Museveni’s currently serving his third elected term after an initial four ten-year “interim period” between 1986 and 1996. An examination of his 26 years in power shows that he’s done great things for Uganda’s economy while becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Kampala Road, 2006.
Photo courtesy of peprice on Flickr.

It just so happened that as I was in New York, paging through a mountain of books and articles, Never Man was on the streets of Kampala wondering about the same things:

I remember when nights in the city were dark because there were no neon signs commanding us to buy things, when there was nothing to buy and even if there was, there was no one to buy it. We were all broke.I remember when nights in the city were silent because no one in their right mind wanted to be outside their homes after sundown, when the nights in the city were silent except for the occasional gunshot.I never thought we would ever become this.

I walk pavements up to the zebra crossing and wait for rude and pompous drivers in luxury saloon cars to pass so that I can walk again, across the firm and permanent tarmac of Kampala Road. All around me there are people talking to each other in loud, boisterous voices, arguing, joking, haranguing, talking on cellular phones about how expensive life is these days, because it doesn’t occur to them to think how much better it is than the days when life was cheap.

…

I try to imagine that I am invisible, just watching and not being seen, and I let the gratefulness overwhelm me, allow myself to be surprised that out of mounds of smouldering earth, we made this: pizza, and multi-storeyed glass-walled towers, and modern cinemas, and phone booths and cocktail bars and satellite TV and GQ magazine vending stalls.

And I try to stifle the sense that this is a fragile beauty, that it cannot last. That one day something will happen, something will happen to bring it all crumbling down and we will be back to 1986, and that when it does I will shake my head and say, “Shit. It was just a matter of time. It couldn’t last.”

Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 still awaits a final decision by the country’s Parliament, but the country’s Daily Monitor newspaper reported Wednesday that President Yoweri Museveni has “assured the US State Department of his willingness to block the Bill”:

President Museveni has reportedly assured American authorities that he will veto Ndorwa West MP David Bahati’s proposed anti-gay law, a position that breaks with his recent stance and the statements of officials in his government.

Read more »

Gay Uganda and AfroGay, both of whom have been blogging tirelessly about the threat the Bahati Bill poses, are featured in the post.

I’ve been reading a lot about ethnic conflict this week to prepare for two presentations I’m giving next month, but rather than quote something, I’d like to point you to two related links that came my way today:

Never Again in Sri Lanka is a set of video clips in English, Sinhala and Tamil that commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka. The videos were originally broadcast on Sri Lankan television and have been collected and preserved online as part of the effort to document the Sri Lankan civil war, one of the longest-running ethnic conflicts in the world. (Original link from GV: Sri Lanka: Anti-Tamil riot videos.)

Resolve Uganda is hosting a petition to President Bush, thanking him for meeting with President Museveni this week at the UN and asking him to continue to work for peace and justice in northern Uganda. The meeting and the petition are in response to a recent spate of LRA attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo that have caused at least 75,000 people to flee. UNICEF is estimating that 90 children were abducted.

I am not among those people who will die for Uganda but among those who will kill you for Uganda. I will kill anybody who challenges Uganda and don’t underrate me because of my gray hair, I will kill you.

Despite the block, the site is still going strong, publishing a daily mixture of hard-hitting journalism and amusing gossip. The following article falls in the latter category:

British etiquette experts in Uganda to train M7 in table manners

We got some information some months ago that as the CHOGM plans continue to gather momentum, some British experts in protocol and etiquette were flown to Uganda to help Museveni get CHOGM compatible.

Those people who have sat in the same room with him at state dinners know that M7 is a very crude man. He eats like a greedy pig and it is an embarrassment to people.

Full article»

Impartial? No. Hilarious? Yes.

Yoweri Museveni will die of gout. Obote’s wife will take over under the title Obote III, followed within two months by a military coup led by Salim Saleh in collaboration with Aga Khan (who, in sly retaliation for the Stangate debacle, will force Saleh to charge Americans double the nightly rate at the Kampala Serena Hotel — all under the pretense of development work, naturally).

The Red Pepper will discover Salim Saleh’s previously well-hidden penchant for American hip-hop after a house servant chances upon his closet shrine to Jay-Z. To shield himself from embarrassment, the new leader of Uganda will invite the eminent artist to the country and crown him Kabaka of the Buganda. The former Kabaka’s body will be packed in concrete and sealed into the Bujugali Dam, the building of which will proceed expediently due to the Saleh-Khan partnership. Jay-Z’s next album will feature a remix of “Oh My God,” in which he changes the line “got crowned king down in Africa” to “just became the new Kabaka.” Fans will urge him to retire; “For real this time” will be the headline of Slate’s disgusted review.

In November, sources close to Aga Khan will reveal that he actually is a terrorist, and that he’s been funneling foreign aid to Uganda and revenue from the Serena network into nuclear projects in the Federated States of Micronesia. Jackfruity will be awarded the 2007 Best of Blogs award for her hard-hitting, tireless reporting on the so-called philanthropist. She will then be taken in by the CIA for questioning as to the exact nature of her interest in the latest Greatest Threat to National Security. This site will languish forlornly in the blogosphere until one of Aga Khan’s aids discovers it. Selections will be compiled into a Mein-Kampf-esque Life of the Aga Khan IV, and Jackfruity will become a bestselling author. Unfortunately, she will be unavailable for a booksigning tour, as she will be locked in Guantanamo Bay.

I filed this piece of information away somewhere in the back of my brain with the waragi and let it sit there until yesterday, when I decided to see if it was true.

First resort: Google, the Omniscient God of Search Engines. I typed in “aga khan daily monitor” and was shocked/thrilled/somewhat disappointed to see that, aside from a couple of news articles about Aggie’s recent publicity stunts, the first result listed was none other than yours truly.

Hello, I’m Jackfruity, and I’m an Aga Khanoholic.

Even more determined to demystify the connection between Aggie and the Monitor, I did a little more research. It turns out the paper is part of the Nation Media Group, a conglomerate that owns a variety of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations throughout East Africa. It was founded in 1960 by (surprise!) our friend, the Aga Khan Foundation for Economic Development, and His Highness the Aga Khan now owns 43% of the company’s share.

This knowledge forces a choice between Museveni’s biases and Aga Khan’s. There’s really only one way to make such a monumental decision. Allow me to present the Official Jackfruity Aga Khan/Museveni Comparison:

Category	Museveni	Aga Khan	Winner
Headgear			tie
Parentage	cattle herder	Shia playboy	Aga Khan
Public endorsement	Joseph Kony	Kurmanbek Bakiev	Aga Khan (lesser of two evils)

Aga Khan it is. Glad that’s settled.