Museveni’s criticism of the West: Act of bravery or panic?

President Museveni with African leaders at the recent African Union summit in Kigali, Rwanda. FILE PHOTO

In neighbouring DR Congo, voters were supposed to be going to polls today; exactly 10 years since the resource-rich impoverished Central African nation held its first multi-party elections since 1960.
The 1960 elections that came shortly after independence from the Belgians saw Patrice Lumumba under his MNC party become prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president under his ABAKO party after reaching a compromise.
However, after only four months in office, Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba who in turn protested and likewise announced dismissal of the former from office, sparking off a political stalemate that prompted the army commander, Mobutu Sese Seko to seize power from the two.
History tellers have hinted before that both Belgium and the United States masterminded Lumumba’s removal and consequently his death.
Current president Joseph Kabila, who came to power in 2001 following the assassination of his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who led the resistance backed by Uganda and Rwanda against Mobutu’s 32-years one-party regime, announced in September that elections will be delayed until 2018.

See no evil, hear no evil in Africa
Congo’s story is quite familiar in Africa. Rather than changing governments, elections are usually more gruelling, let alone bruising.
In keeping up with the pan-African spirit, majority of African governments will turn a blind eye on any governance deficiency but be quick on calling for dialoguing when things go wrong, processes usually facilitated by Western governments.
More than 50 years after the first African country attained independence from their European masters, the continent remains entrapped in the imagination of foreign forces between two fragmented extremes.
One, that Africa exists as treasure pot, a source of vast land full of natural riches for the taking either surreptitiously or through doing business, and other extreme, that Africa needs saving; a place of disadvantaged souls where outsiders are seemingly obliged to offer helping hand of missionary gallantry.
However, according to Makerere University political science don, Dr Juma Okuku, the first upheavals in the early years of post-colonial Africa were looked at as merely isolated events rather than as forerunners of a turbulent future.
“All stories of coup d’états/plots or assassination of political leaders who were perceived as anti-establishment besides the element of opponents being greedy had an element of foreign intervention,” he says.

Of imperialism and African witness
This, of course, remains a subject of debate by political scientists, international relations scholars and others alike.
For example, is it right for one nation to advise another on how to run its own affairs? Or should big aid donors like the United States, European Union, China or even Russia be allowed to pump billions in African economies and just stand by and watch leaders mismanagement the continent?
In a missive woven with religious anecdotes and in a tone that at best expresses anguish of leader who grapples with prospect vulnerability, President Museveni this week made a case for “just wars” where Western intervention is reasonable and “unjust wars” where intervention is abhorrent.
“In the last 16 years, since the attack on the twin-towers in New York in 2001, the USA and the other Western countries have attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Of these wars by the West against independent and sovereign States, two were clearly wars of aggression; they were unjust wars,” he said.
“It is only the war in Afghanistan that was a just war because some confused group, called al-Qaeda, intoxicated with religious chauvinism, had carried out aggression against the USA. It was correct that the USA responded and dislodged the Talibans and their allies, Al-Qaeda, from Afghanistan. We all supported this.”
“In the end, these wars of aggression against sovereign states have generated human catastrophes that have few equals in the history of the world.”
What he, however, knows better but perhaps did not mention is that interests of Africans are not about to matter in such interventions. Western powers execute only interest-predicated interventions, whether unilateral or multilateral.
The interventions are executed to fulfil national policy objectives, but implied in diction of saving people’s lives, guaranteeing democratic aspirations and ending oppression.
The recent former US secretary of state Hilary Clinton scandal and WikiLeaks cables offered some insight into the real motive behind the ouster of Col Muammar Gaddafi who was eventually murdered by Western-backed rebels on October 20, 2011.
Seven months earlier, the NATO-led coalition forces of France, UK and US commenced military intervention in Libya, apparently to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution authorising the international community to “take all necessary measures” to protect the civilian population in wake of the civil war that had exploded as part of the Arab Spring uprising that swept through several Arab states.
That still notwithstanding, President Museveni forgot to mention that is was partly Gaddafi’s attempt to cling to power after 41-years that gathered a host of enemies both home and away, which spiralled into civil war that was preceded by small protests.
Matters were only made worse by the gravity of arrogance and defiance that he exuded even in wake of growing protests calling for sweeping reforms.
President Museveni, who came to power three decades ago, is a student of Gaddafi’s school of thought that revolutionaries do not relinquish power.
In his missive the President said he fought the former “two times: 1972 and 1979. I needed no lectures on the positive and negative points of Gaddafi.”
However, in the immediate aftermath of civil war in 2011, President Museveni in an opinion piece published by this newspaper, scolded Gaddafi for, among others, over-involving himself in the internal matters of other countries, overruling other leaders in the AU and promoting terrorism.
The deputy executive director of the Uganda Media Centre, Col Shaban Bantariza, describes Mr Museveni’s missive as “an ideologically correct analysis”.
“Okay, let us assume Gaddafi was bad but how was Libya under him and where is it without him?” he notes. “If you didn’t get the point well, what President Museveni was pointing out is that habit of Western countries over-using their superiority without applying logic has far reaching consequences.”

