The Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014

On Monday 24th February, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni signed into law the long-debated Anti-Homosexuality Act. The act introduces new offences and extended sentences for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people (see the All Out poster, below). The passing of the law drew immediate criticism from the international community, with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHR) Navi Pillay describing it as ‘deeply concerning’, US Secretary of State John Kerry comparing it to anti-Semitic legislation passed by the Nazis in the 1930s, and rights groups such as New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) observing that it is a violation of fundamental human rights.

Following the signing, a number of Uganda’s largest donors placed their aid programmes under immediate review. White House spokesman Jay Carney said that the US – which is one of Uganda’s largest donors, with a programme worth more than US$400 million per year – was reviewing its assistance to the country. Denmark immediately withheld US$9 million from its aid programme, and Norway cancelled US$8 million of its support for Uganda. The World Bank also withheld a US$90 million loan package. The passing of the law also produced other economic effects as well, including a drop in value of the Ugandan Shilling - which fell 2.9% against the US dollar - and a call from some business leaders, led by British entrepreneur Richard Branson, for investors to boycott the country. 

Although in the period following the act’s signing, Museveni has attempted to present the new law as a great show of strength, and as an example of his government's independent-mindedness from ‘western’ influences – for example, during an extended interview that he gave to CNN on 24th itself (available here) – in reality the new bill, and the manner in which it was passed, highlight growing weaknesses within his presidency, as well as the increasing disconnect between his executive and the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM)’s parliamentary caucus.

These weaknesses have in fact been evident ever since the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was first introduced, in 2009. Although the original draft was tabled as a private members bill – by David Bahati, MP for Ndorwa West – it quickly became a cause celebre of a group of younger NRM MPs who, distrustful both of the president and of his executive, have made it their political project to check Museveni’s powers. From the outset, this group of ‘young turks’ recognized that if this new law could be passed, then it would draw a strong reaction from donors, and lead to significant aid suspensions, and that this would be in turn be a huge blow for Museveni. This is because, despite all of the recent talk of imminent new petrodollars, the president remains largely dependent on foreign aid to fund the enormous networks of political sponsorship that he has used, since seizing power in 1986, to extend his influence throughout the country (especially in the rural areas). As of 2012, foreign aid still accounts for 20% of Uganda's entire budget, with a value of around US$1.6 billion. 

Thus, although Museveni’s personal views are themselves certainly homophobic – a US embassy cable released by Wikileaks in 2009 described his opinions regarding homosexuality as ‘quite intemperate’, and as influenced by those of his wife Janet (who is a born-again Christian), while in the CNN interview referred to above, he called homosexuals ‘disgusting’ – he nevertheless recognized the potential threat that the bill posed to him, and he therefore moved quickly to quash it. In late 2009, the president issued an executive order against the bill, and he set up a special parliamentary committee that found the draft legislation to be legally unsound. When this didn’t work, and the bill was reintroduced again, in February 2012 (albeit with its former provision for the death penalty – for acts of ‘aggravated homosexuality’ – removed), he then directed the executive both to filibuster its passage through parliament, and to publically condemn it as (again) legally 'redundant'.

However, in the period since early 2012, the group of NRM ‘young turks’ – whose parliamentary numbers significantly increased in the February 2011 general elections – have become greatly emboldened, and have challenged the president on an increasingly wide range of issues and legislation. Ironically, they have received at least some encouragement in these efforts from international rights-based organizations, who have separately come to regard the group as a key constituency for avoiding the emergence of a ‘resource curse’ once Uganda’s new oil comes on-stream in a few years times (in addition to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, oil has been another of the rebel MPs ‘causes celebres’). In addition, though, the group has also received funding and support from a number of (especially US-based) evangelical Christian networks. Most importantly of all, though, during 2012, the young turks have also found a new, and very powerful, de facto leader in the person of Parliamentary Speaker Rebecca Kadaga. Although still the Vice Chairperson of the NRM, in recent months Kadaga has emerged as Museveni’s most significant political rival, and has challenged him directly on a number of issues (for example, on his ongoing attempts to have four members of rebel MPs group – Theodore Ssekikubo, Wilfred Niwagaba, Mohammed Nsereko, and Barnabas Tinkasimire – thrown out of parliament).

It was through the direct intervention of Rebecca Kadaga that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill finally got through parliament. On 20th December last year, Kadaga allowed the bill to be tabled for a third time – even though it was not on the order papers for that week – and having packed the house with their supporters, the rebels finally managed to pass the bill. Yet even after that, the executive continued to fight the bill, for example on 28th December when Museveni wrote a 28-page letter to Kadaga, and to all MPs, claiming that the vote was illegal, because the house lacked a quorum when it was taken (by 20th December, most MPs had already left for their Christmas vacations). Later, the president went on to say that he would delay signing the bill into law until he had consulted with the scientific community over whether homosexuality was an outcome of genetic predispositions, or socialization. However, on 24th February, following growing pressure from the popular press – which was also responsible for generating the major 'moral panic' over homosexuality that followed the first tabling of the bill, in 2009 – Museveni finally gave up, and signed the bill into law.

Looking ahead, the passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill will almost certainly have at least three major effects. Firstly, it will result in further significant aid cancellations, of the sort that have already begun. Even though some of these monies will doubtless eventually be restored, following the passing of this new law, all donors will be under huge pressure (from their own domestic constituencies) to follow the UK's lead in shifting their support away from 'direct aid' - i.e. money which is given directly to the state itself -  towards more 'indirect' forms of assistance - through which funds are funnelled directly to civil society organisations. The UK have already made this shift following a corruption scandal in November 2012. Such a shift would revert back to 1990s-era approaches, which were later rejected for undermining state legitimacy and capacity.

Any major move towards indirect aid would have huge repercussions for Museveni himself, who is heavily dependent on direct foreign aid to fund his networks of political sponsorship. Ever since he came to power, Museveni has used decentralisation - and the proliferation of local administrative structures that this has generated - to deepen his influence throughout the country, especially in the rural areas. Without direct aid, the president will instead become more reliant on the military to extend his power. These current developments are unlikely to have any effect at all on Uganda's receipt of large levels of 'strategic aid' (i.e. military aid), especially from the US - given what America perceives to be its key regional strategic importance, and the fact that it still provides the majority of the troops for the African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) - and Uganda is also now playing a peacekeeping role in South Sudan. In other words, the reaction to this law will likely accelerate current politic trends, which have already seen Museveni making moves to extend the army's role in domestic affairs. For example, during his recent 'anti-poverty campaign' - which unofficially inaugurated his reelection campaign - the president announced plans to set up a military barracks in ever county throughout the country, to oversee 'new initiatives'. The commander of each of these barracks will allegedly report directly to Museveni's brother, Gen. Salim Saleh.
  

Secondly, the passing of this new law will greatly embolden the group of rebel NRM MPs, and especially their leader, Mary Kadaga. Indeed, although Museveni will continue to try to check her powers over the coming period, it is now almost inconceivable to think that she will not end up running against him – in some capacity – in the next presidential election (in 2016). Thirdly, and perhaps ironically, the passing of this law may in fact increase Museveni’s general standing within the wider pan-African community. In recent years, homophobic sentiment has been harnessed, and encouraged, by an increasing number of African governments, who have used it as a vehicle for promoting African ‘sovereignty’ in the face of (what is perceived to be) increasing outside influence on the continent. In a context in which Museveni has already indicated his plans to run for a senior regional role if and when he does step down as Uganda’s president, his signing this bill into law may therefore improve his chances. 

However, what remains unclear at this stage is what effect the next law will have on the people it most effects: i.e. Uganda’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community? In the days since the law has been passed, the community has come in for greatly increased vitriol in the press, with the tabloid Red Pepper, for example, publishing the names of Uganda’s ‘Top 200 Gays’ - in a move which has frightening echoes of Rolling Stone’s 2010 publication of the photographs of 100 gay people, alongside a banner headline reading ‘Hang Them!’ That publication was shortly followed by the brutal murder of gay-rights activist David Kato. 

However, whether this current wave of homophobia is sustained into the longer term will depend very much on how the new law is implemented. Although the death penalty has been removed, the new law amongst other things still increases penalties for some forms of same-sex conduct between adults; outlaws lesbianism for the first time, and; introduces new offenses of ‘promoting homosexuality’ (which could include offering legal advice to gay people, and/or offering health services). Yet how many of these new and increased offenses will be actually enforced by the courts remains to be seen. In the only positive development this week, the Minister of Health, Ruhakana Rugunda, has already said that all health services will continue to be provided in an equitable manner, regardless of patients’ sexual orientation.

There is a proverb in Runyankore/Rukiga, 'enjoojo kwirwana obunyansi nubwo bubonabona' - 'when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers'. As Museveni and Kadaga lock horns ahead of 2016, Uganda's LGBT community bears the brunt.

Oil and Aid

Recent weeks have seen a number of significant developments in Uganda’s nascent oil sector, which in combination, may speed up the start of production. The first occurred on 21st March, when President Museveni finally signed into law the Petroleum (Exploration, Development, Production and Value Addition) Bill. The bill – which is designed to be the first of three new pieces of legislation relating to country’s recent oil finds in the Lake Albertine Graeburn – had taken more than two and a half years to get through parliament, following a sustained challenge led by a group of rebel MPs within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM). Then, on 3rd April, a three-member arbitration panel in London found in favour of the Ugandan government in its long-running legal dispute with Canada’s Heritage Oil (over US$434 million which Kampala claims it is owed in capital gains tax on Heritage’s 2009 sale of its oil rights in Uganda to Ireland’s Tullow Oil). Although the decision does not end the dispute – despite the Ugandan government’s claim to the contrary – it nevertheless significantly strengthens the legal basis for Kampala’s future dealings with international mining companies operating in the country. Finally, on 15th April, the government announced that it had finally reached a decision on the building of a new oil refinery at Kabaale-Biseruka (which is close to the newly discovered fields) – in which the government hopes to retain a 40% stake. On the one hand, the planned refinery is much smaller than the one the government had hoped for: the new plant will have an initial capacity of only 30,000 barrels per day (b/d), which is significantly lower than the 200,000 b/d originally envisaged. Yet on the other, this means that the refinery will be much cheaper to build, and will therefore come on-stream much more quickly.

