Of Museveni's health status and views that confound many

President Yoweri Museveni. [UPPS]

Now clocking 78 years with Uganda firmly in his grip, a choking one in the eyes of his critics, the president is a known health freak. He engages in physical exercises which include swimming and many times he has showed the world how fit he is.

Other than his left arm that sometimes gives him difficulties in moving, he is not known to suffer any health condition. Museveni belongs to the group of traditional-style rulers who rarely, publicly, owns up to a sickness or any other human weakness.

Coming from a clan of the Banyankole people that is known to live long, his father Kaguta having died at the age of 97, and his known uncles having lived beyond 100 years, Museveni considers himself young, and many times he has shown fitness donning his military fatigues matching majestically, trotting now and again and doing exercises publicly.

Despite the strongman's show Museveni harbours fears of infections and so on trips he carries his traditional food; he has his own standards on nutritional content, and he publicly says it. He has emerged as a solid proponent of African foods, despising western diets.

Museveni remains embroiled in an internally generated war of the mind about his firm believe in African (or borrowing from his early engagements with Pan-Africanism) and dismisses modernity in its various presentations (Christianity, colonialism/loan post-colonial linkages, English language, and donor aid). This is a war of the mind he regularly wages on anybody who wants to hear.

As the firebrand freedom fighter ages, and the heavy state responsibilities continue weighing on him, he has gradually transformed into an African elder, sharing publicly what he firmly believes should concern Africans-strict adherence to the African cultural believes and practices that belonged to our forefathers including diet, food, sexual and reproductive health, medication, and religion. He never hides his disdain for Western culture. He in fact blames them for the current challenges facing third world countries.

As a military general and grandfather (many times during his dialogues with Ugandans he calls them bazukululu-which loosely translates to grandchildren), he seems to hate anybody questioning his way of looking at things and general approach to life. He is the man that commanded a team of armed young men that toppled a civilian government in January 1986, and has ruled Uganda ever since. A man like that would certainly wonder whether there exists in his surroundings anyone that knows more about leadership than him. Who can question his wisdom?

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni in Johannesburg, South Africa, July 27, 2018. [Reuters]

Following Thursday's budget reading in Parliament, Museveni immediately released a statement accusing his public/state officers of colluding with colonialists by signing loan agreements behind his back. He accused them of plotting to get money for their own use which in his estimation was corruption. He blames them for the current debt portfolio. Through a signed statement, he says he will personally take over loan agreements and will be the one signing them.

His senior officials, including the prime minister, are embroiled in a mabati theft saga even as Museveni accuses public servants of corruption.

His scepticism about Christianity and related western practices is captured in his book 'Sowing the Mustard Seed' where he accuses missionaries of being responsible for rendering Africans (Ugandans) lazy. He argues that people were led to live at the behest of God.

In her book "The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Betrayed: Memoirs of Miria Matembe, the author accuses the president of weakening the Leadership Code that aimed at forcing public officials to declare their wealth. Matembe, a former minister in Museveni's Cabinet, also accuses the president of pardoning people convicted of corruption.

Helen Epstein, a lecturer of Human Rights and Global Public Health at Bard, says that while Museveni yearned to fill the intellectual void left in Eastern Africa after the retirement of Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, he does not quite measure up to Nyerere's legacy.

"Museveni's ideas are limited and pragmatic, nurtured in the battlefields of Uganda's rural Luwero Triangle and within the constraints of global capitalism. This book is steeped more in the narrow convention of a street fighter than the contemplative tone of a scholarly treatise," says Prof Epstein.

Former journalist and now Kira Municipality MP Ssemujju Nganda says the president always claims that he is requested by people to remain at the helm but this is not true.

"He violated his promise when he assumed power in 1986. He violated his own manifesto on 2001 where he promised he was not going to stay for long.

"At one stage he claims he is not interested in the seat but people urge him to stand. The president and his family have become a big burden to the country," says Nganda.

For a man who started off as an opposition politician, jumped into exile and led a mass movement that changed the political direction of the country, Museveni must constantly be bothered that his country could slide back and that is something he wouldn't wish for.