Don't turn a blind eye The U.S. President will do all Africans a disservice, says MADELAINE DROHAN, if he doesn't point out that Uganda's celebrated leader is increasingly showing a darker side
By MADELAINE DROHAN Friday, July 11, 2003 - Page A15 Africa is a confusing place for someone like U.S. President George Bush, whose view of the world has the good guys wearing white hats and the bad guys obligingly dressed in black. The African leaders he has chosen to meet this week do not fit comfortably into either box. Pretending that they do for the sake of U.S. strategic interests will only cause massive problems for everyone down the road. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, whom Mr. Bush is to meet for four hours today, is a case in point. The former guerrilla leader fought his way to power in 1986 and won plaudits around the world for bringing relative peace and stability to a country ravaged by former leaders, including the notorious Idi Amin. While some neighbouring countries sank into chaos and decay, Mr. Museveni turned Uganda's economy around. He invited back the 70,000 Asian-Ugandans exiled by Idi Amin and promised they would be given back their expropriated properties and businesses. It was because of Mr. Museveni's policies that Uganda was the first poor country to become eligible for international debt relief in 1998. International aid money has flowed in, representing half of the country's annual budget. (Canadian taxpayers donated $31-million in 2001-2002, either directly or through international institutions.) The Ugandan leader's stand on terrorism brought new appreciation from Washington. Even before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks Mr. Museveni had pledged to support the war on terrorism, and Uganda was one of the 45 countries in Mr. Bush's coalition of the willing. But it is Mr. Museveni's record on HIV/AIDS that clinched his spot on the Bush itinerary. UN AIDS figures indicate Uganda, alone among sub-Saharan African countries, has managed to arrest the advance of this scourge and reduce the rate of infection among adults to a startlingly low 5 per cent, as of the end of 2001. Compared with South Africa and Botswana, where the adult infection rates are about 20 per cent and 38 per cent respectively, this is nothing short of amazing. What better backdrop for Mr. Bush's much-heralded, but as yet unfunded, program on HIV/AIDS? But Mr. Bush will do Ugandans and, indeed, all Africans a disservice if he does not acknowledge that Mr. Museveni is increasingly showing a darker side. Corruption is running rampant in his country, which ranks among the 10 worst countries in the world on the Transparency International corruption perceptions index. When international donors met in Kampala last May, they warned Mr. Museveni that they were finding it increasingly difficult to justify to the taxpayers back home the continuation of aid to Uganda. An estimated $40-million (U.S.) was being lost or misused each year, they estimated, and the rot extended from the very top of the administration down to the grassroots. Uganda's role in the Congo crisis is another black mark. An internal Ugandan government report showed that senior military officers were looting the Congo of its rich minerals for their own gain. The most worrisome development is Mr. Museveni's uncertain commitment to democracy. While elections were held in 1995 and 2001, only candidates belonging to the President's National Resistance Movement were allowed to run for office. This made the elections a complete mockery. Mr. Museveni maintains that political parties encourage tribalism and that Uganda is not yet ready for political pluralism. More recently, the party he controls voted at its national conference to remove the constitutional limit of two terms for any president. If this becomes law, it will allow Mr. Museveni to run again in 2006 and open the door to him becoming president for life. Prominent politicians who have spoken against the move have been sacked. Mr. Bush, who is not known for having a nuanced foreign policy, faces a difficult situation with Mr. Museveni. He is a good leader threatening to go bad, which makes him neither a black hat nor white in Mr. Bush's world. To his credit, the U.S. President has stated publicly that he expects a peaceful transition of power in Uganda in 2006. But he must show that he is willing to back his words with something stronger if Mr. Museveni refuses to go. The United States has also cut Mr. Museveni a lot of slack in his handling of armed resistance within Uganda, including the extremely brutal 13-year-old rebellion in Acholiland in the north. Until now, Mr. Museveni's army has been grossly ineffectual in putting a stop to raids by the cult-like Lord's Resistance Army against local civilians to capture and enslave children for its ranks. Local people accuse Mr. Museveni of half-heartedly prosecuting the war -- to torment the Acholi for past opposition to his government, they believe -- or of feigning action in order to pursue a negotiated peace settlement. Whatever Mr. Museveni's true motivation, the massive suffering continues. The United States has a long history of looking the other way when a leader deemed necessary to its strategic interest acts less than democratically at home. Ugandans I spoke to during visits in 2001 and 2002 believe that Mr. Museveni's reputation as Africa's renaissance man will shield him from any international retribution for his actions in the Congo, his corruption and his foot-dragging on democracy. It is a cynical, but probably accurate, assessment of the current state of affairs. It's up to Mr. Bush to prove them wrong. Madelaine Drohan is author of Making a Killing: How and Why Corporations Use Armed Force, to be published this fall.