These potential breakthroughs with the oil sector come at an important time for the Ugandan government, which is still struggling with the fall-out from November’s aid suspensions by many of the country’s main donors. The donors’ coordinated action – which followed allegations that the Office of Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi had embezzled US$13 million of aid meant for the Peace, Recovery and Development Plan for Northern Uganda (PRDP) – involved the freezing of the entire Joint Budget Support Framework (JBSF) for 2013, and has left the government with a shortfall of US$300 million (7.1%) in its annual budget. In response, in early March the Finance Ministry was forced to publish a revised budget which envisaged deep cuts to ministries’ spending, and to social service provision, as well as a reduction in infrastructural investment. Anecdotal evidence suggests that large numbers of civil servants have already gone several months without pay. In addition, the government have also now revised downwards their growth forecasts for 2013, from 5%, to 4.2%. All of this, then, combined with country’s still very high inflation rate, has left the government facing a severe economic crisis.

On the one hand, the donors’ recent actions have once again highlighted the ineffectiveness of aid suspensions as a policy device. As with the similar suspensions that were recently imposed on Rwanda, the donors – even as they were coordinating their actions – don’t seem to have given much thought as to what they were trying to achieve in the process. Certainly, no explicit demands appear to have been made of the Ugandan government, other than by Sweden (which in late November, demanded that Kampala repay in full the US$6.7 million that Stockholm had contributed to the PRDP). As a result, other than impacting the rank and file of civil servants (who have not been paid in 2013) and presumably also those members of the Ugandan public who rely on social services, it is not clear what effects the aid suspensions are likely to achieve. In an attempt to assuage the donors – and to overturn the suspensions – in November, the Ugandan government ordered the office of the Audit-General to begin a ‘forensic audit’ exercise on the accounts of all government departments, to try to identify fraudulent activity. The following month, they also introduced a ‘High Level Government Finance Reform Action Matrix’, as a general measure aimed at improving economic governance in the country. In addition, the Bank of Uganda (BOU) has also now pledged to reform the system through which bank accounts are set up in the country (in an attempt to reduce the number of ‘ghosts accounts’ through which embezzled funds are frequently channelled.

However, none of this is likely to have much impact on the activities of the upper-echelons of the NRM - or those with connections to senior figures. Moreover, pressure on the president to target senior colleagues such as Mbabazi has been further weakened, over the past month or so, by growing divisions within the donor community over when the suspensions should end. Following an early-March meeting of all members of the JBSF in Kampala, it emerged that only Britain (which appears to have been the driving force behind the frieze in the first place), as well as Sweden and Denmark, remain committed to the ongoing aid suspensions. Meanwhile, Germany, Ireland, the EU and others have all now indicated that they favour a resumption of aid to Kampala, probably by the year’s end. Yet unless the donors can present a ‘united front’ to Uganda over the action, it is doubtful that the suspensions – however long they are in effect for – will exert any real political pressure in the country.

On the other hand, though, the recent aid suspensions have had a marked effect in accelerating the government’s current drift towards ‘economic nationalism’. Museveni’s desire to move in this direction has been evident at least since the publication of the recent National Development Plan (NDP), in April 2010. Whilst not advocating full-blown protectionism, the NDP certainly envisages the government exerting much greater control over its own economy. The current aid suspensions have then further accelerated the government’s moves down this line, as evidenced both by their recent moves aimed at getting oil production on-stream as quickly as possible, and by their related shift towards China as a source for development finance. In addition to being heavily involved in Uganda’s oil plans – through the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) – in mid-April Beijing agreed a new US$9.8 million loan to Kampala. Crucially, the new loan, which is part of the US$20 billion that China pledged to Africa in July, appears to have no conditionalities whatsoever attached to it, and the money can therefore be spent entirely at the Ugandan government’s discretion. It also follows another loan, of US$350 million, that China Exim Bank gave to Uganda last year, which the government is planning to spend on a new Entebbe-Kampala road. In these ways, then, Kampala appears to have much greater control over the new Chinese aid than it ever has with monies provided by the ‘traditional donors’.

However, despite the recent progress that has been made with oil, President Museveni now faces a number of serious obstacle in his plans to further develop the nascent sector, and to use this to further his grip on the domestic economy. In particular, a group of young rebel MPs within the ruling party have vowed to block the presidents moves at every turn. The group has become particularly emboldened since the election of the current (ninth) parliament, in February 2011, during which they have also made oil issues their particular cause celebre. It is this group that was primarily responsible for delaying the first Petroleum bill for so long, and they are now gearing up for a serious fight over thelast piece of planned oil-related legislation: the Public Finance Bill 2012 (which includes an extended section on ‘Petroleum Revenue Management’). Although Museveni has expressed a desire to have this new law passed within the next few months, the ‘young turks’ – supported by the large sections of the media – have vowed to side with the parliamentary opposition in order to defeat it.

In response to the growing threat posed by these rebel MPs, in January, Museveni briefly vowed to suspend parliament, and to impose martial law on the county – a threat that was later repeated by the head of the army, General Aronda Nyakairima. However, if the aim of the threat was to silence the young turks, then it backfired spectacularly, because it galvanized support for the group not only in parliament, but among the wider population as well. In addition, Museveni’s threat of a ‘palace coup’ also drew a strong reaction from the international community. Nevertheless, over recent months the executive has continuously targeted individual rebels. In December, one of the group’s most outspoken members, Cerinah Nebanda (former MP for Butaleja District), was found dead at a clinic in Kampala, in apparently mysterious circumstances. The government initially claimed that she had been the victim of a drug overdose. However, following apparent discrepancies with the autopsy results, Museveni himself was forced to give two press conferences denying official involvement. 

Then, in January, another leading rebel figure, Theodore Ssekikubo (MP for Lwemiyaga) was arrested on charges of ‘inciting violence’, for a speech he made at Nebanda’s funeral. Although he was later released without charge, in early April, Ssekikubo, along with three other members sitting MPs (Wilfred Niwagaba, Muhammed Nsereko and Barnabas Tinkasiimire), were officially expelled from the NRM. The expulsions have set up a potential constitutional crisis, in that being expelled from the party does not necessarily require the four MPs to stand down from parliament – even though this is the president’s obvious wish. Interestingly, the person who will now have to deliberate on the matter in non other than Speaker of the House Rebecca Kadaga who, although the Vice Chairperson of the NRM, is  also the de facto leader of the rebel group, and is one of Museveni’s most outspoken critics. As if all of this doesn’t make the president’s task of silencing parliamentary criticism over oil difficult enough, Museveni is also faced with a resurgent opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), who have been galvanized by the recent election of their new leader, Mugisha Muntu.

With real momentum now developing around the nascent oil sector, it is possible that production might now begin sooner rather than later (although exact predictions as to when exactly when this will be remain notoriously difficult to make). But whether this does signal a genuine shift towards economic nationalism in Uganda will depend very much on how the JBSF donors position themselves in the months ahead. Yet with China becoming increasingly influential in the country, and with Beijing increasingly being viewed by the government as their favoured ‘development partner’, a genuine shift in lines of influence is now possible. In the end, it may be an alliance of rebel government MPs and opposition members who are best placed to check the excesses of the Museveni executive for the foreseeable future.

Rise of the Kingdoms

Since the start of this year, officials from the Kingdom of Bunyoro have been repeating calls for the creation of a ‘regional tier of government’ for their part of Uganda, and also claiming that this should receive up to 12.5% of all revenues from the region’s new oil fields (in the Albertine Graben) – once production starts. The demand is unlikely to be met by President Yoweri Museveni, but it nevertheless demonstrates just how emboldened the kingdom has become in its dealings with central government since major oil discoveries were first made in the area (in 2006). Following the discoveries, the government initially proposed an 80%-20% split in future oil revenues between the state and the districts from which the oil had come. Crucially, though, it was argued that as a ‘cultural institution’, the kingdom itself lay outside the formal structures of district administration, and was therefore initially entitled to nothing. 

However, from that time onwards the kingdom and its allies have mounted a concerted lobbying campaign both in parliament – especially through regional MPs associated with the Bunyoro Parliamentary Caucus and the Greater North Parliamentary Forum – and in the media, and this has latterly forced the government’s hand. From mid-2009 onwards, Museveni has had to consult the kingdom on practically all regional matters, and he was eventually forced to concede on oil revenues as well. Thus, when the first new piece of oil legislation, the Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Bill was finally passed – in December – it included provision for some of the monies to be paid to the kingdom as well.

