{UAH} How Museveni frustrated Muslim unity project

• August 24, 2009
• Written by Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda

• President had an eye on Busoga vote
• I saved the government a lot of money

In this fourth part of 'MY STORY', JUSTICE GEORGE KANYEIHAMBA who retires at the age of 70 from the Supreme Court in November this year explains to SSEMUJJU IBRAHIM NGANDA how Museveni blocked the appointment of Sheik Ahmed Mukasa as Mufti: They (NRA) captured power on January 26, 1986. I was still teaching at Cardiff (UK). I had no intention of joining them (NRA), although I had fought with them very hard.Then the European Union sent me to Uganda with someone called Dr. H. Bond to investigate the Banyarwanda refugee situation in western Uganda, so I came as an expert.

Museveni had just become President. He heard that I was in the country. I gave a public lecture at Makerere and my theme was 'the NRM Government'.

I said that we have an opportunity, we must do much more than we are doing. We must remove the mis-governance that we inherited and so forth. (Tarsis) Kabwegyere was also there.

After that lecture, the President got to know that I was in the country. He called me to State House. I went there and we had two solid hours, just the two of us.

Most of the time I was saying Mr. President, you have an opportunity, please remove this, remove this. I took him a present which appears in my books and people have commented on it.

You read it in the citation when I was being given the doctor of laws at Warwick University. I sent a piece of paper in an envelope. When I got to him, I said Mr. President, I have brought you a present. I think he was very surprised.

He opened it and read it. It read, "Mr. President, the most successful leaders in the world are those who surround themselves with constructive critics and not blind admirers." He smiled and said this is wonderful; I am going to keep it near me all the time. I wondered later on in my book whether he actually kept it.

Then after our discussion, he said I want you to do a small job for me. I had heard rumours that he wanted me to be the chairman of the Constitution Commission. And at that time it was based in the Ministry of Constitutional Affairs under Sam Njuba.

I said Mr. President, I have heard rumours that you want me to be Chairman of the Constitutional Review Commission.

But if I have to do that, I would rather that the department is moved under the presidency, it is in the Office of the President that I can deal with you directly. Those bureaucrats will make life impossible for me.

He smiled and said no, no, that is not what I want you to do. I said, "What do you want me to do then?" He said, "I want you to be Minister of Commerce".

This shocked me and I said that although I had taught company and commercial law at the university, I am not a commerce man. He replied that being a minister, you don't have to be an expert, which actually is right.

You need to have the ability to control your ministry, get the right people and supervise them. You don't have to be an expert, and this is how I became Minister of Commerce.

My predecessor who had started in January was [Evaristo] Nyanzi, and there had been a problem. For me I have never known what the problem was. He was removed and even jailed. He [Museveni] wanted me to replace Nyanzi and that is exactly what I did.

Eventually after consultation with my family and everybody, I accepted and became Minister of Commerce. And that was the time when we had a shortage of essential goods.

RETURNING HOME

After the appointment, he gave me time to go back to the UK to report my findings on the refugee situation to the EU who had sent me to Uganda. He also gave me time to consult with my colleagues. He said make up your mind quickly because I want to reshuffle my Cabinet.

Then he paid an official visit to London. They called me; I went and stayed with him at the same hotel. And that is when he asked me whether I had made up my mind.

I said yes, I accept. My family and everybody said if your country calls you to serve, you cannot refuse.

After a few years, he moved me to the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General. By the way, that was the second time he was telling me, Kanyeihamba, you did a good job in the Ministry of Commerce.

Because you controlled those thieves and you put up systems which we depended on. I was responsible for the barter trade those days and I travelled all over the world seeking markets for the country. So, he thanked me for the job well done.

[After serving as Attorney General] in 1991-92, I became his first ever Senior Presidential Advisor on International and Human Rights Affairs. When I became a judge in 1997, that portfolio disappeared with me. I was the first and last to hold that job.

PROMOTING BARTER TRADE 1986

The fight we had was against corruption and abuse of office, which we had inherited. We fought that and many people in the ministry, particularly in the Bank of Uganda, fought the concept of barter trade.

Indeed I remember someone saying minister, we are paid very little, we only supplement the little money we have with the little money we make from foreigners who make contracts with us.

He smiled and said, 5%, 10%, how do you pocket 5% of the refrigerators or electrical equipment? So he said barter trade has ruined us. Eventually they fought against it.

We got so many items out of barter trade; lorries, electric goods and refrigerators, and so forth. It really flourished because the President believed in it very much.

And some of our partners in the world helped us succeed. The problem we had were the short-changers.
When I became Attorney General, knowing what happened when I was Minister of Commerce, I stopped many, many losses to this country; where people were short-changing the country.

Somebody, for example, advised by the so called government lawyers – says we are buying some Army equipment and they put a clause in the agreement to say that this is on condition that the buyer - and that is the Government of Uganda - shall not inspect the goods.

