{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: Of Cyomoro and Muhoozi -why we should be worried about West Point graduate first sons and daughters!

This is long but makes good reading .

Some  lessons to pick if you are open minded .

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Of Cyomoro and Muhoozi -why we should be worried about West Point graduate first sons and daughters!

http://ugandaspeaks.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/mr-mwenda-your-article-on-rwanda-is-heavily-one-sided-and-probably-compromised/

 

Philip states my position on granting our leaders particularly in view of the evolution of Rwanda's sibling NRAM/A revolution in Uganda!

Many years ago as a young university student, I visited Rwanda. The guns had barely been silenced and in retrospect it was a very foolhardy thing to do. Certainly my parents were not impressed as they had not been told were I was until i came back after having had a nasty road accident in which i almost died as the practice then was if driving at night to drive at breakneck speed in case one came across an interahamwe roadblock and became a statistic! Interahamwe still roamed the countryside! The car got written off! At the time I was impressed by the orderliness of the refugee camps which had not as yet got dismantled! Uptill now, I believe the orderliness of those camps were a good sign of things to come.

Each time I read of skirmishes between RPF and the NRA or between NRM politicians and Rwandese counterparts I am amazed at the naivety of commentators particularly those who would see the Museveni/Kagame entreprise fail! Having watched them as a boy get into taxis in jeans and windbreakers on the way "home", I have watched Rwanda's progress over the years with interest. I have found a lot to be proud of in their progress. One a member of their elite went out with me many years later. He revealed that his business dealings as were those of another of out classmates extended deep into Congo which offered them a much bigger market than did small Rwanda! these "boys" are rumoured to be multimillionaires -in real money!

But depsite Museveni's protestations, that the RPF "boys" left without his knowledge at a time when he was abroad, anybody who was in Kampala on the day they left would have no doubt that military intelligence knew exactly what was going on! The "boys" were quite frank and clear as to where they were going and they caused a shortage of taxis in downtown Kampala as they hired taxis to take them to the border. In addition kinyarwanda tapes of Rwigyema had been playing on Kampala streets for quite sometime.

A young Ugandan -Rwandese lady I knew at the time also had close links to players in both the NRM as well as the RPF/A. She introduced me to some interesting characters among them the late Jet Mwebaze. While Jet was older and a 'commander", he was actually very charismatic and easy person to talk to. Through him one got to get a very good understanding of the NRA/M officers relationships with the LRA front in the north, the RPA/M, SPLA/M and various congolese factions. The story at the time of his death is that he was carrying a significant amount of money to Congo on one of his private business deals. He had his pie in many interesting pies and business deals that were more revealing than what one heard from the government or through the newspapers. An example was a meeting in Kampala between Bashir and Museveni at which Museveni denied any links with the SPLA. The same week, I was introduced to SPLA commanders by Jet -business partners of his with whom he had negotiated deals to provide hundreds of millions of shillings worth of sugar and foodstuffs. it was not too much of a stretch for one to imagine where arms could come into that equation. given Jet was a big player in Gulu at the time, it also demonstrated just how much serving army officers were involved in private business deals that potentially undermined the northern war! Here was an army officer who was very well connected being the younger brother of Kazini a then senior army commander hobnobbing in full daylight with SPLA officers in Kampala while the president was pleading plausible deniability with Bashir in the same city. I got to meet Kazini the same day again in the presence of the SPLA officers! I must say Kazini was drunk and not very happy with his younger brother. Am not sure whether this had anything to do with the obvious embarrassment and conflict of interest of the presence of the SPLA officers! Through the same young lady as well as another mukiga girl at university who worked for Salim Saleh, I got to meet him too and heard some quite interesting stories! I met Ugandan coltan exporters years before Ugandans knew coltan even existed as well as gold dealers from Karamoja. At the same time I also happened to know some French people in the embassy so got to hear their chatter about Rwanda and congolese politics the way the French government and local embassy staff viewed it. I know that thousands of Ugandan Rwandese crossed the border while so called UN troops were patrolling it to attend a big meeting in the Rwandese mountains! And I heard stories about what befell Rwigyema's assasins long before rumours ever started appearing about them! Among those boys who crossed the border with hopes and aspirations for self determination were boys i went to school with. Some still leave in Kigali and are players there.

Through these chance meetings I got to be able to connect dots between these players years before they happened. And for these reasons I believe that the individual problems between Kampala and Kigali are overplayed and over exagerated. Regardless of what happens, Kagame and Museveni still appear at major functions together and appear to have a fairly good relationship. Am almost certain that if Museveni had to run away from Uganda, kigali would offer him a safe haven as would Kampala offer Kagame and many of his men who have homes in Uganda and send their children to school in Uganda!!

I have always wondered what the difference was between Kigali and Kampala. Why very similar movements have in some ways taken different paths. Is it because Rwandese have spent more time in exile and lived in other lands where clean streets and orderliness are important or is it because the leader in Rwanda is able or more willing to exert more total control? Why is it that an increasing number of my professional colleagues are finding safe haven and working conditions better in Kigali where they are paid better and have freedom to do a more satisfactory job? Really the people in Kigalia are not very different from the people who took over Kampala in 1986. Both have guerilla backgrounds and received their training from similar sources. Both subscribe to similar ideologies. Why then do the results seem to be different. Does the use of one language in Rwanda (except of course for the popularity of luganda) help when compared to our fractious tower of Babel? Is it possible that such extreme enemies can set aside their difference to vote for one leader and one dream?

Going by their cousins experience in Kampala, I find this hard to believe. If it quacks like a duck, and it looks like a duck, it is a duck! The Kigali regime is in many ways not different to the one in Kampala. in many ways they follow the same template even though the veneers are different.

There is no doubt that Kagame has more toatal control than Museveni has in Kampala! But one wonders is this a good thing? like Philip says very eloquently, we should be looking at the Kampala regime to determine whether it is a good thing to grant Kagame a blank cheque!

Both have military and guerilla backgrounds. Both led paesant revolutions. Both took over very fractious and conflict ridden societies. Both have armies and political offices largely dominated by one ethnicity! Both have paesant generals who have risen to be kings of commerce. Both have been involved in cross border wars. Both revolutions have directly or indirectly led to genocide -allowing them to justify thei revolutions. Both have argued for stability at the expense of democracy!. Both lead politically complex societies in which ethnic sectarianism can lead to thousand s of deaths in an instant. The Buganda riots of last year are a perfect demonstration of how

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.