However, kingdom supporters are now using this newfound political leverage to try to force

The Kingdom of Bunyoro

concessions on various other issues as well, including on some which are not directly related to oil. For example, in April last year, Bunyoro officials lobbied the Ministry of Justice over the establishment of a regional justice centre in Hoima Town. In July, the King of Bunyoro himself, Solomon Gafabusa Iguru, met with the president at his official residence in Kirukura District, during which he pressed Museveni over state investments in regional education, health care, and road building projects. Then in October, kingdom supporters also played a leading part in getting the Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA), to release its long proposed plan for an upgrading of the main Kigumba-Masindi-Hoima-Kabwoya Road (one of the main thoroughfares through the region). Yet perhaps the biggest display of the kingdom’s new found confidence occurred in July, when Bunyoro officials sponsored a major fundraising event at the Ndere Centre in Kampala, which was attended by a broad swathe of the capital’s ethnic Banyoro elite. The event was both a celebration of cultural pride, but also an attempt to mobilize support for the kingdom’s ongoing efforts over oil revenues, and regional development in general.

The discovery of such large oil reserves within the kingdom’s historical territory has of course given particular impetus to Bunyoro’s recent political resurgence (current estimates put the reserves at least 3.5 billion barrels). However, jockeying over future petrodollars is only one of the factors that has led to the revival of the kingdom as a political force. Equally, if not more, important has been the effects of the Museveni government’s long-standing policy of ‘decentralization’ – which have fuelled the rise not only of Bunyoro, but of a number of other ‘traditional’ kingdoms (and other traditional authorities) in other parts of Uganda as well.

Decentralization has been the cornerstone of the Museveni government’s internal political policy since it came to power in 1986. Institutionalized through a range of legislation passed between 1987 and 1997, the system claims to increase popular participation, and improve accountability and service delivery. However, in recent years, a growing consensus has emerged that from the 2000s onwards, Museveni has also used decentralization – and the proliferation of local administrative structures that it allows for – as a kind of ‘divide and rule’ strategy, aimed at fragmenting political opposition throughout the country. For example, it is notable that when Museveni came to power, in 1986, Uganda had 22 districts, whereas today, it has 111 and one city (Kampala).

However, effective as this strategy has undoubtedly been in thwarting major opposition parties such as the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), it has also latterly spawned a generation of MPs who are more committed to local issues that to the political centre (for example, all of the younger rebel MPs who have challenged Museveni in recent times began their political careers in the local administration system). More generally, the proliferation of districts has generated more complex sub-national political landscapes. It is in this context, then, that ‘traditional’ authorities have latterly started to thrive. And this revival of kingdoms (and other traditional authorities besides) has been particularly marked in those places where the institutions involved have been able to mobilize local grievances over resource allocation – as Bunyoro has done in relation to oil.

Buganda is another traditional kingdom that has recently revived its political relevance by mobilizing grievances over resources. In one sense, the ‘Buganda question’ – the question of exactly how (by what institutional arrangements) the Kingdom of Buganda is incorporated into the Ugandan nation state, has been a vexed one from colonial times onwards. However, the issue has become politically charged again in recent years, as a result of decentralization. In Buganda’s case, the fragmentation of the kingdom’s historic territory into an ever greater number of separate districts initially weakened the ethnic Baganda elite’s sense of common purpose. In response, both kingdom officials, members of the Buganda parliament (the Lukiiko), and Baganda members of the national parliaments, lobbied intensively for increased powers for the kingdom, as the rightful ‘supra-district’ political entity in the central region. Museveni refused to grant these powers, but he did eventually concede to the creation of a separate ‘Buganda Council’ – to coordinate healthcare, education and infrastructure projects across districts – and he later talked about the creation of a ‘regional tier of government’ for Buganda as well (although to date, this has never been instituted).

However, since the mid-2000s, the kingdom has made its greatest gains over questions of land – gains which have ultimately resulted in Buganda becoming, once again, a key player in the national political landscape. The main catalyst here was Museveni’s new Land Act (which was passed in 1998, although was not implemented until several years later), which devolved all land claims down to newly created District Land Boards (DLBs, one of which was established for each new district in the country). One of the key effects was to divide a number of existing, and in some cases very long-standing, land disputes across multiple DLBs – effectively making it less likely that these claims would ever be settled. The kingdom itself had a particular stake in the problem, given that it is at the centre of the largest land dispute in Uganda (relating to 9000 square miles of land that were taken away from Buganda in 1969, yet which are still claimed by the Kingdom). However, its attempts to challenge the government on the Land Act resonated with a wide range of ethnic Baganda land owners, many of whom found that their claims were similarly divided across different districts (and this situation was relatively common, even for relatively small land owners). More generally, the kingdom’s attempts to present itself as the ‘defender of land’ also resonated with the wider Baganda public – even with those who owned very little, or even no, property at all – in the context of rapid population expansion in Kampala. Following attempts by the kingdom to further provoke the issue through its main radio station, CBS, the issue eventually resulted several days of rioting in and around the capital (in September 2009).

Recent years have also witnessed an attempt by elites associated with the former Kingdom of Ankole to

John Patrick Barigye, self-proclaimed Ntare VI of Ankole before his death in October 2011

re-establish their political relevance by mobilizing over resource issues. Ankole is in many ways the most controversial of Uganda’s former kingdoms, given that it was historically divided into two castes – an elite pastoralist caste (the Bahima), and a ‘commoner’ agricultural caste (the ‘Bairu’) – and was thus, in a sense, always divisive. Indeed, for this reason, it was the only one of the traditional kingdoms to not be reinstated by the Museveni government in 1986, and even today, it is still not officially recognized. Nevertheless, this has not stopped those associated with the current claimant to the Ankole throne, Charles Rwebishengye (son of the late John Patrick Barigye), from attempting to reinsert themselves in the region’s political affairs. In recent years, this group has mobilized under the umbrella of the Ankole Cultural Trust (ACT), which has again gained in popularity by assisting its members with land disputes and, more importantly, by providing a range of education scholarships to supporters’ children – especially in some of the poorer new districts in the Southwest. The success of these initiatives was demonstrated in August, when the ACT staged a huge fundraising event in the region capital, Mbarara, which was attended by all of the 200 most prominent clans in the region.

Recent developments have therefore highlighted the various ways in which Uganda’s ‘traditional kingdoms’ have now become a key part of the country’s increasingly complex national political landscape. Whilst kingdom elites remain unlikely to directly challenge President Museveni’s power in the short term, they may become more important players in the future, especially in the event of any radical shift in Uganda’s governing structures (a prospect that has become more plausible, in recent months, following talk of 'palace coups', and the like). Indeed, it was in order to check this potential rise in their influence that in 2010 the president tabled the Traditional Leaders’ Bill - which aimed to limit the powers of Uganda’s various monarchs (something that Museveni is technically already entitled to do, under article 246 of the constitution). However, as a further sign of the kingdoms’ political force, they were able to mobilize their supporters in parliament to have the more controversial clauses of that bill dropped.

Museveni's Military Might

In February, a delegation of senior government officials from Mali visited Kampala, leading to speculation that Uganda may soon commit peacekeeping troops to that country. In December, the UN Security Council voted to create a new international peacekeeping force for the country, the African-led International Support Mission for Somalia (AFISMA), and it is now widely anticipated that Uganda may be looking to play a significant role within that. If Kampala does commit, it will give the Ugandan Army (UPDF) a military footprint in West Africa, in addition to its already extensive presence across large parts of the central and eastern continent.

In May last year, the UPDF and the US Army Africa (USARAF) co-hosted the second biennial African Land Forces Summit (ALFS) in Kampala. The stated aim of the meeting – which brought together army top-brass from 36 African nations – was to foster relationships between national armies, with a view to engendering future military co-operation (for example, in relation to regional security threats). However, for many commentators, the stated purpose of the conference was overshadowed by the symbolism of the event, which appeared to confirm Uganda’s rise as one of the pre-eminent military powers in Africa – something which has been very greatly assisted, in recent years, by US backing – at the same time as signalling future threats to the country (as characterized, in particular, by Sudan’s refusal to attend the summit). As such, it also raised important questions about the UPDF’s future role in Uganda’s own domestic political landscape, and about Kampala’s increasing use of its army as a primary tool of foreign policy, especially in the region.

In recent years, both the size of the UPDF, and the complexity of its organizational structure, have grown significantly. Following a mass recruitment of 9,000 new soldiers in late 2009, in August 2011, the army passed out a further 3,300 new troops, bringing the total number of regular forces to over 55,000. In addition, in March 2012, senior officers recalled 1,700 former soldiers, suggesting that, although the UPDF does not officially have a reserve force, it has greater numbers of men at its disposal than even this total would suggest (some estimated put the UPDF's unofficial reserves at around 10,000). Over the same period, President Museveni (who is also commander-in-chief of the UPDF), has undertaken a series of mass promotions among the UPDF officer class. For example, in January 2011, he promoted 208 middle-ranking officers. This was followed, in late September that year, by the promotion of 9 senior colonels to the rank of brigadier – the group included Museveni’s son, Kainerugaba Muhoozi, and also one woman, Proscovia Nalweyiso – and in April 2012, by the advancement of a further 204 middle ranking officers (most of whom moved from the rank of captain, to that of major).

Moreover, all of this also took place against a backdrop of increased military spending in the country. In a series of reports published from late 2011 onwards, a leading arms-control NGO, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), found that between the periods 2002-2006 and 2007-2011, Uganda’s arms imports increased by 300%. During 2006-11, Kampala imported 38,000 small arms and light weapons (nearly 20% of the total across Africa), whilst in 2011, Uganda’s total defence expenditure exceeded US$1 billion – by far the highest in the region. Certainly, these figures were inflated by Museveni’s 2010 decision to purchase 6 Su-30MK combat aircraft from Russia (which, although they are relatively old technology in global terms, will nevertheless eventually give Uganda one of the most advanced airforces in East and North-east Africa). However, recent reports have suggested that the UPDF’s spending is unlikely to stop there. In particular, rumours persist that the army has already bought, or else is about to buy, a range of new armour (although UPDF commanders have refused to comment on subject, arguing that the details of arms procurement are classified).

