Museveni’s politics for politics’ sake

I once asked a supposedly serious, more reflective surrogate of President Yoweri Museveni about why the man wanted to stick to power so bad – and was ready to go on forever.

What does he want to achieve? “They say he has been the best at playing the different strong units of the country: Baganda, Catholics, Muslims, control over the military. That this is his genius and that is why he has been able to keep power all this while. Granted.

But to what end? For what? Why does he need to keep power? The surrogate said to me that he didn’t know either. But added, quite sombrely, that if you spoke to the man – which he does quite often – the man believes he has done so much for Uganda. He believes he is the best thing to ever happen to the country.

The surrogate called it some sort of delusion. Because when anyone looks around, there is clearly nothing to show for these forty years. Sleep? Roads? Everything has been run down.

Dear reader, I am among the lucky ones to travel and seen the region – our neighbours. We are in the ranks of Malawi, South Sudan, Somalia and Burundi. Those are our comparisons in the region. On a visit to Dar es Salaam, for example, Uganda looks like Stone Age.

The public transport (Mwendokasi buses), the public medical facilities, their expansive road networks, the general air of happiness you feel among Tanzanians. You don’t even have to go all the way to Dar es Salaam: motorists using the Mutukula border understand this imagery really well.

From Masaka to Mutukula, it feels like you are driving through ekikuute, a rugged cattle road through the forests. Immediately you cross into Tanzania, you get the feel you are driving into a country with a government. Yet indeed for Uganda, this is a major entry point.

But the fellows running Uganda seem not to care. I will not mention Kigali or Nairobi. Neither will I mention Lusaka or Khartoum or Addis Ababa. These are our neighbours but in a world of their own.

Yet, they haven’t had a singular government for all this time. (Rwanda is the closest to us in terms of longevity of a sitting president – and there is plenty to show for their man’s long stay). One would assume that long reign enables a president to see their policies implemented and pushed through.

Especially if they are good at playing and confusing all opposition forces, as is often claimed. Not this one. Not Yoweri Museveni. One of the coldest but very honest comments I have been told by refugees escaping Khartoum is how run- down they found peaceful Uganda.

And how broke Ugandans are. You have nothing, they said. They cannot believe their eyes, yet they, too, lived under an autocrat. My intention here is not to talk about how Museveni has sold the country to foreigners. (All other African countries somehow did; this was forced on them).

But how Museveni never had the mind to build anything native within this period is mindboggling. Sadly, not even for his ethnic base, the Banyankore or Basiita, or Bachwezi as his son has bragged about Runyankore being the language of power and privilege.

Reader, I cannot understand how one could be president for forty years and does not have a single relative or close friend owning a bank, a gold mine, a telecom company or a major coffee exporting company. What is this?

That every time we read the national budget, we are also reading the profits of Museveni’s friends and relatives! This is not smart at all. I would understand if Museveni was unwilling to build anything for the country (because these are random people out there). But even for friends, kindred and close associates!

They own nothing significant except deals from government – tenders and corruption cuts. The problem here is that Museveni’s associates and relatives will fall into penury as soon as the man leaves office – because their only source of income, which is the national budget and corruption from connection, will not be under their control anymore.

No wonder they are forcing Muhoozi onto the country to guarantee continuity – but still for the same peanut cuts in budget and commissions. Museveni loves juxtaposing himself against President Amin.

Yes, it is not just mindboggling that a man who has been in power for forty years endlessly contrasts himself against a man who was in power not just for eight years, but also before 70 per cent of Ugandans were born.

However, this juxtaposition remains embarrassingly telling that Idi Amin, with little formal education, will remain the undisputed father of the nation: As Lwanga Lunyiigo recently, and Mahmood Mamdani (1995) among other elite opinion have noted, the year 1972 is the year that Uganda actually earned her independence.

This came with the expulsion of British corporations (through Indians banking in the UK). Sadly, Museveni presided over the return of these corporations, without even thinking about creating room for natives. What a legacy!

Before Prof Lwanga Lunyiigo published, Uganda: An Indian Colony 1898-1972, Dr Olive Kobusingye had published, The Patient, which is a book about our medical sector, specifically, Mulago hospital.

The image is that the medical sector is itself a patient. It is sick. But more significantly, Kobusingye, carefully, meticulously, walks us through Idi Amin’s health sector up to Yoweri Museveni.

Dear reader, there has not been a man much-maligned than Idi Amin. As far as public health is concerned, this man not only valued medical professionals, but had love for country.

He committed crimes – like all folks with power tend to do – but for country. For him, it wasn’t politics for politics’ sake, it was politics for something.

yusufkajura@gmail.com

Author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.