GENERAL TUMWINE AND THE MAKING OF TOUGH TIMES

General Elly Tumwine was laid to rest on Tuesday after succumbing to cancer last week.

Tumwine was the army commander of the National Resistance Army (NRA) when they took over Kampala in 1986. He remained a high ranking official of the government and even when dropped as security minister in 2021, was still seen as a leading light of the NRM.

But whenever the origins of the NRA are revisited the fact that he shot the first shot that started the bush war in February 6, 1981 is trotted out. This made him a huge symbolic figure in the Movement’s history.

One wouldn’t fail to note the timing of Tumwine’s demise at the beginning of a week during which 48 Generals, him among them, many of them bushwar veterans, retired from the army.

Clearly a passing of an era is underway that would be interesting to put in perspective.

When the story is told of the beginnings of the bushwar we gloss over the fact that Tumwine and many of his contemporaries, many university graduates, were the crème de la crème of their generation.

When I went to university much later in 1992 it was impressed upon me that of all the kids I started primary school with only 2,000 or about 0.1 percent of us had made it to University. At that time there were only two universities, Makerere and Mbarara University of Science & Technology (MUST). If that was true for us imagine how much truer this was for the Tumwine’s?

The Amin administration by the time Tumwine graduated, had decimated the economy, but earlier generation’s reported that before they had finished their final exams they already had job offers from government and the top corporate companies.

"That these princes could have forsaken their place at the high table of society to become outlaws suggests two things; either they were mentally unstable or the times were so desperate they could not see any hope for the future, despite their high qualifications....

People who know these ladies and gentlemen more intimately, report that they are as sound of mind as the next man.

When you came out of university you were hopeful for the future and ready to take on the world, this clearly was not the case in 1981, at least for Tumwine and his contemporaries.

Despite their larger-than-life personas today and their influence on society over the last three decades, these renegades were the minority in a population, which had resigned itself to the leadership of the day.

It can be argued that they lost their idealism as soon as they assumed the reins of power. The dynamics of running a state means they have had to face up to the realities of what it takes to hang on to power. It is often a messy business and forces men and women to do things they never dreamed they would do.

 Uganda nor the NRM is no different.

Power gives one the ability to influence events, without power your vision for the future remains a pipe dream. How you exercise that power is down to the wielder of that power and what society is willing to allow you to get away with.

Its for this reason, if you want to be remembered as a hero or saint, die young or do not wield power. That is why we venerate people like Jesus, Che Gueverra, Thomas Sankara and John F Kennedy on one hand and Mahtma Ghandi, Mother Theresa and even Nelson Mandela on the other.  Exercising power Is not for the faint hearted and rarely leaves those in power with unsoiled hands.

So it should come as no surprise that a section of society feel hard done by Tumwine and his contemporaries on one hand, while the generals maintain the conviction of their cause, shown by the way some of them closed ranks behind Tumwine.

One image that emerged from events surrounding the General’s farewell was the a 28-second video clip of dozens of 4WDs leaving Kololo Ceremonial Grounds after Tumwine’s state funeral. Most of these were official government cars, an indication of how much richer government is than it was when the young Tumwines threw their fate at the mercy of the gods.

This event brought to mind the saying, “Tough times create strong men; Strong men create good times; Good times create weak men; Weak men create tough times”