How former rebel Yoweri Museveni remained in power for 35 years

Ugandans under the age of 35 – and that is more than three-quarters of the population – knew only one president.

Yoweri Museveni, who came to power in 1986 during an armed uprising, defied the political laws of gravity that toppled other longtime leaders in the region.

The 76-year-old’s time at the top was accompanied by a long period of peace and major developmental changes for which he is very grateful. But he has managed to maintain his grip on power through a mixture of encouraging a personality cult, using protection, compromising with independent institutions and the sidelines of opponents.

During the last election five years ago, when he addressed the issue of his retirement, he asked, “How can I get out of a banana plantation that I have planted and that has begun to bear fruit?”

For this revolutionary, the harvest is not over yet.

My acquaintance with the president took place in the 1990s in the form of a school play in which the turmoil of the Milton Obote and Idi Amin years was performed.

The play reached its climax on January 26, 1986, with the liberation of the land from Mr. Museveni’s national army, which put an end to wars and senseless killings.

It is this image of the man as liberator and peacemaker on which many Ugandans were raised, and on every occasion is reminded of it.

Presidential pressure

He is also a fatherly and grandfatherly figure.

Many young Ugandans refer to the president by the nickname ‘Sevo’, and he likes to call them Bazukulu (which means grandchildren in the Luganda language).

But the family man does not consider himself a typical aging patriarch as he lies down in his favorite chair while his children and grandchildren scurry around.

In his campaign for his sixth term, which feels like it started right after the previous election, he traveled the country, starting factories, opening roads and starting new markets.

And in view of his relatively youthful challenger, 38-year-old former pop star Bobi Wine, Mr Museveni wants to show his vitality. Last year in April, to encourage practice during the exclusion, he was filmed and repeated the trick repeatedly, including in front of the students in November.

The story continues

“If your father loves you, he should empower you. In the next five years, ‘Sevo’ will ensure that, when we finish school, we will be able to find work,” says 25-year-old Angela Kirabo. and touches on the issue of youth unemployment, which is a major concern.

The economics graduate is a proud Muzukulu (grandchild) who grew up in a family that supports the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM). She was also vice chair of the party’s chapter at university and thinks the president still has a lot to offer after 35 years in power.

Presidential age limits overturned

One of his closest friends and advisers, John Nagenda, says Mr Museveni’s selflessness is one reason for his ability to arouse loyalty.

“He was prepared to die for Uganda. I would say we are very happy to have him,” the 82-year-old said.

“Most other people I know who were president wanted to do it for themselves; they wanted the honor. But Museveni wants to do it. [it] for the country and the continent … he is an African. ‘

However, according to the original provisions of the 1995 constitution, the president was not to be re-elected after 2005.

Previously, it was indeed generally understood that he was opposed to addressing questions and saying that he would rather return to his farm.

The journalist William Pike, who was seen very close to the president and the NRA at one time, described in his memoirs how the president was really upset when he was asked during a dinner in the early nineties if he had the rest of the time to stay in power. his life.

“Museveni said, ‘Of course not,’ but he was clearly furious about what he considered a real insult. He did not falsify it. At that point, he did not intend to continue,” he said. Mr. Pike wrote.

But something changed in 2004, although it was never clear what exactly it was, and his MPs endorsed the idea that the constitution should be amended to remove the presidential limits.

He had the green light to stand until he was 75 years old.

And then in December 2017, the constitutional barrier of an age limit for a presidential candidate was also removed – an issue that led to fighting on the floor of parliament and a police attack on the building.

Many see this as the NRM’s way of getting Mr. Museveni to become president for life.

It is not for nothing that parliament feels obliged to reward the leader who serves long. MPs’ willingness to go along with the changes has a lot to do with the fact that they believe they owe their positions to the president.

Less challenges for authority

The importance of protection extends throughout society.

It sometimes manifests as development programs for women, market vendors and government work. In a country where 15% of young people are unemployed and more than 21% of the population live in poverty, a whole town can save from poverty by agreeing with the right party.

But his supporters point to the transformation of Uganda as a positive reason to give Mr Museveni another five years.

“If you come from the north and east, you will understand that a great peace achievement has been brought. For 20 years, those regions have been engulfed in a war,” said 28-year-old Jacob Eyeru, who is the government’s national youth degree leads.

While acknowledging that unemployment is worrying, he adds that the NRM ‘has transformed the economy to not only make it regionally competitive, but also globally competitive’.

Despite these changes, he also weakened the independence of some of the most important institutions in the country to ensure fewer challenges to his authority.

The judiciary has not been spared and has been accused in recent years of recruiting so-called ‘cadre judges’, who are loyal to the government.

When judges made independent decisions, they sometimes had to contend with the authorities.

For example, on December 16, 2005, highly trained security personnel raided the capital’s capital, Kampala, and re-arrested members of the alleged rebels’ People’s Redemption Army, who had just been acquitted of treason.

“They turned the Temple of Serenity into a theater of war,” Judge James Ogoola wrote in a poem about the incident titled Rape of the Temple.

As for the challenging election results, the outcome of every presidential contest except the one in 2011 has been disputed in court. In all cases, the courts ruled that the irregularities were not serious enough to justify an annulment.

The media also threatened his independence.

On the face of it, Uganda has a vibrant media industry that has grown into hundreds of private radio and TV stations, print shops and internet-based services under Mr Museveni.

“In the early days, before cynicism and decay set in, there was a degree of intellectualism within the regime that tolerated dissenting opinions and was able to debate and disagree about it,” said Daniel Kalinaki, general manager of the Nation Media Group for editorial, in Kampala.

But outlets were shut down and journalists detained as the leading lights in the government ‘got thinner and thinner’, Kalinaki added.

But perhaps the most important factor in Mr Museveni’s lifetime is the way in which any potential opposition force has been sterilized.

Opposition supporters shot dead

When it became clear twenty years ago that he would remain in power, some of his former associates began to break away. While doing so, the security forces, regarded as a national police and army, aimed their guns at these political opponents.

Kizza Besigye of the Opposition Forum for Democratic Change, who was first a doctor of Museveni, first spoke out against the 2001 election. He was arrested and prosecuted on numerous charges, including rape and betrayal, but has never been convicted.

Now that Bobi Wine, a singer by the real name Robert Kyagulanyi, has a serious challenge for the president’s government, he has become the youngest politician to face the wrath of men in uniform.

The MP, whose star power attracts large crowds of young people, was brutally arrested during a colleague’s by-election campaign in the northwestern city of Arua in 2018. He then faces charges of treason that were later dismissed.

On the campaign trail for this election, police arrested him and his supporters, shed tears and fired because they defied the coronavirus restrictions on the gathering of large groups.

During two days of protests in November following the arrest of Bobi Wine, 54 people were killed, many of whom were allegedly shot by security forces.

Putting your head above the parapet in Uganda is a brave choice and everyone who mr. Museveni wants to challenge, should not doubt the level of harassment they are likely to experience.

Through his 35 years in power, he has come to sit at the pinnacle of power where he is in total control. He also managed to reinvent himself.

While he was the political start-up candidate in the early 1940s, those taking on this role may now run the risk of incurring his considerable anger.