The political temperature is clearly rising in Kampala. At the core of the matter is the opposition reform proposals that have largely been ignored and passed over by an NRM-dominated Parliament. A constitutional amendment to reinstate term limits has been blocked from being tabled. The much-awaited debate on the Public Accounts Committee report on the Chogm funds scandal has also been blocked, much to the chagrin of the PAC members themselves, but perhaps more of the MPs that see their cherished institution, one of the arms of government, getting defiled.
The international community is bracing for a showdown with the Museveni regime, it seems, 24 years since he came to power and became the darling of the West. Today, the West is divided on whether Museveni is an asset or a liability to their interests in the region. Is the honeymoon over?
It is becoming clearer by the day that political change in Uganda is inevitable. What is not as clear is the shape it will take. What is occupying opposition strategists is the methods that will be employed, to achieve the regime change objective. More thought is being given to nonviolent political action. Inter-Party Cooperation youth and women are, in most of their trainings, reading from non-violence literature.
Yet, they know that Uganda could not be more repressive than Milosovic's Serbia. In Serbia, young people organised themselves using meagre resources and were later assisted by the western democracies like the US and UK. They run a horizontal organisation, Otpor, or Resistance, with a fluid unidentifiable leadership spread over the country. Repressive regimes know how to "arrest leaders to kill a revolution".
In Yugoslavia, the method was rendered useless - there were too many leaders without a central authority, or hierarchy. It was a truly mass movement. Uganda's opposition ought to study the Serbian model more closely. This is important because Ugandans want to cause change without leaving their homes to live in war camps and Internally Displaced Persons settlements. Change that comes out of nonviolent actions is predictable and manageable. Ugandans are closer to South Africa than Serbia. They can also learn from the South African anti-apartheid struggle, which employed non-violence methods until apartheid snapped.
Only a few years ago, South Africa seemed headed for a blood bath. The ANC and other forces in the African community were escalating the internal struggle against apartheid, the international community was applying economic sanctions with increasing vigour, and South Africa had become a pariah nation. Cornered, the white security apparatus was hitting out savagely.
Few people who look back at those dark days recall that militant non-violence was the key tool in the struggle against apartheid and, in the end, precipitated a negotiated revolution. The scope and creativity of methods employed by anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s amounted to what the theologian Walter Wink describes as "probably the largest grassroots eruption of diverse nonviolent strategies in a single struggle in human history."
Hunger strikes ended detention without trial. Gandhi's legacy loomed large as economic boycotts of white businesses, court actions that challenged apartheid laws, rent boycotts and demonstrations proliferated.
People often refer to "the miracle" of South Africa. If courageous leadership, committed citizens, a willingness to embrace forgiveness and reconciliation, to find solutions even when it seems impossible, and to take a leap of faith into the unknown make a miracle, then, surely, that's what it was.
Text: http://allafrica.com/stories/201005140086.html
