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Salaam. They received arms from FRELIMO and the Tanzania government and later from Gaddafi and infiltrated these into Uganda in order to end what he calls "the monopoly of arms by the northerners." By the time of the collapse of Amin's regime, on 11 April, 1979, the Fronasa force (largely Museveni's personal army) 227 had grown to 9000 while Obote's Kikoosi Maalum numbered only 1500. Under both Presidents Y. K. Lule and Godfrey Binaisa, Oyite Ojok for Obote and Museveni continued to recruit their kinsmen into the army with the latter accusing the former of recruiting only the northerners and the former accusing Museveni of recruiting only the Banyarwanda. By the time they took over in 1986, the National Resistance Army had 20,000 soldiers under its command. The few northerners remaining in the army were either eliminated or forced into exile. Museveni's prejudice and hatred against the northerners is further revealed in his assertion that "t he whole community in Acholi and Lango had become involved in the plundering of Uganda for themselves." (p. 178). Some of the northerners might have been corrupt, but to condemn whole communities indiscriminately as Museveni does is merely to express some deep-seated hatred. He uses this condemnation to justify his punitive measures against the northerners probably in search of a "final solution." As Museveni continues, with the help of the Americans, to hunt for "bandits" - as he calls northern leaders who are fighting for human dignity - thousands are dying in the unending civil war while others are herded into "protected camps." Is this not genocide? Recently, Museveni has even defended the activities of his eldest son, Mohoozi Kainerugaba, who was accused by several Uganda M.P.s of recruiting 200 fresh graduates from Makerere University to serve in the army's Presidential Protection Unit (PPU) that protects his father. His son has no right to carry out ar my recruitment, and many of these recruits were, in the father's words - "his friends" (read Westerners).4 Can one be more secretarian and authoritarian than this? It is easy, in retrospect, to demonize Obote and the "northerners" and make it appear as if he was merely responding to the ethnic paranoia of his people. The reality, however, was much more complicated as we have tried to suggest. Looking at the evidence presented in this book, it is obvious that Museveni sees himself as the Earnest "Che" Guevara (the legendary South American guerrilla leader) of Africa. He gives details of war strategies, plans and battles, ending up with a kind of guerrilla warfare manual which he expects other progressive African leaders to adopt in order to "Sow the Mustard Seed" in their countries. Is it any wonder that since he came to power in Uganda, he has used people like Paul Kagame in Rwanda and Laurent Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to apply the teachings of his manual in their countries. Kagame was of course, an officer in the National Resistance Army of Uganda, and many of the so-called Kabila Tutsi death squads operating in Congo where they have been accused of killing scores of Hutu children and women refugees, 228 as well as innocent Congolese civilians, are actually Ugandans or Rwandese trained by Museveni. No wonder the New York Times of June 15, 1997 was so lavish in its praise of Museveni. It wrote: Yoweri Museveni is a "leader secure in his power and his vision. The recent victory of Laurent Kabila's troops over Mobutu Sese Seko's government army in Congo marked perhaps the most impressive of Museveni's moves in the international area." Obviously the United States and other European powers, seem to see the role of Museveni in the Eastern and Central Africa as that of removing certain regimes from power and replacing them with those that will put the interests of foreign business before the needs of their people. Th is is tantamount to recolonisation of Africa with the collaboration of native guerrilla leaders! External Factors One of the weaknesses of this autobiography is its attempt to play down or ignore external factors that have influenced the history of Uganda. For instance, the involvement of Obote in the internal affairs of the former Zaire, Rwanda and Sudan gave much political ammunition to his enemies at home. For instance, Obote's hatred of Moise Tshombe, the then Zairian Prime Minister, whom he regarded as an agent of neocolonialism, made him support the National Liberation Committee, located in north-eastern Zaire, which opposed Tshombe's government. Buganda was sympathetic to Tshombe, and this explains the genesis of the "gold scandal" allegations which almost brought the government of Obote down. Also, the immediate cause of the overthrow of Obote's government in 1971, was the discovery of a conspiracy between the Israeli government and Uganda Defense Minister, Felix Onama and Idi Amin., Army Commander, to support the rebels in Southern Sudan. At the request of Israel, the two
