Where should the hunter go?

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OPINION

By Dr Ronex Kisembo Tendo

“I have hunted the game and cut off its head. Now you tell me to go. Where should I go?”

President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni did not utter these words as a proverb or a flourish. He spoke them as a man conscious of history, of unfinished labour, and of the danger nations invite when they confuse impatience with wisdom. The statement is not arrogance; it is an appeal to memory. It asks Ugandans to look backward honestly before deciding to leap forward blindly.

There are moments in the life of a nation when politics must rise above slogans and confront history honestly. Uganda is living through such a moment. The question before the country is not whether leadership should ever change, no serious society believes in eternity, but whether change, pursued without regard for context, memory, and consequence, can itself become a form of recklessness.

Pre-Museveni Uganda was marked with violence, betrayal, and institutional ruin. The years preceding 1986 were catastrophic in the literal sense of the word. They marked the systematic unmaking of a state and the corrosion of national confidence.

Under Obote I, the optimism of independence curdled quickly. Power was centralised faster than capacity could be built. Constitutionalism was sacrificed for control, and political disagreement was recast as treason. The 1966 crisis, the abrogation of the constitution, and the assault on Buganda were not isolated events; they signaled the beginning of a pattern in which the state responded to complexity with force rather than institution-building. The promise of self-rule gave way to suspicion, repression, and the slow hollowing out of trust.

Idi Amin’s seizure of power completed what institutional weakness had begun. The Ugandan state was transformed from a governing authority into an instrument of terror. Extrajudicial killings became routine. Bodies floated in the Nile. Bodies of Professionals, our doctors, judges, academics, engineers, were hunted, exiled, or murdered. The expulsion of Asians shattered the economy overnight, destroying commercial networks and investor confidence. Inflation spiraled, GDP collapsed, and Uganda became an object of global mockery, whispered about in diplomatic corridors as a warning rather than respected as a nation. The passport lost its dignity. Citizenship itself became dangerous.

Amin’s obsession with spectacle betrayed the hollowness of his power. Unable to command legitimacy or respect, he clothed himself in excess, in uniforms heavy with invented medals, self-awarded titles, and theatrical ranks that no serious military tradition recognised. The decorations multiplied as the state collapsed, as though fabric and metal could compensate for the absence of discipline, strategy, or authority. It was pageantry standing in for competence, costume replacing command. The more powerless the regime became, the louder the uniform tried to speak. History, however, is unimpressed by costumes.

This was organised cruelty. The army fractured into ethnic militias. Fear replaced law. Violence replaced policy. Uganda fell apart.

Obote II returned power through militarised politics, not reconciliation. The country, already traumatised, was plunged back into conflict. The Luwero Triangle became synonymous with mass graves, scorched villages, and civilian slaughter. Elections did not heal wounds; they reopened them. Regime change came again, but institutions, already fragile, were denied the time and stability required to recover. The economy remained anaemic, the state brittle, and the people, Ugandans, became exhausted.

It was during this long national night that Museveni was not looting the ruins nor bargaining for power within a broken system. He was organising, studying, mobilising, and articulating an alternative. While Uganda haemorrhaged professionals, he was writing about the failures of post-colonial governance. While armies preyed on civilians, he was building a disciplined force anchored in political education rather than ethnic opportunism. While the state relied on terror, he was articulating a vision of security rooted in legitimacy and popular support.

The National Resistance struggle was born not merely of ambition, but of diagnosis: that Uganda’s crisis was institutional, not cosmetic; structural, not episodic. That frequent regime change without ideological clarity and institutional consolidation was a recipe for endless collapse. That power seized without a long-term theory of the state would always degenerate into violence.

When Museveni finally assumed power in 1986, he did not inherit a functioning state; he inherited debris. GDP had been shattered. International credibility lay in ruins. Citizens had been conditioned to expect betrayal from authority. The task before him was not governance as usual; it was national resuscitation. Peace had to be engineered where chaos had become normal. Order had to be restored where fear had been routine. Institutions had to be allowed, perhaps for the first time since independence, to breathe.

That Uganda stands intact, governable, and regionally consequential today is inseparable from that reconstruction. What distinguishes Museveni’s leadership is not longevity for its own sake, but coherence of purpose over time. He understood early that the first task of governance in a fragile state is security. The Uganda People’s Defence Forces were not allowed to remain a victorious rebellion; they were forged into a disciplined national army and, eventually, into a regional stabilising force. Borders were secured. Insurgencies were contained. Uganda became a net exporter of security in a region desperate for it. States that improvise their security pay with blood. Uganda chose continuity, doctrine, and institutional memory.

Peace, in Uganda’s case, is measurable. It is schools that open on time. Farmers cultivating land without displacement. Borders that hold while others dissolve. It is the extraordinary reality that, in one of the most unstable regions on earth, people flee into Uganda rather than away from it. Nearly two million refugees from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and even Kenya have found sanctuary within Uganda’s borders. This is not charity. It is the dividend of stability.

Beyond its borders, Uganda’s posture has been quietly but consistently Pan-African in the deepest sense. Long before solidarity became fashionable, Uganda provided sanctuary and training to the ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe at the height of apartheid’s brutality, when such support attracted danger rather than applause. That choice placed Uganda firmly within Africa’s moral lineage of liberation.

Today, that instinct expresses itself through leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement, South-South Cooperation, and African Union mediation efforts, including facilitation of the Sudan peace process and the incoming chairmanship of the Africa Peer Review Mechanism. Uganda is now a convening power whose voice carries weight because it has carried responsibility.

At home, the social architecture of the state has widened rather than narrowed. Women occupy the highest offices of executive authority, parliamentary leadership, judicial power, military command, diplomacy, and public administration as decision-makers. Freedom of worship is entrenched. Traditional kingdoms like Buganda, Bunyoro, Busoga, Tooro, Obusinga bwa Rwenzururu, Acholi, Iteso, and others were restored as instruments of cultural dignity and conflict management. These were acts of political intelligence.

Museveni’s leadership has also been tested under pressure. The Covid-19 pandemic was a global stress test. In moments of crisis, decentralised confusion kills faster than disease. Uganda’s response favoured central coordination, clarity of command, and loss minimisation. It was decisive. And decisiveness, in emergencies, saves lives.

Critics often frame longevity in leadership as inherently illegitimate. History does not support this claim. Otto von Bismarck governed Germany for over two decades while founding a modern state. Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel each governed for sixteen years during reunification and consolidation. Xi Jinping’s extended leadership reflects a developmental model prioritising coherence over rotation. Duration is not pathology; misdirection is. Governance is contextual. Liberal democracy does not look the same in Berlin, Beijing, Kampala, or Juba. Sustainable development demands order, security, and institutional memory before rotation.

The choice Uganda faces is therefore not between democracy and eternity. It is between continuity with managed evolution and disruption without readiness. The hunter has not yet left the field because the work of securing the game, the state itself, is not yet fully complete. To demand departure without a coherent transition risks undoing gains that were costly to achieve.

Museveni today represents more than incumbency. He embodies accumulated judgment, regional trust, and a proven capacity to manage both calm and crisis. He has become, whether one likes it or not, a stabilising constant in a turbulent neighbourhood.

In uncertain winds, nations do not uproot the great tree to experiment with seedlings. They protect the roots that run deep until the ground is firm enough to bear something new.

That is stewardship.

The writer is Group CEO Afrika Mashariki Fest

kronex425@gmail.com (0772963625)