By Oweyegha Afunaduula
CONTINUATION
This article is a Treatise ( i.e., a long and serious piece of writing) by a person grounded in science but with a good understanding of social and political issues. It will require people who are open-minded and ready to change their minds to accommodate new insights. It is a comparative analysis of two militarily developed minds: one of a modern European ruler and one of a modernizing Ugandan ruler of the late 20th Century and early 21st Century. It is written as if the long-ruling leader of Uganda is no longer in power. It is, therefore, in the past tense.
Indeed Tibuhaburwa Museveni remarked that he did not care if the members of Parliament slept during legislation so long as they woke up in time to vote his wishes and choices. He exercised extreme influence peddling through the political strategy of National Resistance Movement (NRM) Parliamentary Caucus to which he ensured some 10 military chiefs also belonged and ascribed to his Party – the National Resistance Movement Organization (NRMO).
Although the Constitution barred serving members of the army from partisan politics or from serving in political stations. This way he undermined the aspirations of Ugandans of having a non-partisan army and a one not linked to a political party.
All this means that the political behavior of the two men were similar: they were not ready to share any power with anybody, and both wanted to enhance their power and authority as much as they could militarily and politically, at the expense of the political development of the citizens and alternative political associations.
A docile citizenry was a political resource The question is: Could their having come from other countries explain their political behavior? What about their military adventures in neighboring countries to the extent that they did not care allocating national resources (including the National Budget, to military arsenals and violence than to social development and productivity of the citizens?
Napoleon Bonaparte ruled revolutionary France for 16 years only from 1799-1815. He was born in a poor Italian family at Ajaccio on the Island of Corsica, which had been annexed to France a year before his birth. His family was one of the many exiled families in France This converted him into a French Citizen.
Indeed the King of France had given Napoleon Bonaparte’s father and other exiles amnesty to become French citizens. He suffered poverty and hardship in early childhood. He became a student in an Italian Military Academy, at Brienne, in 1779 at the age of 10, and later in Paris.
His military career started in 1784. He rose very fast in the army from a small rank of sub-lieutenant in 1792 to Brigadier in 1793 and to full General in 1796. Nevertheless he was a professional soldier, not a politician. His professional proficiency was high.
He never joined politics, despite many temptations to do so, and this helped him to rise to Emperor of France. He rose to power at the age of 30 through a military coup against the civilian Government. He loved knowledge especially philosophy of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Reyna, and used what he learnt to learn the theories that past leaders and great thinkers employed and he emulated them.
Tibuhaburwa Museveni was born in the Mulenge area of present-day DRC, near Goma to a pastoral nomadic family, but the year of his birth is not known. His parents migrated with him as a toddler, first to Gishenyi town of Rwanda. Belonging to the nomadic-pastoralist human energy system, they stayed in Gisenyi for some time before they migrated to Ankole of Uganda. Like Napoleon Bonaparte, his early life was a life of hardship and poverty.
In Uganda the family briefly stayed together at the Kraal of Amos Kaguta, a brother of his father who had migrated to Uganda much earlier, but soon after, the father of Tibuhaburwa Museveni, Kayibanda, left him and his mother at the kraal of Amos Kaguta, preferring to stay in Karagwe, Tanzània, for the rest of his life.
Unlike Napoleon Bonaparte, however, Tibuhaburwa Museveni did not a professional soldier but a guerilla fighter who gained his military skills through years of fighting to overthrow the Government of Idi Amin, a professional soldier and later that of Apollo Milton Obote and Tito Okello.
The first time he acquired a military title was when he overthrew the Military Junta Government of Tito Okello: without rising through formal military structures he became a General. He did not become President until he was 42 years old after years of military adventure in the bushes of Luwero in Buganda, which cost some 500000 lives of combatants and non-combatants.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power in France was helped by the French Revolution 1789.If opened opportunities for him to rise to greatness. He was an ordinary man of talent who won a position of honor in the New France that was a product of the revolution. The revolution introduced the concept of “Career open to all men of talent”.
Promotions and appointments were made on the basis of merit, personal qualifications and ability; not race, class or religion. No barriers were erected to common people from rising to power in France. Indeed ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity became central to the new governance in France.
As he fast rose in the military and to power, Napoleon Bonaparte used the three words as his slogans to win support and loyalty among the poor needy and exploited. He displayed his natural abilities and military skills and benefited in terms of promotions during revolutionary wars of 1792-1798; hence his supersonic military rise in the revolutionary army. The revolutionary wars enabled him to transmute from a commoner to a leader of exceptional abilities.
To Be Continued…….
For God and My Country.
The Writer Is a Ugandan Scientist And Environmentalist
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