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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Wed Jul 21 2010 - 18:01:46 EDT
<http://independent.co.ug/index.php/cover-story/cover-story/82-cover-story/6
90-family-rule-in-uganda-> Family rule in Uganda
How Museveni’s ‘clan’ runs the government
By The Independent Team
22/07/2010
· Look at the original text with many photos
**
http://independent.co.ug/index.php/cover-story/cover-story/82-cover-story/69
0-family-rule-in-uganda-
In his inaugural address as professor of history at Makerere University on
June 18, 1986, the highly respected Ugandan historian, Samwiri Karugire,
spelt out the problems of Africa. In a lecture titled “Wind of Change or
Merely Change in the Wind? African Polities since Independence,” Karugire
said the biggest ills of our continent are “numbing corruption and
nepotism.”
“It is because of these gross malfeasances,” Karugire reasoned, “that our
rulers become insecure in their sumptuous offices and therefore they must
surround themselves with their own relatives with whom, of course, they loot
the national treasury.”
Quoting journalist David Lamb, Karugire said: “The slain President William
Tolbert of Liberia, when he was president of that country, made his brother
Frank, president of the senate; another brother Stephen minister of finance;
his sister Lucia was appointed mayor of the city of Bentol; one of his sons
Ambassador at Large, his daughter Wilhemina presidential physician; his
niece Tula, presidential dietician; his three nephews respectively,
assistant minister for presidential affairs, agricultural attaché in Rome
and vice governor of the national bank; his four sons in-law respectively,
minister of defence, deputy minister of works, commissioner for immigration
and board member for Air Liberia. One brother-in-law was appointed to the
senate, another as ambassador to Guinea and yet another as mayor of the
capital city, Monrovia.”
Tolbert was behaving like African despots of his time like Marshal Mobutu
Sese Seko of then Zaire, Daniel arap Moi of Kenya, Omar Bongo of Gabon,
Gnasingbe Eyadema of Togo, Obiang Ngwena of Equatorial Guinea, etc. So has
Uganda gone through a wind of change or a mere change in the wind in regard
to these African political practices? If he were still alive today, what
would Karugire say about President Yoweri Museveni’s Uganda especially given
that his son, Edwin Karugire, is married to first daughter, Natasha?
Anatomy of family rule
Previously a critic of political patrimony, there is growing concern even
among those closest to him that Museveni is treading the long trodden path
that Karugire condemned 23 years ago. For example, Museveni has appointed
his wife, Mrs Janet Museveni, as state minister for Karamoja; his brother,
Gen. Salim Saleh, formerly a minister of state for micro finance, as Senior
Presidential Advisor on defence, a job at the same rank as a cabinet
minister; his brother-in-law, Sam Kutesa, minister of foreign affairs; his
son, Muhozi Keinerugaba, commander of the Special Forces, his daughter
Natasha Karugire, Private Secretary to the president in charge of Household.
Museveni has also appointed his nephew, Joseph Ekwau (son of his younger
sister Violet Kajubiri), Private Secretary to the President in charge of
Medical Services (HIV//AIDS); his sister Miriam Karugaba as Administrator at
State House (she is semi-literate) and her husband (therefore Museveni’s
brother-in-law), Jimmy Karugaba, as Officer in Charge (OC) of the Accounts
Department at State House. Museveni has also appointed his sister-in-law,
Jolly Sabune, Executive Director of Cotton Development Authority, his
niece-in-law, Hope Nyakairu, Undersecretary for Administration and Finance
at State House, his cousin Bright Rwamirama, State Minister for Animal
Husbandry, his other cousin, Faith Katana Mirembe, Assistant Private
Secretary in charge of Education and Social Services and Justus Karuhanga,
Private Secretary to the President in charge of Legal Affairs who is a
nephew to Mrs Museveni.
There is no doubt that people like Saleh and Kutesa merit their positions.
Saleh is a war hero who distinguished himself as a brilliant and brave rebel
commander while Kutesa is one of the veteran politicians on Uganda’s
political scene. But equally Uganda has many competent people who can
perform their roles. If the president sought to avoid being accused of
nepotism, there was enough talent to choose from to make public
appointments.
Many observers say that increasing family influence in government has gone
hand in hand with the informalisation of power. Thus, although formal
authority is vested in official institutions, effective power is wielded by
this informal clique of family and kin. The official structure presents a
semblance of national ethno-regional and religious diversity to win the
regime legitimacy. The informal but highly powerful structure of the closest
of the president’s family and kin is the “real” government.
