A few days before the dawn of 2016, I received a parcel from London, which contained a new book by my fellow congressman Yoga Adhola.
The book is titled: “UPC and National-Democratic Liberation in Uganda” and it kept me quite busy and out of trouble during the festive season.
Adhola’s work is possibly the first book written entirely as a study of the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) which is unlike many other books which deal with the history and politics of UPC, but in the context of a study of Milton Obote, the party’s founder-president, such as Dr Ginyera-Pinycwa’s Apolo Milton Obote and His Times and Kenneth Ingham’s Obote: A Political Biography.
I met and got to know Mr Adhola during the 1980s through a mutual friend, Ambassador Daudi Taliwaku (RIP) who died unexpectedly in March 2001 and by coincidence or divine design all three of us were in New York where our departed friend was acting permanent representative of Uganda to the United Nations.
Whenever the trio met at a bar or a restaurant or at home, it was like a reunion of my favourite 1960s political science tutorial class at Makerere. Although one member has sadly left, discussions of our “tutorial class” have continued and this review and critique of comrade Adhola’s book on UPC is thus part of an ongoing work in progress.
Adhola’s book advances three theories to explain and analyse the politics of UPC and Uganda; the theory of national-democratic liberation, the theory of modes of operation and the theory of social identity.
Social identity may be defined as, “that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership.” In Uganda, the social identity Adhola is concerned with is “nationality” commonly called “tribe”.
Who is Yoga Adhola?
Comrade Adhola is a Ugandan nationalist and patriot who hails from eastern Uganda and was my contemporary as a student at the University of East Africa. He was elected president of the University of Nairobi Students Union for the 1969/1970 academic year.
By an interesting coincidence, my Kenyan friend, political scientist and now senator Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o was in 1969/1970 guild president of Makerere University College. I am advised that most young people know him as the father of the award-winning Hollywood actress, Ms Lupita Nyong’o.
When a military coup took place in Uganda on January 25, 1971, Mr Adhola left the country and spent the next eight years in self-imposed exile in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he interacted with many Ugandans who have played leading roles in various governments since 1979 when TPDF and UNLA overthrew the Idi Amin military dictatorship in Uganda.
He returned to Uganda soon after the Amin regime collapsed and from 1980-1985 Mr Adhola was editor-in-chief of The People newspaper published by UPC. He returned to exile in July 1985, soon after Gen Tito Okello overthrew the second elected UPC government.
This time he fled briefly to Kenya and proceeded from there with his family to USA where he has lived for more than two decades, but he comes to Uganda regularly to take the political pulse of the country.
The 255-page book is dedicated to Yoga’s father who was a member of UPC and according to the author the old man “deified Milton Obote, but unfortunately did not live long enough to know his son became one of the high priests who was very close to his deity”.
I can hear Adhola’s detractors on upcnet shout, “blasphemy!” Known for his frank and strong views on political issues, Adhola appears to relish and thrive on controversy. He is I think one of the most misunderstood, underrated and vilified persons on upcnet which would certainly be boring without him.
Towards national democratic liberation
According to Marxist analysis, national-democratic liberation is the equivalent of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions which took place in Europe during the period when European countries were evolving from feudalism to the bourgeois nation-state.
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