The Concept of Federo: a Case Study
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This article gives some ideas on what is behind some of the internal conflicts in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and many other places that 'were' colonized.
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The Monitor (Kampala)
Kajabago-Ka-Rusoke
Kampala
Federo is a concocted term from the word Federal by politicians from Buganda. Buganda is a nationality along other nationalities in Uganda, which nationalities were each conquered by Britain; beginning from 1890 by a British company called The Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA) authorised by the then British government.
This conquest is known in history as colonisation. Uganda was made up of these nationalities and became a British colony. Under colonisation, either a country or a group of countries is put together by political ties for economic purposes of that colonising power by force.
The sovereignty of each nationality is automatically conquered. In the same way, the sovereignty of each tribe or nationality in a colonial Uganda amalgamation was conquered.
Eventually, every colony in the world came to understand how wrong the colonial arrangement was. Every colony therefore began struggling for independence but without any tribe or nationality doing it on its own to separate from the colonial amalgamation.
When the coloniser was faced with common, sometimes violent, political bargaining by the amalgamation they would give up their colonial arrangement without disturbing or disintegrating the boundaries of a given colony.
So colonies became independent with boundaries, which were established at the time of being colonised. In May 1963 in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was formed, to unite all independent African states and to support the anti-colonial struggle by African countries, which were still under colonial rule.
But it was also agreed that boundaries left behind by colonial authorities should continue being respected and honoured by post-colonial administrators. That simultaneously meant that each tribe or nationality in a former colonial amalgamation continued losing its own sovereignty under a post independent state.
However, some nationalities still feel sad to have lost their sovereignty. But, unfortunately, this is very much irreversible. If we tried it, the former colonies would find themselves in terrible turmoil.
Buganda is one of the nationalities whose sovereignty was conquered. But it is not alone in this type of conquest. It is part of a Uganda commonwealth and a component of an African union. Society is never static but dynamic. There is motion both in nature and society. Buganda, Uganda and Africa are all in motion.
There are people in Uganda who are opposed to Mailo land rent; Mailo land was a gift to Uganda Kings and chiefs for accepting and collaborating with colonial forces.
The Kings in Uganda today are descendants of those Kings - at the time of colonialism. At the same time they want to restore what colonialism found them with plus what colonialism gave them against the ordinary people.
Their aspiration for a federal structure in the superstructure is based on aspiration for an economic base; restore Mailo land from which they can obtain rent from the ordinary peasants - but not a federal structure for development.
No one can extract money from individuals for personal use and then say he/she is extracting money from them in order to develop them. It is just ridiculous.
Kings in Uganda have no political powers. So, their social and cultural position cannot allow them to assert themselves, as they would have wished to do so economically. Hence this explains the demand for political power, which they can use as an instrument for attaining economic goals.
This makes them ignore the NRM government mechanism of decentralising political power through a council system, which goes down from the centre, down to the village in the hands of peasants from whom they want land rent, claiming that it will be the Federo structure that will develop the same peasants.
Whenever they will fail in achieving these ends, they will always hate any government that will occupy seat of central government in Uganda. They have no friend. They only have a permanent interest.
It is only a Ugandan who has Uganda at heart who should stand firm for what he/she thinks is ideal for Uganda, in whose hands the Uganda state apparatus should fall in order to apply the same apparatus:
- to reflect the social and economic will of the majority; to implement that social and economic will; to suppress the considered incorrect social and economic will of the anti-people elements.
All this should be done with neither fear nor compromising the ideal. But all cadres should undertake educate the population about the extreme pre-colonial conservative, neo-colonial tendencies and about those individuals who are losing direction in terms of class and social analysis so that we can put in place a correct Uganda socio-economic formation based on an objective academic anatomy of society.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200410180115.html
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