Dear Yoweri Museveni, give Uganda a chance while you still can

Dear Yoweri Museveni, my name is Yusuf Serunkuma (PhD). I am a scholar based at Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), with several affiliations at universities across Europe.

(Partly due to your politics, my second PhD at Makerere has been stalled. But it is a matter I am handling well). In terms of specialisation, I am an anthropologist, but with close interest in political science, and African political history especially our never-ending exploitative affair with the Euro-America colonial machine.

I have a new book on this thematic coming out this January. It is titled Surrounded: Democracy, Free Markets and Other Entrapments of New Colonialism. I have had to say a bit about myself – and throw these big degrees around – in the hope that this will give me some authority with which to speak – and appeal to you. (Many ordinary readers of mine don’t care about these things).

I write out of both love and anxiety. For a long time, I have been drawing scenarios about how this entire thing goes down. With neither rancour nor bitterness, I have not stopped asking: how does Museveni end his hold onto power? This question has become more urgent the older you have become.

The fact is that old age makes even the best-kept products, organic or industrial, weak and vulnerable – no matter how well they are preserved. Indeed, the Bible, Qur’an, science, literature, and African tradition have extensive sombre and sadder reflections on liabilities of old age. One loses both their physical and mental shine, and where agility and steadfastness once stood, an aching and sluggish body creeps in.

I am also writing to your close friends, Mr President. And I mean, your bosom friends, not those many scrawny hangers-on. While Uganda might not know who your most- trusted friends are, surely every man has his friends.

There must be either a pastor, a medicine man, a soldier or ordinary herdsman with whom you find most strength and have tended to confide in. I am appealing to these friends to have an honest conversation with you. So, this letter is just a couple of talking points.

SIGNPOSTS

I will begin with this: surely 38 years of trying to build a country is long enough. Perhaps, it is about time to be content with your work and say, “even the best dancer exits the stage at some point.”

As you and I agree, Uganda will be here after we have all gone, and like all other countries, it is space of hope and pain, struggle and sacrifice, and it only continues giving. It never stops. Surely, it cannot be you or us to solve all of Uganda’s problems or superintend over its resources forever.

Like it outlived the men who came before you, this country will definitely outlive all of us. New people will have to deal with the challenges of their time. This is their time. In these almost four decades, a lot has changed in the world of science, economics, technology culture. You should not be blamed for being unable to catch up with these trends. Humans are not machines.

See, for example, when you first became president in 1986, pen pals and telephone landlines, and black-and-white televisions were the coolest thing. Nowadays, it isn’t even just Wi-Fi, email or social media. It is artificial intelligence. cryptocurrency. Can you imagine, money was recently stolen from the central bank by just a click of a button!

Computers are having conversations with humans. Surely, this is not your world. See, if there is anything we failed to accomplish in our forties, then fifties, sixties, or even seventies – when that “youthful hue still sat on our skins like morning dew” – then these cannot be accomplished in our frail 80s and 90s when our bodies are wrinkling and breaking without warning.

You cannot allow to reach Joseph Biden levels to sign out. But for me, it is not these changes in the world of science and technology that worry me the most. But how you have planned to leave the president’s office. It looks like there is no plan at all but simply continuing with normal routine programming.

Look, while it might be difficult to contemplate now – especially because many of your friends have accumulated so much and believe endless supply of goods translates into immortality – it is certain that you will surely leave that office one day. But how have you planned your exit?

There are two options: (a) after kicking the bucket, as happened in Tanzania recently when President John Pombe Magufuli passed. (b) or as a man heading for retirement in your beautiful home in Rwakitura. If you died in office tomorrow – and I pray this never happens – sheer anarchy would be loosened onto this earth.

On the one hand, there would be absolute confusion on how to handle the constitutional provisions against the egos of self-centred individuals, especially by those in the military, on who to become the next (interim) president.

I am not sure if Vice President Major Jessica Alupo can pull this off. Neither am I sure of your son, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba. The justice system, civil society and folks in the opposition seem to be terribly emasculated.

On the other hand, having presided over the most arrogant, corrupt and tribalistic public service in recent history, there will be sheer pandemonium everywhere. I know other Ugandans have been so relentlessly gaslit as being sectarian for mentioning this. But select folks – mostly from western Uganda – have used their tribalistic connections in senior offices to defraud and dispossess many other natives.

Sadly, these select individuals have come to represent all of western Uganda. This anger is only subdued because you are still president. But with you deceased, without substantive authority, there is potential for indiscriminate purges especially in the central region where your people have inflicted immense pain.

THE EXAMPLE OF DANIEL ARAP MOI

There is a lot of learning from former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi. There is life after the presidency. After 24 years in office, in 2002, he announced to the country that it was time to sign out and go into retirement. He made an official announcement, and prepared the country for a next free and fair election.

Even when his regime had been most hated, he quickly cut a very honourable posture among Kenyans. Mr President, I am convinced you believe you are the connection between your people (close associates), and their continued access to the national cake, especially through taxes and tenders.

My contention is that there is more security, and more guarantee for their continued access if a peaceful transition happens. But once hell breaks loose, all their accumulated fortunes risk being lost. Many have actually already left Uganda for more secure places.

Against the above, I want to propose that you give Uganda a chance when you still can. Death in office is a recipe for disaster. Follow President Moi’s example. Either allow the country to go into an election without you as one of the candidates. Do not even attempt to influence it.

Or appoint a person in whom you have most confidence as vice president and then resign your office. They can carry on and organise elections or call for a government of national unity.

The country will slowly move on as you busk in the image of a god-father. Most elite opinion will be in favour of forgiving all your crimes – they are quite many – and actually valorising you for executing your exit well especially at the moment where the possibility of internecine fighting was hovering on the horizon.

yusufkajura@gmail.com

The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University