This rapid expansion of the UPDF since 2009 primarily reflects the growing role that the army now plays in Uganda’s domestic political landscape. With Museveni increasingly isolated within parliament – following a sustained challenge by a group of younger rebel MPs from within his own ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) – both he and the executive have become ever more reliant on the army as a means for quashing dissent. For example, in early September 2009, the president deployed the UPDF throughout Kampala in order to put down Baganda ethno-nationalist riots. In April 2011, the special forces group (SFG, which are headed by Kainerugaba Muhoozi) were similarly used to bring a series of opposition-led riots under control. And throughout early 2012, the UPDF were again active in relation to opposition leader Kizza Besigye’s ‘Walk to Work’ (W2W) campaigns. Elsewhere, Museveni has also become increasingly dependant upon the military as a means for strengthening state control over Uganda’s troubled Karamoja region (in the North-east of the country, and in which the UPDF’s 3rd and 5th divisions are currently based).

However, it is in relation to Uganda’s nascent oil sector that the president has become most reliant upon the army. From the time that significant oil deposits were discovered in the Lake Albert basin (from 2006 onwards), Museveni and his inner-circle have attempted to control the nascent oil fields by effectively militarizing the entire region in which they are located. Thus, following a series of cross-border skirmishes between the UPDF and the Congolese Army (FARDC), in 2009, Kampala announced construction of a new army base in Kyangwali Sub-county, Hoima District – which when complete, will be one of the biggest military installations in the country. In early 2010, Museveni then handed over security for all of the oil fields to his son’s SFG, whose duties include policing the ‘special permits’ which are now required for anyone – including elected officials – to access local populations. Moreover, the UPDF’s role in the oil sector is likely to expand once production begins in earnest, in a few years' time.

Yet even if Uganda’s current military expansion is driven primarily by domestic concerns, it would not have been possible were it not for Kampala’s commitment to ongoing military operations in Somalia. From the time the current African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) began, in January 2007 – with backing from the UN Security Council – Uganda has provided the lion’s share of troops for the mission, as well as much of its command-and-control structures. Indeed, following al-Shabaab’s bombings in Kampala in July 2010, Uganda has recently increased its overall commitment to the mission, to 8,000 troops.

The key point though is that prior to the UPDF becoming involved in Somalia, Uganda’s overall military expenditure was effectively capped by the donor community. Throughout the late 1990s, and early 2000s, the World Bank and Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID), in particular, put sustained pressure on Museveni and his executive to limit defence spending as a percentage of their overall budget – even in the context of (then) expanding military operations against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the north of the country. However, following the creation of the AMISOM mission, any such spending limits have effectively been lifted, with the US, the UK and the EU all contributing to the costs of the intervention. The US, in particular, has already spent US $550 million on military training and equipment for the Somalia force, and much of this has gone directly to Uganda. For example, since 2007, American military contractors have operated a training camp for Somalia-bound UPDF troops at Kakola (about 50 miles northeast of Kampala), which in May 2012 passed out 3,500 men. In addition, since 2007, Uganda has received other forms of military support from the US besides (i.e. over and above that which they have received specifically for AMISOM). Most notably, in October 2011, President Obama deployed 100 US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) to assist in the UPDF in their hunt for LRA leader Joseph Kony.

Moreover, all of this has also given Museveni renewed confidence in using the army as a primary means for achieving various of Uganda’s other foreign policy objectives across the region. For example, it has resulted in the Ugandan president reinvigorating the UPDF’s operations in North-eastern Congo and the Southern Central African Republic (CAR) to capture Kony and his men. These operations had been ‘running out of steam’ a little, especially in light of more pressing domestic concerns. However, in the context of Uganda’s renewed military strength – and again, with additional US support – in March last year the UPDF announced that it would form the majority of a new brigade-strong AU force against the LRA. Moreover, following its creation, the new structure almost immediately proved a success, when in May, a UPDF patrol captured a senior LRA commander, Caesar Acellam, near to the DRC-CAR border.

Recent months have also seen a ratcheting-up of the Ugandan government’s rhetoric regarding the current conflict between South Sudan and Sudan. Having supported the Southern People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) from the mid-1980s onwards, Uganda remains a staunch ally of (the now independent) South Sudan, and could thus be expected to be draw into the conflict on Juba’s side. Moreover, this possibility became increasingly real last year, when the Sudanese Ambassador to Uganda Amb Hussein Awadi claimed that Kampala had been providing covert support to rebel groups in Darfur. Reflecting Uganda's new military strength, Kampala's response to these claims has been notably robust. Thus, following the Sudanese Ambassador’s comments, Security Minister Wilson Mukasa refuted the allegations, but also said that Uganda was well capable of repelling a Sudanese attack, and thus had nothing to fear from such an eventuality. Kampala has also been similarly blasé about the possibility of future armed conflict with Egypt over ongoing disputes over ownership and control of water in the River Nile. Indeed, at the time he announced the purchase of the Su-30MK aircraft to his cabinet, Museveni claimed that the new jets would ensure victory over Egypt in the event of any such war.

President Museveni is likely to become increasingly reliant on the UPDF as a tool for quelling domestic opposition in the months and years ahead. He is also likely to deepen their engagement in various theatres of conflict throughout the region, and across the continent. Kenya remains Uganda’s primary ally, and relations between Kigali and Kampala are at an all time high. Therefore armed conflict with either of those states is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future. However, the UPDF’s engagement in North-eastern Congo is likely to continue, and to expand, for many months to come, whilst the potential for renewed conflict with Sudan grows all the time.

Review- Ghosts of Kanungu (African Affairs)

The latest edition of African Affairs (Vol. 111, No. 445: 673-675) carries a review of my book Ghosts of Kanungu: Fertility, secrecy and exchange in the Great Lakes of East Africa (James Currey, 2009). The review is written by Professor Richard Fardon from SOAS, University of London:

Richard Vokes has written a compelling account of the tragic events that hindsight suggests were to culminate in 2000 with the deaths of some hundreds of members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandmants of God (MRTC) in the south-west of Uganda.

Ethnographic monographs on Africa, whatever their other virtues, can rarely be described as riveting from first to last, but this one is. Its achievement is to explain the concatenation of events around the demise of the MRTC without foreclosing every doubt about the exact nature of those events. We shall never know with certainty what happened in March 2000, but Vokes has worked tirelessly to derive a plausible narrative by placing the documented events in the context of the various forces – of the past and the present, the relatively local and global –working upon them.

The book opens with the scenario as it appeared to a newcomer – as Vokes then was – and closes by revisiting the same scenes in the light of eight years of investigation. A fire in a building at the headquarters of the MRTC in Kanungu immolates many of its surviving members. As well as the remains of a last meal, a wall calendar is found that laconically records for 16 March 2000 ‘world’s end’, and for 17 March ‘bye’. Vokes, who had arrived earlier that month intending research in south-west Uganda, caught the news item on CNN in Kampala. From the outset, media, police, politicians, and so forth began to apply different glosses to what had taken place. Initially in Kanungu, then in the following days at other MRTC properties, investigators discovered mass graves, some of them simply bodies tipped into pit latrines. What mixture of murder or cult suicide might explain this? The answer involves our retracing the history of this ‘African-Initiated Church’ (AIC) to learn about its antecedents, expansion, teaching, and demise.

Historical reinterpretation is needed for one set of antecedents to become apparent. The Nyabingi cult appears in records of the colonial period primarily as a movement of resistance. Vokes argues that this was only one guise adopted by a network of relations, exchanges, and initiatory knowledge that sought to redress misfortunes, particularly infertility in narrow and broad senses. The MRTC took part of its template from Nyabingi, one reason for the MRTC being unusually secretive for an AIC. Between Nyabingi and the MRTC stood a historical mediator in the shape of Roman Catholicism. The White Fathers were distinctive and successful, at least vis-à-vis the Church Missionary Society, for reasons that included both their practical attempts to improve the lives of their parishioners, and their advocacy of the protective role of the Virgin Mary, particularly in women’s affairs. Nyabingi, as one informant put it, became a Catholic, and in the process also became anthropomorphized. With the retirement of the last overseas missionaries, the Church passed into local hands, and Africanizing initiatives were encouraged after Vatican II.

The central figure of the drama, Ceredonia Mwerinde, was visited by the Virgin Mary at a site particularly associated with Nyabingi in its guise of anti-colonial struggle. Over time these visions began to specify a whole style of life and of worship. Adherents set up their own sites of worship and residence, the MRTC being eventually expelled from the Catholic Church, taking some clerics with it. Growth of MRTC as an AIC correlated with the worst onset of AIDS, and its adherents were largely drawn from those most marginalized, particularly young AIDS widows in polygamous households, possibly descendants of migrants, as well as other women at risk economically. What property they retained was made over to the MRTC in expectation of security. Meanwhile, under the influence of international Marian contacts, the leadership of the MRTC turned increasingly to preoccupation with the doctrines of the final days. Illness, particularly malaria, broke out in the cramped collective dwellings; drought led to hunger approaching starvation; and, as they died, increasingly the group cut themselves off. The end was mostly likely suicide by poison, the dead engulfed by a fire set by the last to die.