Double-standards, contradictions or sensing panic?
“Of course we cannot stop them from offering us a helping hand, which we need but at the same time if we are to develop they should allow us to find solutions to some of our problems,” Col Bantariza notes.
“In the case of Libya, the African Union had requested the US, UK and France to allow it undertake some interventions but they refused because they had a different agenda.”
Yet both the West and African leaders are guilty when it comes to double standards. Dr Okuku, in summary, describes the President’s missive as a pack of “irony” and “full of contradictions”.
“It is true Western concerns are coupled with their interests but who is fighting their proxy wars in Somalia, South Sudan and Central African Republic to remain relevant in their eyes?” Dr Okuku wonders.
“In return they will keep a blind eye on his stay in power and other misdeeds.”
Dr Okuku cites the period in the run up to the presidential elections early this year where different actors called for political reforms to ensure a same-level playing field and refine the country’s political system but which fell on deaf ears.
“Then how can he say local factions should be encouraged to reach compromise rather than getting foreign sponsors to suppress and ignore their domestic rivals. Don’t you find that ironic?” he wonders.
But Col Bantariza, however, says fostering or trying to secure compromises in given situations does not make miracles.
“How many compromise deals have you heard being secured for the conflicts in the Middle East but are the conflicts over? That still doesn’t mean the disagreeing factions should not dialogue,” he says.
On the irony of Mr Museveni’s missive calling for dialogue between local forces yet his government has rejected many demands by the Opposition, Col Bantariza, says: “The government sometimes ignores voices from sections of the public because what they are suggesting is either narrow, selfish and is based on emotions.”
“While it is possible that Iraq and Libya may have turned into tragic-states on the uncalculated intervention of the West, from analysis of a list of countries where leaders don’t want to leave power besides wielding absolute control without regard for institutionalised leadership, a riotous future is usually what follows,” Bantariza says.
He concludes by saying indeed, like President Museveni quoted from the Book of Galatians (Chapter 6, versus7), “Whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap.”
In neighbouring DR Congo, voters were supposed to be going to polls today; exactly 10 years since the resource-rich impoverished Central African nation held its first multi-party elections since 1960.
The 1960 elections that came shortly after independence from the Belgians saw Patrice Lumumba under his MNC party become prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president under his ABAKO party after reaching a compromise.
However, after only four months in office, Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba who in turn protested and likewise announced dismissal of the former from office, sparking off a political stalemate that prompted the army commander, Mobutu Sese Seko to seize power from the two.
History tellers have hinted before that both Belgium and the United States masterminded Lumumba’s removal and consequently his death.
Current president Joseph Kabila, who came to power in 2001 following the assassination of his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who led the resistance backed by Uganda and Rwanda against Mobutu’s 32-years one-party regime, announced in September that elections will be delayed until 2018.

See no evil, hear no evil in Africa
Congo’s story is quite familiar in Africa. Rather than changing governments, elections are usually more gruelling, let alone bruising.
In keeping up with the pan-African spirit, majority of African governments will turn a blind eye on any governance deficiency but be quick on calling for dialoguing when things go wrong, processes usually facilitated by Western governments.
More than 50 years after the first African country attained independence from their European masters, the continent remains entrapped in the imagination of foreign forces between two fragmented extremes.
One, that Africa exists as treasure pot, a source of vast land full of natural riches for the taking either surreptitiously or through doing business, and other extreme, that Africa needs saving; a place of disadvantaged souls where outsiders are seemingly obliged to offer helping hand of missionary gallantry.
However, according to Makerere University political science don, Dr Juma Okuku, the first upheavals in the early years of post-colonial Africa were looked at as merely isolated events rather than as forerunners of a turbulent future.
“All stories of coup d’états/plots or assassination of political leaders who were perceived as anti-establishment besides the element of opponents being greedy had an element of foreign intervention,” he says.

