Hoping for candy store. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the presidential son and junior dictator who wants to succeed his papa Museveni. Photo: Facebook.
The drama playing out in Uganda’s succession dance has been played out since time immemorial. In Greek mythology, the many-headed serpent is The Hydra.
According to mythical lore, it had a poisonous breath and blood so virulent that even its scent was lethal. To make things worse, if any of these heads were cut off; they had the ability to regrow.
Statehouse, the seat of power in Uganda has become a hydra because of the several heads it uses to show the many faces of a regime whose multifaceted poisonousness is of mythological proportions. Two of the heads of this hydra are in the shape of the dictator Gen. Yoweri Museveni and his wife Janet Museveni in this dysfunctional World bank and IMF-financed dictatorship.
The two share a different vision about who should succeed the former.
Gen. Museveni has no succession plan and possibly hopes to achieve statehouse life after statehouse death. His wife, on the other hand, wants to install her own preferred choice.
Whoever this choice is, Janet has someone in mind that she can control like a puppet on strings in order to preserve the spoils which come from this grand larceny masquerading as a government. In the last presidential elections, it came to our notice that she fronted Lt. Gen. Henry Tumukunde as a candidate. Tumukunde is married to Stella Tumukunde, a cousin to Janet Museveni.
His introduction in the race had a twofold purpose. One, to spread the field thin as a straw candidate so as to deny Robert Kyagulanyi, a.k.a. Bobi Wine and the Forum for Democratic Change candidate Patrick Amuriat certain segments of support. Bobi Wine in reality still garnered more votes than the dictator anyway.
The second reason for fielding Tumukunde was to rattle Gen. Museveni into seeing his way towards Janet’s plan for succession. In the past, she has played her hidden hand in stacking the NRM’s house of cards in her own favor.
In 2004, Uganda was rewarded $4.3m for surpassing the national immunization target coverage in 2002. Former Health ministers Jim Muhwezi, Mike Mukula and Alex Kamugisha, as well as Alice Kaboyo, the current Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister for Luwero Triangle-Rwenzori Region and Janet’s relative, misappropriated this money. Then it transpired they were all doing Janet’s bidding, Mike Mukula for one said that he was only a conduit for the money meant for the First Lady.
In 2008, July 12, Gen. Museveni summoned the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) Members of Parliament (MP) for a one-week retreat to discuss party discipline and ideology at the National Leadership Institute, Kyankwanzi. The real reason was to save then minister of defense—and later, prime minister—Amama Mbabazi from a brewing corruption scandal. Mbabazi had hoped to succeed Gen. Museveni and this was too much for the First Lady.
When Gen. Museveni presented his paper “Strategic Bottlenecks Facing Africa” his wife, who is also the MP from Ruhaama County, opposed him with the words: “After 22 years in power we should not be talking about problems, we should be speaking about solutions!” Mbabazi was eventually vanquished when he did what he accused Dr. Kizza Besigye of doing by dramatically “jumping the cue” instead of waiting for Gen. Museveni to anoint him over any successor the First Lady seeks to foist upon Ugandans. Dr. Besigye, a former Museveni ally of course as Ugandans know broke with the party over Museveni’s autocracy and became a major opposition leader and presidential candidate.
The two heads of this hydra keep cutting each other down in proxy battles which see their respective heads growing back in the shape and form of different political players who all have bit-parts in this succession pantomime. While all this drama unfolds, Ugandans experience more and more misIn Greek mythology, however, the Hydra faced Heracles. Thankfully, he realized that the Hydra would regrow any head that was chopped off, so he enlisted the help of his nephew Iolaus. When Heracles struck at the creature, Iolaus burnt the stump of its necks with a firebrand, preventing the diabolical beast’s heads from growing back. The Hydra’s one immortal head was cut off with a golden sword given to Heracles by Athena.
The Hydra was thus defeated.
The moral story is that defeating the Hydra in statehouse will be a Herculean task, but it will be done by the masses.
Columnist Matogo can be reached at [email protected]
