Democracy and Socialism in Africa by Robin Cohen & Harry Goulbourne

Author:Robin Cohen & Harry Goulbourne [Cohen, Robin & Goulbourne, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, African Studies, Essays, African, National, Social Science, Political Science, World, American Government
ISBN: 9780813380520
Google: jCuNDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 7146993
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1991-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Law, Democracy, and Underdevelopment

Factors of even greater importance to the issue of democracy in Uganda today lie outside the statutes that established the resistance committees and in developments that have occurred elsewhere in the legal arena and in relation to the political and socioeconomic context within which they were promulgated. First is the fact that the resistance committees were in existence before the promulgation of their enabling statutes. Despite their egalitarian veneer, they operated primarily as conduits for the implementation of NRM policy at the district level. Coupled with this fact has been the contradictory impact of the suspension of political activity. The promulgation of the resistance-committee statutes after the fact was not merely undertaken to clothe the existing bodies in legitimacy. Rather, it was to incorporate them permanently as part of the framework of governance and to reinforce the NRM domination of political power in the country.

At the same time the adoption of the resistance-committee statutes forced the banned political parties underground. To gain access to the resistance committees they now adopted the “party line” and in many instances successfully infiltrated these organizations, a fact explicable in terms of their operation in the political arena for much longer than the NRM and because of superior organizational capabilities, especially the UPC and DP, which also have considerable financial resources at their command.

The ministerial power to suspend a resistance committee on grounds, inter alia, that it is engaged in acts of disrupting public security, law and order, and in sectarian politics resulting in the “disruption of peace and harmony in the community” is explicable in terms of the omnipresent threat to the NRM power base represented by the older political parties. Thus also, sectarian politics is not defined by the law and one can only speculate on the type of activity that would be deemed a disruption of peace and harmony. The need to exert control over resistance committees also explains why there is an absence of a provision in the resistance-committee statutes to enable them to challenge or appeal such ministerial action and why the NRC—an institution composed of hand-picked NRM and NRA representatives—has final say in the matter. It is ironic that the final decision about a matter of such crucial importance to organizations that emanate from the grassroots of society, should be vested in a body that operates with all the trappings of a Westem-style democracy. It is, however, questionable whether the NRC itself has any real power, for many of the issues that are debated in the assembly have already been considered by the “Kitchen Cabinet.” In its present form, the NRC is merely a rubber-stamping organ of the NRM.

Vesting control over the establishment, organization, and operation of resistance committees in the district administrator has two main objectives. The first is captured in the district administrator’s function of “implementing government policy”—a euphemism for social, economic, and political control. It raises the issue of the autonomy of the resistance committees. The second arises in areas where there is rebel activity against the government or where there is an absence of sympathy towards NRM policies.

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