By gagging dissenting voices, Museveni has no doubt failed true leadership test

Published on 06/05/2011

Barrack Muluka If a revolution should come to Uganda, it will not be because opposition leader Kizza Besigye has orchestrated it. Nor will it be the doing of the local legal fraternity. If President Yoweri Museveni understood this, he would worry less about Dr Besigye walking about in the streets of Kampala. He would instead bring his energies to bear on the kind of things he used to dream of as a youthful romantic revolutionary at the University of Dar es Salaam in the 1960s. He would not dispatch the Uganda Army to brutalise civilians for walking in the streets. President Museveni has recalled his university days in his collection of speeches titled What is Africas problem. He recalls how he perceived the University of Dar es Salaam as the seedbed of progressive revolutionaries, such as he dreamt of becoming. This university bred philosophers and patriots who sought good life for their people, rather than selfish privileges. Besides, the youthful Museveni was enamoured of the philosophies of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. He may not have quite understood Mwalimu well, he says. But he thought there was something inherently noble in what Mwalimu was telling Africa and the world. And so young Yoweri went to Dar to nurture his revolutionary dreams. He believes he emerged out of Dar a thorough bred revolutionary. It is the paradox of history that the older Museveni does not seem to know that revolutions are not made; when conditions are right they simply happen. He has forgotten that the professors in Dar taught him that no one individual or group of persons can cause a revolution whose time has not yet come to happen. That is why he unleashes the Uganda Army against angry civilians decrying the hunger pangs in their bellies. It is not Fidel Castro of Cuba, Ernesto Che Guavara, nor Vladmir Lenin who can make a revolution happen if the situation is not ripe for one. Throughout history, revolutions have happened only because their time had come. African leaders afraid of being washed downstream by revolutions can take solace in this. Conversely, they are therefore better off addressing good governance in their countries instead of unleashing crude military men into the streets. For when the revolution will happen, not even all the armies in the world rolled into one can stop it. Guevara of Argentina is the quiescent revolutionary of our times. He was a celebrated Marxist revolutionary in his day. He gravitated across Latin America preaching revolution, breathing fire. Eventually he played a key role in the Cuban Revolution of 1958. His subsequent efforts to lead

revolutions in Congo Kinshasa and Bolivia, however, came to naught. The difference between the two and Cuba was that Cuba was ready for a revolution. None other than President John F Kennedy, an avowed adversary of revolutionary Cuba, was to proclaim: "I believe there is no country in the world, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonisation, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my countrys policies during the (Fulgencio) Batista regime." Batista reigned in Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1958 when the revolutionaries overthrew him. In his glorious days, Batista was a military dictator of the worst order. There is an uncanny resemblance between this man and some characters that have ascended to power in Africa. First, the man rose to power in 1933 in what has gone down in history as "the Revolt of Sergeants". Like some self-styled African "revolutionaries," Batista enjoyed the patronage of US, as a blue-eyed boy. Like the same African leaders, Batista appointed himself chief of the armed forces. Again, like African revolutionaries of this extraction, he orchestrated an election and got himself elected president of Cuba in 1944. In 1952, Batista frustrated a democratic election he was clearly losing. He got himself declared president. Batista is remembered for such things as suspending the Constitution and revoking most civil liberties. These included things like the right to strike. The less said of this man the better. Suffice it to say that many of the things happening in Uganda today remind you of characters like Batista. It is an African tragedy that even intellectual leaders like Museveni, who obviously know these narratives very well, end up as mirror images of people like Batista. As a graduate of political science, you would expect Museveni to know that Ferdinand Marcos assassination of Benigno Aquino in 1983 did not stop a popular uprising from overthrowing the Marcos dynasty. Nor did it matter that the popular voice did not have a clear leader. The people of Philippines dragged Benignos widow and "plain housewife," Corazon, out of quietude and catapulted her into State House in 1986. Till her tragic passing on two years ago, Cory remained inscribed into the hearts of men and women of goodwill all over the world as an icon of democracy. Museveni has failed the test of leadership. He is one more of Africas botched hopes. Worse still, he has forgotten all the history and political science he read in the academies. Like the recently fallen professor of history, Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, Museveni could very well be looking hard in the eye of a humiliating grand finale. But the gods seem to have sent him into denial, as they always do at such times. That was why Gbagbo was dragged from the bunkers of State House in his under vestments. Museveni may want to heed Dr Kofi Annans words to African leaders on Thursday this week. The former UN Secretary General decried the failure of leadership in Africa. But he also cautioned those who think their countries were their personal property. He warned them that political cyclones would sweep them away in short order. For when the situation is ripe for revolution, it thrives on its own fuel. The writer is a publishing editor and media consultant.

