ugnet_: How Nkurumah Penetrated Obote

[J Ssemakula]

Excerpts from the article: 

KWAME NKRUMAH’S PRESENCE IN A. M. OBOTE’S UGANDA: A Study in the Convergence of International and Comparative Politics. TRANSTION 48 (1975)

by Opuku Agyeman

 Early in 1868 The Guardian published an article drawing up areas of similarity between the situation in Uganda and the latter stages of the Nkurumah regime in Ghana¹. In October of the same year, Obote, in solemn reminiscence of the events of February, 1966 in both Uganda and Ghana, pointed out that there was “no coincidence whatsoever” in the fact political upheavals had occurred in the two countries simultaneously, ensuing in Ghana, in the ouster of Nkuruma: “Let the House and Uganda know that if we had not acted on the 22^nd of February, 1966, reactionaries were going to stage a rebellion of the 24^th of February, 1966 to coincide with the rebellion against the masses in another part of Africa. I refer to Ghana …”² In May 1969, Rajat Neogy echoed the same impression of  “a close parallel in Uganda and Nkuruma’s Ghana …” expressing the fear that the arm would inevitably take over in Uganda, as they had done in Ghana.³ Some eight months later, following the fulfillment of his prophesy, Neogy was to state how Obote, “tempted to find an appropriate mould to cast his role” as a leader, had been primarily attached to Nkuruma’s style and dash which suited his style best …”⁴ An Ugandan correspondent, writing in May 1971 in a vein characteristic of disparagement, pointed out that, after Nkuruma’s overthrow from power, a “lesser luminary”,  in the person of Obote sought to assume Osagyefo’s mantle of Africa’s spokesman, tirelessly proclaiming “Nkurumaism will never die.”⁵ And Professor Ryan, in a study assessing Obote’s performance as a leader, is compelled, to set Obote’s “difficulties and solutions” against those of Nkurumah whom Obote “acknowledged as his mentor! ”. In th e event, Ryan achieve an essays abounding in analogical statements: “Like Nkurumah, Obote …”⁶

 However, our interest in Nkuruma’s Ghana and Obote’s Uganda goes beyond parallel constructs. Our real concern is with Nkuruma’s impact on Obote’s Uganda, while parallels may at times afford an exciting trail to a significant phenomenon, they do not always necessarily reflect the input of an external environment on a national system.

 

 We intend to show that when in January 1966 the Attorney General of Uganda’s District of Buganda, Mr. Fred Mpanga, charged that all the Obote government had been doing since it took office in 1962 was “toe the Nkurumah line”⁷, he might very well overstated the case without, however, missing a significant phenomenon in Ugandan politics – the case of an Nkumaist penetration of Uganda in a number of issues. Our theoretical interest in this paper is to investigate the scope and extent of penetration, employing James Rosenau’s concept of the  “penetrated political system.”⁸

 The concept afford comprehension of the fusion on national and international systems in certain kinds of issue-areas and is a function of the resolution of two interrelated conceptual problems ... A penetrated political system, then is one in which

                                 “non-members of a national society participate directly and authoritatively, through

                                actions taken jointly with the society’s members, in either the allocation of its values

or mobilization of support on behalf of its goals.”

“ … Within this conceptual framework, we intend to explore the terrain of Nkuruma’s penetration of the Ugandan political system in the issues of national integration , trade unionism and Pan-African unity. It will be seen that Nkuruma’s impact in these three areas made Obote’s Uganda a multi-issue penetrated system.

 National Integration:

It was Ghana’s experience of the violent particularist assertion of the Ashanti National Liberation Movement (N.L.M) and the manner which prompted Nkuruma’s prescription of firm national intergration for African states. The main concern of the NLM, at its founders declared upon its formation in 1954, was for a federal government which would safeguard the country against “dictatorship and communistic practices”,  provide constitutional checks against centralization of power”  and “do justice to the legitimate and manifest desire each region for a large measure of autonomy.” ¹⁰  As Nkurumah saw it, however, the Movement demanded the virtual secession of Ashanti … from the sphere of government.”¹¹ His lament …

“ … To the Osagyefo, there was nothing peculiar about the Ghanaian experience in centrifugal constitutionalism; indeed, as he saw it, the reason why the people of Ghana rejected a federal constitution were “equally applicable to other African states.”¹⁶ And his answer to this ubiquitous threat of balkanization was to prescribe strong unitary constitutions for African states:    