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Museveni - The Ugandan Narkisses A Review Article Sowing of the Mustard Seed by Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Macmillian Publishers Ltd, London, 1997. In Bethwell A. Ogot, Building on the Indigenous: Selected Essays 1981 - 1998 (Kisumu: Anyange Press Ltd., 1999), pp. 223-232.The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English defines narcissism as a "tendency to self-worship, absorption in one's own personal perfections." It is derived from the name of a Greek youth Narkissos, who fell in love with his reflection in water. Museveni's autobiography shows him as the Ugandan Narkissos who has fallen in love with his reflection in Uganda's muddy political waters. He has turned Uganda's historical record into a narrative of self-justification. And although all autobiographies are narcissistic to some degree the careful shaping of a public self-image, monuments to self-love built for posterity - not all are as trapped in narcissism as this book is. For Museveni, it is not so much how the past dictates the present that is important, but rather how the present manipulates the past. The book is the story of his own personal role "in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Uganda over the past 30 years." It took sixteen years to write. He believes that it is he and his colleagues who finally sowed the "mustard seed" of freedom and democracy in Uganda in the 1980s, after first clearing the land of the rocks and weeds of a corrupt system. In other words, he gives no credit to Uganda nationalism in the attainment of the country's political independence. Indeed, he doubts whether there was any Uganda nationalism before him. In other words, all was darkness in Uganda until God willed that there shall be Museveni, and then all was light! The book is also a record of Museveni's ideological development from youth to the present. As a secondary school boy in the 1960s, he was a Democratic Party (D.P.) sympathizer - a kind of D.P. 'y outh winger' - largely because the Bahima Chiefs and the Catholic leaders in Ankole were members of the party. At the University of Dar-es-Salaam (1967-70), he developed a coherent ideological outlook which was largely Marxist. In 1970, he joined Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), while he was working in the Office of the President, in 223 Obote's office, as a Research Assistant. He did this, he explains, not out of conviction, but rather for convenience. This was pure opportunism! It is true Museveni has written a revealing and, in its way, a candid book. But the book has many flaws, of both style and substance: the tone of self-satisfaction and self-congratulation and it is partial and glosses over some complex episodes. And besides his close comrades - most of them from South-West Uganda, he is personally harsh on everybody else. He had low opinion of practically all his teachers at the University of Dar-es-Salaam; he condemns all D.P. leaders as lacking "a dynamic le adership", "conservative men", with "limited perspective"; and the "UPC leadership were generally an uncouth breed, anxious to get rich as quickly as possible using state apparatus" (p. 45); and Y.K. Lule had "aversion to democracy". He however, reserves much of the venom for Obote who is demonized throughout the book as the major cause of all problems in Uganda since independence. It is evident that Museveni's main motive for writing this book - apart from the one already referred to of portraying himself as the saviour of Uganda - was to erase completely the figure of Obote from the history of Uganda. Unfortunately for him, Obote is a much more substantial figure than Museveni implies and his contribution deserves a critical and serious appreciation which would go beyond the sympathetic political biography that has been written by Professor Kenneth Ingaham,1 the first Professor of History at Makerere University and a former Nominated Member of the Uganda Legislativ e Council where he first Obote. Subject: Museveni - The Ugandan Narkisses (2) Museveni writes, for example, that as school boys in Westem Uganda between 1965 and 1966, he and his friends - Martin Mwesiga, Mwesigwa Black, Valeviano Rwaheru and Eriya Kategaya - were "staunchly anti-Obote." (p. 19) He himself hated Obote at that time because he frustrated the East African Federation idea against the support of Nyerere and Kenyatta (p. 18). This is far from the truth. In January 1963, for instance, Prime Minister Obote accompanied Prime Minister Rashidi Kawawa of Tanganyika to England to discuss independence for Kenya, because the East Afncan Common Services could not function properly while Kenya remained a colony. As Harold Macmillan, the then Prime Minister of Britain has recorded in his memoirs, At the End of the Day 1961 - 1963,2 Duncan Sandys, the Colonial Secretary for Commonwealth Affairs, spent several hours on January 28, 1963, "being reproached (and almost insulted) by Mr. Kawawa and Mr. Obote." Kenya became independent on 12 December, 1963 and early in 1964, a
