Left: Museveni queuing to vote on 18 February 2011. Below: Olive Kobusingye, author of The Correct Line?
country in markets, hospital corridors, offic- es, outside police stations, and court rooms – people whose lives were being lived out in circumstances radically different from those depicted by the regime’s enthusiasts. The book presents harrowing accounts of deaths, disappearances, illegal deten- tions, political analysis and events without attempting to give a detailed account of all that has happened in Uganda under President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s rule. “Rather,” Kobusingye explains, “it opens
a window through which we can see Mu- seveni, the man that has been at the helm of Uganda’s government for the last quarter of a century. And beyond the man, we should see Ugandans and what has become of their ‘fundamental change’ in those years…” The book was initially seized by the Min- istry of Internal Affairs for security rea- sons but later released, turning it into a bestseller.
Background Kobusingye is a sibling of Col. Dr War- ren Kizza Besigye, Museveni’s arch-rival. Besigye has run against Museveni in three presidential elections and lost three times – in 2001, 2006 and 2011. Does Kobusingye have an axe to grind? Nobody quite knows. After the 2001 elections, Besigye left Ugan- da for South Africa following a series of sinister security incidents. Te extrajudicial killings, incarceration, intimidation and harassment did not cease for the support- ers he left behind, or for anyone who did not support Museveni’s party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM). Besigye’s family has paid a heavy price
for his decision to run against his former boss. For example, his brother Joseph Musasizi (Saasi) was arrested with others in November 2004 and allegedly linked to a fictitious rebel group called the People’s Redemption Army (PRA). Saasi and others were charged with trea-
son, concealment of treason and unlawful possession of firearms. But when the Pros- ecutor found he could not prove the trea- son charges, they were later charged with murder. On 18 September 2009, two and a half years after the state charged them with
murder, the charges were officially dropped. Besigye’s sister Margaret, a business wom- an, was forced into exile in South Africa af- ter her office and home were turned upside down, and her employees were interrogated, presumably about her contacts with rebels. Later the government listed her as one of the “terrorists” in the Great Lakes Region.
In his own words Museveni wrote in his book entitled What is Africa’s Problem?, that “the state should guarantee [the] security of person and prop- erty. If it does not do that, why should people owe it allegiance?” In his other book titled, Selected Articles
on the Uganda Resistance War, Museveni says: “Without democracy and the hu- man dignity of the African people, Africa will never develop… Te people are too frightened to comment on the actions of the omnipotent rulers that have got the powers of life and death over every citizen of their countries. Rulers can squander resources with impunity; they can violate the human rights of people with impunity. Democracy, therefore, becomes a sine qua non of development. We ought to oppose dictatorship in Africa.” In his autobiography, “Sowing the Mus-
tard Seed” (published in 1997), Musev- eni notes that “…If people are rioting you can arrest them and put them in prison. The government has a lot of power to deal with rioting people and means to control crowds without killing them.” In September 2009, Museveni’s govern- ment was given the opportunity to put this conviction to the test, in response to Museveni’s disagreement with the Bu- ganda King, Kabaka Muwenda Mutebi. Te armed forces moved in and shot dead at least 27 civilians in Kampala, some of whom were reportedly dragged from behind the closed doors of their homes. “If anybody had told Ugandans in 1986
presents harrowing accounts of deaths, disappearances, illegal detentions and political analysis as it describes Uganda under President Museveni’s rule.”
“The book
that the government planned to introduce secret houses where crime suspects would be held and tortured to extract confessions, and that these houses would be managed by persons not regularly employed or su- pervised by the prisons department, many would have been outraged. Tey would have questioned the legality of such ac- tions. Some would not have believed that this could happen under the NRM govern- ment,” says Kobusingye in her book.
Betrayed trust Te Museveni government had emerged from a civil war during which thousands of people were killed and millions were displaced. Museveni’s NRA was fighting to oust a sitting government – one they saw as illegitimate as it was based on a stolen election, Kobusingye writes. “One could well understand the nerv-
ousness of the Museveni regime a couple of decades later,” she adds, “as they imagined another wave of Ugandans taking to the bush to repeat that bloody history…But if he hoped to end the cycle of rebellion and to inculcate in Ugandans a culture of the rule of law, how was that going to hap-
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