How could that be? For me I wanted that man jailed but for political purposes he survived. I am sure he is around. I stopped things like that. At one time they were selling one of our airplanes and they were saying the buyer shall run it for six months and any defects found in the plane shall be paid by the Government of Uganda! You can imagine the kind of things we found and tried to stop.

SERVING AS ATTORNEY GENERAL

I think the main thing was really to amend so many laws to ensure we encouraged transparency and good governance in this country. I was responsible for spearheading so many Bills, both in Cabinet and in Parliament, which appear on the statutes' book and I regard as good laws.

But the most important thing which I achieved as Attorney General was to ensure that anything that government does, including the President, should be transparent, should be in accordance with our Constitution and laws of Uganda; and we should not try to use our strong personalities or our political influence to manipulate the law for our personal benefits.

I think to me that is the message that I left there. If you ask people who were with me in the Ministry of Justice, they will say he was a very, very hard man, but he was very principled and followed his guidelines, and that inspired us to do the right thing for the country.
 
I stopped many, many contracts where people had put personal interests first, so that Uganda loses and they gain personally.

At one time I convinced the President to issue a circular to all ministries saying that any contract worth, I can't remember whether it was Shs150 million, must be approved by the Attorney General, after looking at its legal implication. And I had problems with some of my colleagues but we insisted on it.

Several times, I withdrew contracts which ministers were going to sign because they hadn't sent a copy to us and those contracts were very bad for this country, so I stopped them. One time in cabinet one minister was angry because I had rejected a contract for his ministry.

He said Mr. President Sir, are there some ministers who are greater than others? Why does the Attorney General interfere in our work? But the President explained that the Attorney General is no greater than you, but he has got a profession to ensure that the contracts we enter are properly drafted and don't make us liable to pay millions in compensation.

CHANGING NRM CHARACTER

I think there has been a shift in emphasis (on priorities) to the extent that either the ministries in which I served are now indifferent to the needs of the country, or there has been such intimidation from the top that they [ministers] dare not take the right decision for their ministries or the country, in case they are criticised by the powers that be.

Contract transactions have been personalised in that you have to look at the personal benefit rather than the country's interests.

That is the shift I see. Consequently, the systems that we had set up when I was in Cabinet have either been ignored or scrapped so that now even when a contract involves complicated issues of law, a minister say of Air, and I am using that advisedly, will not consult the Attorney General or they will consult a very junior official who doesn't know the implication. So really transparency and accountability which the Movement was insisting on seem to have gone by the board; it is very sad.

I ceased being Attorney General in 1991 and that is when we were preparing for the CA. I was then appointed Senior Presidential Advisor.

MUSLIM CONFLICT 1993

A lot of things happened. First, if you remember, I chaired the first international conference which attempted to resolve the differences between the warring Muslim factions.

I was then Minister of Justice and Attorney General. On a number of occasions, the President mentioned in Cabinet that I was his trouble-shooter and I resolved a number of issues, including the ranch thing; we disagreed on that one but it doesn't matter.

But then if you remember, there was a difference of opinion between the Muslim factions. Eventually the Tabliqs took over the Old Kampala Mosque. Sadly, we lost four policemen and they (Tabliqs) besieged, no they occupied, the mosque.

The President said in Cabinet; Kanyeihamba, the Attorney General, I want you to go and resolve the matter. He asked me to negotiate with the Tabliqs who were occupying the mosque. When I reached the mosque, I left my escorts and assistants at the gate and walked in. They respected me, they welcomed me.

I told them I have come to discuss with you how we can resolve this impasse.
I proposed that the President would want to see them; that we should listen to him and there should be a conference of Muslims to resolve these matters. Let us do it by the law, and they accepted.

They said since we are going to talk to the President, as you have promised us, we shall vacate the mosque and that is what they did on my recommendation.

Following that, the President met a number of Muslim leaders and political activists and they said let us have an international conference guided by people from all Muslim countries; from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan and Egypt, so that we can resolve this matter.

So we were going to get delegates from those countries but a Ugandan would chair the meeting and Uganda would have its own delegation.
And the President constituted that delegation with me as chairman, Hajjat Anuna Omar was a member, and our secretary was Ralph Ocan, now a judge.

Then we invited delegations from Kuwait, Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and so forth. When we constituted, I became the chairman of the conference by acclamation.

We spent about two years deliberating and ultimately you know what happened, I wrote a book on it; 'Reflections on the Muslim Leadership Question in Uganda'.

We deliberated first in Kampala with all delegations. We met leaders of the factions, the late Sheik Saad Luwemba who was then Mufti; we met Rajab Kakooza, and others. There were about 10 or so factions.

Some came from Luwero. We resolved that there should be a conference of all factions and their leaders, and we should invite the Supreme Council members to a meeting and solve the differences in a neutral place, far away from Kampala.

We agreed on the then Lake View Hotel, I think it is still in Mbarara. The decision was blessed by the President, it was blessed by other people, like Hajji Moses Kigongo, the late Abu Mayanja; they all supported this conference sponsored by the Government of Uganda.