Ugandans want liberation from liberator

Okech Kendo Ugandans are saying they have had enough of latter day messiah Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. For there would be no other reason to jeer a president, a symbol of national unity, if there were no fatigue with his 26-year-old presidency. A quarter of a century is enough time even for a liberator like Museveni to have been done with reconstruction. Yet the man says he is still on course because his leadership is good for Uganda. Museveni says he still has "historical duties and challenges" to resolve, and looks like it is only he, who can. And he believes that without him at the top, Uganda would regress into the murderous years of Idi Amin Dada, Milton Obote, Yusuf Lule, and Godfrey Binaisa. If that were the case, then Museveni has failed to build institutions, a strong leadership with a succession plan, and a legacy. A legacy, to quote leadership guru John Maxwell, is created when a person puts his organisation into a position to do great things without him. By building a personality cult, Museveni has ensured alternative leadership and opposition are emasculated. His vindictive fight with opposition leader Kizza Besigye, which was exported to Nairobi last week, is a good example. Museveni has outlived four US presidents Ronald Reagan, two Bushes, and Bill Clinton. And now he is hell bent on out-ruling a fifth US president, Barack Obama. Ugandans are telling their president the Museveni clan does not hold controlling shares in Uganda. First Lady Janet Museveni the presidents bedside, sorry, right hand woman is minister for Karamoja region. The presidents brother, Gen Caleb Akandwanaho, is a senior presidential advisor on defence, and therefore, the presidents presumed right-hand man on matters of self-preservation. The presidents brother-in-law Sam Kutea is Foreign Affairs Minister. The Presidents daughter Natasha Karugire is the presidents private secretary. First Ladys nephew Justus Karuhanga is the presidents private secretary for legal affairs. The presidents son Lt-Col Kainerugaba Muhoozi is commander of Special Forces. He also leads the elite presidential guard. (There can be noone better qualified to protect daddys regime). Right-thinking Ugandans are not amused by the familiarization of the State. They are particularly uneasy with Musevenis son. The son is leading forces trying to suppress anti-government protests. He is doing it for Daddy Rap. "Muhoozi didnt commit any crime by being the son of the president. He is an individual Ugandan with rights, including contesting for president if he wants," army spokesman Felix Kulaigye once told Reuters news agency. He was responding to opposition claims Museveni was making the presidency monarchical.

They are telling the former guerilla his time is up. But Museveni is not leaving because he has the army, the police, militias, and money. This is the package rogue African leaders need to stay beyond their welcome. It is not enough that Museveni recently won an election and, therefore, claims renewed mandate to rule over fatigued citizenry. African leaders who command the army, police, and electoral commission can always win an election, even if the people do not vote for them. The humiliation of Laurent Gbagbo, his wife, and son are memorable. Museveni certainly watched as fugitive president Gbagbo was ejected from a hole, and then paraded before his rival for Ivory Coast State House, Allassane Ouattara. The episode should sink in the conscience of thinking African presidents if any. In Osamas Name Musevenis comrade-in-revolution, Muammar Gaddafi, is beleaguered. The colonel could be running out of time. Gaddafi once advised Museveni that revolutionaries do not quit. They do not leave, since their countries cannot live without them. Gaddafi has threatened to burn Libyan oil wells if rebels working for the late terror king Osama bin Laden insist on deposing him. Dragging Osamas name into the small matter of Gaddafi and tired Libyans was initially intended to seduce Western support, knowing their distaste for Osama. When invoking Osamas name did not work, and Nato bombers hit harder, Gaddafi tried to appeal to sentiments of the Arab-Muslim world, against western invasion. That again did not work. Feeding fighters on Viagra now wont save Gaddafi either. If the tempo of unrest in Uganda and Libya were sustained, Museveni and Gaddafi would be driven to ignominy, worse than seen in Tunisia, Egypt, and Ivory Coast. Ben Ali of Tunisia fled because the people could no longer countenance a corrupt dictatorship. They were revolting against the corrupt ways of Ben Alis family, friends and cronies. This power clique had grown criminally wealthy, as ordinary Tunisians grew poorer. Now Ben Ali and his acquisitive consort and family are crying, wishing they had tamed their appetite for Tunisias common wealth. Even the benevolent Hosni Mubarak is crying. His sons are feuding about who misled daddy. Egyptians are still baying for their blood. They want Mubarak and his clan to account for their plunder, blunders, and slaughter of enemies of autocracy. Even with all these cases of cornered former presidents so close to home and in time, Museveni is still belligerent. He is fighting the wrong enemies as Ugandans plead for liberation from a liberator. It would be the third liberation, this time from a self-styled Munyankole messiah whose regime has gotten monstrous by the years. Writer is The Standards Managing Editor Quality and Production kendo@standardmedia.co.ke