Once upon a time the President of Uganda, Tibuhaburwa Museveni, conceded that he was  a chameleon. Ugandans ignored it and dismissed it as one of the presidential jokes. In political terms a chameleon has no love for principles, ethics or morality in politics. It is a formidable tool for political survival.

A chameleon is efficient at changing colours – depending on the environment. As a political chameleon, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni is averse to any change that does not put him at the centre of it. If the president said No Change, he did not really mean he hates all change. He knew change is not preventable. He meant change which does not include him as the central pivot.

The president has always been central to change of political colours, and he always uses others to get the change he wants and which he can control as long as possible. This has made him one of the world’s most successful political survivors. He is now only 32 years short of the numbers of years Queen Elizabeth of England ruled Uganda from London.

Of course he has used many tools to ensure that this is the case: exploiting the docility of Ugandans; foreigners (black, yellow, white); brutality; propaganda; education; jobs; deinstitutionalisation; deradicalisation; desocialisation; deintellectualisation; depoliticisation;   de-labourisation: pan-Africanism; deep state; refugees; state capture; disempowerment; money and political buying of opponents; slavery; et cetera.

Now look at Chameleon Tibuhaburwa Museveni – as he called himself many years ago:

1. Front for National Salvation (FRONASA) to Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM) formed by Ezra Suruma and Joshua Mugenyi who were coerced to pass it onto him with Mugenyi working behind the back of Suruma.

2. Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM) gave way to the resurgence of FRONASA as Uganda Patriotic Army (UPA).

3. UPA transited into the National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A), the brainchild of Yusuf Lule and a few other Baganda neo-traditionalists who had sought refuge in Kabete, Kenya, instead of being ruled by Apollo Milton Obote again. They handed NRM/A to the Yoweri Museveni of that time.

4.NRM/A captured the instruments of power from Tito Okello’s Military Junta in 1986, made a new Uganda constitution favourable to President Tibuhaburwa Museveni and his group, has ruled Uganda for the past 38 years and is watching over the grabbing of the land of historically, culturally, biologically settled indigenous communities by nomadic pastoralists from other parts of East Africa while socially, politically and economically integrating millions of refugees in Uganda’s economy, making it a refugee economy.

5. Now, out of NRM is arising what is called the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU) under the leadership of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, a serving soldier of UPDF, formerly NRA. The fact that the president has not, as president and commander-in-chief, reprimanded Gen Muhoozi, supports the view that the president is behind the scheme to succeed himself.

One school of thought is that the president does not need to rely on NRM as his powerbase, since he still takes UPDF as his personal army. According to the school he has conquered DP and UPC, which boast of many old people, but has not conquered Ssentamu Kyagulanyi’s National Unity Platform (NUP), which boasts of numerous youths and a few oldies. Indeed he has allowed PLU to criticize his NRM and accuse it of crimes and failures and so many top level NRMs to flock to PLU.

The school of thought reasons that President Tibuhaburwa Museveni knows the next Parliament will consist of mainly young people, and that if he does not act the Chameleon, Parliament will be infested by NUP. He hopes to undercut NUP’s political support base by so many of the young people choosing to support PLU. 

According to the school, if the NRM and PLU forge an alliance they would together be in control of Parliament, with PLU being the biggest “stage-managed” opposition in parliament. PLU would provide the leader of opposition and if the Mao-Museveni plan of disenfranchising Ugandans succeeds, then NRM and PLU would re-elect President Tibuhaburwa Museveni in Parliament as president for a seventh term as General Muhoozi awaits to be the next President after Tibuhaburwa Museveni.

The school caps its reasoning by arguing that the current manoeuvres surrounding national IDs may see so many voters unable to vote their preferred candidates for political office. There are fears foreigners will access National IDs far more easily than indigenous Ugandans and predominate in future electoral processes.

For God and My Country.