Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the elites in politics of the 1979/80 periods debated and mobilized in ways that reflected personal and foreign interests. It argues that this can be understood from the political context of the time.

Paper long abstract:

Towards the end of the liberation war of 1979, Uganda’s elites gathered at Moshi in Tanzania to form a government of national unity. The legislative arm of government was constituted in the National Consultative Council (NCC), which debated issues of national unity. However, while the elites debated and mobilized fellow countrymen, the Moshi ideals got compromised in favor of personal gains and foreign interests. This inclination could be explained from the political context of the time in which returnees looked beyond Uganda for legitimacy and support. The existence of rival factions based on ethnicity, religion and ideology upon which the elites derived their rhetoric and mobilizing power compounded this situation. The returnees were not the only elites in politics, later the NCC would expand to include various shades of representation that did not relate with the exilic experience. However, in a similar fashion than the exiles, the expanded membership continued to reproduce factional politics driven by personal and foreign interests.

I deploy social sciences methodologies to study primary and secondary sources to answer the following questions: What were the dynamics within the NCC? Who set the agenda? What was the background of those who were NCC members, in terms of education, experience and political orientation? Did the expansion of the NCC under Binaisa significantly change its composition, or the dynamics within it? How were decisions made by the NCC, and did this change over time? Was the NCC able to implement its decisions?