Solving the mystery of Museveni’s true identity

(July 1976) The man who went on to become Uganda’s longest serving leader, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni with his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba who now commands the country’s special forces in charge of protecting his father.

By Henry D Gombya

This weekend, The London Evening Post will publish a special commemoration to mark the assassination of Dr Andrew Lutakome Kayiira on March 6, 1987, on the orders of President Yoweri Museveni, according to Gen David Sejusa, the former Ugandan chief of military intelligence who revealed this during a meeting with this writer and other journalists in a West London hotel during his one-year self-imposed exile in London that ended just over a year ago.

While yours truly has no doubt that the murder of Kayiira could not have taken place without the knowledge of the Ugandan leader, many who doubted he was capable of carrying out such a merciless assassination may now be looking back and starting to wonder whether from the start they knew who this man who has made history as the longest serving Ugandan leader, really is. If anyone had any doubt about Museveni’s intentions, the latest blatant rigging of the Ugandan election may have changed their minds, especially the brutal way in which the person many now believe was the rightful winner of the elections, Dr Kizza Besigye, was and still is being treated by Ugandan security forces on the orders of, you know who.

This writer is not ashamed to admit that, like many other Ugandans, yours truly strongly believed Museveni was the answer to the problems that the country faced under the leadership of Dr Milton Obote and Gen Idi Amin. But while everyone knew where Dr Obote was born, (Akokoro in Lango District) and there are those who can give evidence of having seen him grow up there, play with village boys and engage in games such as hide and seek, games that all of us have played and can remember those we played them with, it is strange that there is still a lot of mystery surrounding where Museveni was born, who he played with and what village life he shared and with whom.

Events that Friday March 6, 1987 changed the life of yours truly for ever and he has never stepped in Uganda since. For the last 29 years, yours truly has struggled to convince whoever wanted to listen that Museveni was a ‘fake democrat’ and had ulterior motives for power. But his popularity then was so high warnings simply fell on deaf ears. Former leaders like Dr Obote and his former deputy Paul Muwanga also warned in vain about the intentions of Museveni but many saw their warnings as ‘sour grapes’. The most disturbing thing is the lack of any information about the Ugandan leader’s uncles, aunties, grandparents, great parents and the whole line of his family that many of us can easily produce and mention without any difficulty. An African grows up being looked after by many ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ and their names stay with you for the rest of one’s life. Why is there a gaping absence of this in the Ugandan leader’s life?

So this week, we will embark on an attempt to expose the lies that Museveni has used to get himself in power and why he is going to fight to the death to keep himself and his family in power AT ANY COST. Most of our sources will come from the very statements he has made and his own writings on various issues in the country. We invite any reader who has any facts regarding this evil man to come out to send them to us and we promise that we will observe the journalists covenant of never revealing one’s source of information even when faced with the threat of imprisonment or death.

 In this Sunday issue of The London Evening Post, yours truly will relive the day of the attack that claimed Dr Kayiira’s life and how the former guerrilla leader spent the last day of his life in the Ugandan capital Kampala. But to kick us off in our efforts to understand what the ‘mysteries’ surrounding the real identity of Yoweri Museveni are, we produce an article authored by one of our regular columnists, Prof Eric Kashambuzi, who was born in Rukungiri District in Western Uganda but is now a resident of New York in the United States of America. He kicks us off by ‘solving the three mysteries about Yoweri Museveni’. We invite readers to take part in this exercise and help us understand who the only man the current youths of Uganda have known as their leader really is.

We would particularly love to hear from those he played ‘hide and seek’ with in Ntungamo, his ‘alleged’ place of birth or those he shared primary school days with. Were you at Ntare High School in Mbarara when he attended high school there? Did you share lectures with him at the University of Dar es Salaam? More precisely, did you fight with him during the struggle to remove Idi Amin in the mid-1970s? Have you any experiences with him while he was commanding the bush war between 1980 and 1986? We would like to hear from you in confidence. We sincerely believe that it is only after learning and understanding what this man truly is that Ugandans can mount an effective campaign to regain their country.

Former Ugandan President Apollo Milton Obote warned in vain about Yoweri Museveni whose first job was in his office in the 1960s.

