On March 16, 1989, the ultra modern subway system of South
Korea’s capital Seoul came to a standstill. Six thousand workers went on
strike; 3,000 of them defiantly occupied the roundhouse from which the
locomotives dispatch. The president, Gen. Roh Tae Woo, ordered a crackdown:
6,000 policemen in full riot-gear surrounded the roundhouse arresting 2,300 of
the striking workers. Within days, the strike was crushed and the subway
resumed its impressive efficiency.
The military dictatorship seemed invincible. Commentators
pointed at the brutal efficiency with which it had crushed the strike and
concluded that democracy was a distant a dream for South Korea. They argued
that since the state-sponsored Federation of Korean Trade Unions was the most
dominant labour union in the country, workers could not provide the stimulus
for democratic reform. The private sector, they argued, was also too embedded
within the state, depending on state-created rents. So it was incapable of
offering an alternative vision.
Yet just when the dictatorship looked most solid, it began
to collapse. Crushing individual strikes was within the state’s ability but
commentators had missed the social and political changes that lay behind it.
The country’s industrial transformation had produced new social groups with new
ideas and aspirations. Factories were producing labour militancy alongside
electronics and semiconductors. The repressive power of the state could not
stop the growth of insurgency among South Korea’s workers. Between 1987 and
1990, the country lost 18 million workdays to strikes ‘ a 200-fold increase
since 1980. This was unsustainable.
By 1992, South Korea had sustained economic growth for 29
years. The new social groups ‘ workers, students, civil society and business
were becoming restless. That year South Korea held its first democratic
elections and has not looked back. The most notable presidential candidate was
Chung Ju Yung, the founder of Hyundai. His campaign motto ‘Get government out
of business’ once again proved that business had developed a vision for South
Korea in opposition to the state.
Uganda has sustained economic growth for 22 years now.
Although Uganda has not seen South Korea-style dramatic industrial
transformation, a number of developments stand out. The boom in education is
churning out tens of thousands of unemployed youths. Rural-urban migration is
creating restless slums and streets. There has grown a sizable middleclass and
private sector. Traffic jams are spreading from Kampala to Mbarara. Many
Ugandans are building good homes but there are no access roads to them; they
are travelling abroad and returning with new ideas and aspirations.
Consequently, the country is witnessing growth in civic
insurgency. The arrest of Kizza Besigye in November 2005 led to some of the
worst riots in our history. There have been a dozen full-bloodied protests
since ‘ over Mabira forest, Kiseka market, Kabaka-Kayunga etc. In July, youths
in Kyenjojo closed down the road to Kampala demanding humps to stop speeding
motorists causing accidents. In Wakiso, civilians arrested their LCV chairman
and poured soil on him demanding a better road. In Mityana, citizens attacked a
hospital where negligent nurses had caused a mother to die in childbirth.
In all these cases, the police have been unable to contain
the protests ‘ in more dramatic cases government has had to bring in the army.
In this country and continent, we tend to obsess about the
procedures of democracy rather than its substance. The real democracy will not
come from laws passed in parliament and the good manners of our leaders. It
will come from civic actions of an increasingly enlightened citizenry. Ugandans
are more demanding and the government is now under siege.
The state can close four radio stations today, contain
streets riots and threaten other media in Uganda into self-censorship. Although
the state is winning some of these individual battles, it is losing the war of
social change. People are talking in bars, others are organising in markets and
many are getting ready for another protest. Civilians armed only with stones
are taking on the military armed with mambas and APCs. Yet it is not the
unemployed youths who will bring about change of government ‘ governments are
rarely overthrown by forces from below. It is elites who cause change by providing
the spark to existing social dynamite.
The current regime has based its survival on economic
growth. This gives it more resources to rent elite support, build the military
and security services to repress those who resist and to deliver some welfare,
however incompetently, to the poor. Yet growth is producing militants;
unemployed youths, restless graduates, committed civil society activists,
embittered intellectuals, an enlightened middleclass etc, all demanding better
government. The government survival strategy is inevitably producing social
forces seeking change.
Therefore, the NRM government will not fall due to its
failures but its achievements ‘ its collapse will be brought about by the very
social forces it has helped create. The only way it can postpone the triumph of
democratic forces is to find a resource from which it can generate revenues
without pursuing economic growth. A stagnant economy will arrest the rate of
the production of social forces committed to democratic reform. The forces of
protest will therefore be unable to find replenishment.
That is why we should worry about the entry of oil revenues
into our economy and politics. Oil is a resource that government can tax
heavily and yet remain profitable. It is also a resource that government can
earn millions of dollars from without having to negotiate with citizens about
public policies and political institutions for growth. Oil revenues may
demobilise civic activism and increase elite corruption and state coercion.
With oil, government can afford to ignore economic growth
and yet retain the resources to rent political support and buy weapons and
train the army and police to coerce those who resist. Government can also
afford to do away with foreign aid. It will afford to ignore bothersome donors
‘ these mzungu who insist on respect for press freedom, rule of law, due
process, human rights and sound macroeconomic policies. The biggest threat to a
democratic future in Uganda therefore is not the government’s current penchant
for repression but its expected oil windfall.
amwenda@independent.co.ug
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