An African Prime Minister
From J. D. F. JONES
KAMPALA
ILTON OBOTE, Prime Minister of Uganda, is beginning to make a name for himself. The fact is worth noting because Mr. Obote, although the least familiar of the Common- wealth's African leaders, is potentially an im- portant man. He is bound up with the highly significant developments towards East African unity; he is a Commonwealth premier who takes that organisation seriously; and he has emerged from the recent Addis Ababa conference as a militant radical and what Keith Kyle in this journal (Spectator, June 14, 1963) described as President Nkrumah's one and only faithful sup- porter. The reference was to Mr. Obote's vision of a united Africa, not to any intention on his part of turning conservative Uganda into an- other Ghana.
Obote is a small man, who makes up for his lack of physical presence by cultivating a chiefly dignity which in public can appear as an almost arrogant aloofness and silence. He wears fault- less dark suits, Uganda's `ithurie tie, and is never seen without the African politician's wand of office, a walking stick. Even in his office this stick lies on the desk in front of him, and here he adds to the effect by sucking on an empty pipe.
Although he is a young man, only just in his forties, the beginnings of legend have come down around his 'life story. It is made clear that he comes from a chief's family in Lange and that he spent a couple of years in Makerere University College. The rest is less precise. and will probably get vaguer as stories of 'how the boy Obote met a snake' and such-like gather momentum. Especially shadowy •are the years • he spebt in Kenya, as a young politician who became a labourer because he wanted to learn about working conditions. He still regales crowds with quotations from the more bloodthirsty 'speeches of Kenya's white settlers. His connec- tions with Jomo Kenyatta are acknowledged but also obscure. The story clears only on his appearance in the Uganda Legislative Council in 1958. ,Four years later he became Prime Minister, an achievement which leaves no doubt about his talents as a politician.
Obote has nOne of the flamboyance of some of his. Kenya colleagues, but this does hot prevent him from being a brilliant, often over- whelming, mob orator. In Parliament he is, if anything, even better, and to hear him in full sway at the dispatch box would delight a visitor from Westminster. His health is not good; his private life remains private..
In administration the story is being allowed to grow that he rarely pauses to eat or to rest; certainly he manages to oversee a large number of portfolios. In his Cabinet, Obote is supreme and unchallenged. He has some able colleagues, but he dominates them so completely that it is hard to name a first lieutenant, much less a rival. The same is true of his position in his party, the Uganda People's Congress, which he leaves to its rather irresponsible ways unless he thinks it necessary to intervene or to make a controversial statement in his capacity as UPC president and not as Premier, as if that made any difference. His prestige in Uganda naturally rose immensely during Independence (October, 1962). It may have declined in a few areas since then, but few would deny that he has succeeded in consolidating an entirely novel position, that of national leader. He is not far short of becoming the charismatic leader that is now so common in Africa.
The ends to which this man will direct himself are not easy to discover, once you go beyond generalities. Obote has written no books; he is no scholar, and he has no time for the theorising that Tom Mboya, for example, or President Nyerere has shown such an interest in. He is still a young man, and before he can turn to the wider questions that preoccupy a man like Nkrumah he must control the wickedly difficult political situation inside Uganda.
This—the balancing of Buganda against the rest of Uganda is what it comes down to—he has done with brilliant skill. Only then can he turn to economics, foreign affairs, long-term policies and visions. As far as the first of these goes, he is no economist and rarely goes beyond the repeated (but utterly sincere) declaration of war on 'poverty, ignorance and disease.' He supports a 'Welfare State' and believes the Government should control the economy. When he turns to foreign affairs, however, the first thing he sees is that not all of Africa is yet independent.
This is the key to all his thinking. There is little sophistication but • much passion in his devotion to independence as an absolute good in itself. All his speeches confirm that everything he does is inspired by a desperate determination to protect and maintain Uganda's independence. More important still, • it follows from this that Uganda has a duty, to bring that same indepen- dence to all other Africans. It is simple, but clear, and for Mr. Obote the logic is over- whelming. 'Ours is a duty to find a basis, begin- ning with our neighbours and extending to the rest of Africa, on which neither we here nor our neighbours nor the rest of Africa can ever again be a projection of Europe or any other part of the world.' He said this before Indepen- dence, and put it better several months later 'This'll, he your first tight „before an audience here on Crete. Just ignore them.' when, furious with Britain, he stormed : `Nobody is going to rule Uganda again.'
Starting from this, he can demand--and be prepared to enforce—a larger Ugandan stake in private enterprise, because he believes Uganda is not truly independent while she still depends for so much on non-Ugandans. This is why he distrusts trade unions, because he fears there are 'foreign hands' behind them (whether they are American or Russian is not the point; in com- mon with most Ugandans he gives the impression of not being interested in Communism). Again and again he has based his foreign policy on the imperative that 'Uganda has inherited neither the friends nor the enemies of her former master,' that Uganda will not become an ideological battleground of East and West; and that the remnants of colonialism are 'a positive danger to our dignity and independence.' Therefore he will support the militants when they turn on southern Africa. He sees PAFMECA (the Pan- African Freedom Movement of East and Cen- tral Africa) primarily as an instrument for pre- serving, as well as securing, Africa's new independence, and as warning of the dangers of complacency he points to the Congo, whose people are 'the heroes of a new type of colonialism.'
There is a typical fuzziness in this foreign policy, which is well caught in his own phrase, 'positive non-alliance as opposed to neutralism.' What this means is that it is not enough for Uganda to be free; she must be seen to be free. 'We have got to have certain views and to ex- press them outside.' The assertion, one suspects, is more important than the wisdom of what is asserted.
Small wonder that Uganda has followed a blustering foreign policy since Independence. Typical, perhaps, was Obote's plan to hasten Kenya's independence by making Uganda boy- cott all Kenya goods; this was described by Kenya's KADU leader Ronald Ngala as 'border- ing on madness.' Perhaps in the committee work of the Organisation of African Unity Uganda Will learn to use quieter, more effective, channels of diplomacy to implement her faith in indepen- dence.• On the other hand, Obote's indiscriminate threats, rages and flights to London are not the whole story. His domestic reputation for modera- tion and an ability to compromise can be seen in the brisk—and quiet—way he reached agree- ment in Khartoum when refugees from the Sudan began to mass in Uganda.
Uganda is small; she had no glorious struggle for independence. Obote suffers from both. He has none of the prestige of Ben Bella or Nkrumah or even Kaunda, none of the poten- tial power of the leaders of Nigeria and the Congo. But he represents important qualities in Africa—political intelligence; determination not to be silenced (this must affect both the United Nations and the Commonwealth); a passion for a wholly liberated Africa; an instinctive desire for African unity; a vague belief in 'African socialism,' which goes with an obvious lack of interest in Christianity or Communism. He is not a thinker, like Nkrumah; but Nkrumah is an exception, ()brute is not. It is Obote and those like him who will be taking the decisions in Africa.
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