Tag Archives: power

How Museveni got into power and why he is not leaving soon

Museveni has remarked that as a guerrilla fighter he is not going to be chased out of state house like a chicken thief. He has warned that you cannot kill an animal and leave someone else to enjoy the meat. Since Uganda has just found oil, Museveni expects Ugandans and the rest of the world to understand why he just cannot walk away and leave someone else to enjoy the benefits. He will come up with something else in 2016 elections to stay in power!

In order to govern indefinitely Museveni forced an amendment in the 1995 Uganda Constitution that removed presidential term limits. He can therefore contest presidential elections as many times as he wants. Western powers have acquiesced. In other situations they would have put pressure including withdrawal of foreign aid. What facilitated Museveni’s ascent to and stay in power?

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Museveni came to power with a hidden agenda which he has executed

On October 23, 2010, I wrote that I had closed a chapter began in 1961 about Uganda’s political economy. The focus of that chapter was to analyze political economy challenges. Now, I am embarking on another one that will state a specific problem and suggest solutions. I will begin with the compelling case of Museveni’s hidden agenda – to promote Bahororo/Batutsi/Bahima dominance from southwest region to the national level – how he crafted and has implemented it without the majority of Ugandans realizing it.

Museveni began preparing his political career while at Ntare School in the early 1960s based largely on local (Ankole) politics. He realized that independence in Ankole (Museveni’s home base) based on majority rule of Bairu (slaves) led by Protestant elites was dangerous for minority Bahororo/Bahima (also Protestants) supremacy. The abolition of kingdoms including in Ankole by Obote – a Protestant, northerner and commoner – was bad news because it removed the institutional shelter that had protected Bahima and Bahororo minority rulers for centuries. Museveni developed a political strategy based on military and religious strength complemented by external forces. But he knew very early on that ultimately what would count most in his rise to power was military strength, not democracy. Religious divisions and external help would supplement military strength.

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Taking stock of NRM’s performance on the eve of 2011 elections

As Uganda heads into another round of multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections, this is the right moment to take stock of what the governing NRM party has achieved since it came to power 25 years ago. The NRM under the leadership of Museveni launched a credible and well thought out development blue print compressed into the ten-point program subsequently expanded to fifteen. This program put Ugandans at the center of development. Therefore NRM’s performance must be assessed against this principal goal.

By contrast the development program was not matched by a cadre with sufficient expertise and experience. A large number of NRM cadres did not have the requisite qualifications much less experience. Afraid of being swamped by the experienced Ugandans who did not fight the guerrilla war from 1981 to 1985, the NRM government chose not to invite qualified and experienced Ugandans in the diaspora and marginalized those at home. To fill the gap while it learned on the job, the government invited a wide range of foreign experts most of them young, inexperienced and ignorant of Uganda’s overall environment.

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The politics of birth control

Politics is the science and art of getting power and how to use it to stay in power. Thus, politics is essentially about conflict or struggle among groups or social categories which allow those who get power to hold on to it and benefit from it. In these circumstances, politics by and large serves to maintain the privileges usually of a minority against the majority. The minority group uses power to disarm opponents (M. Duverger, 1966).

The minority knows that numbers matter. It tries various ways to weaken the numerically superior group. Strategies include dividing the majority group, reducing numbers through conflict, forcing some to migrate out of the territory or marginalizing the group so much that it becomes politically powerless. In the extreme case, the minority tries to reduce the number of the majority group by launching targeted birth control programs.

At the global level birth control was launched after the Second World War because population in the Third World was growing faster than in the developed countries. By early 1970s the global population had ‘exploded’ from 2.5 billion to 3.7 billion over two decades. This growth took place mostly in developing countries. Developed countries expressed fear that if the population explosion is not controlled it would lead to mass starvation and societal catastrophe. Third world governments rejected that view, stressing that economic and social development would take care of population growth (Critical Trends. United Nations 1997).

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Unequal power relations and impoverishment of Rujumbura’s Bairu

Those who do not believe that unequal power relations can make some people rich and powerful and impoverish others and render them powerless need to visit Rujumbura county of Rukungiri district in southwest Uganda.

