Why history of flip-flopping might come back to haunt Tumukunde

It’s now seven months since former guerrilla Lt Gen Henry Tumukunde declared his aspiration to stand for president and a lot has happened.

He was charged with treason and after months granted bail. Even Covid-19 set in and political mass gatherings have been virtually banned, meaning his political work has been limited. Tumukunde’s strategy has been at best muddled.

When he was granted bail in May, he asked for the postponement of the elections on grounds that people can’t meet following the ban on gatherings, but this newspaper understands that he has been clandestinely meeting Opposition groups and seeking an alliance of sorts but with limited success.

In an effort to reinvigorate his seemingly faltering campaign, Tumukunde on Wednesday launched a pressure group he dubbed “Renewed Uganda” with the slogan “Kisoboka,” loosely translated as “it’s possible.”

The colourful function organised at the former spy chief’s office in the luxuriant Kololo suburb was graced by a sizeable crowd who included former Kabarole Woman Member of Parliament Beatrice Kiraso, chairman Boda Boda Association of Uganda Charles Ndugwa, socio-political commentator Frank Gashumba, among other people.

Though in rolling out his agenda Tumukunde promised to focus his energies on the youth who form the majority of Uganda’s population, the women and boda boda cyclists, analysts aren’t convinced that he can mount a serious presidential challenge since many in the Opposition don’t trust him.

“He has fallen out with Museveni many times,” Mr Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a political-historian and a senior lecturer at Makerere University, explains. “But keeps on going back. So people are asking what if we support him and then he goes back?”

Though he ended up performing appallingly in the 2016 presidential elections, when former prime minister Amama Mbabazi declared his bid to run for the presidency in 2015, excitement ensued within some Opposition ranks. This hasn’t been the case with Tumukunde whose wife, Stella Rubarenzya, is a niece to First Lady Janet Museveni.
“It was because Mbabazi was coming out [of the NRM] for the first time,” Ndebesa says. “But with Tumukunde, it has been several times and then he goes back and participates in enabling the regime to shrink political space. That’s why there is no excitement. He isn’t for opening up political space. He is against opening up political space.”

On April 18, 2013, Tumukunde, then a Brigadier, was a happy man after the General Court Martial (GCM) then chaired by the witty Maj Gen Fred Tolit affirmed him a free man.

That judgment had ended eight trying years that included a meandering trial and 18 months of imprisonment in the officers’ mess, Kololo, over charges of spreading harmful propaganda and military misconduct.

An officer convicted of conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline of the army is liable to a sentence ranging between a caution and dismissal from the army with disgrace while if found guilty of spreading harmful propaganda, an officer can be sentenced to death or life in prison, according to the UPDF Act.

While Tumukunde, who has in the past headed both the Chieftaincy of Military intelligence (CMI) and Internal Security Organisation (ISO), was found guilty of conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline in the army, Tolit only handed out a light sentence – a “severe reprimand”.

Tumukunde’s troubles stemmed from his 2005 appearance on CBS and Radio One. On both radio stations, he voiced his disenchantment with the manner in which Museveni was managing the country.

On CBS’s Palamenti Yammwe programme, presented by Meddie Nsereko, Tumukunde said: “I want to retire from the army but they are not releasing me.”

At the time the prickly issue of lifting the presidential term limits had put the country on tenterhooks but that didn’t stop Tumukunde, a serving military officer, from commenting on it.

“Changing the Constitution has a terrible history in Uganda. Obote changed it and you saw the outcome, it started the chain of so many problems in the country,” he said.

To rub salt into the wound, Tumukunde invoked a Luganda proverb, “Gw’owonya eggere y’alikusambya [the foot you save is what kicks you] – but for me it’s grave –gw’owonya eggere y’alikussa [the foot you save is what kills you]. I find it very, very unfair. I was very, very hardworking. I worked so hard but my returns are in the negative. Obote was a dictator but he allowed people to argue their political views, practice their ideology and form parties.”

Once he was freed from the shackles of bondage, many expected Tumukunde to press for his retirement from the army and continue rebelling against Museveni just like Dr Kizza Besigye did in the late 1990s.

To the shock of many, Tumukunde went conspicuously silent before he was appointed minister of Security in Museveni’s government after the 2016 presidential campaigns in which he played a key role in disorganising Opposition gatherings, especially those of presidential candidate Amama Mbabazi.

“He has never been for pro-democracy forces,” Prof Sabiti Makara, a senior lecturer at Makerere University’s Department of Political Science and Public Administration, says.

“There is a mist about him. You can’t just trust him.”
Born on February 28, 1959, in Rukungiri District, western Uganda, Tumukunde even in the 90s was defying Museveni but he was easily broken down by the regime.

In 1994, Tumukunde decided to run for the Constituent Assembly (CA), which midwifed Uganda’s current Constitution. He represented his native Rubabo County, Rukungiri District.

Apparently, Museveni asked him to bow out but Tumukunde was having none of it. According to various sources within the establishment, the President in retaliation decided to bankroll Tumukunde’s two opponents, Prof Mondo Kagonyera and ambassador Gabriel Kangwagye, against him.

As if that wasn’t enough, Museveni intensified his efforts by dispatching the perpetual NRM vice chairperson Moses Kigongo to de-campaign Tumukunde.

That didn’t stop Tumukunde from winning by a landslide, snatching 70 per cent of the vote.

With the Constitution in place, 1996 general election were announced and Tumukunde wanted to retain his Rubabo seat but Museveni had different ideas: He appointed him as the army’s Chief of Personnel and Administration (CPA) and the sent him back to Parliament. This time as an army representative.

While in the 6th Parliament, Tumukunde, a lawyer, was accused of using unsystematic accounts from intelligence operations to spike his nest. But Tumukunde gave a personal statement about the land, houses, farms and cattle worth more than Shs700 million ($393,000). He then attached a summary of his salary earnings for the period since 1986 to that date to back his evidence.

Tumukunde was then transferred and appointed to head the Directorate of Military Intelligence, which was later upon his request renamed CMI, supplanting Tolit, who would later court-martial him.

Tumukunde was later transferred to head ISO, Uganda’s civil intelligence body, only to spend most of the time there fighting turf-wars with his colleagues in other security agencies.

Tumukunde was at loggerheads with his counterpart in CMI, Noble Mayombo, as well as his deputies in ISO, Elly Kayanja and Dr Amos Mukumbi. He also didn’t see eye to eye with then army commander James Kazini.

As he became overly critical of lifting the term limits, it was apparent that his days were numbered as he was ultimately sacked and replaced by Elly Kayanja, who was at the rank of Brigadier at the time.

Following the recent charges, Tumukunde trademarked himself as a prisoner of “conscience” and that his only crime is “difference in political opinion with the establishment”. But with his history of flip-flopping, it will be hard for him to win over hearts and minds of the increasingly sceptical Opposition base.

“It can’t be this time,” Ndebesa says. “They [Opposition] now have people like Robert Kyagulanyi [aka Bobi Wine] who are new then it becomes difficult for Tumukunde who has been around to take centre stage.”