What is so compelling about Vokes’s account is the sense of forces and events conspiring together towards tragedy. Along the way, Richard Vokes generalizes theoretically and methodologically for his anthropological readers likely to be interested in such things, but these passages are neither extended nor obtrusive (whether or not they are necessary) and readers of this journal will not find they obscure the narrative thrust. This is amongst the outstanding Africanist ethnographies of recent years: a splendid combination of ethnographic investigation with the evaluation of texts and images, and a significant addition to the literature on African-initiated Churches.

For more on the book, visit the Kanungu project website, which is available here.

Publication- Photography in Africa: Ethnographic Perspectives

I have just published my latest edited collection, called 'Photography in Africa: Ethnographic Perspectives' (James Currey, 2012). Full details of the publication can be viewed at the publisher's website here, and the book can also be purchased at Amazon.co.uk here (or Amazon.com here).

The collection includes a series of empirically rich historical and ethnographic case studies, which examine the variety of ways in which photographs are produced, circulated, and engaged with across a range of social contexts. The volume includes examples drawn from across the continent, and from each of Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone Africa. In this way, it elucidates the distinctive characteristics of all African photographic practices and cultures, vis-à-vis those of other types of 'vernacular photography' worldwide. In addition, the studies included here also develop a reflexive turn, by examining the history of academic engagement with these African photographic cultures, and by reflecting on the distinctive qualities of the ethnographic method as a means for studying such phenomena.

The volume critically engages current debates in African photography and visual anthropology. First, it extends our understanding of the variety of ways in which both colonial and post-colonial states in Africa have used photography as a means for establishing, and projecting, their authority. Second, it moves discussion of African photography away from an exclusive focus on the role of the 'the studio' and looks at the circulations through which the studios' products - the photographs themselves - later pass as artefacts of material culture. Last, it makes an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between photography and ethnographic research methods, as these have been employed in Africa.

In addition, the book pay particular attention to the fast changing nature of African photographic cultures, especially since the arrival of widespread digital imaging technologies. For example, to take my own field site of South-western Uganda, it is interesting to note that although digital technologies have only become available in significant numbers since around 2009, they have already begun to generate keen discussion, across a wide variety of social contexts. Thus, even in settings in which people are not yet entirely familiar with digital imaging technologies, people are already beginning to debate, for example, what impact pre-natal scan images will have upon concepts of personhood (in a context in which practically any reference to an unborn child is regarded as strictly taboo), what effect digital portraits will have upon exchange relations (in a context in which photographic image-objects play a significant part in many types of exchange relationships), and what impact the advent of Facebook, and other social networking sites, will have upon relations between people ‘back home’ and those now living in the Diaspora.

I recently conducted an interview about the new collection with the editor of African Griot. The interview provides further information about the volume, and some background on the genesis of the project. The full text of the interview can be viewed here.

LRA Update

During last Friday's whistle-stop visit to Uganda, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to be drawn on any questions relating to the hunt for Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Nevertheless, over recent months, a number of details have begun to emerge about both the pattern, and the progress, of the operation. In particular, in late May, the US Army's Special Operations Command in Africa (SOCAFRICA) provided the first update on its own deployment of 100 Green Berets to the region (who having arrived in the field in November last year, are acting as military advisers to various regional armies). The update confirmed a number of important details, including the fact that the US Special Forces, despite being primarily based in Entebbe, Uganda, have established a number of forward operating bases ('Combined Operations Fusion Centres') in areas of LRA activity: the borderlands between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan. The SOCAFRICA statement also claimed some initial successes for the US deployment, arguing that it has already assisted regional armies to improve their tracking and pursuit of LRA elements, and has thus enabled them to increase the pressure on Kony’s men. Indeed, the US statement even went as far as to say that as a result of the new joint operations, the LRA has now been reduced to ‘survival mode’ only. 

When President Obama first announced the Green Berets’ deployment in mid-October, many commentators initially dismissed the move as largely symbolic, and as aimed primarily at assuaging US-based anti-LRA lobby groups. In particular, the operation was criticized for being based out of Entebbe - which is several hundred miles away from the DRC-CAR-South Sudan border zone - for the somewhat passive role in which it cast the US troops (at the time, US Assistant Secretary of Defence Alexander Vershbow was keen to stress that the Green Berets would not directly engage the LRA, but would instead act only as trainers and advisors to regional militaries), and for its ‘time-limited’ mandate. In addition, the deployment looked unlikely to achieve much in a context in which the Ugandan Army (UPDF) – who had been the primary trackers of Kony’s men in recent years – were beginning to draw down their own anti-LRA operation, in light of growing fatigue and indiscipline amongst its expeditionary force, and due to the UPDF’s growing commitments elsewhere.

However, in recent months both the US deployment, and the regional military efforts that this is designed to assist, have received a major fillip from the enormous public and NGO response to Invisible Children’s ‘KONY 2012’ campaign video. Specifically, the huge amount of interest that the video has generated – which following its uploading to YouTube in early March, has been viewed over 92 million times – has done much to galvanize US policy-makers, in particular, into developing a more robust response to the LRA crisis. Moreover, these efforts have fared well with a White House administration keen to demonstrate its own tough stance on foreign policy matters in the run-up to November’s presidential election. It is in this context, then, that in late April President Obama made a speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington DC, in which he indicated that the Green Berets’ mission was to be both expanded, and extended (and in relation to the latter, he explicitly removed the former ‘time-limit’ on the operation). Since then, the US force, although continuing to avoid any direct engagements with the LRA, has also become more active in the field, especially in the area of intelligence gathering (and SOCAFRICA's recent statement also stated that the US are now planning to increase its surveillance overflights of the LRA-effected areas as well). The public response to KONY 2012 has also helped to galvanize Kampala into renewed action against the rebel group. Thus, in late March, President Museveni announced that the UPDF would be contributing the lion’s share of troops to a new 5,000 strong African Union (AU) force to take on the LRA. Although details of the AU mission have yet to be finalized, this will likely involve both a reallocation of the 1,500 or so Uganda soldiers currently based in the LRA-affected areas, and a further UPDF deployment to the zone. For its part, the Congolese Army (FARDC) had already deployed their elite, and US-trained, 391st Battalion to the LRA-affected areas in order to bolster their own efforts against Kony’s men. At the time of their deployment, in April 2011, the 391st Battalion replaced former units of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) who although formerly integrated into the FARDC, largely operate outside of its command and control structures. But since early March, these troops have become much more active in their anti-LRA activities, and have received additional anti-insurgency training from the Green Beret trainers (at a UN Stabilization Mission in the Congo, MONUSCO, Operations Centre in Dungu Town, in Haut-Uele District). In all of these ways, then, it is worth noting that Invisible Children’s campaign, whatever its other shortcomings, has been highly successful in achieving its primary objective, of achieving an expanded US operation in Central Africa, in support of regional militaries’ own anti-LRA efforts.

Moreover, over recent months, all of this reinvigorated military activity has resulted in a number of significant successes. For example, when on 10th March, a detachment of LRA fighters tried to attack a village along the road between Dungu and Faradje Town, they were repelled by an FARDC patrol (who also killed 2 LRA cadres in the process, and recovered a number of weapons). However, even better was to come in on 12th May, when another group of 30 LRA fighters was ambushed by a UPDF patrol on the banks of the River Mbou (on the CAR side of the border with the DRC). In the ensuing exchanges, the Ugandans captured 3 of the rebel fighters – among them one of the LRA’s most senior commanders, and one of Kony’s most trusted aides, Maj.-Gen. Caesar Achellam Otto. Subsequent accounts of Achellam’s arrest were somewhat confused on the question of whether the ambush and capture had been a chance event, or whether it was the result of an intelligence-led operation. In addition, at least one commentator, Angelo Izama, of the Kampala-based NGO Fanaka Kwawote, suggested that Achellam may have even handed himself in – having been seen as a potential defector for several years now (and the relatively comfortable conditions in which the Maj.-Gen. has been held since his arrest may be further evidence that such a deal had indeed been done). Nevertheless, whatever the circumstances of Achellam’s capture, there is little doubt the arrest has done much to further the impression that the net is indeed now closing on Joseph Kony himself.

Yet whether all of this means that the LRA really has indeed now been reduced to ‘survival mode’ remains unclear. Certainly, recent months have also seen the group narrow its area of operations. Thus, although Kony himself may now be in Darfur, and at least some of his men remain in the CAR, since the turn of the year most of his group’s 200 or so remaining fighters have been concentrated in a relatively narrow corridor running roughly west-east from Bangadi Town, through Dungu, to Faradje, in North-eastern DRC. Moreover, although these fighters (who now operate in cells of between 3-30 men) have continued to carry out large numbers of attacks against civilian populations, recent predations have involved much lower levels of violence that has become the norm in recent years. For example, in 33 LRA attacks carried out in North-eastern DRC between Jan-March 2012, 3 civilian deaths were recorded. Most of the attacks appear to have been orientated towards the looting of supplies, rather than to the abduction of additional fighters (as would have been the case until just a few months ago). However, whether this narrowing of territory, and reduction in levels of LRA violence, can be seen as a result of external pressure being brought to bear on the rebel group – through more effective patrolling of surrounding areas, and a stifling of supply lines – remains unclear. Certainly, this is the story that both SOCAFRICA and the UPDF are keen to promulgate to the world’s media. Yet it is just as likely that these developments are instead an outcome of tactical decisions made by Joseph Kony himself – perhaps made in the context of last September’s ‘council of war’ of senior LRA commanders (held in the CAR) – both to concentrate his remaining force in the dense forests around Dungu, and to try to gain the support of surrounding populations there (which will become more important over time, especially if the LRA remain in Haut-Uele for an extended period of time).

