On Friday last week, President Yoweri Museveni granted Vision Group an exclusive interview on a wide range of issues at State Lodge Nakasero ahead of the NRM/A Liberation Day. The Vision Group team was led by the Chief Executive Officer, Don Wanyama; the Editor-in-Chief, Barbara Kaija and deputy Editor-in-Chief Felix Osike.  David Lumu transcribed the interview below.

Congratulations upon the NRM/A 36th Liberation Day anniversary. When you look at the balance sheet of what the National Resistance Movement (NRM) set out to do in the 10-point programme, what are the most outstanding achievements that you are proud of?

I do not have the 10-point programme here now, but you can audit them yourself. I think the first one was democracy. Definitely democracy was one of them and you know how democratic we are.

We are so democratic that we are chaotic. Here everything goes; freedom of speech, freedom of abuse, the elections, the leadership changes... So, we have achieved what we wanted, although the distortion now is that the participants are not democratic minded.

They still want to use bribery in elections. They use lies. So, the issue now is just the quality of democracy, but democracy itself has been institutionalized. I remember the other point was about security of person and property. That one, for sure, a lot has been achieved.

That is why you find that we have got 1.6 million refugees here from other countries and we have got zero refugees from Uganda to the outside. Uganda, which was a net exporter of refugees, is now a net importer of refugees.

That is the best test because if people were unsafe, they would run away. The other point, I think point number five, was unity.  On unity, you know our position. That is why, ever since 1996, when we re-introduced universal suffrage elections, NRM is always winning in the first round.

We have never had a re-run like you have in other countries, where the ruling party fails to get 50% or 51%, and they always have to go back into elections. Here, we always win in the first round of the elections. That is a measure of unity because in 1962, no party could get even 40%.

If you look at the elections of 1962, you see how they scored: Kabaka Yekka (KY) had 21 seats in Parliament, the Democratic Party (DP) had 24, the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) had 37 and the total number was 82 seats.

They were using the parliamentary system not universal adult suffrage for prime minister. So, to get 50%, a party had to get 42 MPs, but none had. Why? Because they had fragmented the country politically, according to tribes and religion.

KY was a Baganda/ Protestant party, DP was a Catholic party and UPC was a Protestant party. So, on unity, we have definitely scored.

Then, we also talked about socioeconomic transformation through education. You can see the numbers in schools; 15 million when we closed the schools (as part of the measures to control the spread of COVID-19). Then you can also look at the number of houses roofed with iron sheets and built by bricks, then, you look at the tarmac roads, water supply and electricity distribution; definitely, there is a big movement.

Then, the other point was building an economy that is integrated and self-sustaining and independent. We have not fully moved on that, but we have moved. For instance, integration of the economy has vertical integration and horizontal integration. Vertical integration means that you produce cotton, you gin it, spin it and weave it and you get a shirt like the one I am putting on now. That is vertical integration.

However, when you produce cotton and export it, there is no integration there. So, that vertical integration has been achieved in some of the sectors such as textile. The shirt I am putting on is from fine spinners, made out of our cotton. The only thing they add on is polyester, which they are still importing, but with our oil, even the polyester will be made here. Then, there is horizontal integration.

This is the linkage between agriculture and industry. For instance, if you take tourism and the hotels, you find that the food served in the hotels comes from Ugandan farms. It is not imported. When you go to other countries, you find that all the food being eaten in the hotels is imported.

Here, most of the food that is eaten in hotels comes from Ugandans here. Therefore, you can study it in more details, and see the degree of both vertical and horizontal integration. However, you will find that something has been done.

In some areas, it is not yet complete, like in the area of coffee. I have been telling these wonderful people that why do you export coffee bean? Why don’t you roast them, grid them and produce the final coffee here? That one, we have been trying, but there is some resistance.

However, in some of the sectors like cotton, we have moved. The seed industry has also moved. People such as Mukwano produce sunflower, and get cooking oil out of it. Then, Mukwano uses the oil from the sunflower to produce soap. Now, that is vertical integration.

