In countries with true democracy where citizens hire and fire their representatives through the ballot box and/or public opinion, Museveni would have resigned or forced to because he has failed to deliver on his promises. Museveni cannot step down in large part because he is not sure what will happen to him once he has lost the immunity that goes with the presidency.
Museveni has had all the support at home and abroad that he needed to succeed. Why has he failed so badly? Everywhere you look domestically, regionally and internationally you see nothing but failure. At home, the diseases of poverty and environmental degradation are undeniable, at the great lakes region level, he has been accused of removing governments, his troops of committing genocide against Hutu people in DRC and plundering DRC resources; at the AU level he has quarreled with Qaddafi and at the global level his star has faded.
Discussions with people who have known him for a long time have shed some light. First, it appears that he set high ambitions that were not matched by his capabilities. Apparently, he deceived himself that he is intellectually superior to Ugandans because of his connections with the Aryan race of Europeans and therefore did not need to listen to people of lower IQ.
During an interview with John Nagenda just before he became president in 1986, Museveni observed that while the people of southwest Uganda were linguistically the same, they were racially different. He was referring to the superiority of ‘white’ Bahororo over ‘black’ Bairu, a superiority complex that he carried with him to state house. He therefore sees all Ugandans as intellectually inferior.
Museveni’s school and university record falls far short of intellectual excellence. He has therefore spent a disproportionate amount time straining himself to prove that he is an intellectual. When you read his speeches and hear him speak especially without a written text you get a sense that he is telling you that his roots are outside Africa, a description that fits in very well with John Hanning Speke’s ‘Hamitic Myth’ which has been thoroughly discredited and abandoned. He is fond of describing his first name Yoweri or Joel (even at the UN General Assembly) in a language that leaves no doubt about what message he is conveying.
So his first shortcoming was to ignore his fellow well educated and experienced Ugandans (apparently his closest advisers during the guerrilla war were not Ugandans). He refused to invite home Ugandans in the diaspora who would have given him good advice. He also dismissed or marginalized senior civil servants because they were connected with Obote and UPC. Therefore he surrounded himself with many advisers who were poorly educated with no or very little experience that he could dominate or intimidate in discussions. He ignored them most of the time. His main advisers have been European experts especially from UK, World Bank and IMF. Linda Chalker has been and still is Museveni’s closest adviser since 1986. It is therefore not surprising that Uganda adopted Thatcher’s severe version (shock therapy) of structural adjustment.
The donors that were looking for someone to implement structural adjustment after it had been abandoned in Ghana in 1986 knew how to win Museveni over. They recognized early that he wanted to be described as an intellectual, a bold and revolutionary leader. They christened him a ‘star pupil’ and ‘darling of the west’. They invited him to major meetings to give speeches of a theoretical nature that diverted his attention from real work at home. He subcontracted economic matters to British experts in the ministry of finance and central bank who had little or no knowledge of Uganda’s history and culture. Museveni then spent most of the balance of his time perfecting weapons of human destruction (WHD) to contain domestic opposition and invade neighboring countries.
Foreign advisers developed excellent programs in areas that matter: macroeconomics, modernization of agriculture, poverty reduction action plan, sustainable development and nutrition action plan etc. However, at the implementation stage foreign experts concentrated on macroeconomic aspects of inflation control, economic growth, export diversification and foreign reserve accumulation. They had hoped that macroeconomic benefits would trickle down to the social sectors and raise living standards. Museveni rejected as sabotage, advice by Ugandans that strategic state intervention in social, infrastructural and ecological areas was necessary. He treated such advice as bankrupt, coming from empty tins mainly in the opposition camp. Accordingly Ugandans’ standard of living has not reached the level attained in 1970 during Obote I regime.
Second, Museveni does not understand or like the concept of presidential or personal responsibility and adoption of corrective measures. For example, Museveni continued to promote export of food even when it was clear that Ugandans were left with inadequate supplies and were starving; Museveni continued to report success in controlling inflation even when he knew that interest rates had been so high that borrowing and investing in labor intensive activities had been frustrated and resulted in reduced economic growth and rising unemployment; Museveni did not accept the advise that increasing fish exports beyond reproductive capacity would lead to overfishing.
I wrote a chapter on ‘The impact of fish exports on food security and the environment’ in Uganda in my book titled ‘The Paradox of Hunger and Abundance” which was published in 1999. Copies were made available to policy makers including at the highest level. The advice was ignored. Now we have depleted fisheries!
I wrote a chapter on ‘Africa and the diseases of poverty’ in my book titled ‘Africa’s Lost Century’ which was published in 2001. I advised that Uganda policies on structural adjustment would lead to social problems if changes were not made to directly focus on the social sectors instead of relying on a trickle down mechanism model. Copies of the book were distributed widely to Uganda’s policy makers. The advice was ignored. Now Uganda is more defined by diseases of poverty than inflation control!
The point being made is that Museveni does not entertain personal responsibility and make necessary corrections. If he had followed advice from those with a different version of structural adjustment he would have averted the current appalling situation where the diseases of poverty such as jiggers and malnutrition have burst onto the domestic and international scene. Because the problems in Uganda had become known globally, Museveni had to say something in the form of an apology but at the same time announcing that corrective measures had been taken and everything was alright. Here is what he said on September 23, 2009 at the UN General Assembly. “We think that, at last, we have graduated from wandering in the desert of under-development and we are now marching towards socio-economic transformation. We are finally doing that which we ought to have done and the truth, this time, is with us. … We are entering into the phase of growth and transformation. Therefore, we believe, our economy will soon take off”. Clearly you can see there is an element of denial in this quotation.
Third, Museveni failed because he believes in his heart that when you make people poor and sick, drunkard and illiterate, unemployed and insane, criminals (and lock them up) and desperate you govern them with much ease and for a long time. That is why he is not keen to provide school meals and public works to employ unemployed youth, improve food security and nutrition and promote quality education and health care systems. He knows that without shoes and decent housing jigger infestation is unavoidable. He knows that without soap and water you are going to produce repellent odor and stay in hiding and thereby cause less trouble for him. I could go on but I think these illustrations have made the point clear about who Museveni is.
Finally, I hope that Museveni realizes and hopefully appreciates that through this critique and earlier ones we are trying to help him move Uganda onto the right development path.