UGANDA HOSTS CHOGM

Why Museveni passes and Mugabe fails the Chogm test
If as they say “birds of a feather flock together” then in all fairness Zimbabwe’s embattled autocratic, octogenarian President, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, should be shining his shoes (and sharpening his tongue) in readiness to travel to Kampala, Uganda, for this week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm). Track records of many of those attending Chogm 2007 in relation to the Commonwealth’s Harare Declaration of 1991 that obliges member states to ensure democratisation, freedoms, human rights, economic development and social justice etc. brings this truth closer home. Juxtaposing Mugabe with the host and Chairman of the Commonwealth for the next two years, Uganda’s General Yoweri Museveni makes the picture and contradictions clearer. He, like Mugabe, has (coercively) soldiered on in power for over two decades and all signs indicate that he is slated for more.This “sin” earns Mugabe the wrath of the so-called international community while Museveni is occasionally consulted on matters affecting Sub-Saharan Africa due to his “experience.” Both have won a couple of elections described as “massively flawed” by, among others, accredited Commonwealth election observer teams. Mugabe is urged to step down while Museveni is “encouraged to pay attention to the weaknesses in the electoral process so as to ensure fairness in future.” The state in Uganda and Zimbabwe, (bearing in mind the “revolutionary” origins of the leadership) has a predilection for the executive arm to interfere with the independence of the judiciary. Where Museveni’s police have raided the High Court to re-arrest treason suspects granted bail, Mugabe’s have locked up judges and defied court orders with great abandon. Museveni has pronounced the courts as being incompetent to decide on matters regarding the legitimacy of his government and recommended them for the “easier” task of determining the fate of chicken thieves. Mugabe has clearly stated that his government only obeys judicial decisions that it deems “objective!” Laws that infringe on the citizens’ rights to privacy have been mooted in both states with the aim of easing the efforts of security agencies to tap into phone conversations and the Internet, for the “maintenance of national security.” Furthermore clamping down on the press and closing media houses is ubiquitously common with these two great governments. There are similarities between “operation murambatsvina” (clean up the city) of Zimbabwe’s Harare and the “beautification” of Uganda’s Kampala for Chogm; in which several small income earners were unceremoniously displaced leaving them without a source of livelihood. The rights abuses in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland and those in Northern Uganda, the harassment of opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangrai and Kizza Besigye and their supporters respectively plus the accusations of cronyism leading to the illegitimate enrichment of family relations close to the centers of power, for their frequency in both countries does not make news anymore. Where President Museveni distances himself from Mugabe is in the way he understands and ably deals with the dynamics of international relations. Where both in the face of decreasing popularity find prudence in playing the trump card of “land redistribution” favouring peasants by “grabbing” land from ostensibly “oppressive landlords,” Mugabe takes land from white Zimbabweans of European origin and hands it over to indigenous blacks, thus clashing with their powerful European “god fathers.” Museveni’s land proposal on the other hand sees black land owners being dispossessed. In some instances “white Europeans” benefit from free land as “facilitation to investors” which leaves powerful Western interests indebted to him. Museveni further endears himself to Western governments by heavily investing national resources to the employ of the western powers as an ally in the “war on terror.” Uganda is seen as a valuable bulwark against “militant Islam” as is practised by Arabic Northern Sudan. Its support for the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the temerity in being the only African country to send peace keepers to chaotic (Islamic) Somalia was all in that vain.Added Museveni is not shy in providing Uganda’s strategic location as a launching pad and safe corridor for western (and Chinese) economic interests in their bid to tap into the vast resources of southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.Whereas Mugabe goes on ranting about “imperialist exploiters” and plots to nationalise private businesses and European interested multinational corporations, Museveni at best pays lip service to these antiquated notions about colonialism.