Then you come to my area, the cattle people. We have liberated you people from importing powdered milk because when we came from the bush, we found you people importing powdered milk from Denmark. You can imagine! They were importing powdered milk from Denmark, and then put in water, and stamp Uganda Dairy Corporation (UDC).

The dairy there and the Ugandan product there was the water, but now, I am glad to be part of the group that has liberated you from drinking milk from Denmark. We produce the milk, it is processed by the different industries, some of it is consumed as liquid milk, some of it is turned into powder and exported.

If you look at the exports of milk now, they are quite something. Then, there are other products; the butter, cheese, and there is even a factory near Lyantonde, which is making protein from milk. They crack the milk and get proteins for use in the medical field. So, there we have also moved.

Then, we talked about the marginalised people, and we mentioned Karamoja in particular. If you go to Karamoja now, you will travel on a tarmac road, you will find electricity there, hotels are setting up there, plus the education, immunisation and the population has grown up. So, definitely, there is some movement there.

And finally, there was also a point on integration of East Africa. We succeeded in reviving the East African Community (EAC) and we are working together with our EAC colleagues on the federation of East Africa. So, Uganda is totally different now.

We are now almost entering the middle income status, in spite of the growth of the population. The population has grown from 14 million to 43 million.

If you look at the per capita, I think it is now $900 per person and to become a middle income, you need $1,000. We are almost getting there, even though the population has been growing. In fact, if we had not gone into the corona lockdown, we would have achieved a middle income status by now.

We would have gone above the $1,000 per person. I have no worry about my bazzukulu, although some people were saying they are too many. I told them to leave them because I know how I will utilise them. So, that is what I can say for now.

A herd of cattle at a farm in Mbarara. Uganda is one of the biggest mill producers in Africa.

Like other world economies, Uganda’s projected economic growth was not spared by the COVID-19 pandemic. What is the Government focusing on to ensure that the economy rebounds?

The economy still grew. Even in the pandemic, it grew by 3.4% last year, I hear. And this year, they said it will grow by 3.8%. The sectors which were growing were mainly agriculture, industry. The services sector was the one which was affected most, especially tourism, hotels, etc. Now that we have opened, they will grow.

People have been mixing up issues, saying children have gone out of school and some girls have got pregnant, but pregnancy is not dying. For us we were talking about dying versus other inconveniences.

The children who got pregnant during the lockdown will get a chance and study as mature entrants, but alive. So, whatever was lost was for the good reason of saving life. That is why we ended up losing 3,000 people compared to some of the countries which lost many people.

The US has lost one million people, now. In the UK, there must be like 150,000 people who died. So, for me, I do not have any worries. During the pandemic, we were able to feed ourselves, have the fuel to run the country. In fact, some of the durable sectors of the economy continued to operate. It is those that are a bit sensitive like tourism, hospitality that suffered, but they are all now coming back.

And with the vaccination, we are sure of recovery. You have seen that Omicron is now going down. The positivity rate at one time was 30%, but I hear now it is 4%. It has come down. And some of those countries, they think they are very clever, but they have some structural weaknesses that were exposed by this pandemic. Many of the people who died were elderly people; parents and grandparents who had been abandoned by their families and put in institutional homes.

For me, I stay with my elderly people here. I don’t have a single elderly person of mine in any institutional home. So, those people may think they are every clever, but one day we shall find out who is cleverer. Their systems maybe more vulnerable than ours; so, we need to develop and modernize in our own way, and not just copying. For instance, the Japanese have modernized, but they do it in their own way.

Even the Indians, they do not put their parents in institutional homes, even when they have problems. So, our economy will grow. There is no problem. We only need to work on our issues of integration. There is a problem, which is corona, but East African countries; Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan and Burundi are on their own and balkanised. Each country is governed differently. This is where the weakness is. We need to concentrate on solving this. Otherwise, we have everything here and we can’t go wrong.

We have learnt that you have dispatched various envoys to deliver special messages to all the EAC presidents; what are these messages about?

Vincent Ssempijja, the defence minister, has been moving with some people to brief the presidents about our operation in Congo. That was all.

