The House that Museveni Built: How Yoweri Museveni’s Vision Continues to Shape Uganda
On sale HERE on Amazon (e-book)
326 pages
Guest writer: David Sseppuuya
Paul Busharizi is onto something here. Longevity
in power or an extended stint on the throne will, invariably, impact a nation
for generations, for better or for worse. They still talk about the Victorian
Era in Great Britain, as they do of the Thatcherite years of that country’s
more modern construct. There are still reflections of Stalinism in the Russian
mirror today, as there is a large Mobutu imprint on all aspects of Congolese
life, whether personal flamboyance or wastage of great natural wealth or
hedonistic lifestyles. Pope John Paul II’s philosophy defines much of what the
Roman Catholic Church will be for the foreseeable future, as will Robert
Mugabe’s legacy, within and without Zimbabwe’s borders.
In the final analysis, the weighting of
long rule tends to present either of two verdicts: good or bad. Or could there
be a halfway point, a job half done, as the cover of ‘The House that Museveni Built’ can be interpreted?
Is this a fly-on-the-wall account, or a bird’s eye view of an observer of
society, as journalists like to self-identify? Media professionals are privy to,
and are privileged to be receptacles of, many goings on in the upper echelons
of society, and in this book there is the odd nugget to reflect this. As
Busharizi confesses, ‘The House that
Museveni Built’ was not intended to be a comprehensive account of the
Uganda Museveni has forged, but more the way he has seen the country change
during his time as a journalist, what he calls the “interplay of politics,
economics and culture that was happening and its influence on events.”
This book is a compilation of articles and commentaries published over a decade, which gives it a panoramic view. Written in real time, they have the authentic feel of that journalistic self-description of “observer of society”. But that also means that they lack the hind view perspective that the historian has, a challenge that is mitigated by the use of footnotes.
Busharizi makes a scythe through Uganda’s
politics (electoral and governance), geopolitics (regional and global), economy
(trade, business and development economics), and society (people, places and
institutions) by way of commentaries penned independently with the macrobian
rule of Yoweri Museveni, 35 years and counting, providing the spine.
Arguably Uganda’s leading business
journalist of the last 20 years, the 2000s, Busharizi’s strength and bias creeps
through. If the lay of the book is the topical subdivisions, he is at his best
with matters business and economic, opining with knowledge and authority on subjects
as varied as the Human Development Index, the Ten Point Programme, the Bretton
Woods Structural Adjustment Programme, national debt, ‘nseenene’ trade, and
procurement protocols. It is little wonder, then, that at The New Vision he
gravitated from the Society Desk to the Business Desk and even had a stint with
Reuters, the global business news beast, as Uganda Correspondent.
The
book serves as a public journal of sorts, flagging important national
developments, seen through individual players, events, patterns and trends. Others are landmark events in the lives of
personalities and the effect they have on the communities and systems they are
a part of. Being topical, as opposed to chronological, gives the book a
dynamism often lacking in memoirs, though it is not a memoir in the strict
sense of the genre.
A special strength is the occasional
parallel drawn with other societies, indicative of the observant and informed
professionalism that made Busharizi such a valuable asset in a knowledge
environment that the newsroom is (this reviewer was his first editor when young
Busharizi was still at university, quite a while back). He, for instance, cites
the contrasting political leaderships of the US and the UK, the former based on
personality, the latter on party machinery and society’s appreciation of a
party’s positions. In analysing the staying power of top leadership, parallels
are then drawn with Uganda’s ruling NRM and the opposition party, the FDC.
However each piece being a reprint of the
observations penned in the immediacy of their occurrence means that there is
little or no benefit of wholesome analysis. Footnotes help mitigate this.
In his musings, Busharizi makes
observations such as, “The NRM, forged in the heat of the Luwero triangle and
moulded into a multi-million-person organization since 1986, has made itself
indispensable for anyone who has serious political aspirations in this country”. This was noted on the eve of Christmas 2014, a point in Uganda’s
political history when post-1986 personalities Patrick Amama Mbabazi and David
Sejusa flirted with opposition from within the NRM. It is a succinct
observation, penned under the headline ‘Only Fools Don’t Change Their Minds’
that embodies the kinetics of the politics of NRM/Uganda under the leadership
of Museveni.
Like that account, many of the entries are microcosms of the dynamics of Ugandan society. Take electoral politics and the never-ending popularity contests that are endemic to the governance of nations: Museveni has been good at courting the female half of the population, making many policies that advance the cause of the woman. There are the earlier policies like women representation in Parliament and affirmative action in university enrolment, which have been around for so long that many probably take them for granted. But in his political astuteness Museveni keeps renewing his appeal to that demographic: Busharizi notes that the 2021 appointment of female leaders to the Vice Presidency and the Prime Minister’s seat, two of the top three political offices, combined with the appointment of women in four out of ten ministerial positions, was more a strategic move and less of grandstanding.
The book
does not have much of Museveni the personality; rather, as the title proposes,
it is more of commentary on the systems and functionalities of the construct
that is Uganda under his leadership.
Busharizi is neither an apologist nor a rabid opponent of Museveni or the
political status quo, dispositions that lend credence to his analyses and
observations. He therefore comes through as a credible exponent of that critical
journalism ethic of being disinterested but not uninterested. Disinterest plays
out in admirable levels of objectivity, while not being uninterested manifests
in real passion for Uganda. The 9 February 2021 entry typifies this: in the
wake of NRM’s electoral victory, secured in an environment of a
Covid-emasculated economy, he criticises the bloated Parliament of 520
representatives, not with emotion as many regime critics tend to do, but by
making this objective observation: “History shows that among the main reasons
for economic collapse is when countries starve or eliminate the productive
sectors of resources in favour of consumers. When MPs get sh165b for cars to
whizz around the country, sectors like tourism – our largest foreign exchange
earner, have been allocated sh176b in the 2021/22 budget….. when your incomes are
falling you have to cut your expenses, but clearly not in Uganda. It would be
funny if it was not frightening.” Few would dispute that perceptive remark,
whatever their political leanings.
This collection of reflections will serve
as a small but significant record of Uganda’s political and economic history,
observed and penned in real time. It is a truism that newspapers are the first
rough draft of history. This is a well-crafted draft, a worthy contribution to
that point in future when the Museveni years are evaluated with the benefit of
hindsight.
‘The House that Museveni Built’ will be published
online on October 9, 2021
dsseppuuya@yahoo.com
Twitter @DavidSseppuuya
