Yoweri Museveni

KAMPALA, UGANDA —  His supporters consider him a messiah, his critics a dictator. But Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni wants to be remembered as a freedom fighter who liberated and empowered an oppressed nation. In office for 13 years, the longest successive tenure of any Ugandan president, the 55-year-old leader has boosted the profile of this landlocked East African nation of about 22 million people.

Peace and stability top his list of achievements in a country plagued by war and tyranny for much of its 37 years since gaining independence from Britain.

A former Marxist who once was marketed by the West as a “new breed of African leader,” Museveni introduced economic-liberalization policies--including privatization, currency reform and a revamped marketing system in agriculture--that made him a favorite of Western donors. Though still among the 10 poorest countries in the world, Uganda has annually grown, on average, at a rate of more than 6.7% during the past 10 years. Annual inflation has gone from an all-time high of 240% to single digits.

Other notable achievements of Museveni’s rule include the introduction of universal primary education, which guarantees elementary schooling for children in each household, at least two of whom must be girls; success at fostering AIDS awareness; and the promotion of affirmative-action policies that have politically empowered women (the country’s vice president is a woman).

However, Museveni’s failure to adopt a traditional democracy, in which political parties are allowed to function freely, has drawn fire. Critics call the former rebel an authoritarian who took power by the gun and doesn’t want to let it go. Museveni has countered that political parties invariably become vehicles for tribal leaders who want to grab power for their ethnic group, a recipe for racial antagonism and bloodshed. Ugandans will vote on whether they want a party system for their country in a referendum next year. Museveni has had to contend with insurgents who seek to overthrow him and corruption that has smeared his administration.

Museveni is also viewed by many political observers as a regional power broker who dares to interfere in the affairs of his neighbors. He supported an invasion of Rwanda by ethnic Tutsi exiles seeking to take back their country; gave aid to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in its fight against that nation’s Islamic government; and, together with Rwanda, helped Congolese President Laurent Kabila in 1997 topple longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Congo, then called Zaire.

But as the new century dawns, Museveni, a father of four and a keen cattle rancher, says he plans to continue seeking investment to his country, develop the infrastructure and boost the financial prosperity of Ugandans. He recently sat down to talk in Kampala, the Ugandan capital.

*

Question: What has been the greatest challenge of governing Uganda, and what would you do differently if you had the opportunity to start over again?

Answer: I don’t think there’s anything I would do differently. But the main challenge was to stop extrajudicial killings by the state, to stop government-inspired violence against the population. . . . The second achievement has been to give political power to the population, so they can [determine] their future through local and national elections. The third has been to liberalize the economy so that producers are not constrained by the state. . . . Maybe the next most important is universal education, [which] we have introduced in the primary schools.

Q: Your critics say you may be benevolent, but you’re still a despot because you have rejected pluralism in Uganda. They claim you stifle the opposition. How do you respond to these charges?

A: We are very pluralistic. We have got a multiplicity of radios, newspapers. Maybe what they’re talking about is that the constitution does not yet allow partisan political activities. This is due to the history of Africa, in general, but specifically the history of Uganda. The political parties in Europe and America evolved in tandem with the evolution of their societies. In Europe, a feudal, peasant society evolved into a middle-class, industrial one. Then social differentiation started emerging: the middle class, on the one side, and the industrial working class, on the other. They had contradictory interests. The middle class wanted to pay as little wages as possible to the workers, give them as little benefits as possible; the industrial workers wanted more and more pay and more benefits. To express their group interests in politics, they formed parties so that they could use the parties to bargain for group interests.

The situation is still different in Africa. Societies are, in many ways, preindustrial. . . . There are many peasants. Their interests are homogenous. . . . When you form parties in that type of situation, on what would they be based? . . . Since there are no legitimate, antagonistic social interests to be represented, the danger is that these parties will become sectarian. We are trying to transplant the European experience onto the African reality, which is different.

Q: Are you saying that the concept of democracy is different for Africans than for Europeans?

A: The form should be different. The essence is the same: free and regular elections by secret ballot; . . . a free press . . . and an independent judiciary. . . . These are essentials. That’s why there should be no party, as we say in our case, or proportional representation. These views about the form democracy should take are the views of our movement. We, the leaders of our movement, evolved those views because of the bad past of Uganda. Uganda suffered a lot. Sectarianism based on religion, based on tribes, caused a lot of havoc in our society. But more important is that, our views notwithstanding, what ultimately matters is the population, because if we put our views to the population in a referendum, and they don’t accept our views, then we shall go with the population, for better or for worse.

Q: Many African nations have been plagued with corruption. What do you believe is the root of this, and what is the recipe for eradicating corruption in African societies?

A: In some cases, corruption has been sanctioned by the leaders themselves, because I think they have got a short-term view of history. They don’t know that to build wealth, [it] must be cumulative over the long period in stable conditions. Maybe some of the leaders . . . think that if somebody grabs wealth in a very short time, that wealth is durable. . . . So I think one of the problems is ideological, because they don’t have a good view of history. You get other situations like ours, where the leaders are against corruption, but the investigative branches are not yet developed sufficiently, so if somebody does something [illegal], you don’t have enough investigative capacity to bring him down and bring him to justice.