The Rwanda border remains closed despite efforts to have the ties between Kampala and Kigali harmonised; what is the latest development on the talks between Uganda and Rwanda?

On the issue of the border with Rwanda, we continue to talk quietly.

Is there any prospect of opening soon?

We continue to talk. This is a bilateral issue. So, I am one here and I cannot speak on behalf of people who are not here.

Recently when people heard that you had sent Ambassador Adonia Ayebare there, they started dusting their offices, saying the border is about to be opened. Is the border going to be opened?

You see, that is the problem with you rumour-mongers. You do not have to imagine. You wait. That is how you rumour-monger, saying I think it should be like this. You wait. Why do you think, you just wait. Don’t guess. Things will come and it will be opened.

There are also outstanding issues for traders, with Kenya blocking some of their goods into the country. How are you solving this challenge that automatically rhymes against your long-held view of building the East African Community where citizens freely move and trade in the region?

On Kenya, President Kenyatta is really a committed East African and he understands.

His Excellency Kenyatta being active in the business sector, he knows the importance of aggregating the market and integrating the market so that it becomes bigger. So, whenever some confusion is created, I ring him, talk to him and issues are solved.

Like the issue of sugar, I think it is now solved. All those issues are created by people who are not wealth creators themselves. If you are serious you fellows, this is the problem you need to solve. This is what you would have discerned because people who do not understand and are not part of the wealth creation are the ones who cause political and even some of those trade problems.

They don’t understand the importance of having a big market. Me, a wealth creator and a farmer, a milk and beef producer and a banana producer, I understand the importance of a market. The bigger the market, the better, but for you, you don’t know what it means because you are getting money from another source. Yet for me, the more the East Africans are together, the better.

So, there is no way I can highlight tribalism, religion, etc, because all of them are buying my milk. They are all my customers and I need them. I cannot take a position which causes cleavage among my market. So, somebody like His Excellency Kenyatta knows this very well because he is a wealth creator and he cannot be the type to go against the need for a bigger market.

Some of the actors are parasites because they want protection. They say, you bring things from Kenya instead of protecting them. But, why should we protect you? We can protect you from things from China and other places, but if you want East Africa to be together, you should compete on merit. Like me, I would not want the Uganda Government to stop Kenyan milk from coming here in order to protect my milk.

That is because I am an inefficient milk producer, I produce at a high cost and cannot compete with other milk producers from Kenya, so the solution is to force Ugandans to buy more expensive milk of mine than the cheaper milk from Kenya. No, I have to compete. If I don’t want to compete, I should leave the milk industry and do something else.

So, that is what we should understand. First of all, the wealth producers should assert themselves and insist on removing all the barriers of trade within the East African market.

Secondly, we the wealth creators ourselves should not be lazy and fear to compete on merit, and depend on the Government building a fence to protect our inefficiency at the expense of the Ugandans.

But, your Excellency, don’t you think the protectionist tendencies from these other countries can scuttle the EAC integration and the federation project?

We shall struggle with them. We need to get alliances because there are wealth creators in Uganda here. I am here. There are also others in Kenya, Tanzania, etc.

Protectionism is pushed by people who do not understand. I don’t want to use very strong words. But, these are people who do not see that a country like the US became great because it has got a big market from New York to California. Three million square miles of land; free trade with the population of 320 million people.  If I was in America, I would be a billionaire by now because of all that market. I will be producing and they buy.

So, how can I fail to succeed in business?  China has also come up. It was a backward country, but now, it is the second biggest economy in the world, partly helped by that big population. Businesses grow very fast.

India is the other example. Now, you people, the bureaucrats and policy people don’t understand this. They just eat the small pieces here, but don’t know how to grow the cake. They just want to eat the small cake here. They don’t care what happens. Why is it that these countries have become rich?

China, which was backward, has now overtaken the UK, France and even Japan that were far ahead. Why? This is what you the analysts should analyse. I normally see these analysts in your papers. You read, and ask; what are these ones analysing?

