By THE OBSERVER UG
President Museveni shakes hands with Cecilia Ogwal during her youthful days
Cecilia Ogwal, the deceased Dokolo Woman MP, was a key figure in Ugandan politics for more than four decades.
She was 77 years. In the last years of her political career, she was a calm, conciliatory figure that was greatly respected by government and the opposition, far from the firebrand politician from 20 years ago who regularly spilled fire.
In a 2003 interview with Richard Kavuma, she candidly spoke about Uganda’s tumultuous past, state of politics in the country and what the future held.
On accusations of UPC messing up the country…
Given an opportunity for the Movement and UPC to argue out case before the people, I don’t think the Movement can overpower our argument. The image of the Movement government has been marred by carnage in every part of Uganda.
The Corner Kilak carnage, the perpetual war and the failure of the government to protect the people have never left the mind of the people of Acholi. In eastern Uganda, the government has failed to protect the people. Cattle-rustling has robbed the people of their animal populations.
In the west, the government failed to protect the people from ADF. There is the Kanungu horror and the Kichwamba horror. The way tribalism is entrenched to deeper than we have ever experienced in this country. All these are negative forces that run against the NRM. How will they fight against them?
On the Buganda question…
I think what one can say is that politics is very dynamic. What was prevalent in 1960s is not prevalent today. I know that there were reasons that led to the abolition of the monarchy but that did not abolish federalism. We have agreed that mistakes do happen and probably mistakes did happen in the 1960s.
The way forward is to come up with a compromise that would take care of all interests. Looking at the 1962 Constitution, there were a lot of favours from the central government to Buganda. What we came up with in the Constituent Assembly was a model that would be acceptable to all.
Federalism in itself as a political system is not only good for those who promote monarchism but good for all. Federalism devolves power to the district and region, and entrenches that power. It is not like decentralization, which leaves that devolution shaky – where it can be tampered with by the central government.
So, I prefer the federal approach to decentralization. We proposed that if we create federal regions in Uganda, they should enjoy equal treatment from the centre. We promoted that nationalistic model of federalism and in fact it was the Buganda representative in the CA who rejected it.
I was very distressed at the manner in which the Movement manipulated a Buganda member to shoot down that arrangement. You know very well that dictatorships hate power centres because they fear any kind of opposition. One of these power centres are the political parties and the first thing the Movement did was to ban parties.
Any dictatorship would fear Buganda because of its big population, its being the centre of our economic activity and because of its long history. Any dictatorship would not want Buganda to be semi-independent of the central government.
On atrocities in Luweero…
How big is Luweero compared with the rest of the country? And not only that, we have an explanation for Luweero triangle. That is where Museveni entrenched himself when he was fighting against the UPC government.
So, whatever happened in Luweero, it is Museveni who is responsible because he was the one recruiting and the method of recruiting we now know; if you don’t kill, you cannot recruit.
That is the method of recruiting for any guerrilla movement. Museveni cannot deceive the people of Luweero anymore. The people of Luweero know who killed them. They know who was responsible for the skulls that were displayed there.
On Museveni’s quest for the third term…
For me, I saw what the Movement wanted right from the start. A political organisation cannot claim to be democratic when its foundation is based on militarism. The Movement came to power by the barrel of the gun to entrench dictatorship.
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