In theory, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) is Uganda ruling party. In practice, it is anything but a party. Strictly, it does not meet the basic criteria and credentials that define a political party. I will explain through a historical detour. It started as a rebel group, initially called the People’s Redemption Army (PRA), a reincarnation of the Front for National Salvation (Fronasa). The commander was a one Mr Yoweri Museveni.
His fighting force, Fronasa, participated in the ouster of Idi Amin in 1979. Another group was Kikoosi Malumu, commanded by Gen David Oyite Ojok; firmly loyal to former President Milton Obote. But it was the invading Tanzanian army that did the heavy lifting of deposing Amin.
For his role in ousting Amin, Mr Museveni had a seat at the table in the transitional government after Amin. When President Godfrey Binaisa was overthrown in May 1980 (having held on to power longer than Prof Yusuf Lule’s infamous 68 days), Museveni was right at the centre of the drama. He became Vice Chairman of the Military Commission, the junta that presided over the disputed 1980s elections. Following the elections, Mr Museveni founded PRA.
In February 1981, he announced war on the new government of Milton Obote, back in power exactly a decade later, having served time in exile after the January 1971 Amin coup.
In June 1981 in Nairobi, Kenya, negotiations held at Mr Matthew Rukikaire’s house resulted in a merger deal of Prof Lule’s rebel Uganda Freedom Front (UFF) and Museveni’s PRA. The two dissolved into the National Resistance Army (NRA).
Lule was chairman, Museveni the vice and overall military commander. A political wing was created – the National Resistance Movement (NRM). On paper, Lule was overall chairman of both the NRA and NRM. Rukikaire was chairman of the ‘External Committee’.
Lule was based in Britain; he passed away not too long after the Nairobi merger. Thus, Mr Museveni took full control as both commander of the rebel group in Luweero and chair of the political wing called NRM. Mr Rukakire was nominally the political head of the ‘External Committee’ primarily based in Nairobi.
Mr Moses Kigongo was a chief political commissar of sorts, a nominal deputy to Museveni, a position he has remarkably occupied to the present, more than 40 years later! The NRA captured power in January 1986 on the heels of a second military coup against President Obote in July 1985.
Five years of war had wrecked the country, and more devastating armed conflict was on the horizon.In earnest in 1986, the NRA banned political parties, squarely blaming them for causing social divisions and political instability. In place of parties the new rulers proposed ‘Movement’ no-party politics, considered an apt alternative until such a time when supposedly the country attains requisite political maturity for parties to operate properly. This proposition received constitutional guarantee in 1995, thus extending to 2005 the ‘Movement’ politics inaugurated in 1986.
Rather surreptitious, in 2005 the NRM or the ‘Movement’, for long marketed and sold to Ugandans as the antidote to parties, now found convenient reason to be a political party! It was deceptively presented as a new political party founded, just like others, in 2005 once a national referendum lifted the legal and constitutional ban.
To be sure, no new NRM political party was created. What passed as the ‘Movement’ from 1986 to 2005 was in practice the state of Uganda. There was never a ‘Movement’ system independent from the state. What is more, since 2006 there has never been an NRM political party existing autonomously from the State. The foremost foundational pillar of the State in Uganda is the military. From 1986, the NRA captured the military space and appropriated all military infrastructure.
As a rebel group and later as a State army, it was personally loyal to Mr Museveni. Even after it was renamed the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) in 1995, it remained patently personalised under Mr Museveni, now increasingly his son. Importantly, it is the fulcrum of power and the channel for exacting control over other State apparatuses, both coercive and financial.
Without these levers of the State, from the armed forces to the economic muscle, the NRM has no identity of its own. Beyond vague platitudes and fancy slogans, it has no coherent and compelling ideological position.
Because it is parasitically ensconced in the state, whatever people see as the NRM, which in one critical sense means Mr Museveni, is the sure way to the State trough. If this was ever in doubt, the ongoing ‘elections’ for party flag-bearers and office holders has put the debate to bed.
The other day, Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa lamented the billions spent to win a seat in the NRM politburo where there is no remuneration or official financial benefit. Brother Tayebwa actually knows the answer! In any event, it was refreshing hearing him speak with the moral clarity of our time as young idealists at Makerere University reading political science.
*Written by Moses Khisa | moses.khisa@gmail.com
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