As US intelligence gathering gains pace, and as regional military efforts become more coordinated, both as a result of US training, and in line with the AU’s new plan, pressure on the LRA will certainly increase. However, with the possibility of further material support from Khartoum – who continue to view the LRA as a useful proxy against the South Sudanese Army (SPLA) and the UPDF – Kony may decide to ‘bide his time’, by simply ‘bedding down’ his force in the least accessible parts of Haut-Uele until the current challenges have passed. Certainly, this sort of tactic has worked very well for him in the past. However, whilst this development might bode well for local civilian populations in the short term, it will also do little to diminish the LRA’s overall, and ongoing, capacity for violence.

Museveni's latest woes

Recent weeks have again highlighted that President Yoweri Museveni faces steadily rising criticism of his leadership both from within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), and from outside it. In late April, a group of 20 Ugandan MPs (including NRM members) announced plans to launch a private member’s bill aimed at re-introducing presidential term limits in Uganda. This was followed, a week later, by Captain Francis Babu, a member of the NRM's National Executive Committee (NEC), trying to place the same issue on the agenda of a high-level party meeting in Kampala. Although both moves ultimately proved unsuccessful – government whips effectively quashed the proposed new bill even before it was tabled, and Babu’s agenda item was eventually ruled ‘out of order’ – the moves have once again highlight just how vulnerable the president has now become. Then, earlier this month, Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi once again came under pressure to step down as Secretary-General of the NRM - in a move which can also be seen as an indirect attack on the president. Moreover, this internal pressure on Museveni is being compounded by a stubborn opposition, and by their long-running public demonstration movement.

For several years now, Museveni has faced a growing challenge from a body of younger NRM MPs who, distrustful both of him and his party executive, have sought to check the president’s powers. During 2011, these ‘young turks’ dealt Museveni a number of setbacks, especially in relation to the country’s nascent oil sector. For example, in October 2011, the group supported the tabling in parliament of documents which purported to show that the then Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa had received a US$16.5 million bribe from Ireland’s Tullow Oil. Although the documents were proved to be fake, they nevertheless became a catalyst for Kutesa’s subsequent resignation. In recent months, the young rebels have continued to keep up their pressure on the president and his inner-circle.

For example, in early February, the group organized a petition calling for the resignation of Minister of Gender Syda Bbumba and Minister for General Duties in the Office of the Prime Minister Khiddu Makubya, over the role that the two had played in the payment of compensation, of around US$70 million, to NEC member Hassan Basajjabalaba over the loss of his public contracts for the redevelopment of several markets, and other public spaces, in central Kampala (at the time the payments were made, Bbumba and Makubya had been Finance Minister, and Auditor-General, respectively). Further pressure was then brought to bear on the two through the Public Accounts Committee, who on 16th February, formally censured the pair – following which both ministers did resign. Also in February, another of the younger NRM MPs, David Bahati, re-introduced his controversial Anti-homosexuality Bill (albeit with its former provision for the death penalty – for acts of ‘aggravated homosexuality’ – now removed). President Museveni remains opposed to the bill, having issued an executive order against it in late 2009. Nevertheless, on the day that Bahati tabled the revised version in the house, he received widespread applause from the NRM members present. Then, in mid-April, members of the young turks, this time working through Parliamentary Appointments Committee, were again involved in trying to force the resignation of Minister of Internal Affairs Hilary Onek. Onek had been previously implicated in the same corruption scandal that led to Kutesa’s resignation – although on that occasion, he managed to hold on to his position. However, the latest controversy relates to a claim that he had lied about his academic qualifications when first joining parliament, by inventing both Masters and PhD degrees from Uganda’s Makerere University. If upheld, this claim will almost certainly force Onek to step down. 

As a result of these developments, President Museveni is today more politically isolated than he has been for many years, and he is increasingly reliant on his loyalist Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi. However, Mbabazi has also been the subject of a corruption scandal in recent months - and he is anyway never far from controversy - and this has further deepened the president’s current political predicament. Thus, were Mbabazi himself to also fall foul of one of the rebel MPs’ parliamentary manoeuvres in the months ahead, then this would leave Museveni very dangerously exposed.

For its part, the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), which is now part of the umbrella-organization Activists for Change (A4C), have done their best to exploit the president’s current weakness. Following his relaunch of the ‘Walk to Work’ (W2W) campaign in mid-January, in recent months opposition leader Kizza Besigye has held an ever greater number of A4C rallies, especially in and around Kampala. However, with the authorities remaining hostile to the group, many of these rallies have become increasingly violent in nature. 

For example, on 21st February, riot police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd at an A4C rally in Katwe Market, Central Kampala. In the confusion that followed, Besigye’s bodyguard, Francis Mwijukye, was hit with a rubber bullet, whilst Besigye himself was hit in the leg by a tear gas canister (he was later hospitalized). In the same incident, FDC Women’s League Chairperson Ingrid Turinawe was sprayed in the face with pepper spray. Four days later, police again fired tear gas at an A4C rally held in Kasangati Town (which lies 9 miles north of the capital). That action resulted in widespread rioting, during which several buildings in the town were torched, and at least 8 people, including a 7-month old baby, were injured. However, worse was to follow on 21st March, when another A4C rally in central Kampala again descended into chaos. In the resulting melee, rocks were thrown at police, resulting in the death of a senior officer, Assistant Inspector of Police John Michael Ariong. 12 senior FDC officials, including Besigye himself, were arrested at the scene, along with several dozen of the group’s supporters. The opposition leader was later released on bail (although with restrictions on his movement), whilst at least 10 people were later charged with the policeman’s death, and with various public order offences relating to the incident. A week later, on 31st March, Besigye was again arrested, this time for breaching his bail conditions, as he attempted to reach another A4C rally in Kasangati. During the arrest, an NBS TV journalist who was covering the incident was hit by a police vehicle, and sustained serious injuries.

In response to the growing unrest, on 4th April, Attorney-General Peter Nyombi invoked Section 56 of the Penal Code Act to ban A4C as an ‘unlawful society’. The move was seen by many as unusual, given that in recent years Section 56 (which is an old colonial law) has only been invoked in relation to religious cults, and not in reference to large-scale political organizations. In this sense, Besigye himself was probably correct in his later assessment that the Attorney-General’s move demonstrated just how seriously the authorities are now taking the opposition threat. 

However, the formal banning of A4C seems unlikely to lead to a decline in the opposition’s protests, at least in the short term. Just one day after the ban came into effect, Besigye held another rally at the Kololo Independence Grounds, in Kampala. On 18th April, the opposition leader – along with Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago (who is another senior figure within the A4C organization) – then attempted another protest at Nakasero Market. Although Besigye and Lukwago claimed that they were only trying to have lunch at the market, the authorities barred the pair’s entry into the site, and this once again resulting in violence. In the ensuing fracas, a number of people, including a 12-year old girl, were injured. Finally, on 20th April, Ingrid Turinawe was arrested as she attempted to reach an opposition rally just outside the capital. In a strange twist, TV footage of the arrest clearly showed a male riot policeman gripping Turinawe’s right breast as she was pulled out of her vehicle. The footage resulted in complaints from human- and women’s- rights organizations, and subsequently led to female FDC supporters protesting topless in central Kampala (for which they were also arrested). The policeman involved was eventually suspended for his actions.

Footage of Turinawe's arrest can be seen here...


...whilst footage of the subsequent protests can be viewed here:


However, the ability of the opposition to move beyond these isolated incidents of unrest, and to develop a coherent opposition platform from which to challenge Museveni, has been significantly restricted in recent months by the emergence of a major leadership battle within the FDC. Following Besigye’s announcement that he would step down at party leader in June, intense jockeying has been taking place within the organization over who will succeed him. To date, at least three major contenders have emerged, including leader of the opposition in parliament Nathan Nandala-Mafabi, FDC heavyweight MP Abdu Katuntu, and long-time Besigye challenger Major-General Mugisha Muntu. In recent times, competition between these three figures has served only to deepen divisions within the FDC. However, it is also intriguing to note that both Nandala-Mafabi and Katuntu have also spent recent months developing their alliances among the NRM young turks: Nandala-Mafabi, by drawing on links made during his former Chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee (the same committee which recently forced the resignations of Ministers Bbumba and Makubya), Katuntu, through his own attempts to check the executive’s powers in relation to oil (for example, in December, Katuntu curried favour with many NRM rebels by taking the Attorney-General to the constitutional court over confidentiality clauses contained in several of the oil Production Sharing Agreements, PSAs). The growth of these alliances is intriguing, because it suggests that in the event of either Nandala-Mafabi or Katuntu taking over in June, an entirely new sort of opposition configuration might begin to emerge in parliament – one that would surely be powerful enough to signficantly restrict the president’s powers.

Museveni remains safe for now, and will probably continue to be so for as long as his political fixer-in-chief, Amama Mbabazi, remains in place. However, with Uganda’s economy performing badly (inflation is currently running at just over 20%, and in April the IMF lowered its growth forecast for 2012 from 5.5% to 4.2%) discontent will continue to grow throughout the country. In consequence, groups such as A4C – who recently tried to bypass the ban by relaunching themselves as For God and My Country (4GC) – will continue to draw big crowds at their rallies. However, whether such anger can be converted into a sustained drive for political change in the country remains to be seen.

'KONY 2012', and a military solution to the LRA crisis

On 2nd March, the US advocacy group Invisible Children posted a 30 min campaign video for their new campaign 'KONY 2012', on the video sharing website Vimeo. Following its transfer to YouTube as well, the film quickly became an internet phenomenon. As a result of its circulation on social networking sites such as Facebook, between Tuesday 6th March and Thursday 8th, the video had been viewed over 21 million times. As of the time of writing, the film's YouTube page records more than 46 million hits (for anyone who hasn't yet seen the film, there is a link to it at the end of this post).

