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A snapshot of Uganda's past and current regimes and their key result areas

What you need to know:

  • This biography, consisting of biographies, is the literary equivalent of a group discount that you can count on to keep your attention riveted to each page.
  • It is an invaluable guide to the stewardships, if you will, of Ugandan leaders from Benedicto Kiwanuka to Yoweri Museveni. 

Let us do the Maths. Uganda has had nine presidents since 1962. That, in a functioning democracy, would imply seven-year term of office for each. Well, not necessarily.

The Central African Republic, Burundi, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea all have seven-year term limits for their presidencies, but they can hardly be described as anything, but despotic. Besides, in Uganda’s case, our 63 years of independence have mostly been languishing under the weight of President Museveni’s rule.

However, this fact does not detract from the value of the volume, “Uganda’s Presidents: An Illustrated Biography”.

It is surely an invaluable guide to the stewardships, if you will, of Ugandan leaders from Benedicto Kiwanuka to Yoweri Museveni. Even though its preface omits Kiwanuka as a head of state, stating that we had eight heads of state and designating Kiwanuka as Chief Minister.

Allied to that, it adds that Paulo Sedugge Muwanga was not technically a head of state. But it still has an account of the nine men who have steered the Uganda ship of state across the high seas of political turbulence we have experienced in this country since 1961.

We cannot run through all the biographies of all the Ugandan leaders in this book, so we will just give you snapshots of the regimes of a few of them.

Benedicto Kiwanuka, 1961-1962

His one-year tenure was viewed by the editors as positive, possibly because it was too short, too soon. After the death of his father in 1940, Kiwanuka’s family was plunged into penury. So he was forced to join the King’s African Rifles (KAR) in 1941.

His KAR training “took him to Kenya in July 1942 so as to provide for his family and Egypt in August 1943. He also served in Palestine that same year,” says his biography. 

Fast forward to September 1972 when a Tanzanian Intelligence Officer claimed in a March 1974 edition of Drum Magazine that while he was held at Makindye Military Police Barracks, he witnessed Kiwanuka’s murder. Amin’s government account of Kiwanuka’s disappearance is captured here, too. 

Apollo Milton Obote, Prime Minister 1962-66, President 1966-71, President 1981-1985

If leadership was his goal, he scored a hattrick. However, his leadership was marred by conflict and upheaval. His troubles really began with the Mengo Crisis. The book gives us his government’s version of this nail-biter.

“The Kabaka had 20 men under arms and he himself was the 21st man armed and trained. Mengo did not have an intelligence unit and as such they got unreliable information and were usually taken unawares by news,” reads the official version, in part.

The rest is history in that it ensured that Obote’s subsequent regimes were history. The man never lived down this crisis. It stalked him till his dying day and, by many accounts, is not interred with his bones.

Yusuf Kironde Lule, President 1979

He only lasted 68 days in office. Could his failure to rule substantively be down to DNA?

“Lule became one of the first native lecturers at Makerere [University]. In his scholarly research, Lule drew a framework for measuring the IQ of Africans. 

Apparently, the European IQ measurement gave Africans very low intelligence. At Makerere, Lule again betrayed fellow natives resisting staff racial inequalities/segregation,” reads part of his biography here.

He was a rabid anticommunist, at least in 1953, and he issued a statement appreciating British rule even as many Ugandans boycotted Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Uganda in 1954 during the Kabaka Crisis which saw Kabaka Edward Mutesa deposed in 1953. 

This biography, consisting of biographies, is the literary equivalent of a group discount that you can count on to keep your attention riveted to each page.