Yes, General Muhozi Museveni Is Curmudgeonly, But His Jingoistic Tweet About Uganda’s Military Capacity To Annex Kenya In Seven Days Is A Fact

General Muhozi Museveni, the commander in chief of the Uganda revolutionary infantry was conceived in Kenya in early 1974 and born in Kenya in the same year. So he is a Kenyan by ambiguous citizenship. His mother, Janet Museveni, by then had dropped out of school, living as an undocumented refugee in Kenya. Her parents had died in war on the Uganda Bantus by Idi Amin’s government. Thus, she was working for a relative as a hopeless house-help in Nairobi, somewhere in Kayole. That was the time also Yoweri Museveni had dropped out of Dar es Salam University, he was operating as a feral cat in Tanzania and in the bush in Uganda, consolidating the guerrilla machinery to fight Idi Amin Dada out of power. However, sometimes Yoweri Museveni used to sneak to Kenya to meet his girlfriend and fellow villager that became Janet Museveni.

One day Museveni travelled from Uganda to Nairobi to pay a romantic but very clandestine visit to Janet before proceeding to Umorogoro Cooperative college in Tanzania (where he was working as a part-time lecturer, teaching cooperative studies, but working as a full time guerrilla fighting in Mozambique through the revolutionary initiatives of Julius Nyerere) After meeting Janet in Kayole, Museveni also invited Janet to a room in Ambassadeur Hotel at the city centre in Nairobi, while he was sitting at the lounge taking a soda as he waited for Janet to arrive, Museveni Noticed a huge tall man stealing a menacing look at him , the huge man was Bernard Shaw, the sharp-shooting reservist police working in Nairobi, but by then Shaw had been assigned by both Kenya and Uganda governments to shoot Museveni on sight.

Good luck, Museveni’s guerrilla instinct enabled him to realize size of danger he was in, Museveni decoyed Shaw by pretending to be calling for one more drink at the counter only to steal a chance to execute movements through which he vanished away from the shooting distance of Bernard Shaw.

Museveni took cover in darkness scampering for safety, taking the first taxi on sight, he pressured the taxi-driver to quickly ferry him out of Nairobi towards Arusha, only to be dropped at Isinya where the money he had ended. Museveni walked on foot from Isinya to Tanzania. This was also the same day Janet conceived Muhozi, and it was also the first day Yoweri Museveni began developing Neurotic hatred for Kenya. This is a very well-known story that Yoweri Museveni himself shared in the Sowing the Mustard Seed, his auto-biographical memoir.

Museveni also has derivative hatred for Kenya Luo’s. He has some kind of passionate hatred for Luo’s. First because the Luo speaking Ugandans from the North in the likes of the Acholi, the Lugbara, the Lango and the Japathola produced Uganda’s first post-colonial leaders that messed up with political stability in Uganda during the mid-years of the last century . Idi Amin was Lugbara, Milton Obote was a Lang’o and Ludwar Tito Okello was an Acholi. According to Museveni, these were the leaders that messed up with Ugandan politics. But specifically, Museveni has dismissed the Luo’s as socially unreliable people with mental capacities punctured by snobbishness, megalomania, paranoia and very irritating public display of thrasonical behaviour. Museveni bases this highly opinionated social observation about the Luo’s on the war history of a very humiliating defeat which Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Milton Obote suffered when the two chose to fight Idi Amin Dada by only using Luo soldiers because according to Obote and Jaramogi Luo’s are the most intelligent people in East Africa .

Jaramogi got himself in this mire out of political sentimentality that comes along with ethnicity and identity in the sense that Obote was his fellow Luo, and also Obote subscribed to common-man-charter, a kind of utopian socialism which was also para-ideology that Jaramogi Oginga Odinga used to flirt with during those days. Yoweri Museveni sardonically pictures this experience in the Sowing the Mustard Seed by also inferring this to be among other reasons why his psychology is substantially not free from neurotic hatred for Kenya Luo’s.

We also have another Ugandan story with similar texture; after the infamous Entebbe raid in which Uganda was defeated in its own game of arms and weapons as narrated in the Ninety Minutes in Entebbe and as well as in the Last King of Scotland, Idi Amin Dada ordered the military to drive out all Kenyans from Uganda within five days, Amin’s order also required that no Kenyan should carry along anything like personal belonging, not even an extra shirt out of Uganda.

During the operation most Kenyans were killed, murdered, terrorized, raped, and properly brutalized by the state of Uganda. This happened because the state machinery for propaganda in Uganda had convinced Ugandan citizens that the Kenya government of that time had collaborated with Israel government to stifle the state sponsored act of terrorism which Uganda had perfected by capturing and holding hostage the aeroplane which was carrying some Israel Nationals , hence Kenyans were enemy aliens in Uganda. Kenyan survivors of this episode have always narrated that Ugandans collective reacted to Uganda’s shameful military fiasco in the Entebbe raid by just singing in one voice; Kenyans must go! This was only sometimes before Idi Amin had to suffer another most humiliating military defeat in Tanzania when he wanted to use his military to annex the region of Mutukula from Tanzania, in addition to having had made broadly-based statement that he also wanted to extent the boundary of Uganda to Naivasha . Thus, historical facts are clear, it is only Uganda which has been displaying internecine war intentions on other East African countries.

