
President Museveni has not disappointed Uganda and Africa since he took the reins of power. The formula sabalwanyi
Museveni so careful crafted after reflecting on what has happened elsewhere in the world, was to the effect that if Uganda was to rise from the dustbin of the society of nations, and stand alongside other progressive nations of the world, the entire polity of Uganda society must be involved in the transformation of the nation.
The involvement of every Ugandan in the economic, social and political life of their country at all levels in this scheme of things was exhibited in five manifestations.
These manifestations were namely; bonna bagaggawale (wealthy creation for all), bonna basome (education for all), bonna babe balamu (health for all-universal vaccination), bonna banywere ku ttaka (security of land rights for all in perpetuity), bonna okwesalirawo (LC system- inclusive universal democracy for all).
This socio-economic-politico, all inclusive formulation is what in this writing is referred to as Musevenomics.
Musevenomics features secure private, and unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services that provides a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract. It also permits the entry of new businesses and allow people to choose their careers.
Musevenomics secures private property rights since only those with such rights will be willing to invest and increase productivity.
A businessman who expects his output to be stolen, expropriated, or entirely taxed away will have little incentive to work let alone any incentive to undertake investments and innovations.
It is this formula which has ensured that institutions social, economic and political, are put in place aimed at shaping
incentives of businesses, individuals, and politicians, to drive the entire Uganda polity towards a higher level of development.
Musevenomics has put in place inclusive economic institutions, that allow and encourage participation by the great mass of the people in economic activities that make best use of their talents and skills and that enable individuals to make the choices they wish.
Musevenomics has ensured that politicians remain agents of the citizens, and not able to abuse the power entrusted to them, and not usurp it to amass their own fortunes and pursue their own agendas, which are detrimental to those of Ugandans.
South Korea where Musevenomics was the chosen path of national approach to statehood, the state carried everybody on
board and not a segment of the privileged few.
The state put in place institutions with incentives that encouraged citizens to exert effort and excel in their chosen vocation. Citizens know that, if successful as entrepreneurs or workers, they can one day enjoy the fruits of their investments. They are free to open any business they like. South Korea is now among the richest countries in the world.
At the turn of the 1600s, the United States of America was more or less at par with Mexico in social, economic and political
development. Mexico opted to move on the line of political elites dominating all spheres of life leaving the vast majority of
Mexicans poor with no opportunity for advancement. Most of South America States followed this path.
The United States on the other hand adopted a whole inclusive approach of the Musevenomics theory. Institutions were put in place whereby every American citizen had opportunity to advance to the top in social, economic, and political spheres of that country.
Today the average citizen of the United States is seven times as prosperous as the average Mexican and more than ten times as the resident of Peru or Central America. He is about twenty times as prosperous as the average inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa, and almost forty times as those living in the poorest African countries such as Mali, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone.
There has also emerged a small but growing group of country which have adopted the Americano-Musevenomics path to
prosperity. These countries have become rich. They are mostly in Europe and North America, joined by Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.
At the bottom of the world income distribution is found countries which have used approaches different from the Americano- Musevenomics. These countries are the poorest thirty countries in the world today.
Almost all of them are in sub-saharan Africa. They are joined by countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Nepal. These countries opted to enrich the elitist few and ignored the rest of the polity.
Take the example of Ghana under the Presidency of Kofi Busia. This country transferred resources to politically powerful groups, for example in urban areas, who needed to be kept contented.
Price controls squeezed agriculture, delivering cheap food to the urban constituencies and generating revenues to finance
government spending.
With the biggest segment of the political polity left out of involvement in the country’s scheme of things, Ghana lost
direction to development and advancement. The country called in IMF, and the World Bank whose conditionalities included, but not limited to, devaluation of the Ghana currency. The immediate consequence was rioting and discontent in Accra, Ghana’s capital, that mounted uncontrollably until the Busia regime collapsed.
Another example is that of the then British colonial of Barbados. In the 1680s the English government conducted a census of the population of Barbados. The census revealed that of the total population on the island of around 60,000, almost 39,000 were African slaves who were the property of the remaining one-third of the population.
Indeed, they were mostly the property of the largest 175 sugar planters, who also owned most of the land.
These large planters had secure and well-enforced property rights over their land and even over their slaves. If one planter wanted to sell slaves to another, he could do so and expect a court to enforce such a sale or any other contract he wrote. Of the forty judges and justices of the peace on the island, twenty-nine of them were large planters. Also, the eight most senior military officials were all large planters.
Despite the well-defined, secure, and enforced property rights and contracts for the island’s elite, Barbados did not have the Musevenomics approach of entire polity inclusion, since two- thirds of the population were slaves with no access to education or economic opportunities, and no ability or incentive to use their talents or skills.
Barbados’ secure property rights and economic opportunities, were for just a few elites. The broad cross-section of society was left out of the scheme of things. As a consequence, Barbados remains a poor country.
In Uganda, the early years of the 1900s saw the British colonialists give away half of the arable land in the then first
province of Uganda or the Kingdom of the Province of Buganda as was officially called. The land give away was approximately 8,000sq. miles. It was given the tenancy name of mailo.
The mailo was allotted to less than two percent of the then population of the Kingdom of the Province of Buganda. This
miniature percentage of the population formed a lazy class of the ruling elite mailolandlord oligarchy, who became the Colonial Instrument of indirect rule. This oligarchy was a reliable ruling class of the collaborating chiefs who had made it possible for the British colonialists to conquer Uganda.
This mailo curse rendered the rest of the population to a class of surfs in their own country. This scheme of things has been a factor over the years in spearheading a series of devastating events which, one hundred and twenty four years later, awaits the instrumentality of the Musevenomics to resolve.
DR Congo is another example to look at. That country became independent from Belgian colonial rule in 1960. As an
independent polity, Congo experienced almost unbroken economic decline and mounting poverty under the rule of Joseph
Mobutu between 1965 and 1997.
This decline continued after Mobutu was overthrown by Laurent Kabila. The citizens in the DR Congo, were impoverished, but Mobutu and the elite surrounding him, known as Less Grosses Legumes (the Big Vegetables), became fabulously wealthy.
Mobutu built himself a palace at his birthplace, Gbadolite, in the north of the country, with an airport large enough to land a super- sonic Concord jet. In Europe he bought castles and owned large tracts of the Belgian capital of Brussels.
Mobutu consecrated the wealthy of DR Congo to the top elite. He had no thought for Musevenomics which should have set up economic institutions that would have involved the entire polity and increased the wealth of the Congolese rather than deepening their poverty. DR Congo despite its vast natural resources, has not become a prosperous nation.
The Musevenomics theory has clearly been at the base of what are called developed, rich advanced nations of today.
Lack of Musevenomics as a tool of development explains why nations are poor and remain poor while their neighbors flourish and travel to the moon.
Musevenomics resonates the biblically grounded belief in the equal worth of all souls in the eyes of God, and accordingly
involves the entire polity in the scheme of things.
Poverty insults human dignity, this state of life can only be reversed by a deliberate policy of the state by creating institutions that lift the lot of all citizens permitting, them to recover their dignity through civil and economic accomplishment.
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni through his Musevenomics tool of approaching development through involving the entire polity, has spurred Uganda from a failed state with no economy worthy any rating, to a middle class economy enabling Uganda to stand with pride in the community of nations.
The sabalwanyi of Uganda Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has laid bare his whole, and rescued Uganda from retrogration. Musevenomics is his trademark, and must be curved in gold on the annals of history.
Dr. Sam Mayanja
Minister of State for Lands
smayanja@kaa.co.ug
