Entry nineteen - Where Nobody's Right If Everybody's Wrong

Last Thursday there was a demonstration in Kampala that got out of hand. Opposition MPs, environmentalists and thousands of protesters marched through downtown Kampala in protest over the president's plan to give away one of the country's last remaining national forests to a sugar company. A few months ago, President Museveni decided that he was going to give - that's right, give for free - 17,000 acres of Mabira National Forest in the heart of the country (between Kampala and Jinja) to Scoul, a company owned by one of the richest people in Uganda, Mehta. Mehta is an Indian businessman (in Uganda, Indians are usually called 'Asians') who owns Lugazi sugar.

There have historically been high tensions between "Asians" and "Africans" in Uganda dating back to the 1920s. The British government imported "voluntary" (though this was a relative concept under colonial rule) labour from India in order to, among other things, build the railway from coastal Kenya to Western Uganda (the Ugandan portion is now defunct except for a few cargo trains). There is a myth that "Indians came to build the railway." However, the majority of Indians in Uganda came as businessmen, primarily in towns but later expanding to some rural areas. British laws systematically prevented Africans from entering business in substantial numbers, while Indians were used as a buffer between Africans and the colonial state. Successful resistance and disruptions of colonial rule were mostly (though not always) directed against the Indian community. Strikes, riots and legal challenges to the colonial state usually focused on the monopoly of business by "the Asians". Dependent on the colonial state, and resented by most African-Ugandans, the Asian community also had a reputation for insularity and disrespect of Africans.

After independence in 1962, the first government of Milton Obote attempted to use its socialist ideology to justify limiting Indian business activity. However, his laws banning Indian-owned businesses from main streets and his secret plans to expel Indian nationals would have crippled his international legitimacy and hurt his own financial and political support (or at least tolerance) from the business community. After Idi Amin took over in a military coup in 1971, most people thought that his regime was a conservative backlash against Obote. However, in mid-1972, he ordered all Indians to leave the country within 90 days. Thousands of Ugandan citizens of Indian origin had their citizenships annulled and their businesses given away, mostly to Amin's supporters.

Prior to Amin's expulsion order, Kampala Road (Kampala's main street and centre of economic activity in the country) was almost all Asian-owned. It was apparently very rare to see Africans in this part of town, or most other wealthy areas of the city. The architecture of Kampala (and most of the country) illustrates this racial segregation. Kampala is built on a series of hills (some say seven, others say forty). Europeans lived on the top of these hills in order to avoid the malaria-infested swamps in the valleys. Indians usually lived on the slopes of these hills, the richer ones living at the top and the poorer ones living at the bottom. Meanwhile, Africans lived in the valleys. After independence the racial segregation was no longer legally feasible or desirable for those in power, but economic barriers remained. Amin's expulsion order was thus very popular among many Ugandans and continues to be remembered as a great moment in Ugandan history by many. In the mid-1990s, the current government of Yoweri Museveni invited some Indian businessmen (the owners are mostly men) to reclaim businesses that had collapsed or were under incompetent management. The Indian community today does not rival the 60,000 + of the pre-Amin years, but they are prominent in business (this time, alongside African-owned and internationally-owned businesses).

I am unsure if Mehta is a Ugandan citizen or if he was one of the Indian businessmen invited back by Museveni, but he is in charge of the biggest sugar company in the country. His books have been closed for over twenty years, during which time he has not paid taxes because he claims that he has been running losses - (no one including his supporters claim that this is true). President Museveni unilaterally declared that Mehta would receive, free of charge, 17,000 acres of Mabira forest. His opposition seized on this issue, which is opposed even by most members of his cabinet. According to a 2001 World Bank agreement, the government cannot touch the forest. Nevertheless, when the opposition voices looked like they would win, according to some reports Museveni ordered loggers to move in before anything had been approved by the government. Put simply, this move looked decidedly dictatorial and Mugabe-ish.

This is all background to last Thursday's protest. The police OKed the protest (something they usually do not do). However, they demanded that it not use Kampala Road and the junction toward Entebbe (the busiest intersection in the country). The protesters of course wanted to use these routes. The chronology of events is hazy, but the following took place within a two-hour window of each other after a few hours of what had been a strong, peaceful protest.

