{UAH} 29 years of NRM: How Museveni and Kony are ‘similar’, and how they are different - Charles Onyango Obbo - monitor.co.ug

http://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/OpEdColumnists/CharlesOnyangoObbo/29-years-of-NRM--How-Museveni-and-Kony-are--simila/-/878504/2604168/-/r89b86z/-/index.html

29 years of NRM: How Museveni and Kony are 'similar', and how they are different

Dominic Ongwen, the top rebel commander of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) appeared in the dock at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to face war crimes charges on Monday, January 26.
Ongwen, who was in the bushes of the Central African Republic (CAR), surrendered to Seleka rebels. They then handed him to the US Special Forces who together with units of the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) are hunting his boss there. The Seleka rebels are now claiming the $5 million bounty the US had put on his head.
What struck me was the coincidence of his appearing at The Hague dock on January 26. It was the 29th anniversary of the ruling NRM and President Yoweri Museveni's ascension to power.
It was not the only one. There are a few uncanny similarities between Museveni and Kony (this is not to say they are alike). Rather the similarities show that LRA is not just murderous, but it is actually a quintessentially African and Ugandan organisation, and Kony is a typical African and Uganda leader in the same way Museveni is, although they come from the opposite sides of our political divide.
•To begin with, Kony and Museveni are the longest serving post-1986 leaders of their respective organisations. Counting from when he came to power, Museveni has been leader of NRM, president and commander-in-chief for 29 years.
Kony effectively became leader of the LRA in 1988, after cobbling it together from the remnants and other dregs of Alice Lakwena's defeated Holy Spirit Movement.
Kony has, therefore, led LRA for 26 years, the only rebel leader of the Museveni era who comes close to The Chief. When it comes to military and political survival, therefore, Museveni and Kony are in a class of their own.
I think Museveni will outlast Kony, but strange things happen in our neck of the woods so I wouldn't place a bet on it.
We must make honorary mention here of the good Ndugu Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda. He has been minister longest in the Museveni administration, right?
•Though perhaps not exactly out of his choice, Kony has the same mindset as Museveni on pan-African rebellion. Museveni talks and acts pan-East African and pan-African. He joined the liberation of Mozambique, based his Front for National Salvation (Fronasa) in Tanzania, and the NRM and its branches in Kenya, UK, and Sweden.
He sent his army to the DR Congo, to South Sudan, Somalia, Central African Republic (CAR), and God knows where else.
The LRA became the most transnational African rebel group, fighting – but mostly murdering, raping and pillaging – in northern Uganda, South Sudan, DR Congo, and CAR. At bottom, both Kony and Museveni are militant transnationalists.
But that is where the similarities end. Kony beats Museveni in that he has had a record-breaking documentary, KONY2012 by the US children's charity Invisible Children, made about his grim handiwork. Within days, it had been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube, and became the most viral video at that point.
Museveni hasn't got a worthy documentary made of him yet. We wait.
Then, Museveni led the NRA out of their Luweero base on a long march to Fort Portal and eventually the Rwenzori Mountains. With the benefit of hindsight and fortuitous circumstances, the story is that it was to reorganise, and they were not defeated as the other side of this story by Milton Obote's UPC government functionaries of the time goes.
In any event, Museveni went and came back as a conqueror and eventually, in January 1986, a victor.
Kony left for Sudan (then), hang around South Sudan after it won its freedom from the north, then high-tailed it to DR Congo where, faced with pursuit by the UPDF, he diversified into CAR.
Museveni didn't find his way back to Kampala from the mountains because he was a better map-reader than Kony. It was partly because NRA/NRM did try, with some success too, to do what the LRA didn't – to make friends. That made a big difference. It meant that for Kony, once he left he could only keep going.
So this week, as he sat under a tree in the bushes of eastern DRC or CAR and listened on radio to news of Ongwen's day at the ICC and Museveni toasting to 29 years, he must have felt like the cursed twin.
Ongwen was well scrubbed and in a sharp suit. Museveni was beaming like a Siamese cat, licking his chops, and prepping to make a run for his seventh run at the presidency in the new year.
That is life. Not everyone wins. Not every boy gets the girl. Not every cat catches a rat; some make do with lizards.

Sent from Gook's iPatch!

"What you are we once were, what we are   you shall be!"

An inscription on the walls of a Roman catacomb.