                “In order to repair effectively and quickly the damage done to Africa as a result of imperialism

and Colonialism, emergent African need strong unitary governments capable of exercising a

central authority for the mobilization of the national effort and the co-ordination of  construction

and progress.”¹⁷

 

 It is significant that …

  … The Baganda, we noted, had been stirred to a greater self-assertion by the fate of the Ashanti King in Ghana. It was now the turn of Obote, as he sought to straighten out Uganda’s asymmetrical constitution, to look to Ghana for another kind of inspiration. At the time of the Ugandan Constitutional talks in 1961, Ghana had already seen five years of  independent development that had entailed, among other things, the supplanting the “disintegrative” independence constitution by a Republican constitution complete with a unitary, centralized structure of government and an Executive Presidency with “special powers”. Nkurumah was this Executive President and, being in a sense freed from the drawbacks of domestic separatism, was able to pursue foreign policies that made him the symbol of the most radical assertion of African independence in a world of active neo-imperialism. Obote was impressed by all that Nkurumah stood for … Nkuruma’s Ghana,  to Obote’s UPC was the “pride of African nationalism,”²⁵ pursuing the “right” policies which the UPC was determined to emulate.²⁶ It thus came as no surprise that at the end of the London Constitutional Conference, Obote sent Uganda’s Attorney General, Mr. Binaisa, to Ghana²⁷ on, as the Opposition was to put it, a “hush-hush” visit “to acquaint himself with the laws of Ghana”, the better to enable the Obote to wipe out the Opposition.”²⁸ However, as it happened, the purpose of Binaisa’s unpublicized visit turned out to be more than that. It was also to arrange a Ghanaian civil servant, Mr. C. V. Crabbe, on a secondment to Uganda in the capacity of a “Senior Parliamentary Legal Draftsman”. As we shall see, Mr.! Crabbe was to become an important agent of Nkurumaist penetration of Uganda. In this connection it is significant that the Uganda Attorney general, visiting Ghana again in September of the following year, intimated that the  Uganda Government was already inspired “by the wonderful work” Crabbe was doing in Uganda and was looking into the possibility of Uganda recruiting more Ghanaian law experts for its civil service.²⁹

 But Obote needed a more direct Nkurumaist intervention in Uganda politics than could be derived from the activities of  Ghanaian legal experts working behind the scenes. The fact of the matter is that it had required the alliance of Obote’s UPC with the Baganda traditionalist movement Kabaka Yekka (KY), to displace the Catholic Democratic Party (DP) and become prime Minister of an independent Uganda. On this account, Obote and his UPC militants were for a while inhibited from undertaking the much needed campaign against the claims of tradition and ethnicity which the KY typified. It was in this instance that Ghana sent an instant rescue mission. On exactly the tenth day of Uganda’s birth as an independent nation, Mr. Busumtwi-Sam, the former Chief Executive Secretary of Accra’s powerful Bureau of African Affairs assumed duty as Ghana’s envoy in Kampala, proceeded to establish ties of “close friendship” with Obote and soon got to work, using verbal drives aimed at the underbelly of the opposition and the traditionalists, to fight Obote’s battles for him. Thus, for instance, in an address to the Kampala Rotary Club, he pointed out that Ghana had been able to achieve “remarkable economic and social progress” because Dr. Nkurumah had managed to turn the minds of the Ghanaian people from the “narrow conception of exclusive tribal rights to the inclusive common interests of the nation”. The “evils of tribalism”, he noted, had become “distressingly manifest” in Ghana before and immediately after independence. “Instead of Cooperation there was disintegration.” And yet political independence which was the start of an economic revolution, he continued,  called for concerted effort on the part of every single citizen. “Tribalism”, on t! he other hand, “engenders fratricidal struggles, and makes havoc of the aspirations of the nation and its people”. “Quite apart from its disruptive and chaotic effect, it makes room for bribery and corruption, favouritism and nepotism” – elements which compromise the prestige of the nation. Nkuruma’s teachings, aided by party organizations, had succeeded “in raising Ghana to a community of common national interest”, thereby setting the stage for Ghana’s social and economic progress..³⁰

