Uganda: Museveni-Mbabazi Power Struggle May Be Over, but Real Reform Still
Years Away
By Angelo Izama
30 September 2014
The firing of Uganda's Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, which has pitched the
country into another spell of political uncertainty, highlights the power of
perpetual incumbency, and with it, the utility of presidential term limits.
As a newly emerging oil producer, Uganda's version of stability, anchored on
the near 30-rule of President Yoweri Museveni, must be distinguished from
other types of political longevity. Its architecture is no longer dependent
on effective hierarchies of a political movement (the NRM) - which the
President and others built in the late 70's and used to take power in 1986.
Neither is it held together by an efficient state bureaucracy. Investors in
Uganda's energy and oil sector, dominated by Chinese interests, discover
this the hard way: No power is more important than the Presidency. Access to
his favour has created a vibrant lobbying industry amongst insiders and
family members, sowing confusion in the official government.
Billions of dollars worth of contracts sit in a state of uncertainty as
hopeful investors work the corridors of power, wining and dining real and
potential interlocutors, buying cars and offering trips to up-market holiday
destinations. The losers take to the courts, using official rules to better
their fortunes. Newspaper editors have all but scrapped the headline
'Another Government Scandal'.
The departure of Mbabazi, NRM's 'bureaucrat-in-chief', as Prime Minister and
Leader of Government Business, will likely add to the uncertainty. New sets
of contacts are required, new patrons sought and a new network will emerge.
The Ugandan story has been one of the slow whittling away of any one single
hierarchy of power, state, party and army. In its place, the Ugandan
political family is a bifurcated assemblage of increasingly smaller groups
orbiting around the presidency - a situation often described as a
"dominant-leader political settlement" (by Professor Samuel Hickey and
others.) Even if the ideological inclination of the NRM is to achieve the
sort of success that China's Communist party or, to a lesser extent, its
African cousins, like South Africa's ANC have managed, its politics remain
counterintuitive.
In the present term of office, President Museveni's 4th as an elected
leader, the longer lasting effects of this political system are coming home
to roost - not least the exit of Mr. Mbabazi. Many observers had
long-expected the former Prime Minister to be dumped, for the simple reason
that his reported presidential ambitions ran run-counter to the logic of a
single-leader formulation and exercise of power under President Museveni.
However dated the concern about a post-Museveni world may seem, the real
question is whether the rivalry between the President and his ex-Prime
Minister is bad for business. Analysis of Mr. Mbabazi's firing has
unsurprisingly focused on the effect it may have on his ethnic group, the
Bakiga, and his own access to various political constituencies, and what
their response may be if they are not absorbed into the President's sphere
of influence.
But smarter folks are setting their clocks to run down to March 2015 when,
if Mr Mbabazi is not dead, in jail, exile or reconciled with the President,
he has one shot at challenging Museveni at the delegates conference of the
NRM. That's if he remains in the party.
Supporters of Museveni have argued that the exit of his powerful rival will
help quiet the coalitions the President manages - making the political
system more stable and predictable with him at the helm, unchallenged. It's
this view that also claims the benefit of Museveni contemplating a successor
or succession process without having to look over his shoulder.
This view however, gives too much credence to the 'who' in the situation and
not the 'what'. In the long run, the risks that Uganda runs are the fragile
and dispersed coalitions, which determine how power is produced and
exercised. Shocks to the system, like the ex-Prime Minister's exit, become
significant events not because the system cannot overcome them, but because
it's innately weak.
Increasingly now, the public sphere is awash with calls for the military to
take the lead in managing not just security but the economy. Military
advisors are already out in force in the rural areas having assumed control
over the country's signature agricultural improvement program.
The borrowing of the military's more intact hierarchy ahead of a general
election also suggests that the NRM party and its structures will be less
important to the outcome of the election itself, further removing the
political organization, already fragile, for some kind of alternative built
around army volunteers.
Constitutional reforms, prepared by the government (until recently by Mr.
Mbabazi) will likely skip the question of term limits. Leaked drafts give
the President more power over Parliament and the Judiciary as well as the
security sector. For now, the power struggle at the center may be over, but
real reform is still years away.
Angelo Izama is a Ugandan journalist and former OSI Fellow. He is working on
a book manuscript on the politics of Uganda's newly discovered oil
resources.