Writer: Alan Tacca. PHOTO/FILE
He endlessly talks about his Bush War days. He has lambasted European colonialists and inept 19th Century African chiefs. He has described Uganda’s past leaders as ‘swine’. He has slogans on wealth creation and jokes on fighting corruption.
However, President Museveni’s most famous quotation is the one identifying Africa’s biggest problem as that of rulers who overstay in power.
People sometimes cite this piece of wisdom from a 40-something Museveni of 1986 partly to spite the 80-year Museveni of our day.
They are puzzled how this immovable ruler grew out of the young idealist. And they often amuse themselves by visualising two gladiators, Museveni-1986 and Museveni-2025, pitted in deadly combat in an amphitheatre.
Perhaps we should stop being surprised by Mr Museveni’s metamorphosis and spend more time trying to understand why it is very likely that Museveni-2025 secretly admires Museveni-1986. For the truth in his most famous quotation is being demonstrated every day.
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All rulers have critics and detractors. Museveni-1986 had his set. They were mostly the ‘negative’ elements, the beneficiaries associated with the ‘primitive dictators’ his guerrilla outfit had fought, defeated and ousted.
In short, the Ugandans who were strongly opposed to Museveni-1986 were bad people who had belonged to or served regimes that Museveni-1986 himself had convinced us were evil.
In contrast, the critics and detractors of Museveni-2025 are mostly ‘positive’ elements associated with values that many sensible people anywhere on earth would want to promote.
If we can characterise them in one sentence, they are people who want to belong to a country in which those who have power do not treat ordinary people as rats.
Back to Museveni-2025, and why the general must daily face the truth of his most famous quotation.
President Museveni in 1986 and President Museveni in 2025. PHOTO/COMBO
Take elections, an important source of serious discontent after the flawed 1980 exercise, and around which the heroic and admirable Museveni-1986 had built his case for a violent anti-government enterprise in the bush.
Between 1981 and 1986, treason was good. Museveni-1986 was the champion. But Museveni-2025 cannot avoid looking back and noting that all the elections that have entrenched him in power for almost 40 years have been flawed, some of them very seriously flawed.
From the time the late Paul Ssemogerere was chased out of parts of the western region in 1996, Ugandans who have been killed, badly injured, imprisoned or exiled for supporting a presidential candidate or a political party opposed to Mr Museveni are estimated to be in thousands.
A smart 80-year-old Museveni-2025 would certainly glance backwards at key low points and admire Museveni-1986, who had just fought and triumphed over the regimes that had perpetrated similar injustices.
Incurable corruption and the gross carelessness with which taxpayers’ money is currently spent on non-priority items must be something Museveni-2025 occasionally contemplates and wishes a heroic Museveni-1986 was in charge.
In our middle age we are rewarded for the good things we did in our youth, and in old age we pay for the bad things we did in our middle age.
Some rulers want to be feared. All want to be loved. After 40 years in power, Museveni-2025 must sometimes be haunted by his middle age mistakes. He must occasionally wonder whether he would not have found peace with himself if he had followed Museveni-1986’s wisdom.
Unable to restore public love, the best way to make the case for hanging on may be to construct scenarios to spread the fear that he could be replaced by a reign where lawlessness, corruption, impunity and arrogance are even more widespread.
The writer, Alan Tacca, is a novelist and socio-political commentator.
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