11:52 pm
Uganda on the Brink?
Thanks for the introduction, Charlie. It is a pleasure to be here.
Tonight, I find myself more worried than usual about Uganda. Life in northern Uganda has always been precarious where a population still find themselves on the crossroads of major African wars… and in the fearful grip of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
But I began to get worried about the rest of Uganda when I saw this story yesterday in the Mail and Guardian (pound for pound still the best coverage of Africa). The story details the split between President Museveni (23 years and counting) and the man he returned to the throne of the Buganda nation, Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II.
But the really interesting part of the story is about the return of a major opposition figure, Olara Otunnu.
Otunnu served many years in and around the United Nations in New York. He was the UN undersecretary general and special adviser for children and armed conflict, and he was a longtime president of the International Peace Academy. In those capacities, I met him several times and found him to be a charming, thoughtful, big hearted person with a great smile.
But his return to Uganda has turned up the heat on long festering problems for President Museveni. I felt a chill tonight when Charlie sent out a Tweet about the State Department’s new travel warning on Uganda.
The warning says the road from the Entebbe airport into the capital, Kampala, has been closed a few times in recent days due to demonstrations. Demonstrations the State Department says have the potential to turn violent.
I have been on that road a few times, but the first was with Charlie Brown many years ago. I remember thinking then that Uganda was one of the few places in Africa which seemed to be truly prospering. The entrepreneurial spirit was alive in hundreds of shops along that road from Entebbe. I was convinced that Uganda could, just maybe, become the anchor for a stable and sound continent.
Tonight that dream seems farther away than ever.