The film focuses on Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and implores its imagined US audience to lobby for a military response to Kony's crimes (i.e. to pressure the US government to expand its current military deployment in LRA-affected areas, with a view to arresting Kony). Although it is terribly self-indulgent (on the part of Invisible Children founder Jason Russell), the film is a very slick polemic, more in the style of a Michael Moore documentary rather than a traditional piece of investigative journalism. As such, it relies more on an appeal to emotion - the shock and anger that any rational viewer will feel when confronted with images of Kony's crimes - rather than on a balanced assessment of facts, in its attempt to persuade viewers to join the campaign. As a result, detail goes out of the window, with the entire history of the LRA being reduced to only the actions and intentions of Kony himself, and with the only issue emerging from the 25-year long insurgency being that of child soldiers - both gross over-simplifications (to say the least). In addition, the complexities of the USA's relations with the International Criminal Court (ICC) - in which an arrested Kony would presumably be tried - are never referred to, of course. Nevertheless, the film has been an enormous internet hit.

In the short period of time since KONY 2012 'went viral' a great deal has already been written about the film, both in traditional media outlets, and in the 'blogsphere' (for an example of the former, see the coverage in the Guardian, for an entry point into the latter, see this digest, published on whydev.org). Whilst much of what has been written so far has responded positively to the film, a large number of sources have also been highly critical of the documentary, and of Invisible Children's motives for making it. For example, across the acres of text that have already been generated in response to the video, very many commentators have already raised concerns over everything from the charity's very style of 'celebrity humanitarianism', to its financial accounts (Invisible Children's own response to these charges can be found here). However, by far the greatest criticism of KONY 2012 has been of its central thesis; that the best way to deal with Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is through military intervention, and that this will have the greatest chance of success if carried out in partnership with the Ugandan Army (UPDF). On the one hand, both journalists and bloggers appear to be quite shocked by the very notion that an humanitarian advocacy group such as Invisible Children should be pushing for any form of military engagement at all - given that all forms of violence are apparently at odds with the very ideals of humanitarianism (and this certainly wasn't helped by the subsequent emergence on a number of websites of a rather goofy photograph of Jason Russell and some of his co-founders posing with weapons and soldiers of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, SPLA; see here). On the other hand, commentators are also appalled by the idea that international forces should work alongside the UPDF, given that army's own poor human rights record. 

So what then should we make of KONY 2012, and of these criticisms of the film? Perhaps the first point to make is that there is in fact nothing particularly new in what Invisible Children are advocating for here. Thus, over recent months a growing consensus has emerged - among both advocacy groups and (more importantly) policy makers - around the necessity for renewed military action against the LRA. For example, as the film describes, following the signing into law of the US Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act (in May 2010), in October President Obama authorized the deployment of 100 combat-ready Army Special Forces (Green Berets) to the Great Lakes region, to assist in the hunt for Joseph Kony and his men. This was followed, in early November, by an announcement from the German Ambassador to Uganda, Klaus Duxmann, that the EU was ready commit both troops and money to a renewed fight. A few weeks later, the African Union (AU) then officially launched its own 'authorized mission’ against Kony, which aims to eventually coordinate all military action against the rebel group. Finally, in early December, an 11-country UN Committee on security in Central Africa met in Bangui, in the Central African Republic (CAR), with a view to also expanding the UN's involvement in future anti-LRA operations. 

Moreover, it is clear that if any of these initiatives are to be successful, they will require the involvement of the UPDF. Certainly, the Green Berets may have the capacity to not arrest, but to actually kill, Joseph Kony himself. Following Obama’s announcement of the Special Forces operation, a number of commentators initially dismissed the operation as largely symbolic (an impression that was apparently then confirmed by a statement from Assistant Secretary of Defence Alexander Vershbow, that a majority of the Special Forces would in fact be based in Kampala, and would act primarily as advisors to other regional armies). However, the deployment is more than a token gesture, not least because the troops involved are under the Special Operations Command in Africa (SOCAFRICA). In recent years, SOCAFRICA have proved highly successful in tracking down remote targets in the Horn of Africa (a region over which they took responsibility in 2008). In addition, they have access to a wide array of high-tech assets, many of which are specifically designed to target mobile subjects (and it is already being reported from Haut-Uele in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC – where a majority of LRA fighters are currently based – that the number of surveillance overflights in the region have increased dramatically in recent months). Thus, the plan will presumably be to try to get a 'fix' on Kony - using either an insider source, or some sort of electronic tag - and to then hit him with a drone. Indeed, it is probably with this in mind that from mid-November onwards, members of the Green Berets deployment have been making regular trips to the DRC-Central African Republic (CAR) border area on various ‘fact-finding’ missions.

Nevertheless, if the US deployment is going to contribute to any wider success - in terms reducing the overall size of the LRA force, and in diminishing the threat that they pose (with or without Kony at their head) - it is going to have to work through regional armies, and (like it or not) this really means the UPDF. This is because other national armies in the region are currently over-engaged elsewhere. For example, the Congolese Army (FARDC) are currently tied up with post-election difficulties in other parts of their vast country, following the contested general elections of December last year. Similarly, the army of South Sudan (SPLA) are engaged in serious conflicts of their own, whilst the national army of the CAR also has its focus elsewhere. The other only significant military actor in the region, the UN's Stabilization Mission in the Congo (MONUSCO) simply doesn't have the capacity to mount sustained operations against Kony and his men. For these, and other, reasons, the UPDF have been the primary trackers of the LRA throughout Eastern DRC, and beyond, ever since the start of ‘Operation Lightening Thunder’ (later renamed ‘Rudia II’) in December 2008 – an operation to which the US also provided over US$38 million in logistical support - and this situation is unlikely to change any time soon. 

However, one major problem here is that following a series of difficulties with Lightening Thunder/Rudia II, in mid-2010 the Ugandans began to significantly draw-down the numbers of soldiers they had engaged in  LRA-affected areas. Today, less than half their original 4,000 troops who started Lightening Thunder still remain. In addition, recent reports have pointed to a growing sense of fatigue, and increased indiscipline, amongst those who are still there. For example, in late 2010, President Bozize expelled the UPDF from Sam Ouandja, in North-eastern CAR, following accusations of illegal diamond mining in the area. Throughout 2011, FARDC officers have made similar allegations against Ugandan forces in Haut-Uele – although to date, they have not produced any evidence to substantiate their claims. But in mid-June, concrete evidence did emerge of UPDF troops in South Sudan engaging in illegal transportation practices.  

Moreover, the Ugandan Army currently has its own burgeoning commitments elsewhere. In particular, Uganda remains in command of, and continues to provide the largest share of the troops for, the African Union’s Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Indeed, the UPDF’s existing deployment of 5210 soldiers in Somalia is set to rise by a further 50% in 2012, in line with a commitment President Museveni made following the al-Shabaab bombings in Kampala in July 2010. In addition, much of Uganda’s own elite Special Forces Group – which is under the command of Museveni’s son Lt. Col. Kainerugaba Muhoozi – is now engaged in securitization work in and around Uganda’s new oil fields in the Albertine Rift Valley (which, despite the impression given in some of the coverage that has followed the release of KONY 2012, is in fact quite some distance away from the LRA's current areas of operation). Finally, during last year’s Ugandan general election campaign, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni promised an additional deployment of troops to Karamoja, in Northeast Uganda – in line with his long standing policy of using the army as a primary means for improving security in that region as well. In this context, then, the LRA may in fact be a lessening priority for the UPDF at this time. 

However, perhaps the key issue here, and the one that critics of KONY 2012 are really driving at, is what sort of 'moral hazard' any renewed military operations - be they attempts to 'decapitate' the LRA, or wider operations against the group - might generate, in the form of reprisals against surrounding civilian populations. At present, the LRA continue to attack all sorts of civilian targets more or less with impunity, across a broad swathe of territory adjacent to the DRC’s North-eastern border with the CAR and South Sudan. Partly as a result of pressure brought to bear by Lightening Thunder (especially during the second half of 2009), the size of Kony’s force is today greatly reduced from its peak of around 3000 fighters, in 2005. Although exact figures are impossible to come by, the group probably now has no more than 400 cadres remaining. One recent UPDF estimate put the number even lower, at around 200 fighters, whilst the FARDC claim that the LRA is now down to just 30 men (however, both of these figures are almost certainly underestimates). Yet even with such a small number of fighters, the LRA remains a potent threat, organized as it now is into small mobile bands (some of which number just 5-10 people), which operate across a mostly forested area which is the size of France. 

Indeed, history suggests that the LRA would pose an increased risk to civilians as they themselves come under greater pressure. Thus, during 2011, these mobile LRA bands carried out many dozens of small-scale attacks, most of them against civilian targets, resulting in at least 152 deaths, and 531 abductions. In one week alone, in early June, LRA cadres carried out no less than 22 separate attacks – most of them in Haut-Uele – including one (on 7th June) near Bangadi Town in which a woman was abducted from her fields, another (8th June) near Dungu in a which a 50-year old woman was killed, and a third (11th June) also near Dungu, in which 5 people died. All such incidents are now tracked in real time on www.lracrisistracker.com, a website that was set up by Invisible Children and another advocacy organization called Resolve, and which uses a network of radios that the two organizations have distributed across the LRA-affected regions (the network is mentioned briefly in KONY 2012). Moreover, at the present time Kony appears to be, if anything, growing in confidence, as for example evidenced by his recent decision to hold a ‘council-of-war’ for his senior commanders at his current base in the CAR. This was the first time that the LRA leadership has gathered in one place since the start of Lightening Thunder, and was no doubt called in response to the US deployment. In addition, there are growing indications that the LRA leader may be planning for his own ‘offensive’ – along the lines of the wave of attacks that the LRA carried out around Christmas 2008 – in the months ahead. 

