Books Uganda


Is Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, a brutal ruler? A new book written by a Ugandan medical doctor says he is. “If Museveni’s regime has profoundly transformed the economy and political discourse in the country, it has done so in a deeply Machiavellian fashion,” says the new book. Bamuturaki Musinguzi has been reading it, and sent us this report from Kampala.


Is Museveni a Machiavellian? I


N JANUARY 1986 THERE WAS EVERY reason for most Ugandans to believe that the bad times were gone forever. Everyone’s aspirations were right there, well articulated in the new govern-


ment’s ten-point programme. Now 25 years later, as the near unanimity of euphoria with which Ugandans celebrated the ar- rival of the National Resistance Army/


94 | June 2011 New African


Movement (NRA/M) has turned to disil- lusionment, a new book attempts to de- scribe the current political atmosphere in the country. Titled “The Correct Line?”, the book tells the stories of some of those Ugandans whose experiences over the last two-and-a-half decades contrast sharply with what was expected in that “new” Uganda. It tells some of the stories that


are unlikely to be told by the government’s salaried writers, whose only perspective on Uganda seems to be that of peace, prosperity, and galloping development. Written by Olive Kobusingye, a Ugandan surgeon and injury epidemiologist, and published by AuthorHouse (UK), the book has its roots in the many conversations that the author had with people all over the


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