Just talking nothing. So, this should be what you blow out there to enable your people understand. I normally see some of my people benchmarking. What are you benchmarking? Why do you only benchmark wrong things? Find out why the US became a powerful country? The US was a colony of Britain. It is now many times richer than Britain. What caused the difference?

That is what your groups should be bringing out to help your people understand where the future is. So, East Africa will integrate and it can integrate very easily because, first of all, these are the same groups, ethnically speaking. I can speak Runyankole all the way to Mwanza and address public meetings. I can go to Bunia, and address a public meeting in Runyankole. My Luo people can go all the way up to Kisumu, speak their language, and the Ja-Luos will answer them. Even the Osikes can go all the way to Amongura and speak the same language with people in Kenya.

So, our people are the same or linked. We also have Swahili. We are not like the European Union. They don’t have a language which can unite them. They speak German, French, English, Spanish: they have a lot of rivalries, they cannot unite easily, but for us we can unite because we have these cultural groups first of all, the Bantu, the Nilotics, then we have Swahili, which belongs to nobody.

So, it is very easy for us to unite in order to create prosperity for our people, but some parasites don’t know this. For instance, some groups had banned the poultry products of Uganda from entering Kenya. We asked, what is the problem? They said the poultry of Uganda is much cheaper and may be even better. Why; because poultry depends on maize, and in Uganda maize is produced much more cheaply than in other places. Therefore, we have got cheap maize, cheap poultry, and somebody somewhere who can’t produce poultry cheaply said Ugandan poultry products should be stopped.

So, the people who are against free trade are actually parasites. These parasite interests don’t want the East African people to get cheap products. They don’t care about the inconveniences they cause, they just want money through using these colonial borders. It is only Magode Ikuya (Minister of Sate for East African Affairs), who has been writing about East Africa in newspapers, but New Vision is always there publishing accidents, vehicles with legs upside down.

A candidate campaigning in the recent Kayunga LC5 byelection. Such elections are one of the cornerstones of Uganda’s democracy which was restored after years of political instability.

The joint Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) operation against ADF has registered some successes in the shortest time compared to the United Nations (UN) peace keeping mission (MONUSCO). What is the long-term plan and how long will the UPDF stay in Congo?

The end state is to help Congo people defeat the terrorists of Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and uproot them so that the villagers in Congo are not disturbed. That is the end state. Also, sometimes they infiltrate and commit some acts here. We just want to wipe out the ADF. ADF was from here. ADF was originally a Ugandan group.

So was Joseph Kony (Lord’s Resistance Army). Why are they not here? It is because if they have capacity, they should be here where they wanted to take over the Government. They could not stay here for some reason, and it is for that same reason that they will not stay in eastern Congo if the Congo government works with us. We shall wipe them out. They are very easy. It is not such a big issue because they have no capacity to fight. They could not stay; why? As for the MONUSCO doing that or not doing that, the reasons are there, but I don’t want to go into them.

The joint forces went there to pursue ADF, but there are other militia groups such as the Mai Mai, CODECO, Ledu groups, among others. The fear is that, if you went for the ADF and you get entangled in the pursuit of the militia groups, then you may not achieve the mission of why you went there. What is your response about this view?

What we want is peace in Africa. In order to support the prosperity of and once in a while, work together, the know-how of pacifying Africa will spread. We may not have to do everything ourselves. We may do one or two things and somebody may be influenced by example. For instance, when we fought here, we worked with Tanzania, specifically Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and with Samora Machel.

That is how we got the ideas of how to do things, and we did them. Tanzania is not here anymore. Mozambique helped me to train only 28 boys from 1976 to 1978. That was all. This Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) you see came from 28 people/cadres. So, this knowledge on how to do things will grow and spread.

Your record on reconciliation is impeccable. We would like to know whether after the 2021 elections you have been able to reach out to the opposition party leaders.

On working together with the parties, we have Inter-Party Organisation for Dialogue (IPOD). I had met the secretary-generals some time before the elections at a hotel in Entebbe, and we were supposed to meet after Christmas on December 27, but my people decided to bring corona here. They thought that I should also get corona. That it was undemocratic for me and Mama (First Lady Janet Museveni) not to get corona. So, they went and picked corona. I don’t know from where. So, some of our young people who were working here were diagnosed with corona.

