At his swearing-in as the new president of Uganda in January 1986, former guerrilla commander, Mr Yoweri Museveni, famously remarked that the problem of Africa was not the people but the leaders who overstay in power.
In recent years when reminded about this laconic remark, he cleverly, if cavalierly, adds a convenient qualifier – that he meant leaders who stay in power when not elected, without the people’s mandate! Of course, the people’s mandate can be manufactured.
Mr Museveni’s closest peer, among African rulers, in the club of incredible longevity in power is Paul Biya in Cameron, who has ruled that country since 1982. Even at a staggering 92 years old, 10 years older than Uganda’s ‘old man with a hat’, to be sure, Mr Biya is seeking ‘re-election’ this month.
Like our Ugandan ruler-for-life, the Ssabalwanyi (chief fighter) and General of the revolution, Biya ‘wins’ elections every five years. While our Ssabwalwanyi has ruled for 40 long years, Biya has held the seat for 43 years, only bettered by Equatorial Guinea’s Teodore Obiang at 46.
Unlike both Museveni and Obiang, Biya has established an incomparable record of ruling mostly from abroad, in Paris and Zurich, occasionally returning home to visit on days marked by celebration and public displays of unflinching support for the autocrat.
There is a popular but erroneous view in Uganda’s political discourse that elites are to blame for the country’s political mess, including the sobering fact that one man, who is way past the retirement age for any job, is way beyond the country’s average life-expectancy, has nevertheless ruled a country of more than 40 million people for 40 long years.
The word elite is liberally bundied around as a catch-all for anyone who is educated enough and has some decent income or property. Years back while still leading the political front against Mr Museveni, Opposition veteran leader Dr Kizza Besigye categorically castigated ‘elites’ for ostensibly letting down the country by tacitly or actively abating Museveni’s dictatorship.
Beyond the catchy headline of calling out elites, a thoughtful and experienced Dr Besigye must have had a more nuanced message than a sweeping condemnation of ‘elites’, because at any rate, there is no homogeneous class of elites that espouses uniform values and is united by one set of interests.
In the current main Opposition political party, the National Unity Platform, there is a somewhat veiled anti-intellectual sentiment trumpeted by fiery foot soldiers and fuelled by the party’s top echelons. This is the more bewildering given the party’s top and inner circle comprises a set of elite actors both at home and in diaspora circles. There is a simultaneous hoisting of credentials in some cases and convenient sleight of hand of chastising those who ‘speak good English’.
Whether it is elites or the masses to blame for Uganda’s current condition, there is an old saying worth rehashing: societies get the leaders they deserve, not those they desire.
Museveni has ruled the country this long not just because of what elites have done or not done, but certainly with the active and passive roles of the masses. To gloss over the latter is to deny the agency of the masses, which in turn obstructs grasp of the sources of change.
The so-called elites are a very tiny minority in Uganda, and no one appreciates this better than Mr Museveni, precisely a key factor why he has ruled the country this long – he knows all too well where the real threats to his power are located.
As a guerrilla-man fighting for State power, the genius of Museveni was not in doing anything individually heroic or extraordinary; it was in persuading a bunch of young people to fight for him and to convince the masses that he was fighting their war, for their good. As a ruler, he has skilfully stayed ahead of the game in ensuring the masses do not revolt against him either at the ballot or in the streets, but he has also co-opted and kept sufficient agents in the armed forces and political sphere who work for him.
Obviously, this is utterly unsustainable, and matters will undoubtedly come to a head at some point, most likely sooner than later. Once there is a mass-tide, in one form or the other, whatever the elites do or do not, speak or stay silent, counts for nothing in a revolutionary moment. That said, no serious society takes pride in discarding its best brains or resourceful individuals, ideationally and materially.
There is an annoyingly lazy recounting of how many Master’s and PhD degree holders we have in the current Parliament to make a facile argument that elites are useless!
What is more, reference to a corrupt and dysfunctional civil service and State bureaucracy supposedly nails home the point. The irony is that it is Uganda’s elites who make the absurd claim that Uganda’s number one problem is the elite class!