Does Museveni-2020 remember the future of Museveni-1986?

The future may be a constantly moving target. However, if we visualise specific events in given future time frames, we can always establish whether what we visualised has happened as we pass through those time frames.

In 1986, a new President Museveni told us to visualise a country that Ugandans would enjoy in the future.

The armies of the ‘primitive dictators’ or ‘swine’ had been disbanded. With a completely new politico-military establishment running the country, the movement towards this visualised country could be felt immediately in southern, western and near-eastern Uganda. 

Subsequently, the distant east and north were coerced or conquered and humbled. Museveni’s brilliant future was embraced everywhere.

Whether you were reading his 10-point Programme, listening to the speeches of the new ruling elite, smiling with the new soldiers, who included children as young as 12; whether you were reporting for work at your office, your school, your clinic or your shop, or walking home after sunset, you had reason to imagine your country getting kinder, more lawful, richer and more attractive.

Now, if you have several options, even as an exile, you would probably choose to live in a country in whose political and socio-economic environment you would feel safe and comfortable; if possible, a country that closely resembles the vision of what you want your own country to become.

Museveni might have sought (and got or not got) money and weapons from Libya, China, North Korea, Cuba and elsewhere for his rebellion, but he chose democratic prosperous Sweden as a temporary home for his family. 

Meanwhile, millions of his fellow citizens faced the wrath of president Milton Obote, a wounded tiger fighting back.

For every government soldier or UPC functionary killed by Museveni’s guerrillas, Obote’s soldiers exacted vengeance by killing several peasants and other citizens in the Luweero Triangle and elsewhere. Thousands of houses were de-roofed. 

Thousands of people were internally displaced. Thousands went into exile.

So, even if his Bush War was a beautiful liberation struggle that he persuaded and sometimes cunningly trapped people (including children) to join, Museveni chose peaceful Sweden for his family and his own holidays from the battlefield.

You may call us, Ugandans, gullible, or even outright stupid; and you may call Mr Museveni very smart; but in our folly, we thought he was an honest liberator with a genuine admiration for democratic welfare states like Sweden.

His detractors called him a ‘terrorist’, a ‘bandit’, a ‘communist’ and what have you. We, his admiring idiots, associated him with moderate socialism and new ideas. 

In 10, or at the very most 15 years – before he “overstayed” in power like the African leaders he despised – we would have a country to be proud of. 

Economically and technologically, Uganda would become a country “making machines that make machines”.

 Do you understand? Museveni was talking about heavy automated machines, robots and so on; an industrial society. Not a cripple called Uganda-2020 with conmen manufacturing radios and electric cars that are not there.

The future he painted for us was certainly not the future of greed and unbridled corruption that we have seen for so many years. It was not a future of the naked barbarism we have witnessed since Dr Kizza Besigye challenged his rule 20 years ago, or today’s State terrorism when Robert Kyagulanyi is his main challenger.

Does President Museveni remember that future, which he has failed to secure, and instead of which we see today’s fascism?
Does he remember that future before he claims to secure tomorrow’s future?

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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