By Charles Onyango Obbo
A picture of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni visiting mudslide victims in military uniform and an AK-47 strapped across his chest has created quite a buzz in the blogsphere.
To critics, it is the best representation of the ham-fisted military-cum-civilian regime that runs Uganda.
One blogger asked if he carried the gun in order to shoot survivors of the mudslide.
President Museveni, who came to power at the head of a victorious rebel army in 1986, declared with quite some fanfare that he was hanging up his military uniform and “putting on a civilian tunic” after he was elected in 1996.
However, his life as a civilian president has not quite brought him the prestige and credibility as did his role as the leader of the first home-based guerrilla movement to overthrow an independent African government.
Corruption, nepotism, expansionist misadventure in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the nastiness that his security services have had to resort to keep opponents in check, means his post-bush era is more tainted than his days as a liberator.
Because of that, Museveni has found it hard to put the military behind him.
Whenever the country is caught up a political crisis, he dives into his military fatigues, takes to national TV, and bangs tables and warns opponents.
What is more, despite his “retirement”, he has continued to promote himself. Now he is a lieutenant general.
Museveni is not the only military man turned civilian president in East Africa and the wider region.
There are no less than four in our immediate vicinity: Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, Southern Sudan’s Salva Kiir.
In most respects, they all fought a more bitter and trying war, or a longer campaign as guerrilla leaders, but when they came to power, they put away their guns and uniforms forever.
Because he is nearing the age of 70, Museveni cuts a rather ungainly figure in his military uniform, and with his AK-47 he looks like a grown man who will not let go of his boyhood toys.
However, it would be an oversimplification to see only that psychological explanation — because dress and talismans seem to play a role in African politics that they no longer do elsewhere.
In the past, most African presidents liked to bring their own style to dress; hence to Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, we owe what is now known in as the “Kaunda suit.” Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere gave us the “Nyerere suit.”
The Congo’s thieving strongman Mobutu Sese Seko had a unique hat, suit, and stick.
However, because he was so despised, he has not been emulated.
Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta had his flywhisk, and Daniel arap Moi, the rungu (staff).
In addition to his military uniforms and guns, Museveni will often carry a big stick, and at his farm he will have a double-headed spear.
The African Big Man needs to have his hands full of props in order to continuously reproduce the feeling that he is holding on.
Also, because they rule in developing societies with large rural populations that are still superstitious, the people usually believe that magic powers reside in their flywhisks and spears.
That usually translates into a large body of peasant fear and obedience, and therefore, precious political capital.
It is an old-fashioned approach, but nevertheless represents an important element of continuity in the continent’s politics.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is executive editor of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media division; cobbo@nation.co.ke
Comments