The protesters moved toward the forbidden junction. Police fired live bullets to disperse the crowd. Protesters started chanting - "For every tree cut in Mabira, the heads of five Asians will be cut." It is unclear if this started before or after a car, driven by an Asian person (completely unrelated to Mehta or the Mabira), knocked down a reporter who was sent to the hospital in critical condition. Another Asian person who was driving by (again, completely unrelated to Mehta or Mabira) was knocked off his motorcycle by the crowd and stoned to death. Another Asian passerby was knocked off his motorcycle but saved by police - though his motorcycle was burned. Some Indian- and Chinese-owned businesses were looted. A security guard shot and killed two protesters who he claimed were looting but who demonstrators say were innocent. All Asian businesses in town closed for two days, and police escorted many Asian people living downtown to police stations to stay the night, for their safety. A huge rainstorm dulled to protest, and a few people were arrested.

Later that day, Museveni made a speech announcing that he was laughing at the protesters because he knew that he could shout louder than they could. In another press conference, he blamed all the deaths on the protest organisers, who were later arrested, and said that the NRM (his party) (note that he did not say "the government" or "the state") would always promote the rule of law. The next day he seemed to back down slightly by saying that the issue had still not been discussed by the Cabinet. Another unapproved downtown protest on Tuesday involving the leaders of all the major opposition parties was teargassed while opposition leaders engaged in shouting matches with the police. The opposition leaders literally ran through the streets avoiding police to get to the building where they planned to hold a press conference. Literally wiping the teargas from their faces, they declared the government corrupt and illegal.

One last point about the opposition. The next president of Uganda will likely be Kizza Besigye, the leader of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). He used to be Museveni's personal doctor but fell out with him several years ago. He has no platform other than being against the government, and he is propped up by a host of shady, suspicious, and/or unknown backers. In addition, he is immensely popular, particularly in urban areas, among the educated classes and among young people. In other words, things are politically shaky at the moment, and none of the country's leaders seem to inspire much hope. In this context, the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM) is scheduled for November in Kampala. Should be interesting.

Entry eighteen - Kampala, New York, and the Gentrified Urban Jungle

I apologise for my little three-month vacation from the world of blogging... I have no good excuses, or bad ones for that matter. However, I hope that this string of entries (saved up from the previous months) make up for some of the absence.

In any case, I would like to dedicate this entry to an observation that I made today about Kampala and New York. These two cities where I have spent the past two years are both booming metropolises with falling crime rates, incessant construction and growing "gentrification", at least in some areas. I had friends in New York living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, i.e. Bed-Stuy, just across from the Marcy Projects (home of the late gangster-rapper Notorious B.I.G.) because it was one of the only neighbourhoods with apartments that they could afford. Although things still looked grim, a block of condos was going up nearby, and I even heard rumours that a Fresh-Direct truck had been seen cruising the adjacent neighbourhood. I have a friend in Kampala living in Makerere-Kivvulu, which since the days of colonial segregation (between Europeans, Asians and Africans - which is still evident in the city's architecture) has been a very poor African slum, because it is the only area that he could afford. Although it is still a very poor neighbourhood, across the street from his apartment is a huge recently-opened conference facility, and nearby are a few newly-constructed spacious houses for Kampala's middle class. I am myself considering moving into some apartment blocks on the edge of this neighbourhood. In the adjacent slum of Katanga, the university recently razed the structures of a few hundred people (squatters, they were called) in order to pave the way for more university facilities. Kampala's suburbs are undergoing even greater transformation as the super-rich seek new neighbourhoods with cheaper land.

However, well within my lifetime, both of these cities were (in the portrayals of some) dangerous, decaying and grungy hell-holes. This is evident in the infrastructure and architecture or both Kampala and New York, even as things (for some) swing economically upward. Twenty years ago (and assuming that I was still twenty-three rather than three years old), I would not have considered entering either Bed-Stuy or Kivvulu for simple reasons of safety. In New York, the cracked sidewalks, run-down buildings and few remaining poor residents of areas such as Park Slope make the current scene of upscale bars, restaurants and boutiques seem like they were dumped on top of a ghetto - which in some ways they were. Someone who lived in Park Slope in the early 1980s said that at that time there were prostitutes and various shady characters on almost every block, and most bars were too dangerous to enter after 10:00. After he moved out in 1981, apparently things got even worse. Today the area is divided into three sections, one industrial, one trendy, and the other yuppie (the industrial one is the only area with rent under 800 USD/month).