Prof Kashambuzi writes:

Because some Ugandans focused solely on removing Obote from power, they never thought about the character of who would replace him. For them any leader was definitely better than Obote. Museveni got this message and after the 1980 controversial elections which Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) under the leadership of Obote won, he offered his military services to topple Obote. Museveni was warmly received in parts of Uganda against wise counsel. He launched a five-year Luwero Triangle guerrilla war, during which half the population in this area lost their lives, to topple Obote and hand over power to Paul Ssemogerere or another leader of the Democratic Party (DP) that is believed to have been robbed of victory by UPC.

When the National Resistance Army (NRA) captured power in 1986, the expectation of installing a Democratic Party leader as president of Uganda was dashed when Museveni was sworn in as the next President until the end of 1990. Promises were made that after 1990, the next president would be a Catholic and leader of DP. That has yet to happen. Since 1996, Museveni has renewed his presidential mandate in externally imposed regular elections conducted at gun point and embarked on programmes that went against national interests like land grabbing by foreigners and the awarding of fellowships to non-Uganda students. Ugandans have now begun to wonder who Museveni really is, focusing on three mysteries: his place of birth, education background and content of his agenda.

Museveni’s place of birth has remained mysterious. Some believe strongly that he was born in Rwanda, others that he was born along the border between Uganda and Rwanda. Yet others that he was born in Uganda but disagree where exactly in Uganda. Some say he was born in Ntungamo; others in Mbarara. Those who are benefitting from his government don’t see the purpose of pursuing this matter. On the other hand, those who see the Tutsi/Banyarwanda benefitting disproportionately, think that this is happening because Museveni himself is a Tutsi from Rwanda.

The second mystery is Museveni’s university education. It is true that Museveni was admitted at the Dar es Salaam campus of the University of East Africa. But what he studied there and graduated in or not, have remained mysterious. He is variously reported to have studied economics and political science, graduating either in economics by some commentators or in political science by others or in economics and political science by yet others. Museveni himself has stated that he studied political economy (Yoweri K. Museveni 1990, Africa Forum Volume I. No. 2. 1991, Uganda Yearly Review 1993).

Former Ugandan Vice President Paulo Muwanga warned that by the time the Museveni presidency ended, the country would have lost ‘all its possessions and national assets’.

However, Museveni does not say he graduated in political economy, a subject that does not appear to have been offered at Dar at that time. That he may not have graduated can be deduced from the 1995 constitution which makes high school diploma (A Level) the minimum qualification for becoming president of Uganda. Perhaps because of a lack of university education essential as a minimum to understand the complexity of globalization, might explain why Museveni has delegated economic matters to his loyalists in the ministry of finance and the central bank that mistakenly drove Uganda deep into the Washington Consensus paradigm with all the negative outcomes such as high youth unemployment, income inequality and continued exports of raw materials.

The third mystery about Museveni is his transformation agenda. In his speeches and writings, he has stressed the urgent need to metamorphose Uganda which represents a complete change of Uganda and society like turning water into vapour. Many interpreted this philosophy to mean industrializing Uganda, creating a middle class economy and society through eradicating poverty, inequality, sectarianism and corruption. However, as time passed, practice digressed from rhetoric. Uganda has since become de-industrialized, land grabbing including by foreigners has gained momentum despite constant complaints from the natives. Illegal immigrants and refugees into Uganda and their acquisition of properties including land, easy access to fellowships to study in Uganda and abroad and finding jobs while Ugandans are unemployed, has increased at an alarming rate.

To the surprise of everyone at home and abroad, Museveni announced on April 4, 1997 that his mission “is to see that Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and Zaire [now the Democratic Republic of Congo] become federal states under one nation” (EIR Special Report 1997). To realize this mission, Museveni called for fast tracking the East African political federation ahead of economic integration as earlier agreed. He also started emphasizing catering for his children and grandchildren rather than the people of Uganda as a whole.

As Museveni struggles to hang onto power, possibly by amending the constitution and removing the 75-year age limit [he claims to be 71 now, a claim that many dispute and believe he is much older], turning Uganda into a one party state by 2021 as he has promised and forging ahead with turning the Horn of Africa and Great Lakes Region into federal states under one nation. Ugandans are now renewing their efforts to understand who Museveni is and where he is likely to lead Ugandans and our country should he stay in power for life.

Yoweri Museveni as he is today. has ambition to head a federal Africa before he leaves power, that is, if he ever does leave power willingly.