Replicating Africa’s curse
Apparently, this reflects the shift of attention from the promise of
“fundamental change” to the slogan of “no change” that has become the
rallying cry of regime functionaries. The informalisation of power in Uganda
echoes other African countries. One example is Donor Cruise O’Brien’s 1975
book on politics in Senegal: Saints and Politicians. According to O’Brien,
politics in Senegal is organised through factions, otherwise called “clans.”
But the clan in Senegalese politics is not defined by kinship although that
may exist and help reinforce political solidarity within a given political
group.
Instead, O’Brien writes, “the clan” is basically a “political faction
operating within the institutions of the state and the governing party; it
exists above all to promote the interests of its members through political
competition, and its first unifying principle is the prospect of material
rewards of political success. Political office and the spoils of office are
the very definition of success: loot is the clanic totem.” Sounds like
Uganda today?
In his 1979 article The Administration of Underdevelopment, David Gould
revealed a similar practice in Mobutu’s Zaire. He argued that power was
organised at the very top around a “presidential clique.” This was composed
mainly of about 50 of the president’s “closest kinsmen” whom Mobutu trusted.
They occupied the most sensitive and lucrative positions of state like “head
of the Judiciary Council, Secret Police, Interior Ministry, President’s
Office and so on.” In his last days, Mobutu’s son Nzanga was a presidential
advisor while another, Kongolo, was commander of the dreaded Special
Presidential Division (DSP).
Next to the kinsmen/women, Gould revealed, was the “presidential
brotherhood”! Though not from the president’s ethnic group, their positions
depended on their personal ties with Mobutu and his clique. Is Uganda’s
power structure moving towards Mobutu’s Zaire? It already has; our
equivalent of the brotherhood would include people like Security Minister,
Amama Mbabazi. So much is the level of patrimony in Museveni’s presidency
that many Ugandans wonder how a man who publicly despised Mobutu and that
generation of African dictators could have so easily gone the same way; the
way none of his predecessors Milton Obote or Idi Amin can be accused of
having gone.
*Why family rule?
Odrek Rwabwogo
For Dr Oloka Onyango, a Makerere University lecturer and head of the Human
Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC), the signs were always there from the very
beginning that this is the way it would be.
“Museveni’s policy has always been to construct personal rule, not
institutional rule. He has destroyed all institutions. And you could see
this from the very beginning,” Dr Oloka told The Independent, adding; “This
is the trajectory he took from 1989 – consolidation and marginalisation. So
when you take that course, you have very few options especially in the new
international setting i.e. who can best insulate you from the International
Criminal Court (ICC) if not family [son and brother].
Oloka said that the problems former Zambian President, Frederick Chiluba has
faced at the hands of his successor and presumed protégé, Levy Mwanawasa and
problems former Malawian President Bakili Muluzi is facing at the hands of
his chosen successor, Bingu wa Mutharika mean you cannot trust your
successor except family. “There are very few Moi-like successors,” Oloka
said, “So you rely on those who have 150% loyalty and these are blood
relatives. For Museveni, there are only two people he can trust – Saleh and
his son Muhoozi.”
Indeed this is a view shared more or less by Charles Onyango-Obbo, a senior
Ugandan journalist based in Nairobi and probably the country’s foremost
political commentator. “One reason Museveni ended up with so many relatives
in key security positions, is that fairly early in his presidency he sought
to entrench his power by limiting the independent growth of his party, the
NRM, and to dismantle the institutions of state (which he had, admittedly,
helped rebuild considerably because he needed them for the reconstruction
effort in his first 10 years in power). But one can never govern without
organised institutions, and a force you can rely on to counter challenges to
your authority. That is how, among other reasons, the security forces became
the bedrock of Museveni’s power,” Obbo told The Independent in a telephone
interview from Nairobi.
Jovia Saleh
Like his erstwhile colleagues, the military has inevitably been the focus of
Museveni’s patrimony. According to a survey carried out by The Independent
last year and published in its Issue 4 (Jan. 25 – Feb. 7, 2008), 74 per cent
of the 23 top command positions in the “national” army, Uganda People’s
Defence Forces (UPDF), are held by officers from Museveni’s western region.
