Yoweri Kaguta Museveni's rise from a little-known University of Dar es Salaam graduate to President of Uganda took many people by surprise. Yet Mr Museveni's ambition and political activism can be traced much earlier.

Born around 1944 in a peasant and pastoralist background in Ankole, to Mr Amos Kaguta and the late Ms Esteri Kokundeka, Museveni got his name from the 'Abaseveni,' as Ugandan servicemen who fought in World War II under the Seventh Regiment of the King's African Rifles were known locally.

In his 1997 autobiography, 'Sowing the Mustard Seed,' Museveni says his childhood was simple and revolved around the cattle-keeping traditions of the Banyankole. He found time for school, attending Mbarara High School and later Ntare School, before joining Dar Es Salaam University in 1967.

According to the official State House website, President Museveni's earliest leadership role came in 1966 when he led a campaign against colonial-era policies by mobilising peasants in northern Ankole to fence their land and urging them not to vacate it.

Nothing at this point indicated that Museveni was destined for power. Mzee Boniface Byanyima, the former national chairman of the Democratic Party, who was the schoolmaster at Mbarara High, got to know Museveni quite well, and described him as an 'average student' of whom he expected little.

"He used to spend holidays at my house," Byanyima told Sunday Monitor in a September 2001 interview. "You see a leader should at that age show signs, for example being a prefect. But he was not such a type; he struck me as a bad man," Byanyima added.

(Mzee Byanyima is the father of Winnie, wife of Museveni chief challenger Kizza Besigye, who is in detention on charges of terrorism and treason).

Mr Augustine Ruzindana, who went to Ntare with Museveni, served his government and then fell out to join the opposition Forum for Democratic Change, says Museveni played a peripheral role in student leadership at the school.

"He was a member of some society, I don't remember whether it was the Scripture Union or Entertainment Society but there is one election he lost and he took it badly. Now when I see how he fears elections, I think it is not new," Ruzindana told the Weekly Observer in a recent interview.

It was at the University of Dar es Salaam, where he went between 1967 and 1970, that the political animal in Museveni roared to life. His contemporaries at the time included former cabinet minister and long-time friend Mr Eriya Kategaya, the late former Foreign Affairs minister, Mr James Wapakhabulo, the Prime Minister of Buganda Kingdom, Mr Joseph Mulwanyamuli Ssemwogerere, and Mr John Kawanga, the Masaka Municipality Member of Parliament.

Museveni is said to have started an ideological study and activist group known as the University Students African Revolutionary Front (USARF) before he went on to fight alongside Mozambique rebels of Frelimo.

His classmates report that Museveni, who graduated from Dar es Salaam with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science in 1970, hardly attended lectures because of his activism with Frelimo. This, some of his critics say, contributed to his eventual poor academic performance.

After university, Museveni returned to Uganda and worked as an intelligence officer in President Apollo Milton Obote's office. The late Obote, who shared a mutual dislike with the man later destined to be President, hardly noticed the young Museveni.

"I didn't know Museveni personally because when he worked in my office, he was a junior officer," Obote said in one of his interviews with KFM radio's Andrew Mwenda.

"I would have known him if he was a student leader because I interacted with student leaders so much but he was never a student leader."

When Idi Amin ousted Obote in the 1971 coup, Museveni found himself in exile, and began mobilising a military response. Those efforts led, eventually, to the formation of the Front for National Salvation (Fronasa), one of several groups of Ugandan exiles that fought alongside the Tanzanian People's Defence Forces to oust Amin in April 1979.

Museveni's first real taste of power came during the post-Amin euphoria, when, in 1980, he was appointed Minister of Defence and vice chairman of the ruling Military Commission, which was headed by Paulo Muwanga. The Commission organised elections later that year in which Museveni ran for the presidency under the umbrella of the Uganda Patriotic Movement.

Museveni lost to Sam Kutesa, then of the Democratic Party, but later to become the President's in-law, confidante and senior cabinet minister. The UPM won only one seat - through Dr Crispus Kiyonga in Kasese - and looked destined for the dustbin of political history.

However, Museveni, made good his earlier threats to resort to war if the elections were rigged, and went to the bush in February 1981, with 26 others and declared war on Obote's newly elected government under the National Resistance Army and its political wing, the National Resistance Movement.

The NRA took power on January 26, 1986, ending the war in which thousands of people were killed, most of them in the Luwero Triangle. Museveni was sworn in as president a few days earlier.

In an eloquent and stirring speech, the new President laid out a 10-point programme to rebuild the country, and said his was not just a mere change of guards, but a "fundamental change".

