Uganda: Museveni-Kony symbiosis and the Acholi pogrom
By Santonino K. Banya
Jan 5, 2006 — It’s often stated that politics is dirty. Indeed, the recent lynching of the butcher of Baghdad is a typical case in point. Not that Saddam’s life should have been spared. There are many Saddams in this world, especially in Africa, who deserve similar fate. What makes Saddam’s case more intriguing was that the very people who supported him and supplied him with arms during the time when he was gassing the Kurds were the same people who saw to it that he was hung. Elsewhere, we have heard leaders oppressing their own citizens boasting of having friends in the White House, translated: “We are untouchable; we can act with impunity, and there is nothing you can do about it.” Given that Rumsfeld was smiling with a murderer at the time when Saddam was at his peak killing his own people and gassing Iranians, only to turn around and called him an evil a few years down the lane, one can clearly see the dirtiness of politics.
In Africa, witnessed the propping of Mobutu’s regime even when he was looting the national treasury. This went for so long that nobody ever imagined the same power sponsoring his removal. Of course, Mobutu died a very miserable man, knowing that he was used and discarded like a piece of thrash despite the wealth of his country. Similarly one of golden boys who used to frequent the White House and Downing Street now seems to have exhausted his bag of lies tricks. Finding that he is no longer the boy with pretty blue eyes, our Museveni has retreated into his small kingdom.
On the Ugandan front, the Museveni-Kony symbiosis and the Acholi pogrom has reared its ugly head again once again; this time, a farce diplomatic stage. After twenty years of silent pogrom in Acholiland on both the LRA and the UPDF fronts, the two butchers who should both be sent to the gallows, are acting like newly weds. For Kony to say: “Museveni is a good man ….,” is an affront to the memories of those they murdered and those herded into the dehumanizing concentration camps. That Museveni is sending Kony envelops stuffed with money and posing in pictures with his mother doesn’t mean Museveni has become a saint of a sudden. How about the mothers of those whom Museveni’s generals and soldiers raped and murdered, are they too going to pose with the new “compassionate” Museveni? Anyone who thinks Museveni is a good man is a mental case.
The two warriors devastated Acholiland and dehumanized the whole population for their own political ends for twenty years. Museveni, an “expert” in political backspin, at least by African village standard certainly knows what he up to. In the past, he understood that by consistently calling Kony a terrorist and blaming all the insecurity in northern Uganda on Kony, it enhanced his image in southern and western Uganda while earning him support from Washington and London. In essence, Museveni wanted Kony around as long as possible. He didn’t want peace to return to Acholiland; that would have dried up his sources of political support from southerners and westerners, and monetary gains from donor countries while the honey mooning was still hot. Above all, without political clout in Uganda, he wouldn’t continue to live off the national treasury, and so would all his tribal generals and political psychopaths.
The latest charade at holding a dialogue with Kony came at a time when Museveni’s stars in the Western world were on the wane; he was no longer the golden boy with pretty blue eyes that Washing and London had been drooling over for two decades. He had been exposed, as yet another small time African despot. Being a master of deception, and with the help of his paid mercenary journalist, Pike, and company, Museveni succeeded in fooling and milking older democracies for all their worth. Facing charges of election fraud after having raped his own constitution to acquire life presidency, the blue-eyed boy of donor nations found himself becoming even less popular among his southerners and westerners, hence, the need for talk with the Banyanyas.
The tragedy of the 2005 election resulted into Museveni being accused for the second time for election rigging; the very same reason that he used in 1980 that sent Uganda onto the road of bloodshed and sectarianism either to unseen in Uganda’s history. Each time Museveni’s political stars dimmed, he invoked the name of his “betters,” Kony, Obote (RIP), and Amin (RIP) and reminded his illiterate tribalists in southern and western Uganda that the Banyanyas would return.
After twenty unchallenged years in power, Museveni still stoop so low that he has to invoke the names of the dead, in order to score political points, while being protected by twelve thousand body guards, the PPG, which is itself a private army in addition to his own UPDF, the so-called national army led by generals from his clan. Even dictator Amin had less than one thousand body guards compared to the self-proclaimed saviour of Uganda who is supposedly very much loved. If Museveni is that popular, why the huge number of guards and all the security apparatus that has turned Uganda into a police state?
Museveni and Kony have both been playing the role of organizing symbol for each other. While Kony played the role of strengthening Museveni’s political base, it was not very clear what role Museveni played in Kony’s brutal adventurism, other than that both men have been directly and indirectly engaged in the Acholi pogrom in Uganda and in Southern Sudan.
There is nothing that helps a desperate despot than having a clearly defined enemy. Museveni’s occupation of Acholiland and the continuous confinement of the entire population in the concentration camps enabled him to carry out his “finish-them” agenda without any uproar in the world. The Musevei-Kony symbiosis and the Acholi pogrom is manifesting itself in the duo’s treacherous behind the scene dealing, while negotiation at reaching reasonable terms in ending the bloody conflict is going on in Juba. Kony will either come out of this tricky situation in one piece to enjoy his blood money from the man he fought for twenty years, or he may disappear like the rest of Museveni’s opponents: “Sudden illness and or outright assassination.” On his part, Museveni may shed crocodile tears or declare in his characteristic bravado: “I have destroyed the terrorist. Nobody plays with my government; we’ll crush you.”
After the Juba spectacle, it remains to be seen whether Museveni, now in his fifth term as the ‘supreme’ leader of Uganda, will still be bent on carrying out his silent pogrom of the Acholi ethnic group. His fallacious statement about resettling the Acholi people won’t come to fruition unless he accompanied it with the total withdrawal of his occupation army. If and when true resettlement does begin, the occupying forces are suspect to embarking on random killing of the scattered populace, and ascribing the blame to Kony’s renegades. As long as Kony is outside Uganda, Museveni will continue to invoke Kony’s name in order to stay in power. Ugandans should expect Museveni standing for the presidential race, come 2011.
For the remnants of Acholi people, you are better off considering yourself non-Ugandans. Your ancestral land, which some of you still occupy are within the colonial boundary that is Uganda, but you have long been declared persona-non-gratis since Museveni’s NRM ascension to power in 1986. The clamor for Acholiland is real, under the pretext of investment and development. Should you lose your land, it may take fifty or even one hundred years, but your land will come back to your future generations by all the means that lands confiscated the world over, have always been regained.
* The author is based in Indianapolis, USA. he can be reached at
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