Anyone who has been observing Yoweri Museveni over the period of his rule can clearly see that his energies are gradually declining.
It is no surprise though for a man born during the Second World War. Unlike many of us who try but soon give up, Museveni has benefitted from his eating and exercise discipline. His conspicuous fear of disease has rewarded him with a relatively less beaten body for his age.
Yet still, even for any careful human with the benefit of presidential privileges, the body still follows a one-way rule. While he has been quite careful with his life in other ways, his health gains are compromised by his work ethic by which he centered the running of the country on himself in ways that even a superhuman on steroids cannot sustain.
A human who has to be consulted on all sorts of affairs, from the macro to the micro, travelling and chairing one meeting after the other into the next day, cannot hold without killing something else of himself.
That is part of the current spectacle. But why should this bother us anyway? I have already given the first reason. It is very unfortunate that Museveni has built the country around himself, to the extent that he has become the primary determinant of the functionality or dysfunctionality of any national institution.
Apparently, many of his ministers, Chief Justice, Speaker of Parliament, and heads of other national bodies may not make any critical decision without his nod. We are somewhere past the fears around the fusion of powers to the fear of what happens when the center that has constructed itself can no longer hold.
The circumstances around Museveni’s advancing age in a presidentialist state are characteristic of what happens in a household of an ageing father that had organised the running of the home around himself.
If he is not willing to relinquish some of his powers to members of his family, either much of the work goes undone or the family members start to position themselves to exploit his vulnerability to take whatever they can.
Work may go undone (and the estate deteriorates) if everyone remains with the fear of tampering with the old man’s things, not to be misunderstood. In any case though, even when they manoeuvre around him, it may not be for the interest of the family, but for individuals.
If the wife is of advanced age too, it will be the children, each taking advantage of the increasing vacuum. The elderly father starts hearing of things happening in his estate without his permission, but he can’t do much anymore.
Over time, he will even start fearing to annoy his own children. Now much of his fate lies in their hands. They can even kill him if he becomes a huge stumbling block. They could refuse to take him to hospital.
They could as well make him do things he wouldn’t otherwise do, either by blackmailing him, manipulating him, or directly telling him lies and preventing him from accessing possibilities of verification.
To a considerable extent, he is trapped now. His own security lies in their hands. In the power struggle that might ensue, the old man starts hearing competing narratives (call it ‘intelligence’) from different members of the family that position themselves to ‘eat’ from him.
The spirit of the home becomes that of ‘okubaza mzee’ (duping the old man). That is how he starts contradicting himself. Today he acts according to word from one member of the family, tomorrow he realises that he was lied to.
Yet still, he doesn’t want ‘outsiders’ to know that he is losing grip of his family. He still has to put up a public façade of being in charge, even when the body obviously shows otherwise.
That is how the stealing members of the family get away with it, on top of the fact that he doesn’t want to alienate them at this point of vulnerability. Impunity is thus irrigated, to become an insurmountable element of the family.
He hears that one son has sold off some of his land five miles away, but he can no longer go there, nor sanction the errant son that protects him. He is no longer the backboned man that would bark and jump onto his motorbike to go verify, issuing threats if it turned out to be true.
Isn’t this where Uganda is now with President Museveni? We may wonder why more and more thieves are getting emboldened and closer to him. But, it appears, for a number of political reasons and for being more prone to manipulation now, elderly Museveni needs these thieves more than before – especially if they can prove some abilities at fixing what he can no longer handle.
He is mobbed by all sorts of opportunists with lie-filled proposals on: how to sort the Gen Zs that have become a menace; how to compromise opposition; how to manage ghettos that are Bobi Wine’s stronghold; starting SACCOs to win over this or that group; teaching Ugandans how to take coffee; etc.
He is fed on a constant flow of fear-mongering and fake intelligence that is meant to facilitate the passing of bloated budgets to ‘avert security threats’. Where there is a lizard, they present a picture of a crocodile to him.
Family members and other shrewd politicians have cunningly positioned themselves to consolidate each power or resource that Mzee can no longer hold, building sub power centers within – sometimes competing, but all aware of the need to appease or not annoy those who command more proximity or biological trust from the old man.
They might all have their desires, but none is aware of how things could turn out after the old man’s candle burns out. What, therefore, makes more sense now is to accumulate as much as they can, by whatever means. Of course they may worry if they will keep the things, but that is for tomorrow.
The writer is a teacher of philosophy
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