A team of rivals, paratroopers or fishermen; same difference
Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni is the only leader in the region who never disappoints when it comes to flaunting a philosopher’s card, every now and then when he speaks. To drive a point home he will adopt an intellectual air, with a lecture offered. As those with a passing interest for things political in Uganda will have seen, his choices of a vice president and prime minister shocked them.
Some have especially dismissed the newly-appointed prime minister that she is not up to the task and will not be able to deliver. Others, however, have said such criticism is being unfair to her, that none of her predecessors in the Museveni era was ever able to deliver anything on their own or launch their own initiatives which would impede the shine on the big man. After all, they point out, Museveni one way or the other on his way out, would not pick a strong-willed character for prime minister.
There are those who are not impressed by the entire cabinet. They are unimpressed at the size of cabinet and what they consider to be recycling some old and tired NRM cadres. Some of these have opted to look at the new cabinet lineup through the context of whose acquaintance or telephone number is worth having given their proximity to the big man himself because that would dictate whether they play in the premier league or some minor, not even regional but local leagues.
President Museveni had his take on his own ministers. While speaking to members of parliament at Kololo independence Grounds, he said of his cabinet that, “…I have brought you a list of ministers…I know that many of you are Christians but many people do not understand Christianity very well although they talk about it. Jesus when he started his movement, there were intellectuals called Pharisees, highly educated people but Jesus looked for fishermen. Jesus did not recruit Pharisees, Levites, Sadducees; he went for Simon Peter the fisherman…So please when you look at my list, know that I am in the path of Jesus”.
However, during the same event, he said something which is more close to how rulers work in this part of the world in their choices of cabinet ministers or other presidential appointees. Museveni was quoted as saying that, “… (In forming the cabinet) I have to look at religion, region, tribe and other things.”
This is the unfortunate reality of politics in Africa. Appointments have to be ‘balanced’ and this balancing act as if it were the Earth and its tectonic movements and political calculations are paramount to other considerations whether it is the age or academic qualifications or the experience of appointees in the tasks they have been handed. After all, no one goes to school to learn about how to become a minister of any portfolio.
We have been countless times before. Every time a president announces his or her choice of ministers each look to see whether ‘one of their own’ has made it. Whether such appointee is competent or not is entirely beside the point. There have been ministers who served for a decade or more in the cabinet despite their dismal records at whatever portfolio they were assigned to. Clearly, there were other considerations to keeping them around for so long.
A president has many constituencies. There is family, whether immediate or extended. In some countries on the continent these take up most of the ‘big’ ministries like finance and defence. Cabinet meetings mirror family meetings. For anyone to make it to the cabinet and stay there they must know an influential family member.
There is the ruling party. In case where that party is deeply divided with factionalism, then those factions are another constituency which has to be considered when making any appointments. That way, you may end up with a bloated cabinet with portfolios created for the sake of keeping the rumblings within silent for as long as is politically possible.
There is the military too. Where it is actively involved in politics, then appointments are guaranteed to them.
This way you end up with a long list of ministers who are easily forgotten by the rest of the public, an incompetent lot. The few, who manage to make headlines, do so for mostly the wrong reasons. A few of them will work hard to outdo each other so that the man or woman in charge will notice them.
Regardless of whether it is a team of rivals, or they are paratroopers or a team of fishermen, it makes no difference if they do not please the man or woman who can easily drop them with a press release. After all, he or she is the common denominator to all of them.