Other regions like Buganda (central) hold 17 per cent, the north 9 per cent
and the east zero per cent! All the five full generals in the UPDF – Yoweri
Museveni, David Tinyefuza, Elly Tumwine, Salim Saleh and Aronda Nyakairima
are from the president’s sub-ethnic group, the Bahima.
While the president has often attributed this imbalance to historical
circumstances of his NRA rebellions that started with mostly his tribesmen,
pundits say almost 40 years since he started his struggle in 1971 should
have been more than enough to rectify the imbalance. Instead, they point to
a systematic attempt to cement a patrimony.
“Once he dismantled state institutions and stifled the party,” says Obbo,
“within the security apparatus, he needed a rationale for apportioning power
inside it. Since he had turned his back on meritocracy in the public service
and politics, he could not run the security services based on meritocracy.
Because the security services lacked the diversity of the NRM party, and
there was little or no direct disloyalty to Museveni,
Kellen Kayonga
he could only use a subjective criterion to allocate authority in the
security services, and so he went tribal in a general sense, and in very key
jobs, he relied on the family. Narrow as these are, they still represent
some kind of criteria – blood relationship.”
How has it been possible?
The question many people will ask is how Museveni, without the advantage
enjoyed by early African dictators who inherited the colonial machinery
amidst illiteracy, poverty, ignorance and lack of institutions, could have
successfully built a patrimony in this age of democracy and enlightenment?
“Historically, family dictatorships largely exist in states that are weak;
the elite leaders are not organised and there is lack of a common national
consciousness. This is exactly what is in Uganda now and that is why
Museveni is able to use family rule without fear,” leading Kampala lawyer
David Mpanga told The Independent.
Dr Oloka agrees that there are few institutional checks to hold Museveni
accountable because it was not envisaged during the constitutional making
process how the extent of abuse could go. “State House is uncontrolled like
intelligence; there are no controls on the president so it’s the president’s
plaything,” he says.
Alice Kaboyo
But for veteran politician Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, who co-founded the Uganda
Patriotic Movement (UPM) with Museveni in 1980 and served as minister in his
NRM government from 1986 to 2003, Museveni has taken this course not simply
because of weak institutional safeguards but also because the president
lacked political grooming.
“The fundamental problem Museveni has is the fact that he never had an
opportunity to associate with elders in politics when he was still in his
youth, his formative stage; leaders like Ignatius Musaazi, Engulu and the
Bikangagas. He has always looked at politics in terms of him becoming the
leader and in the process lost out on the possibility of guidance. Instead
of learning from them he has always been trashing them one by one. Museveni
is a politician who ran out of school, served in government, learnt how to
fire the gun and then shot himself into power. And that is why he is using
family rule with impunity. He seems to be the ‘I-know-it-all, solve-it-all,
giver of jobs and the fountain of favours’,” Bidandi says.
The uses of family rule
While opinion is divided as to whether President Museveni’s institution of a
neo-patrimonial regime was an act of omission or commission, there is
unanimity as to how much this system has helped him retain power for so
long, writing himself in the books of history as the longest serving leader
the country has had. Neo-patrimonial regimes survive because of a
combination of factors like patronage, coercion, blackmail, bribery, etc. It
is a strategy that was well learned by the Museveni regime.
Jolly Sabune
“Apart from his tactic of rewarding the southern middle class, this reliance
on family actually helped Museveni,” says Obbo. “In the short term, it
reduced the level of discordance in the inner sanctum of power. Secondly, it
created a fairly large constituency in the security establishment that had
both a subjective and objective interest in Museveni’s survival.”
Thus, the way Maj. Okwiri Rabwoni [late Brig. Noble Mayombo’s renegade
brother] was handled in 2001 at Entebbe Airport and the shameless way former
presidential candidate Col. Kizza Besigye was treated in 2005/06, that
disregarded all law and the image of regime are embedded in this
neo-patrimonial system.
“A professional security officer wouldn’t do those things out of partisan
reasons,” Obbo has reasoned, “He needs something additional– a primordial
fear that a Besigye regime would punish you and all your family because you
are blood relatives of Museveni – to provoke that extreme response in
defence of the man. The best way to understand this is that while Amin
killed far more people than the Museveni regime, we never saw people like
Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka, Archbishop Janan Luwum, Vice Chancellor Frank
Kalimuzo, etc brutalised publicly. They were taken to Namanve or the
Nakasero State Research Bureau dungeons and brutally murdered out of public
sight.”