The area of Kabalagala has been the centre of Ugandan nightlife for the past quarter century. However, it is located far to the south of the city centre and is surrounded by a mishmash of very upscale and run-down neighbourhoods. When these areas were all poor, and home to a good portion of the population of Kampala, Kabalagala was a popular centre of social activity because it was too dangerous to move around at night between there and the city centre. Although a recent effort to pave Kampala's streets before this year's Commonwealth Conference has improved the situation, until recently the road to Kabalagala was treacherous, doing great damage to any non-4WD vehicle attempting to manoeuvre through it at night. But due to the city's history, this is where the best nightlife in city is. Even downtown Kampala consists of a mix of empty lots, run-down colonial-era buildings and sleek new skyscrapers.

There isn't any grand conclusion that I plan to draw from these observations. However, my experiences of both New York and Kampala are those of prosperous commercialism hastily laid out over gritty urban jungles. Movies, friends and newspapers tell me about how walking through Central Park was asking to get robbed. Books, friends and at least one film tell me how walking, or driving, across Kampala at night was asking to get shot. No doubt these images are greatly distorted, since I know people who have lived in both places for decades and have fond memories of past years. However, the speed with which these cities were significantly transformed gives them each a kind of surreal quality, especially since the architectural and infrastructural changes haven't always kept pace with the monetary and social ones.

Entry seventeen - High fashion

I recently noticed an article in the newspaper entitled "How to Dress Down Without Looking Trashy". The accompanying picture showed a man in a button-down open-collared shirt, tucked into a spotlessly ironed pair of black dress trousers. While I don't generally peruse the fashion section of any publication (and I did not read the accompanying article), this title summarised a problem of how to dress that has troubled me since my first visit to Uganda.

If I were trying fool someone in Toronto or New York into thinking that I am respectably not uncool, I would probably put on my faded jeans or khakis, battered cheap dress shoes, wrinkled button-down shirt, corny 1980s sport jacket and dirt-stained fedora on a walk down to a hole-in-the-wall drinking joint around the East Village or Queen West. My cover would inevitably be blown after a few drinks, when I would inevitably begin rambling on the politics of postcolonial subjectivity or the Red Sox postseason woes. However, at the level of appearance, my collection of ragged attire would not pin me as somehow disrespectful or trashy.

There are several varieties of "scenes" in Kampala, but none equivalent to those that I am used to in North America. The club-goers are often decked out in even more over-the-top fashions than their North American counterparts. The middle-class watering holes are filled with brand-new spotless suits and the occasional pristine dress. Even the Rastafarian-types wear the latest style of jeans and Bob Marley shirts at assorted bars and clubs of various levels of seediness. Even the student hangouts where I feel more comfortable are jammed more respectable high-fashion folks than I would ordinarily tolerate at home.

After my first trip to Uganda, I stopped wearing torn jeans and t-shirts after realizing how run-down I looked, even next to someone who only owned one-set of clothes. After my second trip to East Africa, I began tucking in my button-down shirts for similar reasons to the previous change. Unfortunately, I cannot bring myself to take the next step and begin wearing brass cufflinks, a suit, tie and kiwi-polished black shoes, as many other Makerere students do.

I have my theories on Ugandans' apparent fear of "looking trashy" when "dressing down". The people who wear ragged clothes are mostly crude clueless bazungu and people who cannot afford to dress to impress. A premium is put on looking not necessarily well-off, but modern or with it. The anti- and/or post- modern trends in dress, style and culture in North America are, in general, less pronounced in Uganda.

