Evelyn Anite should be made an honorary general
Ms Evelyn Anite is a minister of some sort, but most Ugandans recognise her by her dizzying antics when pushing for the extension of President Museveni’s rule.
After gunning for a ‘sole (NRM) candidate’ position in favour of Mr Museveni during the 2016 presidential race, Ms Anite now wants the constitutional gate locking out 75-agers thrown open for 2021. Mr Museveni will be over 75.
Ms Anite’s reasoning is so transparent that no intelligent Ugandan should waste their time trying to argue with her, especially after she has proclaimed that even if the Constitution is changed 10 times, the military is on her side.
A subsequent disclaimer from the army leadership was as predictable as it is meaningless.
Age is wisdom. So, Gen Moses Ali, DP’s Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, and all those surviving former UPC bigwigs who became drunkards when Milton Obote was overthrown more than 30 years ago, can compete for the presidency in 2021.
Naturally, they will find Gen Museveni in the queue; first but not offside.
Ms Anite is reviled most harshly as a traitor by those from her northern region who are tired of Mr Museveni. Yet, I think, on balance, they could reinterpret her as a heroine.
Those who are old enough remember when Museveni and his Bush War comrades were young in age and in power; when youthful idealism was the reigning spirit; before the wisdom of old age took control.
The brutal armies of Idi Amin, Milton Obote and Tito Okello had fought each other, even as they fought alongside or against different rebel groups in a complex struggle for power. When the dust settled, Gen Museveni was the man of the moment.
Very significantly, political and military power had shifted from northern Uganda to the south.
Not entirely without justification, the new regime associated northern power with the brutality and dictatorship Ugandans had endured for more than 20 years.
In the propaganda of the day, the northern temperament was virtually synonymous with barbarism.
Even the faces of the resistance to Museveni’s rule – Alice Lakwena and Joseph Kony – reinforced the stigma by their oddness and extreme brutality.
When Museveni referred to past leaders as ‘primitive dictators’ and even ‘swine’, he probably did not include Yusuf Lule or Godfrey Binaisa; nor perhaps even the distinctly rough-edged Paulo Muwanga, under whom he (Museveni) had served as the vice chairman of the 1980 Military Commission government.
Liberation largely meant liberation from northern barbarism; from people who did not – and perhaps could not even – understand that a leader constitutionally comes in, does their job over a few years and peacefully leaves power; from leaders who had to be violently overthrown.
Ms Anite in a sense mocks the south by offering herself as the champion of a leader who is demonstrating that a southerner can want to keep power as desperately as the northerners before him; that for him, as for them, no puppet – be it a Nsubuga, or even an Abiriga, or an Anite – was too despised for an ally; and that he, too, considered military force a tool of his political agenda.
Some ask with contempt: Who is Anite to talk about opinions in the army?
Well, in Uganda you can sometimes reach your destination before making the journey to get there.
A visiting Col Gaddafi (RIP) once noticed the shortage of epaulettes on the shoulders of a young Ugandan soldier and promptly promoted him to a ‘major’.
Since then, the young man has attended various military colleges, fought many wars and is now a proper general.
Ms Evelyn Anite could start right away as an honorary general. The rest is easy.
For now, all she needs perhaps is to modify her smile. A voice expert helped the late Margaret Thatcher to completely change her voice. People of power do such things.
When very senior military officers smile, they etch subtle curves on their faces and show very little, if anything, of their teeth. Facial emotional expression is partly an art form, and she can master it. Otherwise uncharitable military officers might reach the wrong conclusion that the honorary general is empty-headed.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
