Yoweri Kaguta Museveni (born September 15, 1944) is a Ugandan politician who has been President of Uganda since 29 January 1986.
Museveni was involved in rebellions that toppled Ugandan leaders Idi Amin (1971–79) and Milton Obote (1980–85). With the notable exception of the north, Museveni has brought relative stability and economic growth to a country that has endured decades of rebel activity and civil war. His tenure has also witnessed one of the most effective national responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa.
In the mid to late 1990s, Museveni was celebrated by the west as part of a new generation of African leaders. His presidency has been marred, however, by involvement in civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other Great Lakes region conflicts. Rebellion in the north by the Lord’s Resistance Army had perpetuated a drastic humanitarian emergency. Suppression of political opposition and a 2005 referendum and constitution change scrapping limits on presidential terms, enabling extension of his rule, have attracted recent concern from domestic commentators and the international community.
Born on 15 September 1944 in Ntungamo, Uganda Protectorate, Museveni is a member of the Banyankole ethnic group. His surname, Museveni, means “Son of a man of the Seventh”, in honour of the Seventh Battalion of the King’s African Rifles. This was the British colonial army in which many Ugandans served during World War II.
Museveni gets his middle name from his father, Amos Kaguta, a cattle herdsman.
Kaguta is also the father of Museveni’s brother Caleb Akandwanaho, popularly known in Uganda as Salim Saleh, and sister Violet Kajubiri.
Museveni attended Kyamate Elementary School, Mbarara High School, and Ntare School. In 1967, he went to the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. There, he studied economics and political science and became a Marxist, involving himself in radical pan-African politics. While at university, he formed the University Students’ African Revolutionary Front activist group and led a student delegation to FRELIMO territory in Portuguese Mozambique, where he received guerrilla training. Studying under the leftist Walter Rodney, among others, Museveni wrote a university thesis on the applicability of Frantz Fanon’s ideas on revolutionary violence to post-colonial Africa.
In 1970, Museveni joined the intelligence service of Ugandan President Milton Obote. When Major General Idi Amin seized power in a January 1971 military coup, Museveni fled to Tanzania with other exiles, including the deposed president.
The exile forces opposed to Amin invaded Uganda from Tanzania in September 1972 and were repelled, suffering heavy losses. In October, Tanzania and Uganda signed the Mogadishu Agreement that denied the rebels the use of Tanzanian soil for aggression against Uganda. Museveni broke away from the mainstream opposition and formed the Front for National Salvation in 1973.
In August of the same year, he married Janet Kataha.
Museveni returned with his supporters to their rural strongholds in the Bantu-dominated south and south-west to form the Popular Resistance Army (PRA). They then planned a rebellion against the second Obote regime (Obote II) and its armed forces, the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA). The insurgency began with an attack on an army installation in the central Mubende district on 6 February 1981. The PRA later merged with former president Yusufu Lule’s fighting group, the Uganda Freedom Fighters, to create the National Resistance Army (NRA) with its political wing, the National Resistance Movement (NRM). Two other rebel groups, the Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) and the Former Uganda National Army (FUNA), engaged Obote’s forces. The FUNA was formed in the West Nile sub-region from the remnants of Amin’s supporters.
The NRA/NRM developed a “Ten-point Programme” for an eventual government, covering: democracy; security; consolidation of national unity; defending national independence; building an independent, integrated, and self-sustaining economy; improvement of social services; elimination of corruption and misuse of power; redressing inequality; cooperation with other African countries; and a mixed economy.
By July 1985, Amnesty International estimated that the Obote regime had been responsible for more than 300,000 civilian deaths across Uganda, although the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook puts the number at over
100,000.
On 17 November 2005, Museveni was chosen as NRMs presidential candidate for the February 2006 elections. His candidacy for a further third term sparked criticism, as he had promised in 2001 that he was contesting for the last time.
The arrest of the main opposition leader Kizza Besigye on 14 November – charged with treason, concealment of treason, and rape – sparked demonstrations and riots in Kampala and other towns.
In 2007, Museveni deployed troops to the African Union’s peacekeeping operation in Somalia.
Also in this term Museveni held meetings with investors that included Wisdek, to promote Uganda’s call centre and outsourcing industry and create employment to the country.
Museveni was re-elected on 20 February 2011 with a 68 percent majority with 59 percent of registered voters having voted.
The election results were disputed by both the European Union and the opposition. “The electoral process was marred with avoidable administrative and logistical failures”, according to the European Union election observer team.
Following the fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Museveni became the fifth-longest serving African leader.
In October 2011, the annual inflation rate reached 30.5 percent, principally due to food and fuel increases. Earlier in 2011, opposition leader Kizza Besigye staged “Walk to Work” protests against the high cost of living. On 28 April 2011, Besigye was arrested because Museveni said Besigye had attacked first, a charge he denied. Besigye’s arrest led to more riots in Kampala. Besigye promised that “peaceful demonstrations” would continue. The government’s response to the riots has been condemned by donor nations.
In more recent years, infringements on press freedom have increasingly been a central focus. According to Human Rights Watch, “Between January and June [2013], a media watchdog organization registered 50 attacks on journalists, despite multiple pledges to respect media freedom.” During this period, two widely read periodicals, The Daily Monitor and The Red Pepper, were shut down and seized by the government because they published allegations about a “plot to assassinate senior government and military officials who opposed to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni… and his plans to hand over power to his son when he retires”.
Another issue of human rights became an issue in early 2014 when Museveni signed an anti-homosexuality bill into law. In an interview with CNN, Museveni called homosexuals “disgusting” and said that homosexuality was a learned trait.
Western leaders, including United States President Obama, condemned the law.
Museveni has criticised the US’s involvement in the Libyan civil war, and in a UN speech argued that military intervention from African countries produces more stable countries in the long term, which he calls “African solutions for African problems.”
The presidential candidates included incumbent Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, and Kizza Besigye, who complained of rigging and violence at polling stations. Voting was extended in several locations after reports of people not being allowed to cast their votes. According to the Electoral Commission, Museveni was re-elected (18 February 2016) with 61 percent of the vote to Besigye’s 35 percent.
Opposition candidates claimed that the elections were marred by widespread fraud, voting irregularities, the repeated arrest of opposition politicians, and a climate of voter intimidation.
Museveni is an Evangelical Christian and preaches a few times at the Miracle Centre Cathedral, a church he inaugurated in 2004.
Yoweri Museveni net worth is estimated $4 billion (net worth estimated in 2017).
- An Uzomedia Biography
Vía Uzomedia http://ift.tt/2jVzPIW
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