This article is a treatise (that is, 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 modernising 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. It will help history writers interested in comparative history of rulers and their countries. I will not be there when they are writing, but I will have contributed to the written history beforehand.

There is nothing in the Universe that cannot be compared. The reason we compare is to find out the differences and similarities between the items that we seek to compare. In academispeak, this is comparative analysis. Comparative analysis is most useful when it involves critical thinking and critical analysis of what are being compared. Only that way can useful knowledge, wisdom, understanding and insight be generated about what is being compared or the interaction between them. It is possible for what are being compared to be separated by a long spell of time and to interact by remote sensing. For example, we can compare someone who existed in the 19th century with someone existing today. This is what I want to do in this article by comparing France’s Modern European ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Uganda’s self-proclaimed modernising ruler, Tibuhaburwa Museveni. Much of what was happening in Uganda under President Museveni’s reign did happen under Napoleon Bonaparte in France in the 19th century. Napoleon made himself emperor through manipulation. Museveni was never proclaimed emperor but ruled like an emperor.

Napoleon Bonaparte and Tibuhaburwa Museveni have both been referred to as militaristic dictators who relied more on the gun to rule and extend their military adventures in neighbouring countries, but were such adroit rulers that they couched their dictatorships in democratic cover to conceal their excesses in the exercise of power and authority in the countries they ruled.

However, while Napoleon Bonapartes was not hired by other countries to extend their imperialist designs on other countries, Tibuhaburwa Museveni was and did commit his army to proxy wars in places like Somalia and South Sudan. Otherwise, the two men were masters at political manipulation, political trickery and political deception. They could say one thing when they meant the other, and many people fell prey to their manipulations, trickery and deceptions. The countries they ruled were completely at their mercy. They would either rise or fall with them.

One thing is true. The two men ruled countries in which they were not born. They were both good political strategists in their rise to power. They associated with men of influence within the countries they were set to rule, subsequently subduing resistance to their rule through deception and constitutional engineering. Constitutional engineering concentrated all power and authority in their hands to do anything they wanted. In the case of Tibuhaburwa Museveni he introduced in Uganda a new indigenous group of Rwandese among the indigenous groups in the country to ensure they accessed the same opportunities as, or even more than, the traditional indigenous groups. While Napoleon Bonaparte maintained that he was the true representative of France and the embodiment of democracy, Tibuhaburwa Museveni had a similar attitude: he maintained that Uganda had its owner (himself) and that no one could teach him democracy (meaning that democracy started with him and ended with him). The two men allowed representative democracy so long as it did not change the political status quo dominated by themselves. Napoleon Bonaparte engineered a parliament of 1,000 members, over which he had full control, while Tibuhaburwa Museveni engineered a parliament he had extreme influence peddling over, and which at the time of writing this article had expanded from 80 to 529 members of parliament, and was set to expand to higher numbers. Both men did not care about quality of legislation.

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 Organisation (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 behaviour 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 behaviour? What about their military adventures in neighbouring 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 Gisenyi 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, Tanzania, for the rest of his life.

Unlike Napoleon Bonaparte, however, Tibuhaburwa Museveni did not train to be 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 500,000 lives of combatants and non-combatants.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power in France was helped by the French Revolution 1789. It opened opportunities for him to rise to greatness. He was an ordinary man of talent who won a position of honour 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. He was no longer ordinary. He won wars in Austria, crushed an uprising in Toulin, against royalists and Parisians, against Austria again, against Muslim Turks and Egyptian rulers. His military exploits were subserved by being skilful in organisation, foresighted, courageous brilliant, tactical and deceitful. Indeed one of his school teachers once said that Napoleon was ” made of granite with a volcano inside him”.

The was meant to mean that he was a man of extraordinary force of brain and character who would be anything in any circumstances in any country. He was populist as well. In return from Egypt in 1798, he remarked before a huge crowd that had assembled to welcome him, “It looks as if everyone has been waiting for me… Tomorrow would have seemed too late. I have come at the right time. I have come at the right time”. The revolutionary propaganda of “war to the Kings and peace to all people, complemented with liberty, equality and fraternity, enhanced his fame and rise to power.

Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s rise to power in Uganda also reflected his courage, foresightedness, tactic, calculativeness and deceitfulness, although he was short of being brilliant. He subordinated himself to Paulo Muwanga who led the pro-Obote political and military forces during the days of the Uganda National Liberation Front/Army (UNLF/A) in 1979-80, by accepting to be vice-chairman of the Military Commission of the UNLA, although he had a big army of mainly refugees from Rwanda and Mulenge in the name of Front for National Salvation (FRONASA).

It became clear later on, when he insurrected against the political and military regime he was part of, that FRONASA was a two-pronged strategy against the weak regimes in Uganda and Rwanda. He was greatly helped when four neo-traditionalists, led by former President of Uganda, Prof Yusuf Lule, decided to form the National Resistance Movement (NRM) in 1981, while in Kenya as refugees, and later formed the National Resistance Army (NRA) and invited Tibuhaburwa Museveni (then known as Yoweri Museveni) to Nairobi to appoint him as commander of NRA. That was a master political and military gain for Museveni. He amalgamated his failed Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM) and FRONASA army with the UPM/A, and that marked his rise to power in Buganda and Uganda.

It was a timely tactical move that finally saw his military outfit as the most organised and effective resistance to the rule of Obote II (1981) and Tito Okello (1985-86). He finally assumed power on January 25, 1986, although deceptively his regime cites and marks 26th January every year since then as that of ascent to power at great expense to the taxpayers. His remark that “The change of power in Kampala was not a mere change of guards but a fundamental change” was well received by the people who had been waiting for the change. 

Napoleon Bonaparte later became so influential that it was easy for him to use his ineffective French 1000-strong parliament to achieve every wish of his in politics and military ventures, thereby becoming very famous at the expense of the Directory Government. He moulded discontent in the army, among government workers and the citizenry to overthrow the political order. He centralised the administration, away from what had become a chaotic decentralised government. Tibuhaburwa Museveni briefly consorted with decentralisation but eventually undermined it by transferring power and authority, especially regarding the budgets of the local governments, back to the centre – to himself, since central government was absolutely under his control. He was central government and central government was him. That is why he was able to disorient the national budget from social development to military ventures, State House and State House-oriented administration.

Administratively, Napoleon Bonaparte created subdivisions he called arrondissements to replace districts, and those were further subdivided into communes (municipalities) in the true spirit of divide and rule. As the sole appointing authority he chose excellent, talented officials and because of his own efficiency he made brilliant achievements at home and abroad, and the French people were happy and gave him support. However, through overcentralisation of power in himself he destroyed the aspirations of the French. He gave himself a Constitution that only benefited his power, by placing the control of central government and the national budget under his direct personal control. He set up an army of spies for himself and also giant prisons and arbitrary arrests and detentions became integral to his rule. The media became heavily censored, and an army of spies and secret agents kept him well informed of any opposition, which he proceeded to crush ruthlessly. Accordingly, he destroyed the original aspirations of freedom and liberty, which constituted his powerful propaganda in the early days of his rise to power, and political democracy became but a dream for the French. In one short sentence: he turned himself into an absolute ruler.

Tbubuhaburwa Museveni more or less implemented the programme of action of Napoleon Bonaparte in Uganda. He relied heavily on propaganda. His emphasis of democracy, human rights, no corruption, no extrajudicial killings or detention without trial, and an integrated and self-sustaining economy, endeared him the long-suffering masses of Ugandans. However, all this emerged as no more than a bait to approve of him. He went to make a Constitution that centealised all power and authority in himself and immunised him from court proceedings against him in cases of excesses.

There was nothing he could not do under the Constitution or even shelve certain articles of the Constitution in case they blocked his wishes for personal and absolute power. For example, when he wanted to exceed the 10 years limit to the Presidency that clearly barred him to rule beyond two terms of five years each, he simply initiated legislation in parliament, using men and women of his personal party, NRM, to shelve the term limit at monetary cost to the taxpayers; and when he wanted to rule like a monarch without age limits, he initiated changes in the Constitution in the same fashion.

As he approached 36 years in power, Museveni started the talk of hereditary politics with daughters and sons replacing their parents who held political positions in government and the legislature. He even plotted to have parliament elect the president, the same way the French Parliament proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte emperor. Napoleon Bonaparte administratively split the 15 nation-states, into well over 135 districts, and created numerous municipalities and cities, but denied them money to run efficiently. He talked of devolution of power and authority through decentralisation, but ended up reconcentrating power at the centre, with everything starting and ending with him.

