How Museveni exploited Covid-19 to control info and tie down opponents ahead of 2021 polls

BY OTIM LUCIMA

No one dared miss the unusual newscaster – the president!

For 12 unbroken months and over 20 broadcasts, most home TV and radio sets stayed tuned to Covid-19 lockdown news. Daily Monitor cartoonist Chris Ogon dubbed it The Evening Covidrive, L’eight show!

President Yoweri Museveni, the new Covidrive presenter, was humorous, cracked jokes and cut a grandfatherly figure – jajja(grandpa), an adorable title he had lately adopted and affirmed by his greying moustache. 

Even the bazzukulu, mostly millennials, enjoyed his endless hours of kaboozi or chit-chat over the course of days, weeks, and months of Covid-19 captivity. 

Our millennials are largely young and restless, but not this time, with the coronavirus cast as an evil enemy. So President Museveni’s nightly addresses, became more than gabfest, but a must-listen-in. 

My little girl, a millennial, also took to keenly listening to President Museveni.

A drama student, she noticed the smooth shifts between Museveni’s wit and likeable humour.

“This man is effortlessly funny. People struggle to do comedy, but his comes naturally,” she remarked. 

Indeed, in his raft of addresses, Mr Museveni was in good spirit. He was smiley, occasionally chuckled and even laughed, sometimes with tears in his eyes.

But what had changed during the Covid-19 pandemic, yet Gen Museveni was often stern and offered matter-of-fact and no-nonsense addresses to Ugandans? 

Three probable tactical manoeuvres explain Gen. Museveni’s character shifts here. First, President Museveni had knowingly or unknowingly set out on a war of minds to manage perceptions of Ugandans about the perils of Covid-19. 

Secondly, Gen. Museveni sought to deploy to good effect, his psychological warfare skills to win buy-in for his tough measures or standard operating procedures (SOPs) to stop Covid-19. And thirdly, casting as enemies of Uganda, the Opposition politicians, who he likely calculated would go out of their way and violate SOPs and be framed as endangering the lives of Ugandans for mere votes.

So Gen. Museveni grabbed the chance and set about to frame a common evil – coronavirus – and devised tactical manoeuvres (SOPs) to stop the pandemic and save lives. His mission was to use war of minds to scare the masses and apply persuasion to demand public goodwill to fight Covid-19. Here, Gen. Museveni conceived a common good, namely securing the lives of Ugandans. And this paid off handsomely. In nearly 34 years as president of the Republic, Museveni and all Ugandans were agreed on championing a public good; securing Ugandans against Covid-19.

At the time, the coronavirus was killing thousands across the world. Even UK premier Boris Johnson, who contracted and cured from the virus, wasn’t spared by the contagion, neither were celebs, including actor Tom Hanks and actress and musician wife Rita Wilson, and Cameroonian jazz maestro Manu Dibango, among many others. 

Back home, even the grandchildren who Museveni mocks as aloof but crazy about faraway Miami Beach and global socialites, were scared and pushed to listen. Museveni thus enjoyed undivided national attention; both as a warrior and information high priest ready to cast a spell on Covid-19.

So even when Museveni used tough words, shut airports and borders, closed schools, banned public transport and outlawed gatherings, including political rallies, and imposed curfew, he was still well-received and his orders unquestioned. Unlike in previous crises, in the face of riotous Covid-19, a smiley Museveni came off as a better leader; threatened no Ugandan and did not wear his war uniform and General’s pips. Neither did he carry his AK-47 gun to his TV shows.

Museveni thus achieved one of two Napoleonic maxims of warfare, namely, that “there are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind.” Museveni cleverly chose munitions of the mind. 

Thus far, Museveni exploited the coronavirus bogey to legitimize his harsh measures and impose iron-hold on Ugandans. As is his custom in every crisis, President Museveni invoked his tested bush-war manoeuvres and illustrated them as best fit in outwitting Covid-19.

Remember when Mr Museveni faced a blistery political debate during the 1996 presidential election against joint Opposition candidate Dr. Paul Ssemogerere? Museveni ducked the debate, but stormed the studios days later to debate alone, in full military uniform!  

Again, when floods and mudslides swept downhill homes in Kasese in 2013 and Bududa in 2010, Gen. Museveni pulled out his military boots, donned the General’s uniform and totted his AK-47 assault rifle to confront the disasters!

But not this time; not just as yet. Mr. Museveni remained presidential, grandfatherly and amiable. Even his trespasses on social graces, including slurping his tea as he addressed the nation, were taken with chuckles. Then, he stood as a neutral arbiter between civilians and his armed forces. 

The commander-in-chief warned wananchi against violating the 9 pm to 6 am curfew and also admonished trigger-happy paramilitary force – the Local Defence Unit (LDU) –exaggerated brutality in enforcing the Covid-19 lockdown.

“Why beat [civilians]? Listen, explain and resolve,” he counseledin one of his routine addresses. 

These, indeed, were uncommon gestures by Gen. Museveni;identifying with wananchi in matters involving military enforcement. But these overtures soon proved deceptive. Beneath this seeming mildness, the president reserved his soft spot for combativeness by his military, prodding them: “… know when to beat [civilians]!”