 UPC elements were, by and large, pleased with this resolute campaign against pluralism conducted on their behalf and, soon some of them were to suggest boldly that the government should in fact begin to adopt authoritarian measures, Ghana-style, as Mr. E. Y. Lakidi did when he suggested “if irresponsible people continued to cause trouble in Uganda, the Government should bring a Detention Act similar to Ghana’s”^31a But Opposition, as would be expected, was hardly amused by these developments, as their out-cries both before and during Busumtwi-Sam’s arrival on the scene show. Indeed, the fears of an “Nkuruma-style dictatorship” did at times assume hysterical dimensions, as when a number prominent opposition DP supporters expressed fears of imminent deportation and exile to Ghana. “Why Ghana of all countries”, retorted a UPC Member of Parliament, “I don’t know.”^31b The leader of the Opposition Mr. Bataringaya, for his part, warned solemnly that “what is being done in Ghana is not good for us here in Uganda”. As an example of what was happening, in a statement that mingled fact with fiction but which, nonetheless, underscored the Opposition’s perceptions of Nkurumaist dread, he mentioned that, “one party rule has been introduced, the president has been given Life Presidency, a state of emergency is being declared, the opposition is being locked up …”32 Contributing to this catalogue of “authoritarian developments” in Ghana, another Opposition M.P. Mr. Byanyima, articulated the fears of the traditionalists: “In Ghana, there are no longer Kings; or if there are Kings, they are Kings only in name …”  This was what was happening in Ghana, continued Mr. Byanyima, “ and that is why we fear a dictatorship. One man in Ghana is getting hold o! n the co untry and he can do what he likes.^32a In September 1963, a Uganda National Union (UNU) was formed to fight against the introduction of “a semi-God or a cult” into Uganda, a position, its founders pointed out, “that Dr Nkurumah of Ghana was heading for”.³³ When, later on, Obote announced that a party which had fewer than twenty-five members in the National Assembly, as also the Independents, would not be allowed to contest the forthcoming District Council Elections, Mr Enoch Mulira, President of UNU., rejoined that that policy had been contrived by Obote “in order to enforce his Nkurumaism”, while his colleague, Mr Paul Kizito, declaimed, “Nkurumaism will not be tolerated.”³⁴  And the Uganda Monarch Traditionalist Unity Party, protesting the advocacy of a one party system of government for Uganda, pointed out that such a system was tantamount to dictatorship “like that of Dr Nkurumah  of Ghana where people are detained for five years without trial … merely on suspicion and fear …”³⁵ DP street demonstrators, for their part, carried placards, many of which bore the message “Nkurumaism has no roots in Uganda – the Common Man rules here.”^36a And when, in January 1966, a penal Amendment Bill was introduced in the Ugandan Parliament, the Baganda traditionalists lost no time in identifying it as Uganda’s version of the Ghana Avoidance of Discrimination Act designed to ban their traditionalist movement the KY.”³⁶ 

 We have only to note the UPC’s spirited defence of Nkurumah whenever he was so violently attacked by the Opposition and then it becomes clear that, truly, the Ugandan political system did scratch whenever Nkurumah itched. Thus, for instance, Mr. Adrian was to counter-argue that Nkuruma’s treatment of the Ghanaian Opposition had been fair since it had proved itself “one of the most irresponsible, one of the most childish oppositions that perhaps had ever sat in any Parliament in the world.”, with an opposition leader (Dr Busia) who “certainly had his head firmly stuck in the clouds.”³⁷ Reinforcing this view, Mr. Chermonges was to declare that it was, indeed, through this same Opposition that “Americans and other foreign countries” had been working against Nkurumah and even tried to assassinate him – all because of the fact that “Africans are understanding him.”³⁸ As Mr Muwanga who claimed that “by the grace of God” he had been to Ghana three times and had had the opportunity of meeting Dr Nkuruma, his opinion was that the government was being “very tolerant” in allowing the Opposition to talk about Nkurumah being a dictator at all …”³⁹

 Capability shortages, Rosenau explains, do underlie most penetrated systems …

 This intention to follow Ghana’s path enabled to penetrate other sensitive areas of the Ugandan society. After visiting Ghana at the invitation of the Ghana United Farmers’ Council Cooperatives (GFCC), Mr Paulo Muwanga, a Ugandan  MP received some $39,000 from the Ghana government to help him organize a similar farmers’ council in Uganda. It was intended, Mr Muwanga explained, that the Council should be the medium of communication between farmers and the government, as well as with anybody dealing with the country’s agriculture. Other aims of the Council  were the establishment of commercial concerned with or without other organizations to dispose  of all agricultural produce on a co-operative basis and the promotion of African unity through the medium of the All-Africa Farmers’ Union which had its headquarters in Accra. And, significantly, the movement was always to “identify with the nationalist government and help it to build the nation.”⁴⁵ While this Nkurumaist went well with the Obote government, it could not but cause alarm among the essentially rural-oriented Baganda who took family farms seriously and were more interested with their Kabaka than with Obote’s government.

