Fourteen years after coming to power in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni remains unswerving about the course he has embarked on
John Matshikiza
My first encounter with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took place in the romantic atmosphere of a guerrilla army in boisterous and compassionate occupation of captured territory.
It was March of 1997, and the location was Arua in the north-western region of Uganda – Idi Amin country.
Although the war against Amin, and the subsequent war against the second Milton Obote regime, had long been won, the aftermath of those conflicts still resonated all around. Apart from that, there were (and continue to be) skirmishes against insurgents operating from Sudan in the north and the then Zaire in the east.
The Ugandan press daily carried stories of kidnappings and atrocities carried out by the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army and by members of the shadowy Hutu forces known as the interahamwe, exacting an ugly toll on Ugandan civilians in the rural areas. The country that had suffered so long under hideous dictatorships, particularly that of Idi Amin, did not deserve this continuing brutality.
But Museveni’s government, in place for 11 years at that time, had brought remarkable stability and growth for the first time in many decades. Ethnic, religious and political tolerance seemed to be the order of the day – all a conscious part of Museveni’s political philosophy, honed over years of study and reflection during his exile years in Tanzania, and in the crucible of the long guerrilla wars.
Museveni’s war was remarkable for being a principled war against a post-colonial foe. It was not an opportunistic guerrilla war, like those being waged in Mozambique, Angola, Liberia and elsewhere, which had the seeds of corruption buried deep within them.
Museveni, the slender, upright soldier- philosopher who marched into Kampala at the head of his forces in 1986, was at the cutting-edge of the second wave of Africa’s anti-colonial wars.
Ten years later, in 1996, he had held a referendum to establish whether the people of Uganda supported his novel system of “no-party politics”, a hybrid form of democratic governance that side- stepped the ethnic and religious conservatism that had bedevilled Ugandan politics since independence in 1962. The referendum had delivered a resounding affirmation of his vision, articulated through his National Resistance Movement.
A year later, he was on a whirlwind tour of the various regions of the country, delivering his personal thanks to the populace for supporting his mould-breaking approach to the thorny question of democracy in the Third World.
After more than a decade in power, the president had not forsaken his old guerrilla-leader habits. We had arrived at Arua in the morning, and then engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with presidential protocol to establish exactly when Museveni would arrive, what his itinerary would be, and when we would be granted the promised presidential interview.
The protocol people were extremely courteous, taking great pains to ensure that we were comfortably accommodated at an unprepossessing hotel in the town, and that proper transportation had been provided for us. The president’s itinerary, however, remained a closely guarded secret.
It was a frustrating situation. I was leading a film crew, and our task, apart from the vital interview, was to shoot all aspects of the president’s tour – including his arrival on the soil of this formerly hostile region. All we knew was that he would probably arrive by his favoured form of transport: a military helicopter. Where this helicopter would land, and what would happen afterwards, we did not know.
We decided to lie in wait, keeping a close eye on the protocol people and what we assumed were the vehicles they would use to drive out to meet the president whenever and wherever he landed.
At around three in the afternoon, one of the 4×4 vehicles we had been watching came hurtling out of the make-shift presidential compound and roared off down the dirt road towards the town. Other military vehicles in the compound started revving their engines, and the soldiers on the perimeter moved to a higher level of alertness. Convinced that the departing vehicle was heading towards the airport, and that Museveni had fooled us and was about to arrive by plane rather than by helicopter, we set off in hot pursuit.
After a couple of miles, it became clear that we were off on a wild goose chase when the vehicle in front of us stopped and waved us back towards the compound. We were inclined to be suspicious, until someone pointed into the sky, and we saw the fat, olive-green, Russian-built helicopter swooping in a wide circle high over Arua.
We got back to the compound just in time to tag along at the tail of the convoy of military vehicles that was now heading off in the opposite direction, away from the town. After a high-speed chase, slamming through the rutted tracks in a swirl of dust thrown up by the sure- footed convoy preceding us, we arrived at a football pitch adjacent to a tiny primary school deep in the bush.