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Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 6:48 PM Subject: Museveni - The Ugandan Narkisses (2) Museveni writes, for example, that as school boys in Westem Uganda between 1965 and 1966, he and his friends - Martin Mwesiga, Mwesigwa Black, Valeviano Rwaheru and Eriya Kategaya - were "staunchly anti-Obote." (p. 19) He himself hated Obote at that time because he frustrated the East African Federation idea against the support of Nyerere and Kenyatta (p. 18). This is far from the truth. In January 1963, for instance, Prime Minister Obote accompanied Prime Minister Rashidi Kawawa of Tanganyika to England to discuss independence for Kenya, because the East Afncan Common Services could not function properly while Kenya remained a colony. As Harold Macmillan, the then Prime Minister of Britain has recorded in his memoirs, At the End of the Day 1961 - 1963,2 Duncan Sandys, the Colonial Secretary for Commonwealth Affairs, spent several hours on January 28, 1963, "being reproached (and almos t insulted) by Mr. Kawawa and Mr. Obote." Kenya became independent on 12 December, 1963 and early in 1964, a meeting was held in Uganda, which led to the signing of the Kampala Agreement which created the East African Common Market. It was this agreement which was revised in 1966 to create the East African Community which functioned fairly 224 well until it collapsed in 1977. But until Obote was overthrown in 1971, he and the Uganda government supported the regional grouping. Hence, Museveni's schoolboy hatred for Obote for opposing the idea of the East African Federation is one of the many distortions and fabrications in the book aimed at demonizing Obote. Furthermore, Museveni asserts that Obote would rather support Nkrumah's notion of a continental union because he knew it was impractical. "In the case of an East African Union which was feasible, opportunists such as Obote, who were also political dwarfs, feared its realisation because they wanted to remain big fish i n small ponds." (p. 18). The historical facts do not support Museveni's strictures. During the meeting of African Heads of States and Governments, Addis Ababa in May 1963, at which the Organisation of African Unity was formed, Nkrumah made a passionate speech in support of union government. It is on record that Milton Obote was one of the African leaders at the conference who strongly argued in favour of regional groupings. There is also the need to critically assess the Obote I period, 1962-1971. Museveni characterizes it as a time of intrigues and corruption, with no meaningful development. But any objective evaluation of the whole period would show it as the greatest era of prosperity in Uganda. The economy was kept on a sound and expanding basis and much of the money generated was used to expand education and health facilities throughout the country. Politically, Museveni accuses Obote of being unscrupulous and cites the way in which he misled the traditi onalists in Buganda and then, after some years, "made an about-turn over the same issues." (p. 19). He, however, does not discuss the issues. For instance, the independence constitution, which established Buganda in a federal relationship with the rest of Uganda, created more problems than it set to solve. Both Obote and Kabaka of Buganda believed that they could establish a working relationship between UPC and Kabaka Yeka. Museveni condemns this alliance as opportunistic and sectarian, but he does tell us what could have been done, given the independent constitution, which attempted to marry a monarchical and authoritarian regime with a parliamentary system. Moreover, the same independence constitution had provided for the holding of a referendum in the Lost Counties - a disputed area between Buganda and Bunyoro. This area had been excised from Bunyoro and given to the Baganda at the close of the nineteenth century as a reward for their loyalty. For sixty years the Banyoro demanded their counties back but the British were not able to make amends. Buganda had become too powerful for any ruler to offend it. During the constitutional conference in London, it had been resolved that within two years of independence a plebiscite should be taken in the Lost Counties. 225 Nobody thought that Obote would have the courage to implement that resolution. But he did and forever incurred the wrath of the Baganda. The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants voted to return to Bunyoro. This is what ruptured the UPC/KY alliance, and not Obote's unscrupulousness. The Kabaka, as President of Uganda, refused to sign the Bill transfering the Lost Counties to Bunyoro - this in itself was unconstitutional. Buganda leaders then engaged in a series of maneuvers intended to engineer the overthrow of Obote. The election of Grace Ibingira from Ankole as UPC Secretary General to replace John Kakonge, was part of the conspiracy supported by Buganda leaders, to oust Obote, with the help of the Americans and the British who were made to be