Of imperialism and African witness
This, of course, remains a subject of debate by political scientists, international relations scholars and others alike.
For example, is it right for one nation to advise another on how to run its own affairs? Or should big aid donors like the United States, European Union, China or even Russia be allowed to pump billions in African economies and just stand by and watch leaders mismanagement the continent?
In a missive woven with religious anecdotes and in a tone that at best expresses anguish of leader who grapples with prospect vulnerability, President Museveni this week made a case for “just wars” where Western intervention is reasonable and “unjust wars” where intervention is abhorrent.
“In the last 16 years, since the attack on the twin-towers in New York in 2001, the USA and the other Western countries have attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Of these wars by the West against independent and sovereign States, two were clearly wars of aggression; they were unjust wars,” he said.
“It is only the war in Afghanistan that was a just war because some confused group, called al-Qaeda, intoxicated with religious chauvinism, had carried out aggression against the USA. It was correct that the USA responded and dislodged the Talibans and their allies, Al-Qaeda, from Afghanistan. We all supported this.”
“In the end, these wars of aggression against sovereign states have generated human catastrophes that have few equals in the history of the world.”
What he, however, knows better but perhaps did not mention is that interests of Africans are not about to matter in such interventions. Western powers execute only interest-predicated interventions, whether unilateral or multilateral.
The interventions are executed to fulfil national policy objectives, but implied in diction of saving people’s lives, guaranteeing democratic aspirations and ending oppression.
The recent former US secretary of state Hilary Clinton scandal and WikiLeaks cables offered some insight into the real motive behind the ouster of Col Muammar Gaddafi who was eventually murdered by Western-backed rebels on October 20, 2011.
Seven months earlier, the NATO-led coalition forces of France, UK and US commenced military intervention in Libya, apparently to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution authorising the international community to “take all necessary measures” to protect the civilian population in wake of the civil war that had exploded as part of the Arab Spring uprising that swept through several Arab states.
That still notwithstanding, President Museveni forgot to mention that is was partly Gaddafi’s attempt to cling to power after 41-years that gathered a host of enemies both home and away, which spiralled into civil war that was preceded by small protests.
Matters were only made worse by the gravity of arrogance and defiance that he exuded even in wake of growing protests calling for sweeping reforms.
President Museveni, who came to power three decades ago, is a student of Gaddafi’s school of thought that revolutionaries do not relinquish power.
In his missive the President said he fought the former “two times: 1972 and 1979. I needed no lectures on the positive and negative points of Gaddafi.”
However, in the immediate aftermath of civil war in 2011, President Museveni in an opinion piece published by this newspaper, scolded Gaddafi for, among others, over-involving himself in the internal matters of other countries, overruling other leaders in the AU and promoting terrorism.
The deputy executive director of the Uganda Media Centre, Col Shaban Bantariza, describes Mr Museveni’s missive as “an ideologically correct analysis”.
“Okay, let us assume Gaddafi was bad but how was Libya under him and where is it without him?” he notes. “If you didn’t get the point well, what President Museveni was pointing out is that habit of Western countries over-using their superiority without applying logic has far reaching consequences.”