Like Napoleon Bonaparte, he turned himself into an absolute ruler. Like Napoleon Bonaparte, he was allergic to competitive politics and did not treat his opponents humanely. The word “crush” and the phrase ” I will crush them” were common in his public political communications. In his early presidency he never hesitated to tell his political opponents that “I will send you six feet deep”.

Napoleon Bonaparte made many legal reforms to endear himself to the people. He introduced five basic codes: the civil code, the code of civil procedure, the code of criminal procedure, the penal law and the penal code and finally the commercial Law. France achieved law, order and Peace. The civil code consisted of laws such as for family, marriage and divorce, status of women, ownership of property etc, and equality was paramount. He ensured justice and protection of the citizens. But under the code of criminal procedure, many French people, especially in the opposition, were persecuted. The panel code-maintained confiscation of private property and restricted the right to public meetings and associations. Otherwise he restored the Roman Catholic Church to its original status, which angered many French people. He undermined himself as a true son of the revolution which was strongly anti-Catholicism, although he subjected the Church to the State. The state appointed bishops and consecrated them. His decision that the peasants were the rightful owners of the lands held by the church earned him much support from the peasantry. He created 3,000 new hereditary nobles, including four princes, 30 Dukes, and nearly 400 courts. He made his brothers kings in various conquered territories in Holland, Naples and later Spain. He wanted this to consolidate his power, but cast him as a nepotistic person who was destroying the aspirations of the French people by reintroducing noblism, just like the ancient regimes in the country did.

Tibuhaburwa Museveni innovated many legal reforms designed to enhance his hold onto power. There was the sectarianism law which sought to protect refugees in government from the indigenous people regarding opportunities such as jobs and education. There was the dual citizenship law, which allowed foreigners, especially to hold two citizenships and access everything that bona fide citizens accessed under the law. There was also a law to regulate political parties and other associations. There was the law and order law which was directed at limiting the political activities and rallies of the Opposition. He reintroduced kingdoms without political power and instead of categorically calling them kingdoms in the Constitution he made, he called them cultural institutions. It was clear he wanted all power to himself and was not ready to share it with the so-called cultural institutions. He preferred centralism to federalism because the latter would re-empower the former nation-states at the expense of his absolute power. He used his absolute power and control to make the national identity card and passport by making them less accessible to bona fide Ugandans by making them extremely expensive, but easier for other categories of citizens such as dual citizens and the “Rwandese Indigenous Group” he had erected in his Constitution as one of the 56 Indigenous Groups of Uganda.

Tibuhaburwa Museveni initially disliked religion, especially Christianity, and when he established his National Political School at Kyankwanzi, much time was spent by his cadres castigating Christianity. However, later he realised that by supporting religion, it could enhance his legitimacy. He allowed the proliferation of so many Pentocostal Churches to spring up which tended to undermine the traditional religious groups – the Catholic Church, the Church of Uganda, the Orthodox Church, the Islamic faith, etc. He also made sure that every top religious leader that is installed gets a new car. This tended to reduce the intensity of religious criticism of his absolute, one-man rule. He moulded enormous support among the Pentocostal churches, that believed that without him they would not exist and there would be no religious freedom. He took Machiavelli’s remark that “if you want to rule appear more religious than the religious” seriously.

Unlike Napoleon Bonaparte, Tibuhaburwa did not open all does of the State to men of great ability and talent, irrespective of their social status and origins. Eventually, he allowed only those who were ready to praise him and obey him on command. Kinship and ethnicity became key elements in appointments in all departments and Institutions of government, including the army, the police and the judiciary. This undermined his legitimacy as a leader, well in the future and did not put him apart from Apollo Milton Obote and Idi Amin he had cast as tribalists and ethnicists during his revolution and most of his rule despite the fact that he had undermined his reasoning with inappropriate actions.