Fortunately, it didn’t affect Mama and I. So, we postponed, but I was also preparing my speech of the New Year. But we shall meet. The best place is IPOD because there we can discuss everything.

But the largest opposition party, NUP, has boycotted the IPOD process. Are there extra efforts to reach out to them or their leader Robert Kyagulanyi?

Largest, in terms of what?

In terms of opposition representation in Parliament?

The largest stealing party because in Kampala here, they stole many of our votes, but we did not mind. For us, the Baganda say, that if the Muhima is not killed, his or her cattle cannot be wiped out. So, we left those people because they did a lot of bad things.

Anyway, it does not matter even if you are the biggest (opposition party). Whatever you are, if you are undisciplined, arrogant and disruptive, then we ignore you and we work with others because even if you say they have got 50 MPs, the MPs are over 500. Are you serious? So, we shall move with or without you.

If we call you and you don’t come, bye, bye. We shall continue without you, but there is a mechanism which is free, and it is for everybody to come and join that mechanism. But, if some people do not want, that is up to them.

In 2005, the country voted in a referendum to adopt the multiparty political system. What is your assessment of the operation of the multi-party system?

Of course those that practise it, even those of NRM, don’t know it very well. Forget about the opposition ones. So, you still find that politicians don’t know that their main job is to show the people the way.

Instead, they go into bribing people by giving them money and things that they can’t afford. So, they end up in debts.  So, the multi-party system would be working well if the multi-partyists knew what to do.

The multi-party system itself will be working well, but the problem is that this MP, whether opposition or NRM, thinks that he or she should pick from his pocket instead of using ideas to show people how to solve their problems. They now still have the idea that they need to buy people’s support in the sense of giving them material, which of course, is meaningless. For instance what can you do for a constituency of over 200,000 people? Where will you get money to sort out their problems?

So, I normally say that instead of leading, they attempt to carry people. No, your job is not to carry people on your head. Your job is to lead them and show the way. That is where the gap is. The practitioners don’t know how to practise democracy, but otherwise, the multi-party system would be working very well and it would a competition between ideas and leading.

How to solve the problems instead of giving money to voters, which confuses the issue? It is meaningless. It would not solve anything, but it also confuses the issue. Then, some politicians go into attending burials and they sit there as they are dead themselves. Then, some go to churches as if they are priests themselves.

Those are irrelevant things. You show the people how to get out of their problems, and then, work with the government to assist the people in the solution you think is the way forward. That is what leadership is about. 

Some of the residents who were evicted from a contested piece of land in Kyabisagazi I and II villages in Kigorobya sub-county, Hoima district. The President says such acts will end.

With the increase in the commercialisation of politics in our country, recently a group calling itself Transformer Cadres Association of Uganda called for a change in the Constitution to have a president elected by MPs and local governments and not through universal suffrage. What is your view on this?

No. That one failed. You remember that we had it in the NRM party. In the NRM party, we were electing flag-bearers by electoral colleges, but it was more corrupt because the people were fewer and could be bribed. That is why in the NRM party, we said no; let’s have universal suffrage because it was difficult to bribe the whole membership than to bribe a smaller group. I don’t think those people who are pushing that idea (are serious).

In any case, the president is a big man or woman in the country and should get maximum legitimacy not minimum legitimacy. It narrows the legitimacy of such a president by being elected by an electoral college. It should be the whole population. I never bribe the people. I only bribe them through my programmes.

One time in Mbale near Bugema Barracks, there is a murram road there. I was passing there, campaigning, then these Bagisu said ‘busera’. That I should give them busera (local brew). I said no, I am not your enemy to give you busera. You are my supporters and people; I should not be the one to intoxicate you. They voted for me. They were saying that because some people were confusing them, but if you tell them the truth, they will understand. They know where the solution to their problem is. Our people are not as simple as some people think.

