Besigye raises the temperature

Kizza Besigye should be doing better in the current campaigns. Having eroded Museveni's share of the vote across the last two presidential elections (Museveni received 75% in 1996, but only 69% in 2001 and 57% in 2006), everyone - including Besigye himself - anticipated another strong showing this time around.

Moreover, in late August, Besigye emerged from the nominations as the sole Inter-Party Cooperation (IPC) candidate, and therefore in his strongest position ever. At the time, the IPC was made up of Besigye's own Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) as well as the Uganda People's Congress (UPC), the Justice Forum (JEEMA) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Besigye secured the nomination after seeing off a strong challenge from UPC leader Olara Otunnu, thanks in part to a major strategic error that Otunnu made in the latter stages of the nomination process, by calling for the IPC to withdraw from the election, in protest at the perceived bias of the Electoral Commission (EC).

Otunnu's suggestion to withdraw may well have been influenced by recent events in Burundi, in which opposition parties similarly withdrew from the June 2010 presidential polls, in a move which significantly undermined incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza's eventual victory. However, in Uganda, the very suggestion of just pulling out appeared to contradict the main opposition parties' proud democratic traditions (which are most keenly felt among Otunnu's own UPC). After all, most opposition groups had even stayed in through the notorious December 1980 elections, long after it became clear that those polls were badly flawed. Thus, although most members of the IPC, including Besigye himself, have long decried the EC's connections to the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), Otunnu's plan was flatly rejected by the IPC, and by large sections of the UPC. Otunnu later withdrew from the IPC, to stand for the presidency on a UPC ticket. However, a number of UPC MPs, led by former party leader Jimmy Akena, announced that they did not support him, leaving his challenge dead in the water.

With Otunnu out of the picture, Besigye was well positioned to mount a strong challenge against Museveni. However, his campaign has faltered from the outset. Certainly, a significant factor has been his near-constant harassment by the authorities. Moreover, the IPC has been in effect blocked from many media outlets (in one example, the IPC Campaign Bureau claimed in mid-December that nine regional radio stations had refused to carry any opposition content whatsoever. In addition, Museveni himself is running a much better campaign this time around than many had expected.

Nevertheless, Besigye has also made a number of key strategic errors. Firstly, in mid-September, he chose to launch his manifesto in South Africa, in an effort to appeal to the international community, and to the Ugandan Diaspora. By doing so, he presumably hoped to bolster his backing in the event of another contested election result (Besigye eventually won a partial High Court victory over the 2006 election, when it was ruled that 'irregularities' had taken place in those polls). However, in light of the Otunnu affair - during which Besigye was in effect forced to confirm his faith in the EC (he went on to say on radio that there will be 'no rigging' in the current election, and that he will not contest this result through the courts) - the move to South Africa now appears to have been wasted.

Secondly, Besigye has made a huge mistake in these campaigns by concentrating his own campaigning upon the rural areas. The problem is that much of the IPC's appeal to date has been to a mainly urban base (especially of young, educated voters), and thus may not address rural concerns. This was highlighted, for example, during Besigye's recent campaigns in the north-west, during which he spoke a great deal about the distribution of future revenues from the region's recently discovered oil reserves. While this issue will affect the political landscape in years to come, few people in the rural areas would today regard it as nearly as pressing as, say, the region's land issues.

As a result, then, Besigye's support has slumped in recent opinion polls. His response has been to file a High Court injunction, compelling the EC to postpone the elections, on the basis that as many as 4 million new voters will not have been issued with voter cards by the time of the 18th February polls. The move was a new tactic, in that it again attacked the EC, although this time not for its bias, but for its incompetence. However, the injunction was rejected, the High Court ruling that the elections can go ahead without the voter cards.

It is in this context, then, that over the last couple of weeks, Besigye's rhetoric has become more confrontational, and he now claims that the IPC may withdraw from the elections after all, given that the elections will be rigged. This latest move is doubtless designed to renew his appeal to the international community, and to the Diaspora. However, in light of his previous rejection of these same arguments when Otunnu made them, and his own subsequent statements about his faith in the electoral process, the current rhetoric sounds quite peculiar indeed. In addition, in recent days Besigye has sought to raise the temperature still further, by raising the spectre of Egypt, by referring to the current government as a 'dictatorship', and by making oblique references to 'popular unrest'.