According to Obbo, the reason is that Amin had many tribesmen in his
service, but not relatives. The irrational fear of loss of privileges that
drives Museveni loyalists to be excessive in public because they feel the
whole family is threatened is one that didn’t afflict the Amin regime. That
cohesiveness, Obbo believes, has allowed Museveni to hold things longer than
all Uganda’s previous post-independence regimes combined.
Obviously, the military alone cannot guarantee survival of the regime so it
is imperative to build a patrimony in business and in politics, especially
in light of the increasing need to use money to buy political support. Thus
the president has many of his relatives and in-laws well placed in
legitimate business.
Bright Rwamirama
Some of the most prominent include Hannington Karuhanga, chairman UGACOF, a
leading coffee exporting company and chairman of Stanbic Bank. He is a
cousin to Mrs Museveni and is also married to a sister to the Chief of
Defence Forces Gen. Aronda Nyakairima. Although Karuhanga has made his mark
on the business scene through personal hard work, his connections to the
first family and the likely benefits it offers have not gone unnoticed.
Mrs Jovia Saleh: A wealthy business lady who is into real estate and a host
of other businesses is wife of the younger brother to President Museveni,
Gen. Saleh. Her sister Kellen Kayonga, is an accomplished business lady in
this country; she recently won the lucrative deal of exporting security
guards to the troubled Iraq through a security company Askar. She is the
young sister to Jovia Saleh and therefore a sister-in-law to Gen. Saleh.
Odrek Rwabwogo: The proprietor of Terp Consults, a public relations company
that has handled some of the government’s biggest events and programmes, the
most notable being the $1 million ‘Gifted by Nature’ campaign on CNN and the
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). He marries Museveni’s
daughter Patience. Of course other relatives like Kutesa, who owns Entebbe
Handling Services (ENHAS) straddle the space between business and politics.
Museveni’s relatives’ pre-eminence in business, says Dr Oloka, is not only
“an attempt to distance himself from personal corruption i.e. that it is
those around him that are corrupt,” but has also been dictated by the
current economic trends. Thus whereas in the past generation regimes used
state corporations to build their patronage network, liberalisation has left
the current generation of patriarchs with limited options. “Now Museveni
must employ them directly in government and in State House, or let them play
a big role in business,” he says.
Be that as it may, the president’s relatives can still be traced in the few
remaining parastatals and public statutory bodies. For instance, Don
Nyakairu, the Corporation Secretary of Uganda Telecom Ltd (UTL), is husband
to Mrs Museveni’s cousin Hope Nyakairu at State House.
Where will it all end?
Edwin Karugire
“No regime of patronage except perhaps Togo’s Eyadema has survived to the
next generation. But Togo did not have a history of conflict like Uganda has
had. Museveni may therefore try to survive but he may not succeed,” says Dr
Oloka.
Bidandi too is pessimistic about Museveni’s patrimony: “It’s a nasty
practice and I pity his lineage on the basis of what history can give as
lessons in different countries.”
So while it is certain that Museveni is patrimony will collapse tomorrow or
the other day, the extent of its collapse is perhaps best illustrated by
Onyango-Obbo. “The disadvantage of this creation of and reliance on a family
akazu [rule] is that you do not create a buffer between your family and your
enemies, because there aren’t enough non-relatives in the inner eating
circle. Thus a Museveni regime’s collapse will affect more members of his
family more quickly and directly than it did Obote’s or Amin’s. Also,
because you have no buffer, very few of them will help your relatives escape
in the event of a coup, for example, because you have not cultivated a large
enough constituency of ‘subjective loyalty’ for people to take high risks to
aid your flight.”
Interestingly of all Ugandan presidents, none of them has been as obsessed
about legacy as Museveni. And he will rule longer than any other president
probably ever will again. Yet, ironically, because of his irrational
dependence on family, his legacy will disappear faster than those of
presidents who ruled for fewer years.
Again, if his family-rule structure has the risk of decimating more of his
family in the event of his coming to an abrupt end, it means there shall not
be too many people out there to keep his story alive, to cling on to his
good works, and to insist on an accurate recording of the history of his
rule. For that, one needs to have inner, outer, far outer, and farther out
layers of people who feel they are included in the intimate workings of your
government, to carry on your memory. If these people are not there, you will
be forgotten more quickly. Thus the irony is that Milton Obote – and people
like DP’s Ben Kiwanuka – will live longer in history as positive mentions,
than Museveni.
**Wednesday, 11 March 2009 08:16 By The Independent Team
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