Back to Museveni and his General son Muhozi, there are very many historical groundings why one is justified to doubt those tongue-in-a-cheek apologies by President Yoweri Museveni on behalf of his son, General Muhozi, over the tweet by Muhozi that Uganda can only take seven days to capture Nairobi must not be taken serious. Museveni is only lulling Kenyans to sleep. And it is better if Kenyans are not lulled to sleep by Museveni’s dissolubility. The fact is that General Muhozi is a seasoned soldier, well educated, properly trained and well exposed. He has been to all good military schools in the world. He is a well experienced military professional beyond committing a tongue-slip. His tweet is a military signal, he is speaking on behalf of very well-coordinated military system and extensively perpetrated international espionage. For example, there are over five million Ugandans living in Kenya as un-documented migrants. Most of them pose as domestic workers, shebeen keepers, and red-street workers. They ask for very insignificant pay for whatever work they do, social statistics around their work socialization reveal that they accept any pay-rate suggested. The inferable facts are that, most of Ugandans living in Kenya are not desperate job-seekers, they are well trained intelligence officers working as spies for their government, picking any data that may benefit their country in the military sense. This is the point at which Kenya government must improve the standard of managing the degree of porousness of the borders to have Ugandans working in Kenya to be documented before getting hired.

Kenya’s persistent laxity in managing border porousness is not only a security threat but also the root cause of interstate economic betrayal. For example, in Nairobi Tusker, Pilsner and white-cap retail at an average of two hundred Kenya shillings, but along the areas of Kenya-Uganda border like Lodwar, Bungoma, Busia, Pokot and Kitale, the same beers retail at less than a hundred Kenya shillings. Not for anything but due to the fact that some beers that look like Kenya’s tusker, pilsner and white-cap are maliciously smuggled in from Uganda, not only for commercial purpose, but for the primary purpose of conspiracy against Kenya’s breweries and at same time perfect snaring of Kenya’s youths into the abyss of over-exposure to cheap alcohol, a clear picture of Uganda perfecting evil machination and economic covetous on Kenya.

General Muhozi made his tweet immediately after Dr William Ruto, the President of Kenya had suggested that Kenya will take a hundred and forty thousand peace keeping soldiers to Congo, a move which does not sound good to Uganda given that Uganda takes advantage of political instability in Congo to loot wood and minerals from the Congo forest. Hence, General Muhozi must have been informing the world that he will perpetrate the acts of military hypocrisy to fetter Kenya’s efforts towards restoring of peace and democracy in Congo. Similarly, hypocrisy among some countries coupled with betrayal was also a factor that undermined African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) from achieving its peace-building goals in time.

At systemic level, Uganda’s propagandist system of political education has made all young people in Uganda to believe that Kenya is the major source of socio-economic problems in Uganda and hence it must be fought. This is a social observation you will come to when you happen to be a college student in Uganda. Factually, Kenya is not the cause of political challenges in Uganda, the major cause of Uganda’s political and economic challenges is the shallow nature of character of the leaders in Uganda. Thus, spite about Kenya by Uganda is just expression of subliminal sense of inter-state class conflict. This is also some kind of collective mentality I observed in Tanzania when attending a conference at St. Augustine Catholic University in Mwanza, during which several young men and even old men asked me if I was a Kenyan, whether I am aware that Tanzania can defeat Kenya at War. A year later in Dar es Salam at another academic conference still several young men and old men from Tanzania still asked me if I was aware that Tanzania can defeat Kenya at war. This was also the time around which John Pombe Magufuli was so hostile towards Kenya, and Farmajo had indicated that he was ready to go to war with Kenya. Very simple logic would obviously tell you that, just like General Muhozi Museveni, Farmajo was not making a tongue-slip neither was he talking as a President of Somalia, but instead he was sending out military signals on behalf of very well-coordinated international war intentions on Kenya. Hence, it can be logically extended that General Muhozi is very confident that if he attacks Kenya he is sure of throwing the long-range ballistic missiles from his strong-holds in Kisumayu or Arusha, not necessarily from Tororo. A military hope and imagination in which General Muhozi’s tweet is grounded.

Any Kenyan that is conscious about the words of Sun Tzu that ‘in war prepare for peace, but in Peace prepare for war’ cannot wish away General Muhozi’s tweet given some reflections under the light of above, there must be some moral obligations to occupy responsible consciousness of Nationhood . At personal level, I would rather fight and die in the battle field if General Muhozi tries to Annex Kenya’s Malaba town, forget about Nairobi. This is my contribution I will donate to the course of world peace, freedom and democratic governance for free of charge. It is a contribution I am ready to give in defence modern societies living free from the excesses of tyrannical Juntas. It is also a contribution all young people of Kenya must be ready and fit to give to their country in particular and to the world in general. However, in order to fight for one’s country one must be intellectually consciousness, physically alert and hardworking, free from alcoholism, drugs and homosexuality, free from desire for quick money and easy success. Cosmetic desire for property accumulation without sacrifice among the youths is a weakness for any country surrounded by warring enemies. But the spirit of readiness to self-immolation among the youths is a basic military and national defence asset for any country, this is my clarion call to the youths of Kenya.

It is a call that makes sense to those seasoned in the art of war, it binds the conscious minds among us to agree with the observation that it is true General Muhozi Museveni is well known as curmudgeonly person, but his jingoistic Tweet about Uganda’s military capacity to annex Kenya in seven days is a fact, it is not an emotional out-burst to be neglected, it is fact of war to be given carefully orchestrated technical treatment. It should be lazily thought away in a super-sensational fashion as mere balderdash in the stature of an ant climbing the thigh of a female elephant with an intention to rape the elephant.

Alexander Opicho writes from, Nairobi, Kenya