If tensions continue to rise here, then Uganda may well be in for a bumpy few weeks. We will find out soon enough.

DJ M7

A recent opinion poll conducted by Afrobarometer left us in little doubt as to who is going to win the presidential election on 18th February: it placed Museveni on 66%, and Besigye on just 12% (with Otunnu and Mao on 3% each).

Certainly, the incumbent was always going to be the favourite here, given his privileged access to the 'levers of state'. Nevertheless, it has come as a surprise to many, even to veteran Uganda commentators, that he is so far ahead at this stage.

One of the reasons why Museveni is doing so well is the skill with which he (with his team) has controlled his media persona throughout these campaigns. Perhaps it is the case that all elections, the world over, now hinge on the way in which the protagonists present themselves in the media. However, it is worth remembering that in Uganda, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, given that most of the population, outside of the main urban areas, still have only limited access to print media, or to television - or in other words, to any form of visual media. Hence it is a masterstroke that Museveni's media persona in these campaigns has been centred around sound, or more specifically, a 'rap' song - one which has been played seemingly ad infinitum in recent weeks, on the dozens of radio stations which now broadcast throughout the countryside.

The origins of Museveni's song trace to a free concert that was held in Central Kampala a few days before the nominations closed, in late-October. Museveni arrived at the concert in full military fatigues, and proceeded to 'rap' to the gathering crowd (he was in fact reciting two well-known Runyankore nursery rhymes). His efforts were recorded, and were subsequently re-mixed as a campaign soundtrack by the fashionable Fenon Studios. The track was an immediate success, for two reasons.

Firstly, the song has galvanized Uganda's young urban voters to the president's cause. This constituency had previously been a mainstay for Besigye and his Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Secondly, and more importantly, the way in which Fenon remixed Museveni's words recast his patter in the style of someone doing 'okwevuga'. This is a highly technical form of public oratory, by no means easily mastered, which involves a stylized form of rapid rhyme that is rich in allegory and metaphor - hence it is in some ways similar to (at least the more artful forms of) commercial 'rap'. The practice of okwevuga is today most frequently associated with wedding ceremonies, where guests sometimes use it in their speeches. However, it has also been associated, from pre-colonial times onwards, with skilled political leadership. In recent years, a well-known radio presenter in South-western Uganda used it in the credits of his show, and to powerful effect - for a period, his show became the most popular program on the airwaves.

Thus, with the song now playing day-in, day-out, in villages across Uganda, the population is constantly reminded what a capable leader they have. Listen to Fenon's song:

In the weeks following the release of the track, a number of newspapers, including Uganda's main Luganda-language paper Bukedde, poked fun at the song, by publishing pictures of Museveni's face spliced onto the body of various famous 'gangsta rappers'. Museveni's press secretary Tamale Mirundi reacted angrily to the images, describing them as 'offensive', and demanding that they be immediately dropped from future publications.

Yet Mirundi's reaction is itself illustrative. Because it shows that his team does not want any unauthorized images of the president to undermine their carefully constructed control of the aural media space - the very space in which their campaign is currently being won (and the fact that Zain telecom have now turned the song into a mobile phone ringtone is another interesting aside here).

A member of Besigye's campaign team recently quipped that if he wants to mount a come-back in the current campaign, then he will also have to release a rap-song. Otherwise, it will surely be DJ Museveni who is still in State House on 19th February.

LRA on the march again

The first time I was told that the LRA were on the brink of defeat was in 1997. Since then, the rebel group has shown a remarkable ability for sustaining their insurgency, even in the face of (at times) massive military opposition to it.

The current round of military pressure against the group was begun in December 2008, with the launch of the Ugandan Army's (UPDF) Operation 'Lightening Thunder'. Targeted against the LRA's main bases in North-eastern Congo (DRC), the operation - which had the support of the Congolese Army (FARDC), the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), and even the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), aimed to achieve a final defeat of Joseph Kony's men with 3 weeks.