So we went to Mbarara for a whole week, including the international representatives. In the end, we decided on two things. One, that in order to have a unified Muslim community in Uganda, let there be universal elections so that the Muslims freely and independently elect one of the candidates to be their Mufti, a qualified person.

But before that, we gave ourselves two years in which to rewrite the Muslim Constitution, the one that had been in place was disputed and it was not a proper Constitution.

Actually the Muslim Council was registered under the Company's Act, so the memorandum and articles of association were actually of an ordinary company then governing the Muslim community.

We said let us make a Constitution. Actually I thought they should have invited me either to chair that constitutional making meeting; I would have made a good Constitution. But somehow the leadership as I have told you then got divided again.

MUSEVENI FAVOURED LUWEMBA

There was a man who was a political advisor in State House who tended to side with the Luwemba faction. He was negative on most issues. At one time we ran out of money, the President personally sent us money, I think from his pocket, because he was very anxious that we should have peace.

So, when we were closing our meeting and we had agreed on all the principles, somebody in my opinion quite rightly suggested that we have an interim Mufti during the interim period of two years who was not an aspirant, which we thought was a good idea.

If the President had asked me, I would have done that; he didn't. The President personally, without disclosing it, wanted Luwemba to continue being Mufti during the interim period of two years. We didn't' know that.

For me I accepted gladly the proposal by the conference in Mbarara that during the two years; let us have an interim Mufti who would not be qualified to contest when the Constitution was made. That is how Sheik Mukasa (Ahmed) became the interim Mufti.

The two contestants would have been Mukasa and Luwemba. Kakooza accepted the proposal and we had no problem with him, but Luwemba refused. He said he should continue being Mufti until the elections. Had the President asked me; that let Luwemba remain acting Mufti during the two-year constitutional making interim period, I would have achieved it because I had a carrot in my hand.

I would have said [to the Muslims that] if you don't agree, Luwemba will remain Mufti until he is aged 70 and at that time he was about 50, so there was another 20 years. If you agreed that in two years he should remain Mufti but you make a good strong Commission to make the new Constitution, then he will not divert.

I would have succeeded, but I didn't know about it.
So when we did the acclamation in Mbarara, we came to Kampala. I was received very warmly by the late Abu Mayanja, by other leading Muslim leaders; they said how did you achieve it? Ministers said you have done well and we don't know how the President is going to pay you.

You have really done a lot of work, maybe you should become Prime Minister, whatever!
Shortly before we completed the conference, I invited the President to come and close it. He was in Mbale. I invited him personally, I didn't talk to him but I talked to his secretary and said we have completed, please we want the President to come and close the conference on Saturday morning.

He didn't talk to me personally but sent a message to say he was unable to come. I sensed he had not liked what had happened. And the only issue he didn't like was making Mukasa the interim Mufti, instead of keeping Luwemba. The President's eye is always on the vote.

This man [Luwemba] came from Busoga, which was a very important voting constituency and he thought we were damaging his politics.
For me when these people were congratulating me in Kampala, I knew the President had a question mark on that very issue.

He [President] had accepted all the other principles except who should be interim Mufti.
So, they were going to have a Cabinet I think the following Wednesday and I was anxious to know what they were going to do. I told Ralph Ochan who was Secretary, that let the new administration be registered immediately.

Had it been registered, it would have been very difficult for Luwemba to refuse [to step down].
But what happened? They went to Cabinet and I am told the President said I will not accept Kanyeihamba's Mufti. I had ceased being a member of Cabinet at that time and I was a Senior Presidential Advisor. That was about 1992/93.

Kanyeihamba was supposed to resolve this but he had no business electing a Mufti. He poured cold water on our conference. When that happened, Ralph Ocan went to register the new arrangement but Abu Mayanja the minister stopped him. He told him the President has refused; you cannot register the new arrangment.

Mukasa was never registered. The Muslims have a problem there, which I write in my book 'Reflections on the Muslim Leadership Question in Uganda'. It seems the way your Islam came to Uganda is that the Muslim faith depends to a big extent on the support of the government.

You want to be on good terms with the President, you are not independent. So when they saw government pouring cold water on the Mbarara proclamation, they started withdrawing; Abu Mayanja refused to register their new arrangement, other leaders I don't want to mention because they are still alive were not so keen to support something which the President seemed not to accept. So it ended there.

One or two years later, those resolutions we had endorsed at Mbarara took place and that is how Mubajje became Mufti.
He was elected in accordance with our recommendations. And we had peace for sometime until the Council itself or shall I say Mufti, messed up in my opinion.

However, having messed, the Council, should have passed a vote of no confidence in him and then they should have either had an interim Mufti pending election or elected one there and then. The idea that you just abandon everything and then go and elect another….I think that was an error in procedure.

And may be that is why we have problems.

ssemujju@observer.ug

https://observer.ug/news-headlines/4822-my-story-how-museveni-frustrated-muslim-unity-project
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Allaah gives the best to those who leave the choice to Him."And if Allah touches you with harm, none can remove it but He, and if He touches you with good, then He is Able to do all things." (6:17)

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