Museveni promised to hold elections in four years and, to hold the country together, appointed political opponents from other warring factions and political parties, notably Andrew Kayiira of FEDEMU, and Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere of the Democratic Party.

In 1989, the National Resistance Council voted to extend the life of the government to allow time for a new constitution to be drafted. A Constituent Assembly was duly constituted and a new Constitution was promulgated in 1995.

Museveni was at this time enjoying international acclaim for returning the rule of law to Uganda and for speaking out openly about the HIV/Aids epidemic, which was devastating the population, at a time when other leaders denied the existence of the disease in their own countries.

In 1996, Uganda held its first-ever direct presidential elections and President Museveni defeated Dr Ssemogerere, who had resigned from government a year earlier to stand under the opposition alliance, the Inter Political Forces Coalition. Museveni won 75 percent of the votes in an election that Ssemogerere claimed was rigged.

Immediately after the election, President Museveni implemented his campaign promise of free Universal Primary Education, which allowed an extra four million children to join primary school. Praised internationally as one of a new breed of African leaders, Museveni took credit for repairing the basic infrastructure of the country, stabilising the economy, and overseeing a reduction in absolute poverty from 56 percent to 38 percent of the total population.

Change in tide

Criticism of Museveni's reign began growing in the late 1990s, over the continued restrictions on political parties, under the guise of the no-party 'Movement System' of government, as well the failure or reluctance to investigate and prosecute senior government officials accused of corruption and abuse of office.

Despite the criticism, Museveni maintained a firm grip on his government, the army and the organs of the ruling Movement.

Things began falling apart in November 1999, when Col. Besigye, a respected senior army officer, Movement ideologue and Museveni's former personal doctor, wrote a 14-page critique of the Movement, alleging that the fundamental change that had been promised had not been delivered.

Such sharp and internal criticism in the Movement was without precedent, and President Museveni blocked internal discussion of Besigye's paper. The colonel was allowed to retire from the army in October 2000, and he soon after declared that he would stand for President in the 2001 elections.

Besigye's announcement rocked the Movement. Many insiders, including Kategaya and Col (retired) Amanya Mushega, currently Secretary General of the East African Community, urged Besigye to allow Museveni to run for his last term in office.

Besigye claimed that Museveni intended to "rule forever."

Museveni won the election with 69 percent but Besigye, who got 27 percent, claimed that the election was rigged and petitioned the Supreme Court, which ruled that while there had been irregularities, they were not widespread enough to change the eventual outcome of the result.

After Parliament lifted term limits from the Constitution last year, allowing Museveni to stand again, the President comes into this election facing Besigye, back after four years in exile, albeit now in jail over treason and rape charges, as well as questions over his willingness to leave power.

In 'Sowing the Mustard Seed,' President Museveni portrays leadership as a sacrifice. He wrote in October 1996: "Although I have been President of Uganda for 10 years, and have just successfully sought re-election for a further five years, I feel I should reiterate my position on leadership. This is that unless one's purpose in seeking it is to steal public funds, leadership, especially in an underdeveloped country like Uganda, is an endless sacrifice."

President Museveni says he is seeking another term in office to work towards the formation of the East African Federation and to fight household poverty in Uganda. His critics, however, say that by staying on, Museveni is contradicting his earlier views on leadership.

Prof. Dan Nabudere, who worked with Museveni during the liberation days in Tanzania in the 1970s, accuses the President of turning militaristic when confronted with genuine democratic challenges.

"His claims to democratic credentials were not genuine," Nabudere says.

Retired Maj. Gen. Mugisha Muntu, who served as Museveni's army commander for nine years, says the President lacks moral courage to assert his agenda.

"He has failed in that. And really you can see when you look at many things he was saying. First in 1998 he said when he becomes 55 he will leave power. He is hiding his head in the sand like an ostrich," Muntu says, adding that the biggest problem with Museveni is "deception and manipulation".

Ssemogerere, the former DP President General who ran against Museveni in 1996 says although the President has some good qualities, his tendency to think that he is right all the time would slowly shape him into a dictator.

"His model of governance is totalitarian. And he uses it everywhere to undermine institutions. He does not want any centre of power other than him," Ssemogerere says.

Museveni's supporters, such as Defence Minister and NRM Secretary General, Mr Amama Mbabazi, have a different view.

"I have worked with President Museveni for the last 30 years and I can authoritatively say that he is the only one who can manage to lead the country at this moment because his track record is well known," said Mbabazi after Museveni had been nominated on December 15. "Those running against him have no known track record in leadership. Museveni is the people's choice."