The Chief of Staff Land Force Maj. Gen. Jack Bakasumba said that because of the clear political leadership in Uganda “We have been able to build a strong Army because of the clear ideological concept we have. A soldier who is not ideologically upright is like a mercenary.”
Representing the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Wilson Mbasu Mbadi, Gen. Bakasumba was speaking during a dinner that was held at Ndere Cultural Centre for the delegation of the Defence Command and Staff College of the Botswana Defence Forces who were winding up their week-long Geo-strategic tour in Uganda.
Col. Dumisani Ndzinge, who led the delegation from Botswana — said that during their tour in Uganda under the theme ‘balancing economic diversity amid complex security challenges’, they were able to visit the Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Uganda Industrial Research Institute, Quality Chemicals Industries, National Enterprise Corporation which enabled them thoroughly achieved. “We are the first delegation (from Botswana Defence Forces) to visit Uganda and we are honoured to be the pioneers of this start of military diplomacy,” said Col. Ndzinge.
President Yoweri Museveni, who is also the commander-in-chief of UPDF, while speaking to the Forces, noted that Uganda is now stable due to the consequence of ideological and philosophical shifts in the country. “The stability you are talking about is a consequence of the Ideological and philosophical shift here in Uganda, with the fact that we rejected the politics of identity and started advising our people about the politics of interest,” President Museveni said.
He explained that before the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government came to power 37 years ago, Uganda was turbulent and had become a failed state. However, due to the right ideology by the current government, the country managed to pick up and it’s now peaceful and developing progressively. President Museveni appealed to the students to always promote politics of interest, saying that the ideology was crucial for the prosperity of their country.
“Right from Independence, we had a crisis of what is primary? What is important? Is it identity or interest? That’s where the departure point was because some people have been saying that what is important in public management politics is identity; that means tribe, religion, race in some cases, even gender to some extent and you find people like in the case of Uganda here, they formed political parties based on identity,” Museveni said.
“The good thing is that some of us were part of those parties from 1960 but by 1965 we had become disillusioned and said no, what are you talking about? Why is identity so important? Because all these groups were talking about religions and tribes they have needs, they need food, they need shelter, jobs and wealth. Why don’t you talk about their needs? Why do you talk about their identity? Are you not a false prophet? Are you not providing a pseudo-ideology?”
The President further noted that for any society to be prosperous, it needs to produce a good or service and then sell it to earn money. “The only way my tribe, who are cattle keepers and banana growers can be prosperous is to produce a good or a service and sell it. In this case, they produce milk, beef and bananas. But now once they do that, they have one problem; they do not easily buy from one another. Why? Because they all have similar products. It is the other Ugandans who don’t produce milk, beef or bananas because they are fishermen, they are producing other things, they are the ones who rescue me and buy my products,” he said. “When we saw that Uganda was more useful to me as a wealth creator than my tribe, then we developed the principle of Patriotism; love Uganda, you need it, it is more useful than loving just your tribe. You need Uganda for your prosperity.”
The President however noted that due to the fact that Ugandans now produce more than enough products like milk, poultry, sugar and beef, the internal market is not enough to guarantee the country’s prosperity. “We also discovered that even when you love Uganda, Uganda is not enough, we need East Africa. That is why you heard us playing two anthems, the one for Uganda and that of East Africa because for our prosperity, we need the East African market, we also need the African market. Therefore, our second principle becomes Pan-Africanism.”
Additionally, Museveni expounded that in order for Uganda and Africa at large to transform socially and economically, they need to create a new society, and this can only be done if all adults join the money economy. “Our principle number three is socio-economic transformation. We must have a new society. We cannot have a peasant producing another peasant and we think we are doing a good job. We say the society here must be metamorphosis just like Europe and others did. And how do we get a new society? They should all join the money economy, it has four sectors include commercial agriculture, manufacturing/factories big or small, services and ICT. We are telling all these Ugandans that please move into one or more of these sectors. In Uganda, the homesteads still outside the money economy are now 39 percent. The ones in the money economy are now 61 percent. For the first time we have got more people engaged in money creation than before,” he stated.
“Principle number four is Democracy; government for the people by the people. When you see the stability in Uganda, it is because of that new thinking that came up. Otherwise, Uganda was very violent, we lost 800,000 people, killed extra judiciary by Idi Amin and those groups and because of the four principles, we have been able to build a very strong army. Part of the problem why some countries cannot develop a strong army is because of sectarianism. We don’t look at people’s tribes, their religion, we don’t care if you are a woman or man as long as you can shoot properly, that is what we are interested in.”
President Museveni also discouraged the delegation from exporting their country’s raw materials, explaining that it was a disaster causing loss of money and jobs in African countries. “We should add value to our raw materials to benefit more from our resources,” he said. “We are also introducing the knowledge economy because people here are quite well educated as you saw in the Industrial Research Centre, that was just a small part, there are very many highly educated people, scientists whom the government is supporting to make automobiles, vaccines and all that.”
“Now that is all part of the long stabilisation of the country because you cannot have a backward country with an increasing population and you think that you will have stability, you will get instability at a certain stage. The economy transitioning from raw material production to industrial production is a must,” Museveni concluded.
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