As a critical thinker, I just don’t go with the flow. I want to be able to understand everything for myself and as well have defendable reasons for my conclusions always not premised on fallacies.
I will now declare here and now that after careful scrutiny, I have no fair and firm logical basis on which to build the idea that Mr. Museveni is a very bad man.
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In fact my assumption that he could be considered good is back by the closed conversations that I have had with those who know him from close quarters.
That he is intrinsically good is what they have in confidence told me insisting that at least that is what they also see.
So I am clearly not alone. We could make the case that he chooses which side to show who, given what tactical and strategic interests he may have at the time of their meeting after all he is a military general and once you become a soldier I am sure you don’t stop acting as one.
So why do some believe him to be a bad man as seen through his actions or inactions?
Two major reasons:
- Yoweri Tubuhaburwa Kaguta Museveni is a victim of an office!
- A national tragedy and or mistake! What I believe is that Ugandans have continually made one massive mistake: They send a good man to a job (president of Uganda) that’s spoiled many before him.
Why is there so much rejoicing each time we get a new president here? What happens after?
I want to submit that it must have been easy for Mr. Museveni outside the job of president to believe that as soon as you get the job of president you can quickly turn around a nation and do as you please…
Ask him what happened to barter trade and the fire with which he came with it…This man wanted to sleep on beds from Katwe and his ministers moved around in Nissan Laurels!
We were on fire those days. Ask him why he did not keep his revolutionary idea of individual merit those days when he vehemently opposed political parties using their divisiveness along religious and tribal lines to back his case.
He left that noble ground breaking idea like it has Coronavirus in it opting for “tubegyeko”. He was right. He had to go multi-party.
Consequently, NRM does not look more united now than it did in 1996. Does it to you? Now that they have no flag bearer in Sembabule? You really want me to remind you what the Chief Whip, Ruth Nankabirwa said of the Speaker Rebecca Kadaga in the heat of the NRM internal elections?
The moment you take state power, I am sure there are figurative buttons you find that you cannot touch!
It seems plausible that when you are not in there yet you naively assume all the buttons are available to touch and you can play very piece on the chess board for you to win; the game being excellent service delivery and a functional nation.
It soon dawns on you that some pieces on the board must never be played and you can do nothing about that. It did not help that along the course of a very good trajectory Dr. Kizza Besigye forced on the state a new plan.
I am almost certain that Mr. Museveni, given how much he was loved then, did not see power retention and self preservation as necessities that early.
It was Dr. Besigye from within who must have forced him into a self preservation mode so early and there were things that had to be done or else he was gone before a mission was accomplished.
Besigye forced Museveni into self preservation mode
That jostled him a bunch and we can debate if he has ever recovered from that Besigye induced detour.
To keep state power, that’s if you are the type that owns good reasons for accept the requests of the people to stay on, there are things you needs must do. Obote did them and so did Amin.
The colonialists themselves did these very same imperatives until they just left or were forced to leave. You have to bring into the game the means of violence that are the preserve of the state and you convince yourself that they are being used right, and in the right proportions and on only the wrong doers!
What you miss is that for this to go well you and the majority of the population must agree on who the wrong doers are!
Amin and Obote did not wait for Ugandan public to agree with them on who the wrong doers were, they just acted! It is now another’s turn.
I think that what Mr.Kyagulanyi and his new team of “the naive” must do is find out very soberly what it is that that spoils those who go to Entebbe?
It is easy to replace Amin and Obote true. And indeed they were replaced. What we now know is that it is much, much harder to avoid doing the things they did which I now argue to be crucially necessary and unavoidable in the enterprise of keeping state power.
Mr. Kyagulanyi has to demonstrate that he has it in himself to send a grader to raze the house of Eddy Mutwe that has been built in the wetland even when he was his right hand man in the “struggle”.
Those are the hard necessary things to do. He must show us now and not later that should he capture power these young people fuelling their Boda Bodas to escort him in hope, will know that riding on the wrong side of the roads and ignoring traffic signs and lights will attract hefty penalties.
Those are the hard ones. He must make it clear that should he capture power, vending on the streets of Kampala which is what it takes to destroy city order, will be unacceptable and that littering will go to jail.
Will he be able to do these things? He has a group of supporters that have grown up with no order and they see this as the normal. Those that think challenging the state gives them the license and right to break the law.
Our nation is in a much bigger problem than we know. Mr. Museveni must be worried that what he planned has not exactly panned out his way. He is aging fast, and now is the question of how he will be remembered and on that he has no control.
It’s long since peace could be the legacy now that his forces seem to be the ones responsible for the absence of the peace he brought. In the minds of some, that seems the case.
I feel for both Ssentamu and Tibubaburwa albeit for very different reasons. Ugandans are not easy. I am also sure many Ugandans do not know the cost if they are to have a nation that functions as they wish.
It is easier in many other nations not to litter the streets than to expect the city council to collect all the rubbish on time.
In Uganda it’s the other way round, and that in a nation where those littering the city are avoiding, and evading taxes and are very proud of the same.
Let me leave those who want that hard job to try their luck.
