{UAH} Why we need a leader with ability to manage a transition

With a dark haunting past of no leader handing over power peacifully, each leader bombing his way to power & being bombed out of power as well, but also with an uncertain future, Uganda sits on a serious time bomb.

With a population of the youth estimated at 70%, unfortunately who are detached from the past & have probably learnt nothing & forgot nothing. Many of them living in diprorable conditions with nothing to lose thus nothing to fear, some of them educated without jobs, others semi or not educated as evidenced from 70% drop out rates at primary level, with millions of them depending on hands to mouth petty jobs, unfortunately having lost even those survival petty jobs to Covid 19, Uganda is not only sitting on a time bomb but also at centre of cross roads.

The glaring regional imbalance as many sections of Ugandans feel sidelined from the national cake, balkanisation of the country into small ethnic based districts, lack of acess to markets by farmers, insecurity of people & property, land grabbing etc all are issues at hand.

Insecurity in DRC & South Sudan & fragile great lakes region, population increase exerting pressure & competition on the little available resources, environmental degradation etc, Uganda is stuck like a car whose engine gets off while driving on a high way.

With Millions of refugees coming here, but also Uganda being a food basket for the region, the discovery & exploration of the most sensitive resource petroleum moreover near the boarder of a volatile neighbor the DRC are issues at stake

With a less trained, less patriotic, less motivated public service, whose lone motivation is to grab the remains of the skeleton called Uganda, a shaky non regulated private sector that thrives on Chinese fake products, & a handful of mafias in control of both the state & the private sector, Uganda is run like a jungle where survival for the fittest mode is at its highest.

Fortunately though, the antelopes in the jungle seem to have overpowered the tired lion & are already clobbering it to the ground. The military & a few middle class in the jungle, whose king's backbone has been nearly broken, are now stuck & have resorted to creeping on a spineless lioness that is incompetent enough to manage the jungle, with hope that the lioness can take over from the already crumbling groaning old dad so that these mafias can survive thereafter.

Even when i condemn these military & middle class, i feel what they feel, because perhaps they are trapped between a rock & a hard stone, like the famous leopard as quoted by Gen Museveni that swallowed a hot stone, "if i swallow, i swallow fire, if i spite, i spite sweetness" They are stuck, they need help. The danger with them is that they have power & resources, if not handled with care & skillfully, they could choose to run down the country & go down with it.

We have live examples of transitions gone bloody after dictatorships depending on how they were managed & who managed those transitions. Somalia after Siad Bare was plunged into violence, 30 years later it has never recovered. DRC after Mobutu has never raised its head back. Rwanda after Habyarimana experienced the worst genocide ever. Uganda after Amin saw real horror, the wounds are what Uganda reaps to date. Libya after Gadafi, Egypt after Hosni Mbarak have never been the same.

But we also have examples of transitions that went well, Kenya after Moi, Ghana after Jerry Rollings, Zimbabwe after Mugabe, Burundi after late Nkurunziza etc. All this depended on who & how the transitions were managed. The problem with not managing transition skillfully is that any violence between the two elephants, costs the grass, yet the benefit of either of the elephants doesn't necessarily benefit the grass.

There is a possibility that in killing the snake, we could lose both the chicken & the eggs, yet we can find means of pushing away the snake, save the chicken & eggs & perhaps kill the snake later. Its the kind of approach we need to manage the inevitable transition.

That is the reason why the kind of a leader we vote or support against Museveni must be someone with demonstrable skills, experience & undoutable ability to manage such a delicate situation.

Whereas many will argue that a leader doesn't work alone, even organising & assembling a right team requires leadership & analytical skills. Those who sound drums for this lame narrative, kindly check on the teams of our Presidential candidates, you will realize that the incapable ones have attracted incapable teams around them. You will see that those sorounding them are as incompetent as the candidate himself because birds of the same feathers flock together, (mbulira gwoyita naye nkubulire kiki kyoli).

But also any leader no matter how incompetent he is would want to exert his will & power. No leader would admit that he is incompetent, certainly because of the inner fear of losing power, this leader would even do a lot to take control & in doing so, he would have to crush many good ideas of those that think can direct him.

So risking to handle power to a mediocre with hope that he will work with a team is like giving a vehicle to some one who doesn't know to drive simply because the passengers will guide him, the vehicle would certainly crush & the passengers would perish, a blunder that Ugandans shouldn't make. We better give the car to an expert driver & this learner sits in the co-drivers sit to train first.

So by all means, the next President should be a leader with the capacity to understand, articulate & analyse all the issues i raised & address them. With a savagery capitalistic world, if Uganda gets a leader who is glaringly incapable, then, the National wealth would not be stolen by Ugandans like its the case with Museveni but rather by Foreigners & neighbors.

This means that our transition is delicate enough that it needs not only a sobber, but also a highly skilled & experienced leader.
A leader who has the capacity to capture power, negotiate power & maintain power & of all the candidates, it's only *Mugisha Muntu* who can manage the task of delivering Uganda to a promised land. Mugisha Muntu will build a foundation of a stable state with systems, processes & institutions from which any leader can start.

Muhimbise George
muhimbiseg@gmail.com, 0787836515

The writer is a political analyst

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"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"

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