For some time now, I have been mulling over the closure of Democracy Governance Facility (DGF), a claimed Shs 500 billion entity that funded a great deal of NGO and civil society work in Uganda.
On the one hand, I am convinced Bwana Museveni shot himself in the foot while, on the other hand, he did Uganda a great deal of good — whilst causing immense pain to many friends of mine whose personal and professional work depended on this fund.
But with the exception of my friends at Uganda Radio Network (URN) whose ambitions are clearer and more modest—that is, doing educational news, and reporting the entire country—my sympathies for all others stems from the pain that they were structurally misled by an international regime of power and control that was specifically designed to elixir them into ‘full- stomach sleepfulness’ as their countries turned into major looting crime scenes.
At one point, I even thought DGF had threatened to close itself—over anything, say claims of Museveni’s terrible human rights record—and Museveni acted quickly to save face by giving them a closure notice. But then, I dismissed this thought entirely because I know these European benefactors of DGF do not love us that much.
Maybe some employees of the facility at a personal level, but at a structural level, DGF was never designed to improve anything in Uganda (or Africa, more generally). These abstract claims of improving democratic governance and human rights are the trap that killed the mouse!
This continent is a hunting ground — one of them called it a jungle recently—one that they nowadays hunt with more tact, more clinically.
But at the same time, I have not stopped wondering why Museveni decided to close the slave networks of his friends — his own benefactors and co-conspirators whom he has spent an entire adult lifetime so faithfully serving.
DGF AS DEMOCRATIC DECEPTION
Because for me, Museveni and DGF are one and the same. While Museveni might appear to be bleeding the country (as Africa’s most committed colonial emissary), and DGF appears to be watching his excesses, their interests are so closely and seamlessly aligned; both want a governable, easily exploitable Uganda.
Established in 2011, slightly over 10 years ago, DGF has spent over €100 million in Uganda in things vaguely defined as governance, accountability, transparency. (Maybe twice as much). There is not anything to write home about the ambitions of this fund for the last 10 years of its operation.
Problem is, these folks deliberately false-diagnose Uganda’s problem. For these supposedly serious countries in Europe, I refuse to believe that they do not know that Uganda’s problem (and Africa, more generally) is their endless looting of the African continent—through their banks and corporations—that are headquartered in Europe, having been enabled by WB-IMF driven privatisation.
Broke and starving people cannot demand accountability, and can neither mature into serious democratic subjects. What then is Europe obsessed with supporting items that can never sustainably uplift the intellectual and material well-being of the natives?
For how had they planned to throw to the continent?
And here is the kicker: these folks behind DGF are not dumb. They know exactly what they are doing: distract an entire country from things that really matter and bamboozle them with fetishes such as democracy, human rights, freedom of speech—like entire populations were badly looking for space to express their opinions!
Throw money at these causes and make them appear as the noblest and most urgent, and you will have so much noise but heading nowhere. Thus, year in, year out, even with absolute deterioration of the things they purport to fund, they continue throwing money at them!
See, even the few times the country discusses coffee, gold, oil, the minerals in Karamoja, our agriculture, etc., they are crafted in the fluff of democracy and human rights. Not the actual substance and value of those things. Yet European companies (the funders of DGF) have their eyes, and even tighter grip, on these ones.
CSOS AS ELITE CAPTURE
Figures show that there is a whopping 8,000 NGOs and CSOs in Uganda. (Not all of them are or were under DGF care, but this is the same industry). I know, one would ask what are they are doing? Why isn’t Uganda so developed, so democratic, so accountable with all the good work of these wonderful organisations—that have operated for the last three decades?
Yes, because, NGOs and CSOs are neither designed nor funded to transform anything. They are traps for the elite. As I have demonstrated before that it is not natural that my friends, Dr Frank Muhereza, Dr Sarah Bireete, Prof. Dr Zahara Nampewo, Dr Mulumba, Dr Peter Mwesige, Dr George Lugalambi, erudite fellows such as Godber Tumushabe, Nicholas Opiyo, Prima Kwagala, and thousands of fine Ugandans should leave active politics to Museveni’s “fishermen and fisherwomen.”
It is not natural. It is structural. After ruining African economies in the 1980s through what they problematically called “Structural Adjustment,” our Mzungu colonisers were worried about the most educated amongst us joining the peasants, giving them discourse and leading them to the bush or the street to challenge the comprador governments they were recruiting across the continent. (Museveni is recruited in 1980-86—and many others were after the collapse of USSR).
Our colonisers—too desperate to continue stealing our food and other resources— found a trick of distracting the small elite on the continent. The NGOs and CSOs were invented, and the elite were duped into the thought that they would work alongside with their governments and grow their countries. What a lie this was!
And oftentimes, outposts such as DGF come up to push this lie forward, then change them and return as something else.
WHY DGF CLOSURE IS GOOD
How I wish Bwana Museveni closed all funders of NGOs and CSOs! Because that means over 8,000 refined persons— founders and workers in these NGOs and CSO—would be out of work, and thereby thrown onto the streets to join their more impoverished compatriots in demanding reform. Interestingly, they would start with fighting the comprador-in-chief.
yusufkajura@gmail.com
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.
Source: The Observer
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