A combination of sound technocratic management with a good dose of political skill will do the job
I
argued in this column last week that any attempt by Kampala City
Council Authority (KCCA) to carry out transformative reforms in our city
will create high political tensions. This is because all reform
produces winners and losers. Winners will support reform and losers will
become militants determined to resist it. KCCA will be conducting
reforms in a context of an already polarised politics of the wider
Uganda. The current government has been effective at sustaining economic
growth and fostering private wealth accumulation. But it has been
abysmal in the delivery of public goods and services. So, many people
don’t believe in the promises of better public sector management even if
many still have hope.
Here
is the dilemma KCCA’s Executive Director, Jennifer Musisi, faces in her
reform agenda. The costs of reforming Kampala will be incurred by the
losers immediately. So they are certain. This will help them overcome
their collective problems and unite to defend their interests. For
example, if KCCA seeks to collect trading licenses from every shop,
salon, kiosk, supermarket, garage, and barber shop, the inconvenience
felt by these groups will be immediate and clear. So they will organise
politically through political petitions to parliament or the President
or through street demonstrations and mass media campaigns to block such
an effort.
Meanwhile,
the benefits of such a reform effort – in form of better roads, garbage
collected, public gardens, orderliness in the city etc – come at a
later date. So they are uncertain and actually unpredictable. Many
people will make decisions based on past performance. So they may even
suspect that KCCA will collect the money and not do the public services
that it promises. So it is very likely that those who stand to benefit
from Musisi’s reform efforts may even sympathise with traders,
mechanics, etc, when demonstrating against a genuine effort to make them
pay their trading licenses.
Yet
although these constraints are structurally obdurate, I still believe
there is room for agency. To succeed at reform, Musisi will need to be
more than the good technocrat that she is. She will have to develop high
levels of political skill – skill to manipulate the different factions
that constitute the power structure of Kampala. For instance, she will
need to ally with one group (e.g. traders) at a particular point to
fight another group (vendors) in the battle to promote more cleanliness
and orderliness on the streets. Once that has been achieved, she would
have to shift alliances, finding new partners, like professionals, to
get traders to pay their trading licences.
Strategically
therefore, Musisi needs to avoid opening a battle on all fronts – a
demand most public commentators are likely to insist she does. For
example, if Musisi wants to remove kiosk owners from road reserves, she
will be accused of favouring the rich who have built in wetlands. Yet if
she begins with the rich and powerful, they may employ their political
and financial muscle to defeat her efforts.
An
early defeat on a major issue can cause people to lose hope in promises
of change. Tactically therefore, it is better to begin a fight where
she can secure a quick and decisive win e.g. against the weaker link in
the power structure – like vendors and kiosk owners. Yet vendors are
only weak when you are far away from an election year. Given their
numbers, they become politically powerful on the eve of elections.
Musisi
needs to know that she has a honeymoon with time (not term) limits. For
instance, the president has confidence in her work and is determined to
support her efforts. A significant section of the public is willing to
give her the benefit of a doubt, an important moral and political
resource for reform. If she wins a few battles as she did against Gen.
David Tinyefuza now Sejusa, it will create greater confidence in her to
fight other wars. It will also bolster public perception that actually
things can change. However, this means Musisi has to be as adept at the
management of public perceptions (politics) as she is at technocratic
implementation of her objectives.
The
point is that Musisi has to sequence her reforms. She must begin where
she can win, and win easily. This will secure supporters willing to
defend her reforms. Then she can slowly but steadily escalate her wars.
For example, we are four years away from the next election. If Musisi
has any reform that inconveniences large groups of voters, she has to
begin with that – like against vendors, hawkers, market stall and kiosk
owners, barber shops, salons, taxi drivers, boda bodas, garages owners,
etc. These are made of multitudes of voters. Few politicians, at least
not President Yoweri Museveni, will accept any inconvenience against
such popular groups in 2015.
Therefore,
if Musisi can kick off the war against these groups now, her record of
success will give her a fund of moral authority and political clout to
take on the rich and powerful who have built in wetlands, grabbed land
from green areas etc in 2015. Politically, it is always better to take
on the rich towards an election. They are few (so their electoral
strength is weak) yet envied by many (the better to attack their
privileges during election time). Of course they can fight back with
money and control of the mass media. But during election time, the odds
would tend to be against them.
Strategically,
Musisi needs to plan the calendar of her reforms early. Here she has to
identify the different social forces that constitute the power
structure of Uganda, specifically Kampala. Then she has to establish
which alliances she needs to forge now and with whom and against whom.
Then she needs to project when she can shift alliances from one
particular group to fight another group.
For
each reform, former allies will become adversaries and previous enemies
change into militants defending her actions. The aim is never to allow
the evolution of a broad-based coalition of many social forces against
any piece of reform she intends to implement at a particular point.
Ultimately, it is the combined power of sound technocratic management
backed by a good dose of political skill that will change Kampala.
No comments:
Post a Comment