Foreign senile octogenarian despot Museveni finally said the quiet part out loud: “I’m a modern-day king.” Not a president. Not servant of the people but a King.
For over 4 decades in the State House, Museveni is no longer interested in preserving the language of republican government. He speaks as though Uganda were his personal kingdom, the national budget was his royal treasury, and citizens were subjects waiting for envelopes from the throne.
But here is the deeper irony: the man who now claims the title of king has spent decades weakening the independence and dignity of Uganda’s traditional institutions.
He has crippled kings through systematic weakening, there is credible evidence establishing that as fact.
He has turned respected cultural institutions into instruments of political patronage, dependency and control.
A king should embody the dignity, history and collective identity of his people. Under Museveni’s (mis)rule, traditional leaders are too often expected to survive on state favours, vehicles, security, appointments and political approval.
Their independence is gradually suffocatedโnot by a single dramatic act, but by years of calculated and systematic destruction.
That is how authority dies and that is how Museveni kills the real kings.
It is crippling when cultural leaders must flatter the president to protect their institutions. It is crippling when royal legitimacy is treated as something the central government can grant, restrict or manipulate.
It is crippling when a president who calls himself a king places himself above the very traditional leaders whose status he now invokes to justify handing out money.
Museveni’s message is breathtakingly clear: ‘traditional kings may exist, but he is the only one allowed to rule like one’
It’s only M7 to distribute “khaki envelopes.” – turning public funds into personal generosity.
Shs140 billion is allocated in the national budget for his “community outreach and initiatives.” That is not money from his private cattle or a royal estate. It is public moneyโtaxpayers’ moneyโrebranded as the personal benevolence of the ruler.
Then comes the hypocrisy.
Museveni condemns MPs for giving money to voters. He tells churches to ask where politicians get their cash. He warns voters that accepting money means surrendering their political power.
Yet he defends his own handouts. That is not opposition to vote-buying. It is a demand for exclusive ownership of vote-buying.
That is how despotism presents itself in its late stage: not as a coup, but as a ruler abandoning the last pretence that he is merely an elected servant.
And that is how kings and the pretence around them are destroyed: not always by direct crippling, but by weakening the meaning of authority, replacing service with patronage, independence with dependence, and citizenship with submission.
Uganda is not Museveni’s kingdom. The Constitution does not provide for a king in Kololo.
Most importantly, public money is not royal charity. Cultural leaders are not political ornaments. Citizens are not subjects.
Enough is Enough with Musevenism!