But, your Excellency, there is a feeling that even the previous amendments to the Constitution have come through such requests, and that there is an invisible hand of some top officials in the NRM party to advance that position.

I do not support that proposal and I will not support it. I do not know who started it, and for me, this one, I will not support it because it will not fight corruption. That is why we abolished it in the NRM party. We went from electoral college to universal suffrage because with electoral college, it was easier to bribe a smaller group. That is how you get this problem of independents. In fact, if we perfect the universal suffrage within the NRM... If, for instance, we had the money and we could have the primaries by digital thumbprint rather than these papers, which can be ballot stuffed and be able to know it is Museveni who voted using his fingerprint, even the issue of independents would disappear because if you lose in the party primaries and you know you have really lost due to cheating or ballot stuffing, you will know that it is a waste of time to run as an independent because you will still lose.

However, this time because of the cheating, somebody will say I would have won if it was not for the cheating. That is what creates these independents. So, from experience, I do not think those people have a good point or what they are proposing will work for the good we want.

Your Excellency, you are a seasoned politician in the region, and Kenya is currently gearing up for general elections in August. What is your take on the current Kenyan politics?

The elections in Kenya or any other African country is a matter of the people of that country. Those people are the ones who are competent to decide on what to do.

There are accusations that you have a close association with one of the candidates, Dr William Ruto, the current Vice President. What is your comment on these accusations?

Supporting Ruto, we will never do anything like that. We never take sides in the internal affairs of other countries because we suffered from that type of problem when some people were taking sides in our internal politics. So, we have no side in the Kenya elections. Whoever they elect, we shall welcome and work with that person.

We have had a history where Kenyan elections have had a direct impact on us, especially when they are contested; violence and then our imports through there are blocked, what is the country’s plan, just in case issues come up in Kenya?

Yeah, but we have the route to Dar-es-Salaam. It is now improving and the Tanzanians are welcoming it because in the past there were some officials who were not promoting the port of Dar-es-Salaam so much because many of them did not even know what they were supposed to do.

They would behave as if they are doing us a favour, but now, when I was last there, I could see the port officials in Dar-es-Salaam know that it is a business for them also, and that the more goods, the better. So, there is an alternative.

The land question in Uganda is yet to be resolved. Land evictions have also persisted. What in your opinion would be a win-win arrangement for mailo land owners and bibanja holders?

We have never supported eviction of people from land. Even in the Land Act, we put it categorically that no one should be evicted from their kibanja unless they fail to pay busuulu.

We also emphasised that this busuulu should be nominal to simply show that you are a tenant on the land of the landlord. So we have never supported eviction of people. Those who evict people are doing it illegally.

The law also indicates that whoever evicts people unlawfully must be arrested, but it is not implemented, especially in the villages. However, we are going to tighten the implementation of the law.

On my side as the President, I have my representatives, the resident district commissioners (RDCs). These RDCs should monitor and ensure that people are not evicted. If I find out that the RDCs are not monitoring, I will fire them.

There is also the district internal security officers (DISO). If there are gaps in our directive on evictions, we shall change it because we had said that there will be no eviction unless such a person has failed to pay busuulu.

Now, the landlords have a trick of declining to accept busuulu and then accuse bibanja holders of not paying. Now, we are going to change the directive, and put a clause that if they refuse, then the kibanja holder, can pay at the sub-county headquarters. That is all. If the landlord wants the money, they can go to the sub-county headquarters and pick it.

If they don’t want it, it remains at the Gombolola. If we close that gap, we shall then, deal with the other bigger issue. Now on Mailo, we sent our views to the proponents of mailo, urging them to find a common ground on how to address the weaknesses of the mailo land tenure.

The common person, who supported the NRM during the Luwero bush war in Buganda, is treated unfairly when it comes to mailo. They are not like Banyankole or Acholis or any other Ugandan, who own their kibanja permanently. We call it customary ownership. Therefore, I wonder why these people, who call themselves leaders of Baganda, do not care about this issue.

