Signposts on the transition
If there is anything to take from the dramatic overthrow of former Speaker Anita Annet Among (AAA), it is that we have entered a transitional phase in our politics.
If 2026-2031 is a transitional window, before the heirs and their minister-workers are appointed, the first signpost had to come with the election of speaker.
Indeed, while AAA and Minister Mao brawled over the speakership, if one turned on a transition-looking glass, it was clear AAA was not returning as speaker. If Museveni felt he would be powering through the next five years, then his most loyal-servant-speaker would return.
But it seems clear that is being set for a new sheriff, and is working with new people. Dear reader, this transitional phase – painfully – has nothing to do with us ordinary folks or folks in the so-called electoral opposition.
This is not to dampen our oppositional spirits, but to be honest about our superpowers. Many electoral opposition folks continue selling pipe dreams, giving false hope and wasting lives and resources in the pretense that competition will end Museveni’s hold on country.
Well, they end up gleefully working under him citing hackneyed constitutional provisions and mandates. In truth though, only our activism is powerful and can bear fruits often when carefully directed and guided, as happened on the discussion on the Sovereignty Bill more recently.
Maybe a conversation for another day – as political parties, too, have to become activism platforms. The point I’m building here is that the transition phase is simply about acknowledging the mortality of bwana Yoweri Museveni.
CABINET AS SIGNPOST
The truth about the human life cycle is that after some time, a once ebullient and very energetic human succumbs to the ruins of time and aging. Naturally, the offsprings begin to manage their estates. Uganda is not Museveni’s estate, but he has run it as one, and sadly, we have been unable to stop him.
If the people who meet Mr. Museveni say he is losing his grip on things (there is no way Andrew Mwenda would claim this without basis), then the heir-apparent has to help his old man.
If Museveni’s son, Gen. Kainerugaba was central in orchestrating the takedown of AAA, and appointment of the man who became the new speaker, Jacob Oboth Oboth, then surely the son must have a say on who becomes Minister in the forthcoming cabinet.
If the downfall of AAA is signpost number one, then the nature of the forthcoming cabinet will be the second signpost on this transitional phase.
While Museveni uses cabinet to gift friends seats at the dining table, this time, he’ll have major considerations to make. There’ll be donations (say to AAA) and old pacts being respected (say with Moses Ali), but there will be key positions carefully secured. Even if this man has no love for country, he has no choice for his children, friends and associates.
Consider, for example, that AAA’s deputy retained in his position is a signpost on the calculations ahead. While Thomas Tayebwa had to fall like her boss, he was rehabilitated quickly because he is considered a needed politician for the future.
Being 46, and more subtle and technical about his parliamentary exploits, in addition to his ethnic texture, the new sheriffs feel they’ll need him. (At just 52, AAA is young, too. But she acted like she had reached the peak of her political career – which attracted a great deal of noise, making it easier to dress her in a goat’s skin for the vultures).
AVOIDING SUDAN, LIBYA, SOMALIA
It is a painful fact that to avoid the ruins in Libya and Sudan, ordinary Ugandans have to plead with Yoweri Museveni, the same man who has led Uganda into this unpredictable political situation.
Museveni is the absolute demonstration of the Luganda adage “omusota guli mu ntamu,” that “the snake is holding inside your only cooking clay pot.”
If you go hard on it, you’ll break the pot and will not eat for the next days, but to leave the snake in the pot, is also not to eat either. This is the state in which Uganda finds itself. Thus, one has to massage the snake, and give it time to leave.
As he prepares to meet his creator – he has told us as much – Museveni has to think about not only his children and friends, but the hundreds if not thousands of visible and invisible, large and small venomous snakes of many forms he has nurtured and empowered over the years, who will go after one another with lethal force. In the process, they’ll plunge Uganda into Sudan or a Libya situation.
Dear reader, we are not exceptional, Sudan or Libya or Somalia are not too far from us: Foreign capital is all around us, and they would stop at nothing in choosing sides and arming opposing factions.
Thus, Museveni has to give his co-conspirators an anchor – a next center of power around which to coalesce all their interests.
If Museveni goes ahead and appoints his son as VP, which is a constitutional president-in-waiting, it would not be benevolence to Uganda, but his judgment of the time, and benevolence to friends.
For peace-loving and opposition forces, Gen. Muhoozi, not only helps the country to avoid a Sudan-Libya situation, but is undoubtedly a weaker opponent than his father. (Let’s explore this next week).
yusufkajura@gmail.com
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.
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المصدر: The Observer (Uganda)