The president’s helicopter was already on the ground, and Museveni himself was descending the steps, wearing black Oxford shoes, dark trousers, an open-necked, short-sleeved white shirt, and his trade- mark, wide brimmed soldier-farmer’s hat. His face was wreathed in a smile that seemed to stop just short of a chuckle at our expense. The wily bush-fighter had popped up precisely where and when he chose, catching even his own forces on the ground almost off balance. It was quite an entrance.
We spent the next three days pursuing the president as he addressed huge rallies in Arua, Nebbi and Paidha. His style was impressively easy-going, addressing the gathered throngs in down- to-earth English, pausing patiently while local interpreters translated his words. He made a point of searching out appropriate idioms in the local languages to illustrate his political themes, drawing the crowds to him with warmth and a pleasant sense of humour, which they richly appreciated.
The interview we had come to conduct was repeatedly postponed. We relaxed into the president’s rhythm, and enjoyed the ride.
It was worth the wait. By the time we finally sat down face to face, in the garden of the presidential residence back in the capital of Kampala, we had a much stronger awareness of the political style of Yoweri Museveni, and its impact on the ordinary people of Uganda.
Museveni was on a roll. The whole world, including those bugbears of the African revolution, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, were eating out of his hand. Uganda, in spite of the occasional insurgencies in the north and west, had an air of stability and peacefulness.
The terrible bloodshed of the Amin era was a thing of the past – although the carrion birds, the vultures and marabou storks that had become a grisly part of the urban population, were still very much in evidence.
The Ugandan economy was doing a very unAfrican thing – it was growing. The outside world was eager to invest.
Museveni’s confidence was buoyant enough to overflow into surrounding countries. He had become the most important player in the Great Lakes region, a key figure behind the resurrection of the spirit of Rwanda after the genocide of 1994, and the mastermind and sponsor of the long- awaited push to overthrow the absurdly neo-colonial regime of Mobutu Sese-Seko in the massive and seemingly unmanageable state of Zaire, Africa’s dark heart. Kinshasa was to fall in a matter of months, and Museveni’s protg, Laurent Kabila, was to become part of the acceptable face of a new, self-confident Africa, at the head of the state that would revert to its original name of Congo.
Exactly three years after that first encounter, in March this year, I was in Kampala again, once more playing the waiting game. I had been promised another interview with Museveni. But this time, the president’s schedule was being ruled by a host of new gremlins, most of them metamorphosed out of the very same creatures that had been so confidently under the president’s control in 1997.
Peace had indeed come, briefly, to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997. But it had not taken long for the newly installed Kabila to turn on his former mentor, and for the war to flare up again, on new and more complex terms. The Ugandan army found itself dug in deep inside the neighbouring Congo state, in an increasingly uneasy alliance with Rwanda, exchanging artillery fire not only with Kabila’s forces, but with the armies of Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia as well. Military conflict between fellow members of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on this scale was unprecedented.
The unexpected continuation of the war was exacting a heavy financial burden on Uganda, which in turn was breeding unease and an increasingly vocal opposition in the country’s public life, spearheaded by an outspoken media.
Allegations of corruption, both within senior ranks of the army, operating with seeming autonomy deep in mineral-rich Congo, and within the government bureaucracy, the banking system and parastatal and private organisations inside the country, surfaced to challenge Museveni’s untarnished reputation for the first time.
And on top of it all, in the week that I arrived, Uganda’s loyal donors, the Swedes, the Belgians, the British and others, had also come to call. Museveni was locked in conference deep into the night, defending himself against the donors’ accusations of mismanagement, unnecessary warmongering, and corruption. The president was trying to keep his ship of state on course in increasingly choppy seas.
