The security minister-designate, Maj Gen (rtd) Jim Muhwezi, has said he hopes to make a big difference to Uganda’s state of security.

Muhwezi, who headed the Internal Security Organization in the formative years of President Yoweri Museveni’s leadership from 1986 to 1996, told New Vision in an interview that he was humbled by the appointment on Tuesday.

“I am humbled by the trust the appointing authority put in me and I just promise to take up the responsibility with zeal and commitment and I hope to make a difference to make sure that Uganda is stable so that we create an enabling environment for development and transformation of our society,” he said.

The 70-year-old former bush warfighter and the chairman of the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) veterans’ league, reclaimed his Rujumbura County MP seat from the Forum for Democratic Change’s Fred Turyamuhweza in the January 14 elections.

When he lost the MP seat in the 2016 elections, he had occupied it for over 20 years and had been in Cabinet as health minister and later information minister.

He is bouncing back to Cabinet when the issue of security in the country is on the lips of many people.

Unknown gunmen on motorbikes attacked outgoing works and transport minister Gen Katumba Katumba’s car recently in Kisaasi, a Kampala suburb.

Gen Katumba, a four-star general who was previously the Inspector General of Police and formerly the chief of Defence Forces, was wounded in the attack that left his daughter Brenda Nantongo and driver Haruna Kayondo dead.

However, President Museveni vowed that they will defeat the armed criminals as they did in the past.

“We already have clues to those killers. Besides, the new system of digital beacons on all vehicles and boda bodas will eliminate the misuse of vehicles and boda bodas to commit crimes,” he said.

Isolated incident

Muhwezi told New Vision that that incident should not create fear “because it is an isolated one in a huge country full of stability where people are okay going about their businesses”.

“It was a bad incident, but it does not reflect insecurity in the country at all. In terms of statistics, it is negligible. Of course, it was significant because it was a threat to a very important person but it doesn’t reflect insecurity in the whole country. However, like the President was saying, we don’t want that to happen at all. We are going to step up security to make sure that even such an incident does not happen again,” he said.

He and 77 other new Cabinet members, excluding the Vice-President (Jessica Alupo) and Prime Minister (Robinah Nabbanja), expect to appear before the appointments committee of Parliament for vetting early next week.

“As the President said, we are going to use human resource, technology, artificial intelligence and popular vigilance. We have so many people of goodwill who want development and stability, so we shall mobilise them and work with them because security needs a concerted effort of everybody so that we get popular vigilance among the population,” Muhwezi said.

“We know it’s a small group of people who don’t want peace, the majority of Ugandans want peace and stability. So we shall work with them to make sure that we all achieve our objective of a secure and stable country,” he added.