They don’t want to notice the differences in land ownership between the Baganda who fought with us and other people in the country when it comes to land. The Munyankole, for instance, has full ownership of his or her kibanja. It is the same for a Lango, an Acholi, but when it comes to a Muganda, they say, he or she has a landlord to pay allegiance to.

That system was brought here by colonialists and Baganda leaders supported it. For instance, I own land and rear cattle on it, not people. So, this culture of rearing people on land, and not cattle, is not right.

Therefore, using our usual method of not waging war, we decided that we shall discuss with the landlords. We also put in place the Land Fund to ensure that bibanja holders can be helped to acquire ownership from landlords. Amin removed mailo land tenure using force, but for us we said mailo should return with conditions. Unlike Amin, for us, we took the approach of using democracy and discussions. We didn’t want the landlords to completely lose out.

So, in our win-win proposal, we reverted to the 1928 Busuulu-Envujo law of the colonialists, which noted that the kibanja holder cannot be chased off land, and secondly, the payment of busuulu should have a limit.

However, there are arrogant people who don’t care about what NRM is thinking or proposing on this issue. They are doing their own things. Therefore, those arrogant and proud people who don’t listen should know that it is NRM which brought back all these kingdoms, and should listen to what NRM is saying on these matters. We have been quiet because we are humble people.

However, we have reached a point where we have agreed to rectify the mailo land injustices. Our views are known. Some people had brought Ekyapa mungalo, but what does this mean? It means lease, yet lease is for business people, not common people. If the lease expires, what happens to these people? It means they can be chased. I think for the indigenous people, the modern way is to move from customary to freehold.

So, we should find a peaceful way, without quarrelling, of finding a win-win situation on mailo land system, which Europeans brought. I saw one of the leaders saying that mailo is a custom of Buganda. No, sir, it was brought here by Europeans. It is not a culture of Buganda. It was introduced by the British to reward the collaborators.

So, we are not going to use force. We are going to discuss. Eviction of people is going to stop, and we are not going to allow it. If I go somewhere, and I find that people have been evicted, I start by arresting the RDC for abuse of office and neglect of duty. If you can’t defend our people, resign.

Therefore, if these people could agree peacefully without resorting to chaos, we shall discuss quietly in a humble way, look for money and put it in the land fund, pay the landlords and enable our people get permanent ownership. This will be a win-win.

Col Edith Nakalema, the former head of the State House Anti-Corruption Unit, addressing recruits at Police Training Unit in Kabalye, Masindi about corruption. She has been the face of the war on graft.

There are also outcries over the eviction of roadside vendors from the city: how can this process be handled to safe guard all the interests of those involved, especially the vendors who live on hand-to-mouth basis?

It is not about cleaning the city; the bigger issue is that it will empower the economy. Someone rents a shop, pays a trade license and taxes. These taxes they pay help government to sustain the country. Then, some other person comes and trades without paying taxes or license, and no one knows what such a person is selling. So, how will the country be sustained? Saying that you are poor is not an excuse to vend informally. We shall get you what to do and the capital to do it formally.

So, cleaning the city is a smaller issue, formalising the informal sector is the bigger issue. It is likely saying that someone should be allowed to smuggle goods into the country because they are poor. If all people leave shops and start vending on the streets, how will businesses run? Where will the country get the money from? Those who pay rent for the shops, we also tax them.

They also pay taxes and the license fees, but for the vendor no one knows what they are selling. They are not taxed. So, that line is suicidal for the country, and we should understand it as a country.  We had the same issue when we had just come from the bush. People were smuggling products into the country.

So, we told them to abandon the smuggling and use the known border clearing points for importation of goods so that we monitor and know whatever is imported into the country and tax it. The Bakiga in Kabale and the Bagisu fought us, saying we are witch-hunting them, but we told them that they are going to kill the country’s economy. So, you can’t compare informalisation and formalisation of the economy. What they are saying is that we should informalise our economy instead of formalising it because we are poor. The one who smuggles in goods benefits as a person, but the whole country loses. 

The debate across the country is about the sky-rocketing fuel prices. How are you addressing this issue?