The Museveni I finally met, after several postponements, was showing signs of the strain. He was visibly tired, having been up till four that morning, meeting donors with their difficult questions, and strategising for the tough days to come. He was thinner, the jovial glow in his cheeks somewhat diminished, although the easy-going smile still made an appearance from time to time. He was wearing the same (or similar) black Oxfords on his feet, but the rest of the relaxed outfit was gone. Instead, he was wearing a grey suit and a dark tie. The international community had to be taken seriously.
Museveni’s discourse this time was less expansive, shorn of the ebullient, folksy illustrations and digressions that had marked our earlier meeting. But he remained unswerving in his belief in the course he had embarked on. He was not cowed by the toughening attitude of the donor community, and he was confident of winning the forthcoming national referendum and gaining a further mandate for his unique style of government.
We got straight down to the critical matter of the day: the country’s relationship with its international donors, and what the long-term implications might be for the Ugandan economy.
“Our economy is always doing well,” said the president, “although we have some problems, [due to the fact that we are] not collecting enough revenue. That’s how we disturb the donors, and the donors disturb us: because we should be collecting enough revenue so that we no longer need to get this external support.
“We are collecting now about 12% of GDP [gross domestic product] in taxes. However, we are spending, if you take the recurrent and the development budgets, 21% of GDP. So for [the outstanding] 9% of GDP revenue, we have to get support from donors, which is why this haggling is going on. This is not a healthy situation. We should interact with Europeans on issues of markets, not on issues of budget support.” He laughed.
True to form, he was carrying the fight to the enemy – even if it was an enemy with whom he had thus far had a reasonably amicable relationship.
“They crowd us out of the European, American and Japanese markets by protection of their markets – sugar, beef, milk, all things we could export to those markets,” he continued. Furthermore, if Europe and the United States continued to exclude African countries from their markets, African countries “should get together and demand our rights. If they don’t accept, we should throw them out of our markets, and have our own protection.”
We turned to the question of the “African renaissance”, and what meaning it held for the development of the African continent.
“One of the components of the ‘African renaissance’ must be this issue of access to markets. I haven’t discussed with [South African President] Thabo Mbeki what he sees as the elements of the ‘African renaissance’, but I can guess that he is talking about, first of all, African people recovering their sovereignty, which has been usurped. Secondly, to democratise our countries. Thirdly, to modernise our economies – modernise our agriculture, modernise our industry. And fourthly, to take our rightful place in the world – to get our rights in the world.
“I think [the term ‘African renaissance’] is a good summary of what we have been trying to do. The mere statement is a correct one. ‘Renaissance’ means ‘rebirth’, and it is true that Africa is being reborn. Africa was clouded by colonialism and foreign invasion since 1498, when Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope …We had the slave trade, then colonialism, and now we have regained our sovereignty. That is a rebirth.” He chuckled again.
“So the question is, what other elements do you put into that rebirth? It can’t be sovereignty alone. It must be sovereignty, plus other things.”
“Other things” include economic independence, and national and regional stability. The ongoing conflict in the Congo was part of that long-term agenda.
“Congo has been more or less a country without a state, and whatever state there was in Congo was a very corrupt one. For a long time that did not move us to do anything against Mobutu, because it was none of our business. If he was mismanaging Congo, we were sorry, but there was not much we could do about it. The problem came when he wanted to intervene in Rwanda, to cause another genocide, and then when he started to back terrorists against us. That’s when we acted against him.”
He did not directly explain the reasons for his parting-of-the-ways with Kabila, but rather described the current conflict in Congo as “linked to the problems of Rwanda and Burundi, plus the problems of Congo itself, and also the problems of Sudan infiltrating terrorists into Uganda through Congo.
“They are all linked. The problem of Congo is summarised in two parts: the regional security threat, and the internal problems of Congo. We should also include the problem of [Jonas] Savimbi, who has been using Congo all these years – these are all regional security threats. Then there are the internal problems of Congo – lack of democracy for all these years; lack of accountability; suppression of the power of the people by dictators. The Lusaka Agreement addresses both regional and internal problems clearly. Things could move forward well – if the players were serious.”
