The balance sheet of this past two decades has nothing to do with the aspirations for equal rights, freedom and social progress that motivated many Ugandans to wage a relentless fight against Amin and later Obote’s dictatorial regimes, during which many lost their lives. Although Museveni and his cronies achieved their selfish ends as attested by Jim Muhwezi’s response to Justice Ogola……“I would like also to say that when there has been a call for patriotism and statesmanship I have been there. … I do not know my lord where you were at the time but I was part of the peace and tranquility and rule of law which prevails today”…. after condemning people to death by swindling everything that was meant for the victims and the patients of HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis.
I have never considered NRA rebellion as process that had been initiated by the spontaneous intervention of the masses. It was a strategically planned rebellion that was meant to confine Ugandans in absolute ignorance, disease, and poverty at the expense of the leaders’ egotism and greed. After the 1986, Museveni tried to combine populist demagogy with a ruthless policy against the poor, which boosted capitalist profits of the ruling class (his family).
Behind this demagogy, however, Museveni entrenched a policy aimed at keeping social state expenditure to a minimum and at slavishly respecting imperialist capital, which benefited his immediate family, friends and relatives, including a bandwagon of sycophants in Buganda, Busoga and Teso regions in the name of regional balance (not typical mafias).
Indeed, Museveni has made a huge issue of the intractable poverty of the population, leading to its ill-health and death that he has blamed primarily on the past regimes. This 21st anniversary is no cause for celebration among Ugandans.