Museveni at 40: How Uganda missed its moment to break the cycle of power
Yoweri Museveni and the turning of the prospective ideology of liberation into the continuation of colonial and post-colonial traumatic stress disorder syndrome of governance
By Professor Munyonzwe Hamalengwa
IN January 2026, the so-called elections in Uganda re-ushered Yoweri Museveni into his 40th year of leadership as Uganda’s President. This was not an echo but a continuation of Africa’s colonial and post-colonial traumatic stress disorder syndrome of governance which Museveni found when he assumed power in 1986.
The tragedy is that Uganda had a chance to break the syndrome after the fall of Idi Amin in 1979 because Amin was swept out of power by force, and not by a negotiated transition in which the remnants of the old would remain in power to influence and continue the habits of the past.
The removal of Amin was supposed to be a complete break, a game changer as it were. Another tragedy but which represented an unequalled opportunity was the return to power after some shaky beginnings of former President Milton Obote, who should have learnt his lessons better after he was overthrown in 1971 by Idi Amin.
He should have governed differently and perfected the machinery of governance after the painful experience of being overthrown and reflecting and reading and talking to different leaders and learning lessons. How many leaders ever get a chance that was given to Milton Obote to get back into power after an interregnum of eight years? Not many. Milton Obote went back to mishandle this rare golden opportunity and was again overthrown. Leopards don’t change their spots.
The third tragedy is that the numerous subsequent regimes that came into power between 1979 and 1986 when Museveni eventually militarily swept to power, completely failed to manage the political unstable transitions. This period was a missed opportunity to break the colonial and post-colonial traumatic stress disorder syndrome of governance in Africa in general and in Uganda specifically. This period saw some theoretically capable leaders who had written on paper about good governance in post-colonial Africa rule Uganda but utterly failed to govern when they had the reins of power in their hands.
Uganda before Idi Amin had some of Africa’s greatest intellectuals gathered at Makerere University. Amin scattered or killed some of them. A great number fled and gathered either in Nairobi or University of Dar- es -Salaam. Some even ventured into the University of Zambia like Professor Edward Rugumayo and others. After the fall of Idi Amin, some of these intellectuals actually went back to Uganda to put their theories into actual practice but miserably failed and were swept out of power.
Those who followed events in Uganda between 1979 and 1986 will remember that there was a brief period when Uganda’s Cabinet and other crucial civil service positions were composed of some of Uganda’s most famous and renowned intellectuals who had returned from exile: intellectuals like Professors Wadada Nabudere, Yash Tandoni, Mahmoud Mamdani, Edward Rugumayo, Omwony Ojok and many others.
The majority had previously gathered at the University of Dar-es-Salaam where they constituted what became known as the Dar-es -Salaam School of Thought. And they had written on the political economy of Uganda and of Africa and of imperialism. University of Dar-es -Salaam was the most exciting place of intellectual ferment in Africa starting with the announcement of the introduction of “Ujamaa”(African Socialism) by Julius Nyerere in the mid-60s.
A great deal of self-styled Western progressives flocked there to partake in the experiment of proper getting African Socialism. They included academics like Professors John Saul, Terrence Ranger, Walter Rodney, Griffith Cunningham, Lionel Cliffe, Giovanni Arrighi, Henry Bernstein and many others. These intellectuals collectively produced many leading books on the history and political economy of Africa in general and Tanzania in particular (see select covers of some of the books written there).
After the fall of Obote in 1971, most Ugandan intellectuals fled to Dar- es -Salaam to join that heavily fortified and intellectual garrison at the University of Dar-es -Salaam. The debates that took place in Dar-es-Salaam over the years should have armed the Ugandan intellectuals to go back there after Amin and to govern solidly and responsibly. But they utterly failed. The 1979 to 1986 era represented the best period of Uganda’s hope.
A simple declaration of interest is in order here. I was in Dar-es-Salaam myself residing at the University of Dar-es-Salaam during the entire year of 1977 and met some of the Ugandan intellectuals mentioned here. I knew the intensity of the Dar-es-Salaam school of thought. I bought a lot of books on the subject matter as I also worked in the University Bookstore and attended most of the debates.
