Is Kayihura our Deng Xiaoping? 

Politics is the art of repetition. So a politician’s primary aim is to make sure one’s power repeats itself in the shape of more power.
Reform thereby canalises such repetition towards steadying the ship of state.

As the NRM sails forth, then, there needs to be a transition in order for the NRM not to founder on the reef of its own obscurantism.
Indeed, artful repetition speaks to succession in the way it re-establishes NRM’s air of authority by cementing the need for continuity in the minds of wananchi.
This is what happened in China when Mao Zedong died. 

China was not rebuilt from the ground up; Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping instead hitched his wagon to Mao’s star while setting in train reforms which ultimately saw China become the world’s largest economy, in terms of its purchasing power. 
Deng did this not by dismantling Mao’s legacy, but by redirecting it towards the logic:  “It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice”.

Before Deng assumed power, however, he suffered two ousters during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976. 
The second ouster led to his banishment to house arrest in Nanchang; the southeast part of China. Deng, who had long been a favourite of Mao, became an outcast. 
While banished, he swept factory floors. 
Beyond menial tasks, he spent a lot of time reading Chinese classics, foreign histories and the works of Marx and Lenin in echo of Abraham Lincoln’s words: “I will study and prepare, and someday my opportunity will come.”  
His opportunity finally came. 

One wonders if such opportunity will come for Uganda’s answer to Deng: Gen Edward Kalekezi Kayihura.
Once the most powerful security czar in Ugandan history, the former Inspector General of Police fell out with President Museveni and has also been banished. 
According to some sources, he now spends his time reading on his farm in Kasagama, Lyantonde District, while allegedly telling visitors that he is “a prisoner”. 

In this vein, he is like Kwame Nkrumah who, when exiled to Guinea, would call himself “Africa’s prisoner”. 
In spite of his current state, however, Kayihura is reportedly still devoted to President Museveni, and for good reason. 
“Kale Kayihura, just like the (Kisoro LC5) chairman said; there’re those who committed heavy sins and we forgave them. So then why don’t we forgive him?” President Museveni said in January, while in Kisoro.

If Kayihura is “rehabilitated”, he might be the only person large enough to repeat Museveni’s power and thus guide the nation towards policies founded on Deng’s rubric of “reform and opening.”
Through greater engagement with the West, easing of tensions with some key economic partners, eschewal of any cult of personality and bottom-up policy shifts, he will be able to set a due date for a nation in labour.
Agreed, his human rights record is not worthy of an NRM thumbs-up. 

But he was doing is master’s bidding, in the same fashion Deng crushed Mao’s opponents without mercy. 
When he was in power, Deng changed.
So Gen Kayihura would be a perfect transitional leader as he would not inflict payback on the existing power elite, while he would be sure to reach across the aisle to his erstwhile collaborator, Bobi Wine.

For all his failings, Kayihura remains a revolutionary. We saw him commit class suicide in such a way that many doubt he even has a Master’s Degree in Law.
This ability to die a little carries the seeds of Uganda’s reinvention, if the President is willing to let Kayihura become the Deng to his (Museveni’s) Mao.

Mr Matogo is a professional copywriter  
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