Although the adage that there is no accounting for taste may still be accurate, there is some accounting for the limits within which one can imagine tastefulness. Any person's aesthetic tastes are governed by the socio-economic, cultural, historical, blah blah blah contexts in which s/he lives. The tradition of the starving artist (going back centuries), anti-modern chic (well predating the hippies), and commercial saturation in North America and Europe contributes to the Rolling Stones being the epitome of cool because they spend hours making it look as if they don't comb their hair or care that their clothes are torn. And what else explains a shrewd multi-millionaire businessman such as Mick Jagger singing that he has no money, sleeps in bordello doorways and can't get any satisfaction out of life?

Now, this type of American style is not simply a cynical attempt to rub shoulders with poverty without having to experience it. It is often a poignant way of criticising unrestrained consumerism. Similarly, Ugandan high fashion is not a desperate attempt to display one's distance from poverty - and it is certainly not a simple imitation of Western consumerism. Unlike its American counterpart, it has no pretensions about looking poor, and it is predicated on showing respect to others.

However, if style is relative, it is also subjective. I still prefer my dirty fedora and faded khakis, and I look forward to wearing them again in a couple of months.

Entry sixteen - Purely academic

Once upon a time, (some) intellectuals conducted research and published works that confidently sought to tackle global structural "problems". When new political entities began popping up after World War II, a simple rebuke of colonialism was no longer enough. The new breed of post-War scholars were preoccupied with two principles - a will-to-knowledge (finding correlative rules according to which societies worked) and a will-to-change (using this knowledge to effect positive change). They rejected the particularism of their predecessors and insisted on empirical research based on "hard" data. They then identified problems that "Third World" countries needed to overcome in order to complete their entry into the global community promised with independence. They needed "modernisation". To throw off "dependency". To achieve "development". Nearly all concrete policy suggestions were firmly embedded in such approaches.

Somewhere along the way, however, this fell apart. Modernisation was exposed as a hoax. Dependency revealed its one-dimensionality. Development was derided as so much wishful thinking. As academics pondered the shortcomings of their earlier paradigms, some of them rather swiftly abandoned the project of "problem-solving" altogether. In the aftermath of this shift came students who, instead of looking for routes to liberation, sought examples of ambivalence and transnational subjectivity. The result has been something akin to foreign policy debate in the United States. Even after three disastrous years in Iraq by any measure, opposition to American foreign policy has failed miserably to put together anything resembling a coherent alternative. As a result, a stuttering simpleton (a self-proclaimed "problem-solver") has been able to contrast his global, even progressive, foreign policy with the presumed "isolationism" of his incoherent opponents. Likewise, paternalistic conservative bankers, backed up by so many number-crunching economists, have managed to monopolise policy debates about "problem-solving" while their opponents whimper about anti-foundationalism and the fallacy of civil society. Despite the monstrous and unambiguous failure of these bankers over three generations, they continue to rule the debate on "development" and "globalisation" - both of which are noble but ill-defined concepts.

Since I am not a problem-solver, I do not propose an alternative to such an impasse. Unlike politicians, academics are not supposed to compromise intellectual honesty for political gain. Thus, unlike American Democrats, they have something of an excuse. However, I have not advanced far enough in the academic world to abandon the temptation to yearn for the days when it was as simple as proscribing "modernisation" or "development" to feel like one was "doing something".

Entry fifteen - Courting trouble…

(This was written about a month ago, but laziness prevented me from posting it.)

I'm guilty. This blog hasn't been updated in over two months, despite numerous events that could have provoked some extensive commentary. I've been to Sipi Falls in the east of the country, and Kabale to the west (I’ll have pictures soon, I hope). I've talked with Idi Amin conspiracy theorists, CHOGM (Commonwealth Summit) organisers, and drunken security guards - the former is a more frequent occurrence.

But there are two parts to today's entry, the first of which is informative commentary, the second of which is pure commentary. Given the West's apparent belief that Africans are incapable of practicing "politics", it is difficult to tell from here what snippets of Ugandan news actually reach the North American airwaves. So other than being congratulated by Forrest Whitaker for "their spirit", Ugandans are on edge over a controversial court case that is threatening to shut down the country's entire judicial system.