Two Zambian intellectuals were also at the University of Dar-es-Salaam at the time: Dr Sipula Kabanje and the late Dr Roger Majula. During this time also many world liberation leaders passed through the University of Dar-es -Salaam to give speeches, including Fidel Castro of Cuba, Ndabaningi Sithole of then Rhodesia, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and many others.
The tragedy as well is that one of Uganda’s most promising future leaders studied in Dar-es-Salaam and his academic thesis promised a future Africa which was free from imperialism, corruption and all ills associated with the colonial and post-colonial traumatic stress disorder syndrome.
His name is Yoweri Museveni. Instead of liberating Uganda, he exacerbated the colonial and post-colonial traumatic stress disorder syndrome of governance, which he had inherited but had promised to transcend.
Museveni had adopted Frantz Fanon’s Thesis that revolutionary violence against colonialism begets true liberation and freedom, that violence cleanses the African of colonial induced inferiority complex. That violence purifies. Frantz Fanon wrote two worldwide influential books on the liberation potential of violence: “The Wretched of the Earth” and “Black Skins and White Masks” based on his experience and observations of French colonial violence against Algerians in Algeria in the 1950s and early 1960s.
These two books became some of the leading books on the ideologies of liberation in post-colonial Africa and populated the arsenal of books in the libraries of academia and liberation movements in Dar-es-Salaam, Lusaka, Washington DC, Chicago, Peking and elsewhere. Yoweri Museveni used these books as he ventured to do his thesis at the University of Dar-es -Salaam.
In those days in the 1960s and 1970s, students at the University of Dar- es -Salaam were required to do actual primary research in the field before completing their studies. To write his thesis on the liberating potential of revolutionary violence using the Fanonian thesis, Museveni travelled to actual colonial war zones in Mozambique with guerilla units of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO).
He witnessed revolutionary violence first hand, and trained what he did in future in actual armed guerilla warfare that brought him to power in 1986. Museveni used the liberating potential of revolutionary violence not to liberate his people as the theory based on Fanon’s hypothesis postulated, but to violently hold on to power for 40 years as of January 2026.
Museveni started out as a hopeful youthful intellectual, the future of a free Africa but ended up solidifying the very ills of Africa that he had written to overthrow. His is a continuing legacy of the colonial and post-colonial traumatic stress disorder syndrome of colonial and post-colonial mode of governance. When are the “Beautiful Ones” going to be born to paraphrase Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah?
After Museveni took over, some of the Ugandan intellectuals fled and relocated to Zimbabwe briefly, intellectuals like Wadada Nabudere, Yash Tandoni and others. I met Nabudere again in Harare and he told me of the tragedy of the Kampala experiment after the intellectual odyssey of Dar-es-Salaam. University of Zimbabwe becoming the new promising Mecca of intellectual gathering after its liberation from colonialism in 1980. My Master of International Affairs thesis at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, in Ottawa,, Canada was on the Liberation War in Zimbabwe.
I was therefore also excited by the prospects of the politics of true liberation in Zimbabwe after the excitement of Dar-es-Salaam. Thus my visit to Harare. But that Mecca didn’t last long for most intellectuals. Mugabe continued what he has inherited which was a colonial and post-colonial traumatic stress disorder of governance. The One-Party State that Mugabe created in 1980 after inheriting the Colonial One Party State of Ian Smith continues in 2026.
Museveni found One Party States or One Party Military Dictatorships when he assumed power in 1986. He did not have to look further for examples of what to do once he came into power. All he had to do was to perfect the system of repression so that he could not be overthrown as Amin and Obote were.
He had to perfect the theory of Frantz Fanon about the liberating potential of revolutionary violence but this time to turn that theory on its head and use violence not for liberation, but for oppression. Museveni knows that history repeats itself, first time as tragedy but second time as farce. Forty years in power and continuing. What a farce!
Prof. Munyonzwe Hamalengwa spent the whole year of 1977 at the University of Dar-es-Salaam and experienced the most interesting intellectual awakening of a life time.