Double-standards, contradictions or sensing panic?
“Of course we cannot stop them from offering us a helping hand, which we need but at the same time if we are to develop they should allow us to find solutions to some of our problems,” Col Bantariza notes.
“In the case of Libya, the African Union had requested the US, UK and France to allow it undertake some interventions but they refused because they had a different agenda.”
Yet both the West and African leaders are guilty when it comes to double standards. Dr Okuku, in summary, describes the President’s missive as a pack of “irony” and “full of contradictions”.
“It is true Western concerns are coupled with their interests but who is fighting their proxy wars in Somalia, South Sudan and Central African Republic to remain relevant in their eyes?” Dr Okuku wonders.
“In return they will keep a blind eye on his stay in power and other misdeeds.”
Dr Okuku cites the period in the run up to the presidential elections early this year where different actors called for political reforms to ensure a same-level playing field and refine the country’s political system but which fell on deaf ears.
“Then how can he say local factions should be encouraged to reach compromise rather than getting foreign sponsors to suppress and ignore their domestic rivals. Don’t you find that ironic?” he wonders.
But Col Bantariza, however, says fostering or trying to secure compromises in given situations does not make miracles.
“How many compromise deals have you heard being secured for the conflicts in the Middle East but are the conflicts over? That still doesn’t mean the disagreeing factions should not dialogue,” he says.
On the irony of Mr Museveni’s missive calling for dialogue between local forces yet his government has rejected many demands by the Opposition, Col Bantariza, says: “The government sometimes ignores voices from sections of the public because what they are suggesting is either narrow, selfish and is based on emotions.”
“While it is possible that Iraq and Libya may have turned into tragic-states on the uncalculated intervention of the West, from analysis of a list of countries where leaders don’t want to leave power besides wielding absolute control without regard for institutionalised leadership, a riotous future is usually what follows,” Bantariza says.
He concludes by saying indeed, like President Museveni quoted from the Book of Galatians (Chapter 6, versus7), “Whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap.”
In neighbouring DR Congo, voters were supposed to be going to polls today; exactly 10 years since the resource-rich impoverished Central African nation held its first multi-party elections since 1960.
The 1960 elections that came shortly after independence from the Belgians saw Patrice Lumumba under his MNC party become prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president under his ABAKO party after reaching a compromise.
However, after only four months in office, Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba who in turn protested and likewise announced dismissal of the former from office, sparking off a political stalemate that prompted the army commander, Mobutu Sese Seko to seize power from the two.
History tellers have hinted before that both Belgium and the United States masterminded Lumumba’s removal and consequently his death.
Current president Joseph Kabila, who came to power in 2001 following the assassination of his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who led the resistance backed by Uganda and Rwanda against Mobutu’s 32-years one-party regime, announced in September that elections will be delayed until 2018.

See no evil, hear no evil in Africa
Congo’s story is quite familiar in Africa. Rather than changing governments, elections are usually more gruelling, let alone bruising.
In keeping up with the pan-African spirit, majority of African governments will turn a blind eye on any governance deficiency but be quick on calling for dialoguing when things go wrong, processes usually facilitated by Western governments.
More than 50 years after the first African country attained independence from their European masters, the continent remains entrapped in the imagination of foreign forces between two fragmented extremes.
One, that Africa exists as treasure pot, a source of vast land full of natural riches for the taking either surreptitiously or through doing business, and other extreme, that Africa needs saving; a place of disadvantaged souls where outsiders are seemingly obliged to offer helping hand of missionary gallantry.
However, according to Makerere University political science don, Dr Juma Okuku, the first upheavals in the early years of post-colonial Africa were looked at as merely isolated events rather than as forerunners of a turbulent future.
“All stories of coup d’états/plots or assassination of political leaders who were perceived as anti-establishment besides the element of opponents being greedy had an element of foreign intervention,” he says.