I was not then aware that, even as we spoke, the main Congolese rebel movement, who had also parted company with Museveni, were declaring that the Lusaka Accord, signed by all belligerent parties in August last year, was no longer holding. Renewed fighting had broken out, claiming hundreds more lives deep inside Congo, and the Rally for Congolese Democracy was threatening to carry the war all the way to Kinshasa and drive out Kabila for good. So much for the peace accords.
Museveni was certainly aware of these developments, but chose not to share these minor details with me at that time.
The mire of the Congo tends to dominate most of the issues that Museveni is confronted with. Representatives of the donor nations were insisting on adding their voice to the matter, accusing the Museveni government of diverting aid money into the coffers of the military, who in turn are surreptitiously profiting from the mineral wealth of Congo.
“I have been explaining to these Europeans,” he retorted. “They come with a lot of misconceived ideas, and I tell them that we are not looking for anything in Congo, other than our own security, and possibly also helping Congo to stand on its feet, at last.
“We have lived within our budget all these years,” he went on. “We are not an army that lives on chocolates and all that. We manage with meagre resources. We don’t stay in barracks, we just stay in grass huts when we are in the bush. So we are able to execute our mission within the same resources. The resources which donor countries gave us for building barracks, we convert them into means of defending ourselves. Fortunately for us, our climate is not cold, so we can go on staying in those grass huts for a number of years.”
It is unfortunate, he said, that fellow members of the OAU are fighting on opposite sides of the conflict, but “sometimes these things can’t be helped. But that’s where the Lusaka Accord is good, because it has brought us back together. So those who are responsible should really grab this opportunity and end the division among the former allies. All these people were our allies – [Zimbabwean President Robert] Mugabe was our ally, we used to support Sam Nujoma here [during the Namibian independence struggle] I used to work with [Jos] dos Santos’ elders – Angostinho Neto and so on [during Museveni’s own protracted bush war against the Idi Amin regime]. These are our comrades. We became divided over the issue of Congo. Now Lusaka gives us a chance to come together again. So let’s not squander it.”
On whether or not Congo was just too massive and unruly to survive as a single entity, he said: “We want to end the Balkanisation of Africa – this has been one of our weaknesses. I wish we could create more Congos, not fewer Congos! What you need is just to manage it appropriately.”
He did, however, have some thoughts on a kind of dismantling of the state created by King Leopold of the Belgians: “I don’t think it’s appropriate to run the Congo as a unitary state, running it all from Kinshasa. If there was a federal arrangement, with provinces taking much of the devolved power, that problem of size would be an advantage rather than a disadvantage. At the moment it is a disadvantage, because it is not appropriately managed. The managers have never bothered to build a state, or a judiciary, or an army …”
On the forthcoming referendum, he said: “People have the right to choose how they want to be governed. Then we will move forward, as we have been doing. For us it is not a big problem. It is a problem for the foreigners, who seem to have a lot of blood pressure over this issue. [He laughs.] But for our population it’s just a happy occasion.”
It is vintage, unrepentant Museveni to describe an event over which many important people, both in Uganda and in the outside world, are gnashing their teeth as “just a happy occasion” for ordinary Ugandans. To call it a “happy occasion” might be a bit of an overstatement. But he is probably right to be confident that, in the words of several highly critical Ugandan commentators, he will win a further mandate for his highly individual brand of democracy in the July referendum “hands down”. Apart from anything else, there is no coherent opposition in Uganda. Museveni, described as the “master manipulator”, is the only one who knows how to make political sense, even when the chips are down.
It seems highly likely that Museveni will win the battle of wits he is waging with the international donor community as well. It will take a lot more than some strident accusations from representatives of Africa’s former tormentors to permanently discombobulate the wily old lion of Uganda.