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

deadly Uganda can become within minutes while the Rwandese genocide still beats most other genocides in the speed and devastation it caused in turning seemingly innocent neighbours into deadly genocidaires!

My conclusion is that we should not grant our leaders carte blanche to do whatever they want. Our leaders need checks and balances. We should never be beholden to one man for our freedom. And we should have mechanisms to retire our leaders and put them out to pasture on a timetable we chose and not one of their own! The more I look at Kampala, the more I believe we are headed for the war we have been trying to avoid for the last 20 years! it took almost 50 years for the Rwandese cycle of ethnic massacres to repeat itself as it did Yugoslavia. That Museveni argued very eloquently for institutions and then in his later years argued for the destruction of those same institutions while installing himself as the only institution in the land should give anyone pause and concern. That Mugabe has in his later years brought down the hope and aspirations of the people that fought for him and supported him for years should make us think! Leaders need to demonstrate their credentials and a country should not be something that is controlled and run at the whim of one man and his family however altruistic or benevolent he maybe!

In saying this i do not claim to be an advocate of "democracy". Certainly not the simplistic democracy mouthed and parroted by many westerners as an ideal and imposed on societies with complex conflicts that go back decades! I refuse to give our "opposition" a blanket cheque even though i would like to see Kaguta retire to Rwakitura! I have argued for balance in judging Museveni while remaining firm in my belief that he must go or be pushed! I will argue for the same balance and have tried to maintain balance in judging Kagame but will still argue that allowing him unfettered control with no check and balance except at his whim is bound to backfire.

History is filled with empires that were held together by one strongman. They all crumbled and fell to the Generals when the strongman died. In allowing Kagame and Museveni to be the only institutions in Uganda and Rwanda, we set ourselves up for a fall -a nasty one. And if anybody thinks that putting off the fight we have to have is useful, that person needs to revisit the Kenyan riots! The elections in kenya and Zimbabwe raise the question of whether we have a plan for a run off and the chaos that will surely follow if that were to happen!

I also have to admit that I sat in Lee Kuan Yew's chair in the Singapore parliament and have a photo to prove it. I also read his book "From Third World to First". I have visited Singapore manytimes and admire the society he built from nothing. I wish more of our leaders woulkd read his book. I know that Rwanda has been sending their young cadres to Singapore so there is someone reading his book!

I also have known many people who were born in and left Singapore and now live elsewhere. Their own stories go deeper than the concrete and glass buildings and apparent sophistication. Of course one could argue that it is easier to demand freedom once one is well fed!

I do not believe in democracy in the simplistic way it is fed to third world nations by western nations. And do not believe that China or Iran have to open up to western scrutiny. I do believe that they do have to open up to scrutiny by their own nationals though who should have a say in how they are governed and at what pace!! I must admit to being less than impressed by the appointment of Hilary Clinton as overseer of our nascent democracy! I believe every nation has got to find the right balance!

But my experience of Uganda teaches me that the dreams and aspirations of a whole nation cannot be concentrated in the goodwill of one man and his family and cronies -even one who has no cronies like Kagame is rumoured to be or Museveni who claims to have no friends!

And like Philip, those West Point and Sandhurst graduates in the wings of Kampala and Kigali worry me. After Kabila following Kabila, and Eyadema following Eyadema and even the Odinga following Odinga politics next door in Kenya as well as or very own Obote to Obote to errh Obote (that one was nipped in the bud), I am kind of leary of any society where the "man" is the only institution!

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From: ocennekyon@gmail.com Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2016 22:28 To: Ugandans At Heart Reply To: ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com Subject: {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

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