But the training of Uganda youth in Ghana was to cause even greater consternation in the ranks of the Opposition. Since the operations of the Ghana Young Pioneers were the subject of great controversy in Ghana itself at the time, it was thought that sending some members of the UPC Youth Wing – the Youth League – to learn from the Young Pioneers was hardly the appropriate thing to do. As Mr. Rwanwaro lamented, “not all things outside are good for us …”⁴⁶ To such prophets of doom, it came as no surprise the Youth League should, in no time at all, have announced that an Opposition was “no good in African politics” and to have called on the government to “eliminate” the Ugandan Opposition and, furthermore, “not to hesitate to legislate against, or take over, any organization which threatens its existence …”⁴⁷

 The Trade Union Movement

 … Trade union developments here portray considerable amenability to the force of Ghanaian penetration … Consider, for instance, the Trade Union Bill (1965), parts of which an MP, Mr Luande, saw as “a paper out of the Ghanaian book, the Nkurumaism style we do not want here in Uganda …”⁵⁸  As it happened, Opposition charges that the government was copying the Ghanaian system were not without foundation. As another MP, Mr Latim, pointed out, a group of Ugandan politicians (including himself and Mr Magezi, now Minister of Labour whose Ministry was responsible for introducing the new bill geared to political trade unionism in Uganda) had in 1960 been invited to a political conference at the Nkurumah Ideological Institute in Ghana in the course of which Tettegah had delivered a speech expounding the principles of governmental control of Unions. It was clear to Mr Latim that the Ghanaian indoctrination exercise had pulled off Mr Magezi’s conversion – a remarkable feat as he saw it, since before the conference, Mr Magezi, like himself, was a “great believer in democracy” and “in the freedom of the trade unions movement”.⁵⁹

 But the Opposition’s concern was exacerbated by the fact that the Bill itself had the work of the Ghanaian legal expert, Mr C. V. Crabbe. It is revealing that a UPC member of the House, Mr Mugeni, in defence of the government’s position, should have pointed out that it was unreasonable of the Opposition to object to Uganda’s “picking up some good points from Ghana” and to “criticize here a bill because perhaps accidentally it is being drafted by a certain gentleman from Ghana – therefore, the bill is bad …”⁶⁰  What was obviously lost on Mr Mugeni was that the Opposition could not feel so easily persuaded that there was anything accidental in having a Ghanaian draft a bill for Ugandans in terms that made it a carbon-copy of the Ghanaian model.

 It is noteworthy, that inside Uganda, the main centre from which agitation came for the radical ideals of centralization and official control of the Unions was the Uganda Federation of Labour (UFL)⁶¹ which came into existence through, and then was mainly sustained by, the Accra-based AATUF (All Africa Trade Union Federation) …

 Summary

 What we have done in this study is to demonstrate that in the issue-areas of national integration, trade unionism and Pan-African unity, there was hardly any effective boundaries between the Ghana political system under Nkurumah and the responses of the Uganda society during the Obote era. It seems to us that all the essential attributes of Rosenau’s concept of a penetrated political system have been met in the spectrum of Nkurumaist penetration of Uganda. The direct and authoritative participation of the Ghanaian High Commissioner, of “labour attaches”, of a “senior Parliamentary Legal Draftsman” or of Nkurumaist linkage agencies (like the UFL and Pan-Africa) in Ugandan politics were to significantly affect the structure and dynamics of the internal political processes of East African country. Grace Ibingira summed it up when he made his point about Ghana illigitimately influencing “expressions of opinion” and the “trend of thinking among the local population.” But his own protests, as also those of Baganda traditionalists, the Opposition DP, and the Secretary-General of UTUC did not matter one whit. For, in the last analysis, as Rosenau reminds us, the boundaries of political systems “are defined by activities and processes, not by legalities”. As for the success of Nkuruma’s Ghana in this campaign of penetration, it itself illustrates how a small state passionately committed to an ideology (of Pan-Africanism) is able to transcend its limitations in resources and capabilities.

 Ends – endnotes too lengthy to include here (see original article)

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Q. What original ideas  (if any) did Obote ever have?

 The preceding article shows how Obote sought to ape Nkurumah in every way, Uganda’s sovereignty be damned!  It seems at independence Uganda merely exchanged one set of masters, the colonialists, for another set, Nkurumah and Ghana.  The damage done by the tail (Obote) wagging the dog (Uganda) is still being felt to this day, 40 years since; and will continue to be felt for years to come.

 

 

 

 

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