Foreign dictator Tibuhaburwa now believes he is the Last King of Scotland. It is a title Idi Amin gave himself in a fit of murderous delusion, but Museveni has adopted it with his buffoonery and with far more dangerous permanence.
In his book Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State, Prof Mahmood Mamdani said what Ugandans have whispered for over 40 years: octogenarian despot Museveni is worse than Amin.
Mamdani is the Ugandan Asian scholar whose own family was expelled by Amin in 1972. He was among the fiercest critics of Amin’s reign of terror. If anyone has the moral authority to compare the two dictators, it is him. And his verdict is damning.
Amin killed fast. Museveni kills faster. That is Mamdani’s central argument; Amin was a butcher who announced his brutality. He murdered his opponents and left their bodies in the Nile. He was savage, erratic, and visible. The world could see him for what he was: a tyrant yet Museveni is far worse than Amin.
Museveni murders not only people but also institutions. Museveni is the first President to ever molest the Constitution. He murders the future of an entire generation.
For four decades, Dictator Museveni has sold the world a myth: that he is the revolutionary who brought order after chaos. Mamdani tears that myth apart with the calm precision of a scholar who has spent fifty years studying power in Africa.
What order has Museveni brought?
He found a nation traumatized by dictatorship and instead, he institutionalized the trauma. Amin ruled for eight years with a gun. Museveni has ruled for forty years with a gun a machete and poison.
Amin expelled Asians. Museveni has expelled the hope of all Ugandans.
Amin destroyed lives. Museveni destroys the very idea that Uganda can exist without him and if you dare question that, you are dead. He has raped the Constitution by amending it more than twice to remove all limits – terms and age, not because Uganda needs him, but because he needs Uganda to hide him as ICC is waiting for him. Definitely, his expiration time is due.
He has turned elections into expensive rituals of violence, where opposition leaders are tortured, journalists are beaten, and young people are shot on the streets of Kampala for daring to ask for change.
Mamdani is right. Amin’s poison was fast and lethal. You knew you were being poisoned. Museveni’s poison you never see it coming and you canโt tell who is the next target. Anyone and literally, is a target.
Museveniโs poison= works through the schools that no longer teach, through the hospitals that have no medicine, through the courts that no longer dispense justice, through the youth who graduate with degrees and no future except boda boda and exile.
Idi Amin wanted to be the Last King of Scotland. He failed and died in exile, a pathetic footnote yet despot Museveni wants to be the last president of Uganda but eventually Ugandans will confront his poison and he will go sooner than later.