Rukungiri district of which Rujumbura is a part has been in the news for more than a year now. It will likely continue to be in the news because the increasing imbalance in power relations between Bairu and Bahororo people – the latter are rulers of Uganda since 1986 with a big number coming from Rujumbura – has continued to disadvantage Bantu/Bairu people. Bahororo people (Nilotic/Batutsi from Rwanda) have amassed so much power which they are using to end – once and for all – Rujumbura’s Bairu resistance to Bahororo domination since 1800. Under normal circumstances, one would have expected Bahororo to use their power to improve the welfare of all the people in Rujumbura. Sadly this has not been the case. The opposite has been the result.

Upon their arrival in Rujumbura in 1800 as refugees Bahororo people used their military power in collaboration with Arab slave hunters/traders and European weapons to defeat and subjugate the once rich, relatively peaceful and numerically superior indigenous Bantu people. Bahororo gave the defeated people the collective name of Bairu (slaves), still in use to this day in 2010.

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How Bahororo captured and have sustained power in Uganda

Many Ugandans and non-Ugandans alike still wrongly believe that Museveni and his Bahororo people led a guerrilla war starting in 1981 because of the so-called rigged elections of December 1980. The truth of the matter is that Bahororo have harbored the idea of dominating Uganda politics in order to restore Mpororo kingdom which was absorbed into the Ankole kingdom – hence the complications surrounding the restoration of Ankole kingdom.

Museveni and his very close advisers are Bahororo. Bahororo are Batutsi from Rwanda whose ancestors were Nilotic Luo-speaking people who moved into the great lakes region from Bahr el Ghazal of southern Sudan some 600 years ago. Under the leadership of Kahaya Rutindangyezi the Batutsi from Rwanda founded Mpororo kingdom in mid-17th century. The kingdom covered northern Rwanda and parts of southwest Ankole (Ntungamo district). The kingdom disintegrated within 100 years due to internal family feuds. Although they lost the kingdom (and many Bahororo returned to Rwanda while others moved to other parts of Uganda), Bahororo never lost the idea of restoring the kingdom, perhaps on a larger scale – hence the idea of creating the East African Federation or Tutsi Empire.

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Why has Uganda become a nation of complaints?

On balance Uganda has been plagued by complaints more than anything else. And what is worrying is that the complaints are multiplying and getting louder with the passage of time. This article will record those complaints from 1962 to the present and attempt an explanation. This article is written particularly for the youth, Uganda’s future leaders, who must find solutions to these complaints.

Uganda as a nation had a rocky start caused by religious wars among Catholics, Muslims and Protestants as well as resistance to colonial rule which was very bloody in some places. With these conflicts over, law and order was restored and important decisions were made that laid a solid foundation for economic growth and social development. The construction of the Uganda railway, the wise decision that Uganda belongs to Ugandans, the realization that good nutrition is a vital component in human development, and the determination, in the 1950s, that industrialization is essential to create jobs, transform Uganda’s economic structure and build forward and backward linkages.

In spite of this promising start, rhetoric was not marched by action and most dreams were not met. On the eve of independence in 1962, the then Secretary General of the ruling Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) complained, inter alia, that:

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Is Uganda’s national unity idea dead?

When the National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to power in 1986, it had a clear domestic and external policy message which was compressed into the ten-point program. It was a program that had been based on compromise with national unity in mind which became a cornerstone in Uganda’s development discourse in the early years of the NRM administration.

Earlier, the late Grace Ibingira had written about the absence of national consciousness in Uganda brought about by the retention or intensification of ethnic differences during the colonial period. He observed that “Since the colonial system kept them alive through indirect rule and the policy of minimal inter-ethnic contact, the idea of Britain bequeathing a new state uniting all the divergent groups with a government of nationalist politicians from different groups, some historically enemies, generated intense fear in the country, most especially among the group that had more to lose, the Baganda” (G. S. Ibingira 1980).

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Uganda is a military dictatorship disguised as democracy

According to the World Book Encyclopedia, dictatorship is a form of government in which an individual or a committee or other group holds absolute power. Dictators usually have come to power under conditions of turmoil and confusion. Often the dictator seizes power by political trickery or military violence.

Once in control, dictators and their followers retain their positions through force or threat of force. They abolish or closely control the legislature, and quickly suppress freedom of speech, assembly, and the press. They set up an elaborate secret-police system to detect opponents of the government. Persons who object to the dictatorship are persecuted by the government.

On the other hand, democracy is a form of government in which the citizens take part in political decisions that affect them directly or indirectly through their elected representatives. Representatives’ job is to transparently represent the people with whom they made a contract in making decisions about laws and other matters that affect constituents including defending and protecting their rights, freedoms and property.

Uganda as a military dictatorship

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