Creeping violence 

Mr Museveni’s doublespeak here betrays his nod for ruthless handling of those who defy his orders. His was an implied endorsement of brutal armed men to deal blows to civilians violating his SOPs.

This creeping violence was to become unmistakable once the political space was opened up for campaigns in May 2020. And to contain his political opponents, Gen Museveni, through the Health ministry, hatched an obscure mantra of ‘scientific campaigns’. A similar ‘smart’ media campaign had been planned by his National Resistance Movement (NRM) party for 2011, but was shelved to incubate for 10 years. So the outbreak of Covid-19 became a god-send opportunity to activate this media campaign master plan. 

Museveni only bettered this virtual campaign by inserting an army brigade, thousands of police officers and 6,000 LDUs to enforce, riding on the scapegoat of Covid-19 preventive measures, christened SOPs. 

At this stage, Museveni had reversed the Napoleonic maxim of warfare that in the long run, the sword will be beaten by the mind. He knew better that the Covid-19 crisis would best be solved in his favour, not by popular resolutions, but by blood, iron and steel.

So the SOPs, enforced by the military, became manifestly skewed to constrain Opposition rallies and campaigns. Covid-19 thus became the perfect mallet in the hands of Gen. Museveni to knock out his opponents, climaxing with protests on November 18 and 19 2020, following disruption, arrest and detention of leading Opposition figure Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine for violating these SOPs.

These face-offs, by President Museveni’s own admission, left 54 Ugandans killed, largely by soldiers and nondescript armed gangs in plain-clothes. The military enforcement spilled over into post-polls enforcement to contain any more protests and violation of SOPs. Scores more of these protesters and sympathizers, who the President had now branded ‘domestic terrorists’, were rounded up, abducted, tortured or detained. 

But Bobi Wine puts the figure of his supporters abducted or missing at 500 odd, those in detention or have been charged before military courts at 200 plus, those who have mysteriously resurfaced at 61 and those dead at 23. President Museveni would later commend these indistinguishable armed men as hard-boiled commando units who had distinguished themselves against Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels in Democratic Republic ofCongo and al-Shabaab militants in Somalia. 

Interestingly, once the January 14, 2021 poll results were secured, government’s own statistics on Covid-19 cases and hospital admissions across the country dropped steeply from 14,757 cases in December 2020 to only 4,317 cases in January 2021 as life returned to normality. This contradicted scientists and the Health ministry’s pre-election advisory that blocked campaign rallies in Opposition strongholds, warning the election activities would drive up Covid-19 infections.

Just in case you had forgotten, Gen. Museveni has often endorsed military actions against his opponents. This included brutalizing and partial blinding of Dr. Kizza Besigye in 2011 and torturing to near unconsciousness of Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, and his Mubende Municipality counterpart MP Francis Zaake in 2018. 

Communication control

Indeed, to consolidate his command during the Covid-19 crisis and in the run up to the 2021 general election, Mr. Museveni centralized all information and communication. He silenced all voices and permitted only his messages to be broadcast for weeks and months, turning him into an info and communication high priest on Covid-19. With movements and rallies banned and the January 14 vote beckoning, Gen. Museveni’s political opponents remained sitting ducks.

He also personalized all humanitarian responses to the coronavirus pandemic and appointed himself the announcer and dispenser of all relief goodies. This ensured all credits were accorded to him alone. In this way, windows for other do-gooders from Opposition figures, including Bobi Wine, Dr. Besigye, and their political parties were slam shut. 

Only Gen Museveni, his lieutenants and NRM party functionaries were to gift relief foods, including posho and beans, to the urban poor and win their love for saving them. Never mind that some of foodstuffs were rotten and reached only a few suburbs of Kampala and Wakiso, and not even its fringes of Mukono.Curiously, a planned offer of Shs100,000 per month for three months by nonprofit organization GiveDirectly, to more than 200,000 vulnerable urban poor households was blocked by government, through the NGO Bureau, and with the approval of Cabinet.

In this way, President Museveni was left as the sole caring leader in the country with the openhandedness to feed the hungry during the lockdown. He also forcibly bonded Ugandans to his over 20 broadcasts during the lockdown, which ran into weeks, then months, and now a full-year. The Covid-19 pandemic and SOPs thus gifted Mr. Museveni the free hand to control all donations and info and communication channels and dominate his political opponents ahead of 2021 polls.

So, by the time the 2021 campaigns came, Gen. Museveni had tied down his opponents under SOPs superintended by his military. While his NRM functionaries held processions and rallies and violated the SOPs, Opposition activists, including Mityana Municipality MP Francis Zaake, Forum for Democratic Change party’s Patrick Oboi Amuriat and Bobi Wine were disrupted, tortured and shot at and forced off the campaign trail. 

So Mr. Museveni thus exploited a propaganda maxim that a statement or action is only valid when we make or do it, but is an infamous lie or dangerous action when done by our opponents.

Thus, SOPs in the hands of Gen. Museveni, became the roughcast hammer for knocking off political opponents. Some of these grounds were to form ingredients of Bobi Wine’s petition to the Supreme Court, seeking to annul President Museveni’s victory in the polls, a process that suffered a stillbirth as the petition was withdrawn.