Of imperialism and African witness
This, of course, remains a subject of debate by political scientists, international relations scholars and others alike.
For example, is it right for one nation to advise another on how to run its own affairs? Or should big aid donors like the United States, European Union, China or even Russia be allowed to pump billions in African economies and just stand by and watch leaders mismanagement the continent?
In a missive woven with religious anecdotes and in a tone that at best expresses anguish of leader who grapples with prospect vulnerability, President Museveni this week made a case for “just wars” where Western intervention is reasonable and “unjust wars” where intervention is abhorrent.
“In the last 16 years, since the attack on the twin-towers in New York in 2001, the USA and the other Western countries have attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Of these wars by the West against independent and sovereign States, two were clearly wars of aggression; they were unjust wars,” he said.
“It is only the war in Afghanistan that was a just war because some confused group, called al-Qaeda, intoxicated with religious chauvinism, had carried out aggression against the USA. It was correct that the USA responded and dislodged the Talibans and their allies, Al-Qaeda, from Afghanistan. We all supported this.”
“In the end, these wars of aggression against sovereign states have generated human catastrophes that have few equals in the history of the world.”
What he, however, knows better but perhaps did not mention is that interests of Africans are not about to matter in such interventions. Western powers execute only interest-predicated interventions, whether unilateral or multilateral.
The interventions are executed to fulfil national policy objectives, but implied in diction of saving people’s lives, guaranteeing democratic aspirations and ending oppression.
The recent former US secretary of state Hilary Clinton scandal and WikiLeaks cables offered some insight into the real motive behind the ouster of Col Muammar Gaddafi who was eventually murdered by Western-backed rebels on October 20, 2011.
Seven months earlier, the NATO-led coalition forces of France, UK and US commenced military intervention in Libya, apparently to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution authorising the international community to “take all necessary measures” to protect the civilian population in wake of the civil war that had exploded as part of the Arab Spring uprising that swept through several Arab states.
That still notwithstanding, President Museveni forgot to mention that is was partly Gaddafi’s attempt to cling to power after 41-years that gathered a host of enemies both home and away, which spiralled into civil war that was preceded by small protests.
Matters were only made worse by the gravity of arrogance and defiance that he exuded even in wake of growing protests calling for sweeping reforms.
President Museveni, who came to power three decades ago, is a student of Gaddafi’s school of thought that revolutionaries do not relinquish power.
In his missive the President said he fought the former “two times: 1972 and 1979. I needed no lectures on the positive and negative points of Gaddafi.”
However, in the immediate aftermath of civil war in 2011, President Museveni in an opinion piece published by this newspaper, scolded Gaddafi for, among others, over-involving himself in the internal matters of other countries, overruling other leaders in the AU and promoting terrorism.
The deputy executive director of the Uganda Media Centre, Col Shaban Bantariza, describes Mr Museveni’s missive as “an ideologically correct analysis”.
“Okay, let us assume Gaddafi was bad but how was Libya under him and where is it without him?” he notes. “If you didn’t get the point well, what President Museveni was pointing out is that habit of Western countries over-using their superiority without applying logic has far reaching consequences.”

Double-standards, contradictions or sensing panic?
“Of course we cannot stop them from offering us a helping hand, which we need but at the same time if we are to develop they should allow us to find solutions to some of our problems,” Col Bantariza notes.
“In the case of Libya, the African Union had requested the US, UK and France to allow it undertake some interventions but they refused because they had a different agenda.”
Yet both the West and African leaders are guilty when it comes to double standards. Dr Okuku, in summary, describes the President’s missive as a pack of “irony” and “full of contradictions”.
“It is true Western concerns are coupled with their interests but who is fighting their proxy wars in Somalia, South Sudan and Central African Republic to remain relevant in their eyes?” Dr Okuku wonders.
“In return they will keep a blind eye on his stay in power and other misdeeds.”
Dr Okuku cites the period in the run up to the presidential elections early this year where different actors called for political reforms to ensure a same-level playing field and refine the country’s political system but which fell on deaf ears.
“Then how can he say local factions should be encouraged to reach compromise rather than getting foreign sponsors to suppress and ignore their domestic rivals. Don’t you find that ironic?” he wonders.
But Col Bantariza, however, says fostering or trying to secure compromises in given situations does not make miracles.
“How many compromise deals have you heard being secured for the conflicts in the Middle East but are the conflicts over? That still doesn’t mean the disagreeing factions should not dialogue,” he says.
On the irony of Mr Museveni’s missive calling for dialogue between local forces yet his government has rejected many demands by the Opposition, Col Bantariza, says: “The government sometimes ignores voices from sections of the public because what they are suggesting is either narrow, selfish and is based on emotions.”
“While it is possible that Iraq and Libya may have turned into tragic-states on the uncalculated intervention of the West, from analysis of a list of countries where leaders don’t want to leave power besides wielding absolute control without regard for institutionalised leadership, a riotous future is usually what follows,” Bantariza says.
He concludes by saying indeed, like President Museveni quoted from the Book of Galatians (Chapter 6, versus7), “Whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap.”
In neighbouring DR Congo, voters were supposed to be going to polls today; exactly 10 years since the resource-rich impoverished Central African nation held its first multi-party elections since 1960.
The 1960 elections that came shortly after independence from the Belgians saw Patrice Lumumba under his MNC party become prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president under his ABAKO party after reaching a compromise.
However, after only four months in office, Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba who in turn protested and likewise announced dismissal of the former from office, sparking off a political stalemate that prompted the army commander, Mobutu Sese Seko to seize power from the two.
History tellers have hinted before that both Belgium and the United States masterminded Lumumba’s removal and consequently his death.
Current president Joseph Kabila, who came to power in 2001 following the assassination of his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who led the resistance backed by Uganda and Rwanda against Mobutu’s 32-years one-party regime, announced in September that elections will be delayed until 2018.

