By Spy Uganda
According to Ndejje University lecturer Professor.Ndinawe Byekwaso, a distinguished Pan Africanist and pioneer member of Pan African Pyramid, Government’s Parish Development Model program is not different from past schemes initiated by the west ‘to finish off the growing of food for own survival by the peasants in Uganda’ under what was described as Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP).
The Parish Development Model, a program meant to eradicate poverty through the execution of development activities at the parishes was launched by President Museveni earlier this week in the Kibuku district.
The UGX490 billion program was rolled out in October 2020 to support low-income earners as an approach to development as envisaged under the National Development Plan III, with the parish as the lowest administrative and operational hub for delivering services closer to the people and hence fostering local economic development.
However, Ndinawe says this program is not an initiative of the government of Uganda. “It is an initiative of the so-called donors to finish off the growing of food for own consumption by peasants so that they can be completely displaced from their means of subsistence and therefore get impoverished like it first happened in Europe.”
He adds, “This is what is described as social transformation. Its dangers are not mentioned and President Museveni is not shy to say that subsistence farming is responsible for the existence of poverty. To me, the Parish Model of Development, like the Plan for Modernization of Agriculture are schemes of malicing agriculture (see my published articles in international peer-reviewed journals 2019 via ndinaweblog.wordpress.com) And such schemes are popularized by giving out money to a few (bribing them). This is the trick of barbarism misnamed modern civilization or development.”
Recently Museveni discouraged Ugandans from relying on substance farming saying; “The traditional way, where you only work for the stomach (subsistence farming), is a disaster for the African families. Subsistence farming in modern times is like a fish out of water. It cannot survive. It is out of place and in danger.”
“My recent campaign aims to wake up the sleeping 68% portion of our homesteads to join the transformation efforts. We cannot go on with a society that still accommodates irrational archaic practices in modern times when the Americans are celebrating 50 years of going to the moon and coming back. It is suicidal.”
However, Ndinawe trashes the above saying the hybrid approach is the best but the growing of food for consumption to guarantee food security first misnamed subsistence farming is not enslaving.
He says that there is nothing wrong with the growing of food for own consumption first as the guarantee of survival and then supplementing it with other cash crops or even enlarging the production of food crops for commercial purposes rather relying on the market for survival.
“Reliance on the market for the survival of the people is the one which is enslaving the peasant to external forces,” says Ndinawe.
Meanwhile, recently speaking during the launch of the program, President Museveni said that the Parish Development Model is centred on eradicating poverty through agriculture, but was quick to acknowledge that this is not the only way out of poverty.
