There is a teaching in the Islamic tradition which tells us that God gave us treatment for all illnesses - except old age.
Yes, aging is illness that eats away a thousand pleasures. We might not have discovered the treatment for a specific illness (or the ever-profiteering pharmaceutical companies might be hiding the formula from the world), but this treatment surely exists and is simply yet to be discovered.
The Creator never gave us anything as an anti-ageing remedy. Not nutrition, not exercise, nor plastic surgery can stop the wrath of aging. There is an entire billion-dollar industry nowadays that claims to slow down ageing. But cannot stop it. After some time, the body finally starts to collapse.
This is a fact awaiting all of us: where once fine skin stood, gives way to wrinkles. Where once a beautiful smile charmed the world, ugliness takes its place. Shakespeare talks about the seven ages of man, and in the final age, one loses almost their pack of aesthetics: teeth, hair, speech, agility, memory and several others.
What is true presently is that there is no amount of internal opposition in Uganda - democratic or otherwise - that can overthrow Museveni's government. Exactly because Ugandans never put Museveni into office. Neither have Ugandans maintained him in that position.
As we know, plenty of evidence abounds, Museveni was put in office by a mutant imperial machine of the Western world. (Thanks to Kalundi Serumaga's recent review of William Pike's book, Combatants. It is incredible how William Pike revealed so much about Museveni's colonial propping by writing so little).
This explains why our entire economy (banking, energy, Umeme, cash crop farming, Lake Victoria, gold mining, telecoms, etc.) is all in the hands of foreign monopolies because that was the deal Museveni negotiated with the UK's MI6 as Pike would reveal to us.
The point I am making here is that Museveni can only overthrow himself. But this would mean, all of a sudden becoming a communist and trying to promote local capital and enterprise.
But as the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) dissolution recently demonstrated, even at 80, Museveni is not about to flirt with local capital growth. Exactly, because he has a deal, which he has to uphold for his entire lifetime.
IT IS NOT BESIGYE
In being a committed worker for foreign capital, brother Yoweri Museveni has also helped many folks into some form of wealth. These folks, who form most of the visible state (public service heads, high-end dealers) and the deep state are endlessly cutting deals with foreign capital and making sumptuous cuts. (Although, it is my position these cuts are really miniscule compared to what the foreigner takes out of the country. But, granted, they are exciting to an individual).
If I were one of these people, and had a future plan to continue benefitting from the deals cut under Yoweri Museveni for myself and own offsprings, I would be watching Museveni very closely. This does not mean beefing his security personnel against a potential overthrow, but I would be watching and making calculations around Museveni's time machine.
Its battery life is closer to its limit than ever before. Museveni's deep state has so short-sightedly taken this democratic joke too far. They have somehow focused on an already-finished opposition - forgetting that Yoweri Museveni is his own opposition.
Look, to stay in power as long as he wants, bwana Museveni has had to play only two cards: be an honest and committed caretaker for Uganda on behalf of the new colonisers (International Monetary Fund, World Bank, the United Kingdom and others in this league), and make sure he stays healthy. On both, the man has done well. Unlike his peers, like his co-president brother, Gen Salim Saleh, the man neither drinks nor smokes.
M7'S TIME BATTERIES
But we need to be honest with ourselves, if Museveni lived to be as old as Cameroon's Paul Biya, there are no guarantees for a similar presidential life as Biya's. Born out of different histories, Biya governs from Paris, from where he does the same things as Museveni. But in truth, like a couple other countries in West Africa, France directly governs Cameroon.
But Museveni is never "running" Uganda from London. But even if he were to live and have the same presidential career as Biya (which will be too bad for my friend, Muhoozi Kainerugaba), both men will have to succumb to the wrath of aging at some point. It is the inevitable.
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If Museveni presently wobbles when he walks, and, we are told, sleeps through meetings, surely by 2034, he will be in a different world altogether. And as time continues to rain blows on his already haggard frame, the more precarious the fortunes of those harvesting the fruits of his presidency will be.
Thus, if I were in the deep state, I would worry more about the man's ticking clock, and not an already emasculated opposition - for which we also have an already proven formula to deal with it. Because once the man finally loses himself to age (not necessarily through death, but say become a Joe Biden of sorts), there will be sheer pandemonium both inside the palace and the streets of Kampala.
Now this is an entirely different world. My point is this: I find it entirely useless for the deep state spending creative energies on Dr Kizza Besigye or Bobi Wine or other smaller folks.
It is wasteful to escalate these games, and exhaust yourselves when your man can only end himself. How I wish these energies were spent on cobbling a legit internal replacement.
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.