See no evil, hear no evil in Africa
Congo’s story is quite familiar in Africa. Rather than changing governments, elections are usually more gruelling, let alone bruising.
In keeping up with the pan-African spirit, majority of African governments will turn a blind eye on any governance deficiency but be quick on calling for dialoguing when things go wrong, processes usually facilitated by Western governments.
More than 50 years after the first African country attained independence from their European masters, the continent remains entrapped in the imagination of foreign forces between two fragmented extremes.
One, that Africa exists as treasure pot, a source of vast land full of natural riches for the taking either surreptitiously or through doing business, and other extreme, that Africa needs saving; a place of disadvantaged souls where outsiders are seemingly obliged to offer helping hand of missionary gallantry.
However, according to Makerere University political science don, Dr Juma Okuku, the first upheavals in the early years of post-colonial Africa were looked at as merely isolated events rather than as forerunners of a turbulent future.
“All stories of coup d’états/plots or assassination of political leaders who were perceived as anti-establishment besides the element of opponents being greedy had an element of foreign intervention,” he says.

Of imperialism and African witness
This, of course, remains a subject of debate by political scientists, international relations scholars and others alike.
For example, is it right for one nation to advise another on how to run its own affairs? Or should big aid donors like the United States, European Union, China or even Russia be allowed to pump billions in African economies and just stand by and watch leaders mismanagement the continent?
In a missive woven with religious anecdotes and in a tone that at best expresses anguish of leader who grapples with prospect vulnerability, President Museveni this week made a case for “just wars” where Western intervention is reasonable and “unjust wars” where intervention is abhorrent.
“In the last 16 years, since the attack on the twin-towers in New York in 2001, the USA and the other Western countries have attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Of these wars by the West against independent and sovereign States, two were clearly wars of aggression; they were unjust wars,” he said.
“It is only the war in Afghanistan that was a just war because some confused group, called al-Qaeda, intoxicated with religious chauvinism, had carried out aggression against the USA. It was correct that the USA responded and dislodged the Talibans and their allies, Al-Qaeda, from Afghanistan. We all supported this.”
“In the end, these wars of aggression against sovereign states have generated human catastrophes that have few equals in the history of the world.”
What he, however, knows better but perhaps did not mention is that interests of Africans are not about to matter in such interventions. Western powers execute only interest-predicated interventions, whether unilateral or multilateral.
The interventions are executed to fulfil national policy objectives, but implied in diction of saving people’s lives, guaranteeing democratic aspirations and ending oppression.
The recent former US secretary of state Hilary Clinton scandal and WikiLeaks cables offered some insight into the real motive behind the ouster of Col Muammar Gaddafi who was eventually murdered by Western-backed rebels on October 20, 2011.
Seven months earlier, the NATO-led coalition forces of France, UK and US commenced military intervention in Libya, apparently to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution authorising the international community to “take all necessary measures” to protect the civilian population in wake of the civil war that had exploded as part of the Arab Spring uprising that swept through several Arab states.
That still notwithstanding, President Museveni forgot to mention that is was partly Gaddafi’s attempt to cling to power after 41-years that gathered a host of enemies both home and away, which spiralled into civil war that was preceded by small protests.
Matters were only made worse by the gravity of arrogance and defiance that he exuded even in wake of growing protests calling for sweeping reforms.
President Museveni, who came to power three decades ago, is a student of Gaddafi’s school of thought that revolutionaries do not relinquish power.
In his missive the President said he fought the former “two times: 1972 and 1979. I needed no lectures on the positive and negative points of Gaddafi.”
However, in the immediate aftermath of civil war in 2011, President Museveni in an opinion piece published by this newspaper, scolded Gaddafi for, among others, over-involving himself in the internal matters of other countries, overruling other leaders in the AU and promoting terrorism.
The deputy executive director of the Uganda Media Centre, Col Shaban Bantariza, describes Mr Museveni’s missive as “an ideologically correct analysis”.
“Okay, let us assume Gaddafi was bad but how was Libya under him and where is it without him?” he notes. “If you didn’t get the point well, what President Museveni was pointing out is that habit of Western countries over-using their superiority without applying logic has far reaching consequences.”

