Towards 40 years: Why Museveni is president and not a plumber

Author, Charles Onyango Obbo. PHOTO/FILE

Today President Yoweri Museveni will be sworn in for a record-shattering eighth term, two of unelected between 1986 and 1996 under a mix of the 1967 and “bush war” constitution.

Exactly 41 years ago to the date, the Military Commission of the Uganda National Liberation Front government, that took power after the overthrow of field marshal Idi Amin in April 1979, staged a coup against the mother coalition, ousting then president Godfrey Binaisa.

The six-man military commission comprised six men and was chaired by UPC stalwart Paulo Muwanga. The deputy chairperson was now-President Museveni. The commission comprised the key leaders of the Ugandan “fighting groups” in the Tanzanian-led war that defeated Amin. It was dominated by UPC-affiliated forces, with Museveni playing disgruntled second fiddle.

The immediate spark for the military commission coup was Binaisa’s attempt to fire Milton Obote lieutenant and Army Chief of Staff, Brig. David Oyite Ojok. Binaisa’s plan seemed to have been to remove Oyite, and then block Obote’s planned May 27 return to Uganda from exile. The plan blew up in Binaisa’s face.

If he had succeeded, the course of Uganda’s recent history might have been altered considerably.

Although the UPC chiefs and Museveni were at odds, and barely a year later the latter was to launch his bush war after Obote was fraudulently returned to power for a second shot at the job in the December 1980 election, May 12 was significant. It represented a brief reconstruction of the greater UPC of the latter half of the 1960s of which Museveni, and all the other members of the Military Commission, were members. It didn’t last and decisively descended into extreme enmity by the 1980 election, then the bush war years, and the first 19 years of Museveni’s rule, until Obote’s death in his Zambian exile in 2005.

There was a softening on the part of the Museveni camp, and the election of Obote’s son Jimmy Akena as leader of the party his father founded, hastened many changes. After the 2016 election, that old UPC alliance was partially reconstituted – at least with the Akena faction of party. With the January 14 election, UPC-Akena had become a vassal party of the NRM in all but name. So, as Museveni swears in, there is some sort of a mirror moment to May 12, 1980, except like Muwanga, he’s the one in the controlling seat.

More recently, 25 years ago this week, Uganda had its first direct presidential election in the wake of the 1995 Constitution. Museveni won that election with 75.5 percent of the vote, a heady figure compared to the 58.6 per cent he got in this year’s vote.

The irony is that the 75.5 per cent of 1996 was more genuinely won, than the 58.6 percent of 2021, despite the latter being a more democratic gap. 

Despite that, like all Ugandan elections, and particularly notable like all NRM-era polls, the 1996 vote was still fiddled. But the Museveni camp did not steal victory then, they had that one wrapped up fairly. They stole the margin, and rigged in a few areas to humiliate main rival, Democratic Party chief Paul Ssemogerere, including in his own backyard polling station, and to seek to demonstrate that Ugandans considered political parties repugnant, and thus give legitimacy to the one-party system of the time.

The electoral opposition to Museveni made several mistakes, failing to read the national mood and to understand how much many Ugandans, especially in the south, west, and lower east, wanted to record their appreciation for the fact that Museveni had ended a nightmare for them. They mocked Museveni’s big play on having brought peace and claim that Ugandans (outside the north) could sleep soundly without fear. They said, “poor Ugandans cannot eat peace”. However, a long-suffering and forever terrorised population was content to eat peace, and female voters in particular, swung in a big way toward Museveni.

Many of those 1996 Museveni women were mothers, but the majority of them were quite young, having come of age from about 1992. Today, they are mothers. The ones who were mothers are grandmothers.

As Museveni is sworn in, many of them are not running around Kampala ululating in banana leaves. They are crying, pleading for the return of their grandchildren, and children, who were detained, some disappeared, and most savagely tortured by the Museveni security forces for the crime of supporting National Unity Party’s (NUP) Bobi Wine, and enabling him to give the president a run for his money in the elections.

So, here we are. A 41-year-old political wound may be healing. However, one that seemed to have been healed 25 years ago, has been re-opened. Perhaps it is as well he’s president, because Museveni would have made for a terrible plumber.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. 

Twitter: @cobbo3