Junior dictator Gen. Kainerugaba taking on more roles in Uganda’s IMF and World Bank financed kleptocracy.
[The View From Uganda]
Uganda’s senior presidential advisor for Special Operations, Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, a.k.a. junior dictator, and son of dictator Yoweri Museveni, visited Bugiri Sugar factory the other day.
Gen. Kainerugaba, who is also the commander of the Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) Land Forces was invited by the facility’s directors to tour their uncompleted sugar factory in Kapyanga sub-county in Bugiri district.
Mr. Elison Karuhanga, one of the directors of the factory, thanked the general for paying a visit to what is probably yet another white elephant owned by the First Family. This probability, of course, goes beyond speculation since Elison Karuhanga’s father is Elly Karuhanga, a well-known stooge of Gen. Museveni. Karuhanga is a well-rewarded acolyte too, as he holds the position of Chairman for Uganda Soft Drinks Manufacturers Association, Chairman of Uganda Chamber of Mines & Petroleum, Chairman at Development Finance Co. of Uganda Ltd., Chairman of British American Tobacco Uganda Ltd., and Director & Legal Counsel at Canmin Resources Ltd.
This is the definition of all in the family. Have you caught your breath?
Well, there’s more. Elly Karuhanga is also on the board of Nile Breweries Ltd. and Marasa Holdings Ltd., and Chairman for Uganda ThinkTank Foundation, President of The Rotary Club of Kampala, Senior Partner at Kampala Associated Advocates, Chairman-Governing Council President at Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Member of World Trade Law Association. His son, Ellison, played a key role in defeating former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi’s presidential election petition at the Supreme Court, which challenged President Museveni’s 2016 coronation.
The Karuhangas are part of Gen. Museveni’s kitchen cabinet or “deep state”, which is reminiscent of Soviet Russia’s presidium or standing executive committee which functioned as the legislative authority when the Supreme Soviet was not sitting.
However, Gen. Museveni’s deep state is not communistic at all. Instead, it is primitively capitalistic in the way it is swallowing up the economy like the Oligarchs did in Russia. The Oligarchs are a handful of men who seized much of Russia’s natural resource assets after the fall of the Soviet Union.
These were men like Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Fridman, Pyotr Aven, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Potanin and Alexander Smolensky. They struck a deal with former Russian president Boris Yeltsin ahead of the 1996 election to keep him in power and to catapult them to untold riches. Vladimir Putin served as Prime Minister for one year during Yeltsin’s presidency and ascended to the highest office in 2000. He and the Oligarchs have been enjoying the spoils of Russia’s economy ever since.
As Gen. Museveni hopes to emulate Putin by consolidating his own band of thieves through his National Resistance Army (NRA) and its offshoot the Descendants Resistance Army (DRA), he will have a prime eye on creating a kleptocracy around a militocracy.
The disease of kleptocracy keeps spreading.
In South Africa, after apartheid folded, we witnessed the rise of the so called “Black Diamonds”. These are newly rich Black South Africans associated with the ruling African National Congress (ANC). They are crude and crass, much like Uganda’s current minister of Internal Affairs Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire.
The Black Diamonds flaunted their flashy cars and fancy homes, given to them by the white racists of the apartheid era as part of a barter deal for their souls. Gen. Museveni’s cabal is a curious mish mash of both the Russian Oligarchs style and the South African Black Diamonds approach, but the problem with Gen. Museveni’s goons is that they do not build anything.
Every new factory they open is either incomplete, like the Bugiri factory, or collapses soon after such as the Nakasongola Cassava Processing Plant in Wabigalo Sub County, which was opened by Gen. Salim Saleh, the dictator’s brother, 14 years ago. These factories are for photo-ops when they are being opened.
Gen. Museveni’s House of Cards will collapse; all it requires is a wind of change. Columnist Matogo can be reached via [email protected]