Double-standards, contradictions or sensing panic?
“Of course we cannot stop them from offering us a helping hand, which we need but at the same time if we are to develop they should allow us to find solutions to some of our problems,” Col Bantariza notes.
“In the case of Libya, the African Union had requested the US, UK and France to allow it undertake some interventions but they refused because they had a different agenda.”
Yet both the West and African leaders are guilty when it comes to double standards. Dr Okuku, in summary, describes the President’s missive as a pack of “irony” and “full of contradictions”.
“It is true Western concerns are coupled with their interests but who is fighting their proxy wars in Somalia, South Sudan and Central African Republic to remain relevant in their eyes?” Dr Okuku wonders.
“In return they will keep a blind eye on his stay in power and other misdeeds.”
Dr Okuku cites the period in the run up to the presidential elections early this year where different actors called for political reforms to ensure a same-level playing field and refine the country’s political system but which fell on deaf ears.
“Then how can he say local factions should be encouraged to reach compromise rather than getting foreign sponsors to suppress and ignore their domestic rivals. Don’t you find that ironic?” he wonders.
But Col Bantariza, however, says fostering or trying to secure compromises in given situations does not make miracles.
“How many compromise deals have you heard being secured for the conflicts in the Middle East but are the conflicts over? That still doesn’t mean the disagreeing factions should not dialogue,” he says.
On the irony of Mr Museveni’s missive calling for dialogue between local forces yet his government has rejected many demands by the Opposition, Col Bantariza, says: “The government sometimes ignores voices from sections of the public because what they are suggesting is either narrow, selfish and is based on emotions.”
“While it is possible that Iraq and Libya may have turned into tragic-states on the uncalculated intervention of the West, from analysis of a list of countries where leaders don’t want to leave power besides wielding absolute control without regard for institutionalised leadership, a riotous future is usually what follows,” Bantariza says.
He concludes by saying indeed, like President Museveni quoted from the Book of Galatians (Chapter 6, versus7), “Whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap.”

In neighbouring DR Congo, voters were supposed to be going to polls today; exactly 10 years since the resource-rich impoverished Central African nation held its first multi-party elections since 1960.
The 1960 elections that came shortly after independence from the Belgians saw Patrice Lumumba under his MNC party become prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president under his ABAKO party after reaching a compromise.
However, after only four months in office, Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba who in turn protested and likewise announced dismissal of the former from office, sparking off a political stalemate that prompted the army commander, Mobutu Sese Seko to seize power from the two.
History tellers have hinted before that both Belgium and the United States masterminded Lumumba’s removal and consequently his death.
Current president Joseph Kabila, who came to power in 2001 following the assassination of his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who led the resistance backed by Uganda and Rwanda against Mobutu’s 32-years one-party regime, announced in September that elections will be delayed until 2018.

See no evil, hear no evil in Africa
Congo’s story is quite familiar in Africa. Rather than changing governments, elections are usually more gruelling, let alone bruising.
In keeping up with the pan-African spirit, majority of African governments will turn a blind eye on any governance deficiency but be quick on calling for dialoguing when things go wrong, processes usually facilitated by Western governments.
More than 50 years after the first African country attained independence from their European masters, the continent remains entrapped in the imagination of foreign forces between two fragmented extremes.
One, that Africa exists as treasure pot, a source of vast land full of natural riches for the taking either surreptitiously or through doing business, and other extreme, that Africa needs saving; a place of disadvantaged souls where outsiders are seemingly obliged to offer helping hand of missionary gallantry.
However, according to Makerere University political science don, Dr Juma Okuku, the first upheavals in the early years of post-colonial Africa were looked at as merely isolated events rather than as forerunners of a turbulent future.
“All stories of coup d’états/plots or assassination of political leaders who were perceived as anti-establishment besides the element of opponents being greedy had an element of foreign intervention,” he says.

