Uganda is young. That’s why the young or youngish are being passed the proverbial tongs. Accordingly, we saw Speaker Anita Among in August defeat First Deputy Prime Minister Rebecca Kadaga to become the Second National Vice Chairperson (Female) of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).
According to results announced by Dr Tanga Odoi (PhD), the NRM electoral commission chairperson, Ms Among won 11,680 votes, representing 92.8 percent of the total ballots cast. Kadaga received 902 votes, equivalent to 7.2 percent. A total of 12,582 delegates participated in the election. The outcome confirms a generational shift in the NRM. Kadaga is 69, Among 51.
This shift controverts the argument that NRM is a party for anachronistically outmoded politicians. As fresh-faced NRM members replace the greying, as it were, a shift in perception about the NRM’s place in Uganda’s future occurs.
Subliminally, we begin to appreciate the NRM as a party in transition. Age then becomes a number indicating how the Opposition’s days are numbered. But wait, not so fast. The Opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) has often been faulted for its youth and inexperience. In response, NUP seems to be taking a few steps forward to where NRM once stood pat.
Their mayoral candidate, a 52-year-old Ronald Nsubuga Balimwezo, typifies this shift. He has become the face of NUP’s politics in Kampala. By this, he’s the personification of NUP’s experience and grey matter. The latter complexioned not by his silvery hair, but by his engineering degree. With this dancing destroyer, NUP is presented as maturing: child-like without being too childish.
This way, the party’s leading lights appear NRM-old and thence old enough to take the reins from the NRM without missing a beat.
As NRM and NUP face different directions in order to compose the same majorities, age and the symbolism surrounding it should not be an end in itself. Competence, commitment and calm under fire must serve as an “A” and “B” conversation, to “C” our way to progress.
Besides, what does the scorecard read on all those politicos being shifted or dropped by their political parties? Ms Kadaga’s contributions to the NRM, for instance, have primarily been through her extensive service in various high-level government and legislative roles under the NRM administration.
In doing so, she was utterly loyal. So loyal that Ms Among edged her to become the Second National Vice Chairperson (Female) of the ruling NRM by pledging even greater loyalty.
NUP has also been weighing up its options; by choosing options whose electability goes hand in glove with their loyalty. You can’t have one without the other. So, one wonders, is age a factor in NUP’s party politics? Or is age merely a reflection of one’s capacity for loyalty?
If you’re old, your politics should be tempered by a willingness to act your shoe size (instead of your age), in order to articulate NUP’s conservative liberal orthodoxy, which is a balance between the pursuit of progress and the preservation of tradition. NUP is the right-wing of the liberal movement, no less.
The dichotomy here, between liberal and conservative, often wrong-foots liberal adherents when the party reveals a conservative intolerance.
In the end, one’s loyalty to a better Uganda should trump one’s loyalty to party and party comrade, Uganda being a party of more than 46 million, while political configurations are party to divvying up our body politic.
It appears that we are back where we started: parties being hemmed in by sectarianism to the extent that our divisions will justify State repression to ensure the centre holds.