Ugandan Bush War

• President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni – Africa’s fourth-longest-serving head of state in 2023 – has cemented his place in history.
• When his men marched into Kampala in 1986, Museveni became the first leader of a popular insurrection to oust a sitting African government.
• Keeping the politically instructive memory of the dark past vividly alive has been his enduring achievement.

The politics of salvation

• His father was a member of the clan of noblemen; his mother was a born-again Christian, a convert of the East African Revival.
• Revivalists were renowned for their loud professions of rectitude and for their wilful disobedience towards traditional authorities.
• It was in politics, not religion, that the young Museveni sought to author other people’s salvation.

The ‘black Che Guevara’

• By the time the Amin regime collapsed in April 1979, Museveni had 9,000 volunteers under his command.
• In December 1980 Ugandans went to the polls to vote in a new government.
• There followed a long guerrilla war, fought between Museveni’s band of militants and the brutal, incompetent military of Obote’s government.
• In January 1986 National Resistance Army militiamen marched into Kampala and formed a new government, with Museveni as president.
• Commentators sometimes referred to Museveni as the “black Che Guevara”.

Commemorating the Bush War

• The awful violence of the Bush War, as it is called, made Museveni’s new government seem essential.
• Today the memory of the Bush War remains a key part of the liturgy of public life.
• Museveni periodically tours Luweero, where the Bush War was largely fought.
• In September this year he celebrated his 79th birthday at Katonga, scene of a key battle of the Bush War.