Has Museveni finally touched the Ugandan leopard?

In December 2015, Chris Aine, an aide to the presidential candidate Amama Mbabazi, led a scuffle with soldiers of the presidential guard, the SFC, during preparations for a campaign stop by Mbabazi in the western district of Ntungamo.
President Yoweri Museveni, incensed that Aine could dare manhandle what was supposed to be troops from the elite SFC, vowed his vengeance, warning that Mbabazi’s supporters had touched the anus of a leopard and would face the consequences.
Aine soon after was arrested and vanished from public view for several weeks amid rumours that he was dead.
This utterance by Museveni has since then become one of the most quoted and joked about.
Given the current uproar over the proposed move by the government to secure public and private land and lawfully compensate owners for it and then put it to use for major public works like road highways and railway lines, Museveni’s own leopard imagery might be worth appropriating.
Could Museveni himself have finally touched the leopard that is Ugandans’ most sensitive part, land?
As a grocery shop owner in Makindye asked this columnist last Thursday, will Museveni take the land or will land finally take him?
Meaning will he once again prevail in this matter or will land become the issue that finally angers and unites Ugandans against him in a critical mass?
Hundreds of thousands of voters can willingly take money in exchange for their ballot paper partly because state power feels distant from them and they think, anyway, it makes no difference who leads the country.
Ugandans and other people can be relatively indifferent to elective politics when their immediate personal security and especially economic livelihood are untouched.
Once people feel economically threatened, they become alert to public policy.
Land is such a deeply elemental feature of any society, be it industrial or agrarian-feudal.
It becomes much more emotive in a place like Uganda where it also doubles as the final resting place for the majority of the population.
Here is a situation that Museveni can’t manipulate using his tools of divide and rule. He can’t personalise it to past leaders, the Opposition political parties or the media.
He can’t hand out T-shirts or Shs20,000 notes in exchange for land. He is now dealing with the most important treasure that most Ugandans will ever own or hope to own.
Cynicism has so entrenched itself in the society, that few take the government or the President at their word.
Land is something whose financial, emotional and cultural value they understand.
The proposed giveaway of part of Mabira forest 10 years ago in 2007 was the first indication that Ugandans can take their geographical assets seriously enough to oppose the government and stage riots.
If a forest, whose main utility is to help regulate the climate, can impassion Ugandans that much how much more land with more immediate agricultural and other commercial utility?
Today, the largest number of court cases in the upcountry towns and districts revolve around land disputes.
The fact that Museveni has to personally tour the country to explain to the population the importance of the proposed land legislation shows two things.
The first is that even the President realises how emotive this matter is. The second is that his bloated government and Cabinet is shown for the ineffective entity it is.
With the largest Cabinet in Africa and a large public service sector, Museveni still cannot delegate to the line ministers.
No matter how long and how much he explains, the public will hear only one message: The government wants to grab their land.
Or rather: The thieves now want to steal our land, after stealing everything else that belonged to us.
Museveni, then, has become the boy who cried wolf once too often in jest until one day the wolf really did come but by then the villagers thought it was just another of his pranks.
After letting corruption and rule by impunity take on lives of their own for the last 30 years, it is too late now for anyone to believe that Museveni can be well-intentioned, even if he for once really means well.
Let’s watch how this land saga unfolds.
If it becomes obvious to Museveni from his consultation with politicians, the church, crowds at public rallies, the media and others with an interest in the country that this is the one policy he can’t win and he withdraws from it, he will have blinked.
It could embolden those who seek to conflate it and take the discussion to the question of the life presidency.