This profile of Uganda's President Museveni ran in a 1998 edition of Focus on Africa. 14 years later, it makes very revealing reading.
"Despite
this it is hard to dislike Museveni, who has great personal charm. He is not
threatened by dissenting views. He holds frequent press conferences and yawns
widely if the questions are dull. He is a gifted public speaker and always
willing to learn: he rings up businessmen and journalists to find out more
about issues that interest him. He does not kowtow to foreign dignitaries.
It is easy
to see how Museveni, who is a talented diplomat, has managed to glide across
the diplomatic stage. He is funny without being frivolous, human without being
intimate. He has a soft spot for women, and in particular for those whom he can
assume a paternalistic role. During President Bill Clinton’s recent visit he
tipped his head coyly and smiled at ‘his daughter’, the US assistant secretary
of state for African affairs, Susan Rice, who beamed back appreciatively.
The
president has simple tastes; he does not drink or smoke and takes tea from a
flask. When he travels up-country, he carries with him photos of his children
and also his cows. Pictures of both are interspersed in his photo album: a sad
bovine face stares out of one page next to a photograph of his mother. He
enjoys listening to praise songs to his cattle, played by a group from his
ranch, and always available on a battered cassette-player to lull him to sleep.
Museveni’s
achievements, confidence and charisma explain the hold he has over much of the
population-including the army, who adore him. But it has also helped to create
a feeling that without Museveni to whip the government into line, the system
would collapse.
Museveni’s
critics claim he has encouraged this view by refusing to give real power to his
ministers and by stifling political opponents. He is rarely challenged partly
because under the Movement system, political parties spend all their time
struggling for survival rather than building alternative policies. The
president laughs this off, claiming there are many Ugandans who could take his
place when he eventually retires to tend to his cows...."
Anna
Borzello report(ed)s for the BBC from Kampala (Focus on Africa, July-September
1998.)