The genesis of that problem is the directive by the health ministry officials to stop trucks at the border to test truck drivers and other people for COVID-19. When we told them to stop checking, and instead accept the COVID-19 certificates from their countries of origin, they accepted it, but it did not help.

Now, we have directed them to abandon testing because someone told us that it does not help because people have been crossing into Uganda through porous border points without anyone testing them. So, why should they [health officials] disturb these truck drivers who are few? So, right now, emphasis is going to be put on vaccination. So, the fuel issue will be sorted.

In your 2022 New Year’s message, you re-opened the economy and gave directives that by January 24, the night economy will be fully re-opened following almost two years of lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. The bodaboda sector is also crying foul over your maintenance of curfew on them, saying you discriminated them. What is your take on this?

I have heard complaints on the bodaboda operations, and I asked the COVID-19 task force why they left the bodaboda operators out. It seems they were more on the issue of security and not the spread of COVID-19.

So, I have asked them to review the bodaboda issue. If, it is about security, then we can handle it differently. However, let them study it and get back. That is what is left to decide, but all the other guidelines on re-opening will commence as I announced them to the country.

The other debate related to the re-opening of the economy is whether Government allowed pregnant and breastfeeding girls to attend classes. Some religious leaders have opposed the move, while civil society has welcomed it. What is your position on this?

We shall discuss it in Cabinet. We have not taken a position on it. What I don’t encourage is to permanently condemn these children for the mistakes they may have made or society may have made them to make. That because she got pregnant, her future is closed; that one, I will not accept.

And why would I not accept the fact that even mature entrants, somebody in their 40s and 60s, can go to school and study. So, if you allow a mature entrant, who has already had children, why do you permanently condemn this child? Now the other one of either allowing the one who is pregnant or one who has given birth, delivered and breastfeeding, it is a logistical issue. How will you do it? Are you going to have antenatal clinics in schools? And the one who is breastfeeding, are you going to open up a day care at the primary school? How will you manage all these? I think it is a logistical issue, but I am glad that on the other bare minimum, there seems to be an agreement.

So, next week we shall discuss it in the Cabinet and take a harmonised position. However, I can see that we now agree on the minimum that these children delivering should not ruin their future permanently.

The war against corruption has not been won. Recently when there was a launch of the lifestyle audit, you urged the Inspectorate of Government to go slow, noting that these people can conceal the wealth or take it abroad instead of investing it here. Now, this has been interpreted by the public to mean a slow momentum against the fight against graft. What else needs to be done to progress on this front?

I was saying that Beti Kamya (IGG) was talking of life style audit. First of all, that is a lot of work. Looking at people and how they are spending the money. So, what I was saying is that there is a simpler way of how to fight corruption because this money, which they are stealing, is mainly government money.

Yes, you might steal private money, if you are on my ranch, but the private people know how to defend their wealth because they are nearer. It is a smaller operation. However, these ones steal government money. It is easy to follow up by looking at how much money has been collected? How has it been distributed and budgeted?  What was it supposed to do? Where did it go? You can follow up that money.

So, I was telling them that that is a more scientific way of doing this follow-up with the permanent secretary to ensure that this money is not diverted and that it does what it was supposed to do and does it well.

The in the district, there is a Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and at the sub-county there is a sub-county chief or town clerk. So, the group of Beti Kamya, they really need to check on those four people, who look after government money in Uganda. So, that is what I was telling them. It was not the whether; it was how to do it? I don’t know how practical it is to conduct a lifestyle audit. Yes, you may say; why is so and so having so many buildings? What they start distributing these buildings and hide them in the names of their relatives.

So, for me, I think, it may become more cumbersome. For those who have built from stolen money, if you can get the facts, then, I have no problem. For me, I was looking at the easier way, but I you can forensically show, there is no problem. I will clarify that position to say that I am not stopping this life style audit, but I am alerting them because I don’t want us to lose this fight again. Okay, you might catch the old ones, but the new ones now, will adopt new tactics. I think we can separate how we fight the old ones and the new ones.