In conclusion, KONY 2012 is a well meaning campaign video, whose central message is not as surprising as some commentators have suggested. Nevertheless, there is a great danger inherent in its thesis; if viewers do indeed advocate for increased military action, yet that military action turns out to be inadequate, it may result in worse LRA predations against civilian populations in the Congolese-CAR borderlands.

Invisible Children's film constantly implores its viewers that 'we are all in this together' (or words to that effect). What we are actually all in together is a politically complicated world.

Qadhafi and Uganda

In the five weeks since Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qadhafi was killed by the National Liberation Army in his home town of Sirte, both scholars and media commentators have examined the legacy of his 42-year long reign. Across the many acres of print that have resulted, a key theme which has emerged has been the complex nature of the Colonel's foreign policy, especially in Africa. And nowhere, it would seem, are these complexities more obvious than in the history of Qadhafi's engagements with Uganda. Indeed, this helps to explain why the Libyan leader's recent demise has been greeted with such mixed reactions both from the Ugandan government, and from the Uganda public.

Thus, on the one hand, there are those mostly older Ugandans, especially those from the Central and Western regions, who still keenly recall the significant military support that Qadhafi provided to the Idi Amin regime during the 1970s. Following Amin's rise to power in 1971, Qadhafi quickly recognized that as a fellow Islamic regime - and moreover, as one that was explicitly anti-Israeli in orientation - Amin's Uganda would not only be a useful ally, but might even as a 'bridgehead' for the expansion of Libyan influence throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. It was for this reason that less than 12 months after Amin came to power, the Libyan leader sent 400 soldiers to bolster the Ugandan Army, and why he later replaced the 11 military jets that were destroyed by the Israelis during the famous Entebbe raid of 1976.

However, it was following Tanzania's invasion of Uganda in January 1979 that Qadhafi played his most decisive role in Uganda. With the Amin's army on the brink of collapse, in mid-February, the Libyan leader airlifted a major force of 2500 troops (consisting of regular soldiers, as well as members of Libya's People's Militia and its Islamic Pan-African Legion), along with tanks, armoured-personnel carriers (APCs), multiple-rocket launchers, artillery, and even a number of warplanes. The Libyan force finally met the Tanzanian advance at Lukuya swamp (about 70 miles southwest of Kampala, on the main Kampala-Masaka road) and a major engagement ensued. Even today, a number of burned-out vehicles from the battle are still easily visible from the Kampala-Masaka road.

The Battle of Lukuya (as it became known) initially went very well for the Libyans, and on the morning of 10th March, they routed the Tanzanian 201st Brigade, and took Lukuya Town. However, they then failed to press home their advantage, by not continuing on to the major urban centre of Masaka. One of the key mistakes the Libyans made was to not send out any reconnaissance south of Lukuya - which would have revealed that at that time, practically no opposition stood between them and Masaka. In addition, the Libyans failed to build proper defensive positions in and around Lukuya. In consequence, the Tanzanians were able to regroup, and on the night of 11th-12th March, launch a major counter-offensive against the town. Using a pincer-movement of the 201st Brigade and the more elite 208th, the Tanzanians caught the Libyans by surprise, and cut them to pieces. In one rather macabre detail, one Ugandan exile who had fought alongside the Tanzanians at Lukuya later recounted to me that many of the Libyan militiamen were unluckily dressed in desert fatigues. In the bright moonlight, and against the background of Lukuya's dark papyrus swamp, this attire resulted in their being 'lit up like Christmas trees', and eventually turned the whole thing into (what the Ugandan exile described to me as) a 'duck shoot'.  

Lukuya was the last major engagement between the Libyans and the Tanzanians, although there were some further skirmishes in and around Entebbe - and one amusing episode in which the Libyans tried to retaliate by bombing Arusha. On that occasion the Libyan pilot famously got lost, missed his target, and ended up blowing up a herd of antelope near the Ngorongoro Crater. Finally, on 11th April that year, the Libyans secured Amin safe passage out of Uganda, and he spent almost a year in Tripoli before finally settling in Saudi Arabia. But the point is that because of this extensive military support to the Amin regime, Qadhafi became an especially despised figure in those Western and Central regions that had seen the bulk of the fighting. In addition, he remained persona non grata in administrative circles throughout the years of Obote II.

However, following the rise to power of Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM) in 1986, Qadhafi once again became an influential figure on the Ugandan political scene. Yet from the beginning, the Libyan leader's relationship with Museveni was much more complicated than it ever had been with Amin. This stemmed from the fact that although Qadhafi provided the NRM with significant funding, arms and training during the bush war, Museveni - who had, after all, fought alongside the Tanzanians in 1979, as a senior member of the then Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) - always remained deeply suspicious of the Colonel's motivations, and especially his plan to use Uganda as a 'bridgehead' for Libyan influence into the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa (an aim that never really diminished, even after the fall of Amin). Moreover, the relationship between the two men became even more complicated still, following Qadhafi's turn away from Arab nationalism, and towards African integration, as his major foreign policy objective, from the late 1990s onwards.

Following Qadhafi's move towards African integration - which eventually resulted in his being elected chair of the African Union (AU) in 2009 (amidst talk of a Libyan-sponsored unified African currency, a future 'United States of Africa', and so on) - Museveni continued to do very well financially out of Libya. Thus, it is widely rumoured that Qadhafi donated US$4 million to Museveni's 2000 referendum, and a further US$5 million towards his 2001 election campaign. Either way, the period since the 1999 has certainly seen Libyan companies invest US$375 million in Uganda. For example, Libya now owns a 60% stake in Tristar (which exports textiles from Uganda to the US), a 49% share of the National Housing and Construction Corporation (Uganda's largest real-estate developer), and a number of Uganda's largest hotels, including the iconic Lake Victoria Hotel in Entebbe. In addition, prior to Qadhafi's downfall, it was widely anticipated that Libya would also invest heavily in Uganda's nascent oil infrastructure, especially in the proposed US$300 million pipeline from Kampala to Mombasa. Yet against all this, over this same period Qadhafi also became increasingly suspicious of Museveni's deepening ties with Britain, Israel and (especially) the US, whilst for his part, the Ugandan president saw the Qadhafi's integrationist project as a threat to his own plans for a more integrated East African Community (EAC, which - according to current rumours - he one day hopes to lead).

In addition, it is my surmise that Museveni was also deeply suspicious of the popular effect that the Libyan leader's vision had upon the Ugandan public. Whilst much has been written both about the history of, and the reasoning behind, Qadhafi's drive towards an integrated Africa, existing commentary has (to my mind, at least) failed to capture the sheer pizzazz of the Colonel's enterprise, or the at times electrifying effect that it had upon ordinary Africans. And nowhere was this more obvious than in Kampala. Thus, I remember being in the city during Qadhafi's visit in 2001, on which occasion he behaved with such panache - in addition to his convoy of Mercedes-Benz, and his striking female bodyguards, on his first day in town the Libyan leader bought the entire stock of a local jewellers, and then proceeded to toss all of the jewellry, along with a load of cash, into the waiting crowds - that it couldn't fail but to galvanize public opinion. In these and other ways, he seemed to embody the very best of 'Afro-optimism', something that is deeply seductive in many African contexts. Thus, for months after his visit, images of Qadhafi remained a best seller for Ugandan photograph dealers, as people came to regard these as a 'must have' item in their personal photograph albums. Indeed, for a period, at least, Qadhafi may have even achieved greater popularity in Uganda than that enjoyed by Museveni himself. Moreover, the Libyan leader later erected a grand symbol of his authority in the Ugandan capital, in the form of the magnificent Qadhafi National Mosque which, sitting atop Old Kampala Hill, now dominates the city's skyline, especially at night (see my recent - albeit not very good quality - view from Kampala Road). Qadhafi took up the project in 2003, reviving an older plan for a 'grand mosque' in the city which had first been floated by Amin in the early 70s.

For these reasons, the relationship between Qadhafi and the current Ugandan president was always somewhat ambiguous, and this continued up until the end. Thus, following the start of the NATO bombing of Libya, in March 2011, Museveni embarked on a major round of 'shuttle-diplomacy' across Africa, in an attempt to secure an AU resolution against the airstrikes (an extraordinary meeting of the AU held in late May in Addis Ababa later called for an immediate cessation of the attacks). Yet at the very same time, we now know (thanks to the wikileaks cables) Museveni was privately concerned that the Libyan leader might even try to assassinate him, as a result of which he applied to the Americans for additional air radar information on his flights over international airspace. Finally, following the beginning of the NATO campaign, Museveni published a long (and somewhat rambling) treatise on Qadhafi in the journal Foreign Policy, in which he developed 11 reasons why NATO should desist, alongside 5 'positive points' about the Colonel, yet in which he notably also went on to expand 4 reasons why Qadhafi was 'no saint'. Moreover, it would appear that it was not only Museveni who picked up on the complexities of Qadhafi's approach to Uganda. Thus, I leave the final word here to Godfrey Ahabwe, former MP for Rubanda East, who finishes his own recent eulogy to Qadhafi in the Independent with the words:

"Fare thee well, the Great Leader of Libya and Africa, certain weaknesses notwithstanding."