The operation got off to a poor start, with the Ugandans failing to deliver enough men and supplies to the front line, and with the LRA receiving tip-offs about the attack (many of the Ugandan soldiers involved in the operation were themselves decommissioned LRA fighters, some of whom remained loyal to their former boss). Nevertheless, as the months went on, and especially following the UPDF's entry into the Central African Republic (CAR) in mid 2009 - to which many LRA leaders, including Kony himself, had fled in February of that year - the tide began to turn in the UPDF's favour.

Into late 2009, the UPDF began to score some significant victories, including the capture of one of Kony's most senior officers, Major Okot Atiak, and the killing of at least seven other senior LRA leaders. In November, another senior commander, Lt. Colonel Charles Arop, surrendered to the UPDF. It later transpired that on 2nd October, the UPDF had come close to securing the biggest prize of all when, in an attack in Djemah in Eastern CAR, they had fired upon, and almost captured, Joseph Kony himself.

However, the optimism which followed these victories proved short lived. By the end of 2009, it was increasingly obvious that these military successes were coming at a terrible price, as the LRA, in its weakened state, was carrying out ever greater predations on surrounding civilian populations, as the group looted supplies, and sought to bolster their ranks through the forced recruitment of child soldiers. In one attack in December 2009, LRA fighters killed an estimated 345 civilians over 4 days in Haut-Uele (DRC) in the largest single massacre in the group's 23 year history. By August 2010, it was estimated that in the preceding 18 months, Kony's men had killed up to 2000 civilians (which would again make it the bloodiest 18 months in the group's history). Over the same period, the LRA had also kidnapped 1,600 more people, and had caused a massive 300,000 to flee their homes.

In addition, despite the UPDF's best efforts to disrupt Kony's command and control structures, by mid-2010 the LRA had reestablished organizational coherence, by moving to a 'zonal' mode of operation. In this way, each remaining LRA commander was allocated a particular zone in which he could operate without further authorization from Kony. Thus, Kony's brother, Major David Olanya, was allowed to operate freely in Maboussou-Gambala (CAR), General Binasio Okumu in Obo (CAR), and so on. Operating as independent units in this way, the LRA became much more difficult to disrupt than it had been previously, and it was able to operate over a much wider area. By mid-2010, the group's increasingly bloody attacks were being carried out as far apart as the extremes of Orientale Province (DRC), Western Equatoria (Southern Sudan) and in Eastern CAR as far north as the border with Chad.

At the same time, the UPDF force deployed in the CAR in pursuit of the LRA had began to run into problems of its own. Primary among these was a wave of infighting among the leadership, which eventually resulted in the force commander, Colonel Emmanuel Rwashande, being replaced. In addition, the Ugandan government decided to withdraw 1000 of the 7000-strong force, and to redeploy these men to Karamoja in North-western Uganda. Further drawdowns are also likely as President Museveni seeks to bolster security back home ahead of the next February's presidential elections.

Thus, by September of this year, the LRA had become significantly emboldened that they appear to have made contact with the Khartoum controlled Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The LRA was formerly equipped by the SAF throughout its long-running insurgency in Northern Uganda. If these reports are true, it would suggest that LRA leaders are confident that they may once again prove useful to the Khartoum regime - especially if, as expected, the forthcoming referendum in Sudan results in a further round of conflict between the SAF and the SPLA.

Last week's report that Kony himself has now moved to Darfur might also point to this Khartoum connection. So too would recent reports that the LRA are also now forging an alliance with another CAR militia, the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) - another longtime proxy of Khartoum. Certainly, if the LRA and the UFDR were to join forces, then it would bode ill for UPDF troops in the CAR, especially given the wealth of fighting experience, and sophisticated weaponry, upon which the UFDR can draw.

I was recently at a conference at which I heard, in a paper given by a European government official, that the LRA insurgency was now on the wane and that, following the passing of the recent anti-LRA bill by the US Congress (in May this year), that the group should now on the brink of a final defeat. I hope that he's right, of course. However, the first time I was told that the LRA were on the brink of defeat was in 1997.