Educationally, Napoleon Bonaparte, did a lot to promote education. He established numerous high schools, built military schools and made them state-run. He built the Extemporal University in Paris to cater for higher education. He gave priority to science, mathematics and technology, but only as next to military training. He then founded the University of Paris with 17 academies scattered in many departments. However, he defeated the education of women, arguing that their place was the kitchen. He abhorred moral and political sciences and oppressed the liberty of the Press and literature. He censored newspapers and made sure any published book had to be examined before publication.  Public education became pervaded to patriotic purposes and personal elevation. Children were taught as a priority to live and obey the Emperor and to pray every morning and afternoon for his long life and safety.

Tibuhaburwa Museveni destroyed the might of the traditional schools by introducing privatisation in education. He introduced Universal Primary Education and Universal Secondary Education, which lowered the quality of education. He allowed the proliferation of schools -both public and private. Like in French schools under Napoleon Bonaparte, a lot of time was allocated to patriotic engagements of children although it was extremely difficult to identify on patriotic individual in the regime government. At the time of writing there are nearly 100 universities, eleven of which are state-run. Military schools and universities representing the president’s commitment to militarisation of everything conceivable sprang up. A lot of priority was allocated to military training of even the police, paramilitary groups, spies and resident district commissioners (directly responsible to him personally), with all focus on power retention by controlling the movements and actions of the citizens and especially alternative political leaders to prevent them interacting with the population, which may disorient the collective thoughts against the regime.

Most institutions under Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s rule were infiltrated by militarily-trained agents. Even government programmes in sectors of health, education, energy, transport, industry, etc were infested with military officers. In a way this approach to governance undermined the aspirations of Ugandans. What was called security was not security of Ugandans and their property but security of the ruler and his regime. The citizens lost their natural resources, including lakes, fish, forests, swamps and land to foreigners, some of them military officers, including those who enjoyed manipulated citizenship and nationality via Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s Constitution and dual citizenship.

What was known as land grabbing involved official grabbing of the underground resources constitutionally and people’s lands, including natural ecosystems, often through land giveaways by the ruler, or by financially empowered foreigners using money to buy peasants off their land. Many bona fide citizens became a floating army of internal refugees, unable to produce food for themselves. Poverty mushroomed.

Some people became new international slaves while others became home-based slaves. Participants in the new international slavery called it international labour movement. It became dangerous when it was associated with trade in human organs, especially kidney. Many Institutions sprang up to engage in export of Uganda youth who failed to get jobs at home. The institutions belonged to government functionaries or those attached to them.

Last but not least, Napoleon Bonaparte preoccupied himself with public works such as construction of canals, bridges and roads and did establish a good communications network. He facilitated Commerce, industry and agriculture, which made him very popular and a true son of the French revolution. However, his commitment to wars cost France a lot of money and too many lives of the sons of the country. Social development suffered as most time, energy and money were allocated infrastructural development and military adventures.

On the other hand, Tibuhaburwa Museveni also allocated enormous time, energy and money on infrastructural development. He built some nice roads, dams hydroelectric power stations and a new bridge to complement the old one built by the British colonialists. At the time of writing this treatise, poverty among Ugandans had grown to 41 per cent of the population of some 44 million people. His guiding philosophy of development was development first (meaning infrastructure first), environment and nature next, then people last.

Even then he allowed much destruction of environment and nature by mainly regime functionaries and foreigners. In pursuit of his interests in sugarcane and oil palm he allowed destruction of natural lands to establish plantations of those foreign crops at the expense of ordinary people who were displaced to give way. I should also mention that he committed much time, energy and money in developing the oil industry, and in training personnel thereof since the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

Half-hearted and misleading commitment to social and economic transformation of the country was seen in aborted and abortive schemes such as Emyooga, Parish Development Model and Operation Wealth Creation, which ended up bringing prosperity to mostly partisan individuals of the National Resistance Movement, rather than whole communities, which sank further and further into poverty. Otherwise, project approach was no popular than programme approach.

With many communities in poverty, it was politically easier to manipulate them into subservience to the regime in power. Poor people have no time to think about alternative other than day to day survival. Their choices in the political realm can easily be bought and they were to keep the long-ruling regime in power.

In summary, to a very large extent, the latter day convert to modernisation ruler of Uganda of the late 20th and early 21st century was a reincarnation of France’s modern European ruler but while the latter was a ruthless army general who was proclaimed emperor, the former was a near-ruthless general who ruled like an emperor.

For God and My Country.

• A Tell report / By Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a former professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Makerere University, Uganda