First, some background. Kizza Besigye, leader of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), was arrested during the 2005-6 presidential campaign for treason and rape. After Besigye was released on bail, military police (dubbed the "Black Mamba Urban Hit Squad" due to their black t-shirts) showed up in front of the High Court to arrest him under military charges. (Besigye used to be a General and personal doctor to President Museveni.) MPs in Museveni's party had eliminated term limits allowing Museveni to run in the election, which he won by about a 60-40 split, a much thinner margin than the previous two elections. (A Canadian journalist was expelled for suggesting that the margin was slightly slimmer.) Besigye, who is not exactly the most articulate man in Uganda, has been acquitted of all charges by the High Court, but continues to fight military charges.

The current court drama involves suspected members of the People's Redemption Army (PRA), which was/is supposedly Besigye's military wing. Some have admitted guilt in order to take advantage of an amnesty law. However, the remaining ones were recently granted bail by the High Court. But... deja vu. The Black Mambas showed up to rearrest the released PRA suspects, scuffling with lawyers and judges as they did so. The Chief Justice of Uganda announced that the judges will be suspending all judicial activities in Uganda until the government complies with the Court's order to release the suspects and apologises for "insulting the judiciary". Some Makerere University students refused to attend lectures, but others apparently beat up the Student Guild President when he tried to organise a demonstration downtown (which the police had promised to disperse using teargas - they have delivered on such assurances at at least three demonstrations since November). From what I understand, the case against the PRA suspects is suspect at best - even the existence of the PRA is in doubt despite government assurances that they are still active in the Congo.

However, I would like to expand on my previous (provocative?) statement that Westerners see Africa as an apolitical black hole, out of which come soul-touching human-interest pieces and depressing horror stories, but no real news. It is hard to argue with those who argue that Africa needs development - especially when they define development as higher life expectancy, higher levels of education, lower infant mortality, etc. On the other hand, it is even more difficult to argue in any self-critical fashion for development, especially when it is defined as some inevitable desirable endpoint, or cluster of desirable endpoints. What about the political struggles, social contests, and divergent ideological views that are inconsistent with this noble but arbitrary concept? Yet "development" remains the primary relationship between Africa and the West and the raison d'etre of most African governments.

Take the example of Lesotho and the Transkei (which I am stealing from a book by James Ferguson). The Transkei was a South African native reserve or "Homeland" - a symbol of apartheid oppression. The South African government tried to promote the idea of the Transkei as an independent African government and funded several journals regarding development issues in the "Homelands". Scholars, activists, and your average run-of-the-mill North American news presenter recognized this as a sham. They argued, quite rightfully, that one could not talk about development in the Transkei without confronting the oppressive labour policies of South Africa and the apartheid regime's economic and social dominance over the barely independent state. In other words, nobody bought the idea of the Transkei as "really" an independent state.

On the other hand, Lesotho had been internationally recognized as a sovereign independent nation-state since the 1960s. Like the Transkei, it was/is completely surrounded by South Africa and dependent on South African employment for its work force. Like the Transkei, Lesotho was dependent on South Africa as well as a handful of Western states for its basic sustainability. However, unlike their politicized rejection of development discourse regarding the Transkei, academics and activists all uncritically referred to the challenges of "development" in Lesotho - good governance, eliminating corruption, etc. In other words, the Transkei's lack of development was blamed on South Africa, while in Lesotho it was thought of as Lesotho's problem. In the Transkei, politics were put front and centre. In Lesotho, they were eliminated.

Today, (most) Western journalists and diplomats - and even a significant number of scholars (and Ugandans) - portray the current government of Uganda as an unambiguously good captain of development. Therefore, they argue, any opposition to that government is unjustifiable because it opposes this goal of development. Grievances (justified or not) over government-appropriated land, regional manipulation, disrespect of the judiciary and increasing authoritarianism are simply rejected as unimportant and irrelevant so long as progress has been made in the categories of "development". People, however, are not apolitical automatons who need only food, water and a roof over their heads. Unfortunately, most of the world is flattened and depoliticised by the good intentions of a few social engineers. Put the social back in the social sciences.

(note: after short strikes and an assurance from the president to "look into things", the judges and lawyers are back at work and there have been no big events since then.)