Photos: Kakwenza Rukirabashaija\YouTube Screenshots
Today October 9 marks 61 years since Uganda won independence from Britain in 1962. Uganda has nothing to celebrate today.
Uganda is governed by a regime of blood and terror under military dictator Gen. Yoweri Museveni whose U.S.-backed regime has been in power for 37 years now. He came to power by the barrel of the gun and rules by the barrel of the gun.
Ugandans are hoping that the cycle will be broken and that Museveni will not depart by the barrel of the gun. Yet his brutal militarism makes this wishful thinking. Americans unfamiliar with Museveni’s terror regime can now get a sampling by watching The National geographic documentary film “The People’s President” on Netflix and Hulu.
Uganda armed forces whisked the legitimately elected president Robert Kyagulanyi, a.k.a. Bobi Wine—subject of the documentary—into an unmarked car when he returned to Uganda on October 5 after a tour of Canada, the U.S., and South Africa. He was rushed under heavy military escort to his home where he remains under house arrest. Museveni had been determined to prevent images being streamed globally on social media showing tens of thousands of Ugandans welcoming Bobi Wine along the way to his home from Entebbe Airport.
Museveni—officially 78, but believed to be 85 years old—knows that he is a hated relic of the past and that Bobi Wine, 41, epitomizes the present and the future. A few weeks ago before he departed for his overseas trip Bobi Wine conducted a national mobilization tour for supporters of his National Unity Platform (NUP) party. Hundreds of thousands of people greeted him at the rallies. Uganda armed forces did not disrupt the mobilization tour. Museveni likely wanted to gauge support for Bobi Wine. He was spooked by the numbers he saw. He must have fearful visions of these hundreds of thousands one day marching toward State House to end his tyranny.
It’s a possible not distant scenario given the level of discontent within the civil populace and the armed forces.
Museveni announced that the mobilization rallies would not be allowed to continue just as Bobi Wine set out on his international tour. In Canada, Bobi Wine was the keynote speaker at the Uganda Diaspora Conference. In the United States, he met with Biden Administration officials at the State Department and a senior official in the office of Congressman Gregory Meeks, a ranking Democratic Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
From the U.S. Bobi Wine visited Ugandan diaspora in South Africa. Ugandans then mobilized and prepared to welcome him back home last week. Instead he was kidnapped from the airport runway as soon as he disembarked the Air Rwanda flight at Entebbe.
Bobi Wine remains under house arrest with scores of heavily armed soldiers surrounding his property and a helicopter buzzing overhead much in the same way as the days following his defeat of Museveni in the 2021 election.
The headquarters of NUP remains besieged by armed forces. Today when party officials readied to make statements reflecting on the meaning of “independence” under dictator Museveni, several of them, including Secretary General David Lewis Rubongoya and spokesperson Joel Ssenyongi, were arrested and whisked away together with scores of party supporters.
Uganda is not yet Uhuru.
When Museveni seized power in 1986, he famously told the thousands who cheered him when he was sworn in on the steps of Parliament: “The problem of Africa are leaders who overstay in power.”
Since then Museveni has done everything to remain in power. He’s unleashed a state of genocide that far exceeds Gen. Idi Amin’s atrocities. Museveni’s crimes have impacted not only Uganda but the entire East and Central Africa region. Millions of Africans have perished as a result of Museveni’s militarism: his army has committed massacres in every region of Uganda including a 20 year vendetta in Acholi region captured in the documentary “A Brilliant Genocide”; Museveni invaded Rwanda in 1990, increasing hostilities between Hutu and Tutsi and sparking the 1994 genocide after the plane carrying Rwanda’s President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down—an article in The New York Times quoted a French official saying Gen. Museveni provided the missile that downed the plane; Museveni invaded Congo multiple times for resource plunder sparking multiple wars that have killed millions and leading to the World Court granting Congo reparations of $6 billion for the war crimes—he later begged then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to block a separate ICC investigation knowing, rightfully, he’d be indicted for war crimes in Congo like Sudan’s Omar Hassan Bashir for crimes against humanity in Darfur; and, Museveni invaded South Sudan in 2013, leading to ongoing conflict that’s claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands.
Museveni has also turned corruption into unofficial but widely accepted policy. His ministers even steal resources for people in Uganda’s famine-stricken region of Karamoja. Museveni himself is a thief. In 2018 a U.S. federal court trial convicted Chinese wheeler-dealer Chi Ping Patrick Ho of bribing Museveni and his then foreign minister Sam Kutesa $1 million for oil and other business concessions. More money was to come later in the form of business partnership with Museveni’s family, the court heard. The U.S. gained jurisdiction when Ho used a New York bank to wire Kutesa’s $500,000 share; Museveni, a much more clever thief than Kutesa had his $500,000 delivered in cash to Uganda by Ho wrapped as a “gift.”
Since 2020, Gen. Museveni’s regime has intensified a campaign of kidnapping, torture and killing of primarily young Ugandans who are suspected supporters of NUP. Museveni declared war after Bobi Wine, then a 38-year-old Member of Parliament declared his run for the presidency. On November 18 and 19, 2020 armed forces massacred as many as 150 Ugandans protesting the arrest of Bobi Wine. The campaign of kidnappings, arrests, torture and killings have continued and escalated since January 14, 2021 when Bobi Wine defeated the dictator in Presidential elections. Museveni, who controls the army and police forces simply declared fraudulent results in his favor and refused to yield power. He’s an illegitimate ruler.
The most iconic victim of Museveni’s torture campaign is one of Uganda’s most famous writers Kakwenza Rukirabashaija. Museveni’s son, junior-dictator Gen. Muhoozi Kaenerugaba is alleged by Kakwenza (Bobi Wine examines his scarred back above)) to have participated in his torture. Both Museveni and Muhoozi are the subjects of an International Criminal Court (ICC) complaint as reported on several media outlets.
Even with the murderous militarism and criminal corruption Museveni remained in power due to diplomatic, financial, and military support from the United States, Britain, the EU and the multilateral institutions, the U.S.-controlled World Bank and IMF. This is because Museveni is a useful tool of U.S. geo-political and strategic policy. Museveni deploys almost 10,000 soldiers in Somalia which the U.S. fears could fall to al-Shabab militants, so he gets a blank check on human rights abuses and domestic terrorism in Uganda.
Yet the blanket support for Museveni’s blood-regime is beginning to unravel. Ugandans had been protesting intensely over the last five years in-person and online against the World Bank and IMF for their support to Museveni’s illegitimate regime. The last straw came when the dictator signed the anti-LGBTQ law in May, 2023. In August the World Bank announced that there would be no more new financing to dictator Museveni’s regime.
The protests must continue against the U.S. administration that still provides close to $1 billion in annual support to the regime and to the EU.
When hundreds of thousands of Ugandans showed up at Bobi Wine’s mobilization tour before he departed for his most recent international visits, leaders in all the Western countries—and of corporations like Total Energies—that still support Museveni were also able to see who is really the legitimate leader of Uganda.
Museveni may keep Bobi Wine under house arrest but in fact the dictator is the one who is the prisoner in Uganda, surrounded by 48 million prison wardens—the entire population of Uganda. They are all waiting for the right time, which will surely come, to drive him out.
Uganda is not yet Uhuru. Uganda will eventually enjoy a second Uhuru.