Of imperialism and African witness
This, of course, remains a subject of debate by political scientists, international relations scholars and others alike.
For example, is it right for one nation to advise another on how to run its own affairs? Or should big aid donors like the United States, European Union, China or even Russia be allowed to pump billions in African economies and just stand by and watch leaders mismanagement the continent?
In a missive woven with religious anecdotes and in a tone that at best expresses anguish of leader who grapples with prospect vulnerability, President Museveni this week made a case for “just wars” where Western intervention is reasonable and “unjust wars” where intervention is abhorrent.
“In the last 16 years, since the attack on the twin-towers in New York in 2001, the USA and the other Western countries have attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Of these wars by the West against independent and sovereign States, two were clearly wars of aggression; they were unjust wars,” he said.
“It is only the war in Afghanistan that was a just war because some confused group, called al-Qaeda, intoxicated with religious chauvinism, had carried out aggression against the USA. It was correct that the USA responded and dislodged the Talibans and their allies, Al-Qaeda, from Afghanistan. We all supported this.”
“In the end, these wars of aggression against sovereign states have generated human catastrophes that have few equals in the history of the world.”
What he, however, knows better but perhaps did not mention is that interests of Africans are not about to matter in such interventions. Western powers execute only interest-predicated interventions, whether unilateral or multilateral.
The interventions are executed to fulfil national policy objectives, but implied in diction of saving people’s lives, guaranteeing democratic aspirations and ending oppression.
The recent former US secretary of state Hilary Clinton scandal and WikiLeaks cables offered some insight into the real motive behind the ouster of Col Muammar Gaddafi who was eventually murdered by Western-backed rebels on October 20, 2011.
Seven months earlier, the NATO-led coalition forces of France, UK and US commenced military intervention in Libya, apparently to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution authorising the international community to “take all necessary measures” to protect the civilian population in wake of the civil war that had exploded as part of the Arab Spring uprising that swept through several Arab states.
That still notwithstanding, President Museveni forgot to mention that is was partly Gaddafi’s attempt to cling to power after 41-years that gathered a host of enemies both home and away, which spiralled into civil war that was preceded by small protests.
Matters were only made worse by the gravity of arrogance and defiance that he exuded even in wake of growing protests calling for sweeping reforms.
President Museveni, who came to power three decades ago, is a student of Gaddafi’s school of thought that revolutionaries do not relinquish power.
In his missive the President said he fought the former “two times: 1972 and 1979. I needed no lectures on the positive and negative points of Gaddafi.”
However, in the immediate aftermath of civil war in 2011, President Museveni in an opinion piece published by this newspaper, scolded Gaddafi for, among others, over-involving himself in the internal matters of other countries, overruling other leaders in the AU and promoting terrorism.
The deputy executive director of the Uganda Media Centre, Col Shaban Bantariza, describes Mr Museveni’s missive as “an ideologically correct analysis”.
“Okay, let us assume Gaddafi was bad but how was Libya under him and where is it without him?” he notes. “If you didn’t get the point well, what President Museveni was pointing out is that habit of Western countries over-using their superiority without applying logic has far reaching consequences.”

Double-standards, contradictions or sensing panic?
“Of course we cannot stop them from offering us a helping hand, which we need but at the same time if we are to develop they should allow us to find solutions to some of our problems,” Col Bantariza notes.
“In the case of Libya, the African Union had requested the US, UK and France to allow it undertake some interventions but they refused because they had a different agenda.”
Yet both the West and African leaders are guilty when it comes to double standards. Dr Okuku, in summary, describes the President’s missive as a pack of “irony” and “full of contradictions”.
“It is true Western concerns are coupled with their interests but who is fighting their proxy wars in Somalia, South Sudan and Central African Republic to remain relevant in their eyes?” Dr Okuku wonders.
“In return they will keep a blind eye on his stay in power and other misdeeds.”
Dr Okuku cites the period in the run up to the presidential elections early this year where different actors called for political reforms to ensure a same-level playing field and refine the country’s political system but which fell on deaf ears.
“Then how can he say local factions should be encouraged to reach compromise rather than getting foreign sponsors to suppress and ignore their domestic rivals. Don’t you find that ironic?” he wonders.
But Col Bantariza, however, says fostering or trying to secure compromises in given situations does not make miracles.
“How many compromise deals have you heard being secured for the conflicts in the Middle East but are the conflicts over? That still doesn’t mean the disagreeing factions should not dialogue,” he says.
On the irony of Mr Museveni’s missive calling for dialogue between local forces yet his government has rejected many demands by the Opposition, Col Bantariza, says: “The government sometimes ignores voices from sections of the public because what they are suggesting is either narrow, selfish and is based on emotions.”
“While it is possible that Iraq and Libya may have turned into tragic-states on the uncalculated intervention of the West, from analysis of a list of countries where leaders don’t want to leave power besides wielding absolute control without regard for institutionalised leadership, a riotous future is usually what follows,” Bantariza says.
He concludes by saying indeed, like President Museveni quoted from the Book of Galatians (Chapter 6, versus7), “Whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap.”