Q: Tribalism has been the bane of many African societies. Is there a way of eradicating tribalism?

A: The remedy for tribalism is transformation of society from a preindustrial society to an industrial one. People in an industrial society are less tribalistic. . . . If I am manufacturing vehicles or motorcycles, and I don’t care who buys my motorcycles, the more the better. . . . So what you call tribalism is actually underdevelopment. Because societies are underdeveloped, they don’t discover that their interests are wider than the parochial.

Q: Some Ugandans are very much against the presence of Ugandan troops in Congo, as are the Congolese. How do you justify Uganda’s involvement in Congo?

A: We had to stop genocide. First in Rwanda, but also in eastern Congo. And we also had to stop terrorism, which Sudan was fomenting through eastern Congo. Everybody knows the sort of atrocities the terrorists have been committing in [western] Uganda, coming out of Congo. Congo was acting as a conduit for these terrorists coming out of southern Sudan.

Q: What kind of prognosis do you have for Congo?

A: We have signed the Lusaka [peace] accord. This deals with regional security problems, the internal problems of Congo.

Q: Many Congolese seem to think that Uganda wants to annex Congo in order to have access to its riches.

A: First, we are not [even] able to exploit the riches of Uganda. . . . Those Congolese may not have heard that Uganda has one of the richest deposits of phosphates in Africa and even the world. We are not able to exploit it. It is just lying in the ground. We’ve got huge deposits of iron ore. We’ve got oil. Let’s first exploit them, before we go to the ones of Congo. We don’t have the capital to exploit our own resources. Why should we go for the ones of Congo?

Q: Why did Congolese President Laurent Kabila turn out to be the kind of person that Uganda could not deal with?

A: It was really a cascading of events. Kabila . . . failed to organize a resistance against Mobutu [Sese Seko] for 30 years, and he only came to take advantage of the regional hostilities . . . that had developed between Rwanda, especially, and Mobutu’s Congo. Mobutu was supporting the genocidaires. Since Kabila had been an ineffective opposition against Mobutu, when there was this conflict between Rwanda and Mobutu, he came and jumped on the bandwagon and events moved [fast]. It was a mistake that we did not organize a conference of the anti-Mobutu forces so that we could select their leadership. . . .

Q: Do you believe in the U.S. call for African solutions to African problems? Or do you view that as an excuse to keep American troops out of Africa?

A: It is all right. It is correct. [Americans] can make mistakes, because they don’t know the situation well. Of course, they should not be indifferent to humanitarian disasters, because they have the capacity to assist. But on the political issues, I think it is better for them to keep out.

Q: So African countries should feel obliged to intervene and help solve crises in other African countries?

A: In a number of well-defined areas, yes.

Q: In your 1996 election manifesto, you mention that colonialism was partly to blame for the regression in Africa. Do you believe that African nations should be compensated for the ills of slavery, colonialism and the Cold War? If yes, what form should the reparations take?

A: I don’t waste much time crying over spilt milk, because Africans are also to blame in a way. They were weak. They were not well-organized. African chiefs were the ones who were selling people into slavery, because of their shallowness. They were backward. They didn’t understand what was happening in the world. They didn’t understand their wider interests. . . . African weakness is what permitted the Europeans to exploit us, and [this] weakness must be solved. Now that we are back in control of our destinies, let us strengthen ourselves instead of remaining weak. Foolish people are always exploited. Let’s start afresh now. Even African Americans should build themselves . . . instead of just sitting there in the slums and saying the whites brought us here. . . . Of course, the whites should also be Christian, not take advantage.

Q: Why did you make it a priority to empower women politically?

A: There was always a distortion. Women were more than 50% of the population, they were left out, and yet they are the producers of wealth in the countryside. So it was a must that we empower this 51% of our people.

Q: What impact has that had on your administration?

A: The women are coming up in entrepreneurships. They have also stabilized politics, in a way, because they tend not be so opportunistic. They tend to go after the interests of stability. They are not so reckless, like the men. So they are actually a very powerful influence, once they are supported.

Q: Which three issues do you think are important for Uganda to address in the first five years of the new millennium?

A: First, to ensure that we get more investment by removing all bottlenecks to investors. Second, to ensure that we continue to develop infrastructure, so that we lower our cost of production, so we can be able to sell, and that we continue to develop human resources through mass education. Finally, work for the East African market. An integrated market is a sine qua non of sustained growth of our economies. Part of our economic integration, we hope, should lead into a political union of East Africa . . . a political federation of at least East Africa.

Q: How would you like to be remembered when you leave office--if you leave office?

A: I will leave office, for sure, because I am not a hereditary king. I would be very glad to leave office, once I have served my term. To be remembered, just as a freedom fighter, who helped to give the people of Uganda a key to their future, to give them democracy, get rid of the dictatorship.