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Museveni interview: Trek from Marxism to private capitalism
President Museveni. PHOTO/ PPU
What you need to know:
- What would you do if President Museveni extended an invitation to you to carry out a once-in-a-lifetime interview?
- A few days ago, Philip Matogo was the recipient of such an opportunity. As he writes, the experience—along with its dos and don’ts—can be quite surreal.
On Monday, April 7, 2025, I was at home discussing with my neighbour, Ivan. It was one of those discussions that reminded me of the saying that calls attention to the fact that “remember when” is the lowest form of conversation.
In short, I was bored out of my mind. Then my phone rang. On the other end of the line, a man describing himself as the President of Uganda’s handler told me, rather inclusively, that the President—Mr Museveni—wanted to speak with me. I asked when, and he hung up before committing to a time or place. My phone rang again. I answered it, and the State House switchboard announced itself. I was told by the famous unknown manning the switchboard that the President would be on the line shortly. “Is that my son Philip Matogo?” the President boomed on the other side of the line. His famous charm thawed any potential frostiness on my part. As our conversation bubbled to effervescence, the President invited me to the State House for an “exclusive” interview.
Taken aback, I barely gathered my wits about me to ask when. “Sunday,” the man who has ruled Uganda since 1986 replied. Sunday came faster than trouble at a National Unity Platform (NUP) party rally. After undergoing a Covid-19 test, I was waved into the palatial grounds of State House, Entebbe. It is a beautiful place, but rather impersonal for my taste. After sitting tight in two waiting rooms, at separate times, of course, I was taken into a boardroom the size of a football pitch. At the head of the many tables therein sat the personable and familiar figure of President Museveni. Since he was seated there waiting for me, he did not have to demonstrate the politician’s art of showing up late and taking all the credit. He looked distant as he seemingly took my measure. He had worked with my late father and taught my mother at Bweranyangi Girls' Secondary School in 1965, so I had some curiosity value to him.
Ideological footwork
When being prepped for this interview, I was advised by State House personnel to avoid topics that seek to strike headlines as opposed to highlighting the President’s deeply held views. “Talk ideology, he likes that,” I was advised.
So my task was how to make the lofty and contemporary my line of questioning when I had only prepared to ask the President, “Sir, is your son on steroids?” I had to play nice. The President had graciously granted this interview to me to correct what he half-jokingly labelled my “rumour-mongering.” I prepared new questions as I polished up on my Marxist-Leninist jargon.
Soon, as the President anthologised his views, it dawned on me that ideology was not just a pet topic to the President. It was his political love language. On the subject of wealth creation, I knew his views. So does everybody else. I decided to ask him something else. Namely, how do his current views square with his previously held leftist views? The President, who acknowledged the analytical oomph of Karl Marx’s thought, sided with capitalism, driven by the engine of private sector growth. Essentially, he was more for private capitalism than state capitalism’s capacity to correct market inequities.
Philosopher or browsing philosopher
As I listened to the President’s views, I was struck by his vast fund of knowledge on a range of topics. However, I noticed that he never went deep. He only scratched the surface with academic buzzwords that leave many wanainchi in awe. When I asked him about the view that African countries cannot unite because they produce the same goods. He dropped the word “complementarity” to explain that argument, like a hip-hop star in their prime. This readiness to touch but not tamper when it comes to delving deep ideologically could be rooted in his days as a guerrilla. In his own words, he has written and probably spoken on how the guerrilla warrior lives by the day, with each day they find themselves alive, being a victory in itself. Such an outlook must have reshaped his temperament less towards ideology and more towards practicality. After all, Museveni and his men did not win the war by reciting Shakespeare to the bookish Milton Obote.
After attaining power, President Museveni’s somewhat vagarious temperament suited the vagaries found in the unbridled capitalism his regime would give way to. Out of this, my impression was that his sense of ideology grows out of self-interest instead of the sheer love of ideology in and of itself. This makes him adaptable, not being tied down by hard-and-fast ideas on how a society can be remade in the image of its potential greatness. Alternatively, he could just be too busy to devote himself to the rigours of deep ideological inquiry when a platitude or two will suffice to convince the average Ugandan that you know what you are talking about.
The death of Vanguardism
President Museveni is clearly a patriot. Whether he does or does not merit the adjective is bound to get lost in translation across the deepening and widening political divide, however. On patriotism, I asked him why he seems to have abandoned the Leninist notion of Vanguardism. This idea briefly describes how a revolutionary vanguard party leads the working class in overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialism, ultimately progressing to communism. The National Resistance Movement claimed to be such a party when it barrelled onto the political scene. Last Sunday, however, the President changed his tune somewhat.
He said the private sector would lead the way and not a rabble of bleeding hearts. As I listened to him speak eloquently on neo-liberal aesthetics, I realised that 1986 is a different country. Or possibly it’s dressed up in a veneer of difference. You see, the president’s about-face amidst shifting global issues in a world riven down the middle by global corporatists and rampaging oligarchs could be an update on the flexibility of a non-aligned stance, sure to keep him safely out of harm’s way when East faces West in the ultimate grudge match.
