Museveni’s identity crisis

On reading President Yoweri Museveni’s book, sowing the Mustard Seed, you realize that it reflects the character of a person finding it difficult to correctly explain his family tree, parentage, real place of birth, as well as date of birth. There is also an apparent cover-up of the social status of his family, a cover-up on his true relationship with the late Boniface Byanyima family and accounts of his childhood memories that seem to be more imaginary than real.

Interestingly, Museveni writes that his own family – his daughters and wife, contest his earliest collection of his life on earth. Museveni claims that he could recall what happened around him at the age of four months! Well, his wife is the Minister of Education and she knows what she is saying.

But a defiant Museveni has this to say to his family: “I, however, regard this as treachery against knowledge to conceal what I remember most vividly, on account of intimidation by my daughters not to record events as I remember them.”

If his own family contested what is contained in the book, then who will trust what Museveni claims about his life and other events discussed in the book?

Museveni calls Ntungamo, a region in Western Uganda, his birth place and that of his father, Amos Kaguta, and informs the reader that his grandfather was born in Rukungiri (Rujumbura), while his great grandfather Kashaanku ka Kyamukaaga Ruhirimbura, was born in Rusheenyi (Ruyonza-Kakaamba area). “It seems that is our area of origin,” Museveni writes with doubt. 

Instead of revealing his real birthplace, Museveni invents his birth place as Mbarara town. “I was born in the old Government Hospital at Mbarara somewhere near the town clerk’s premises.  One would have thought that it would have made my birthday very easy to establish. That was the exact opposite,” Museveni notes.

In his usual style of blaming others for his own predicaments, Museveni blames his parents: “my own parents never bothered with knowing birthdays in exact terms.”

He also blames the colonial government for not keeping records properly.   “The birthday is about the 15^th September 1944. What a shame for somebody who was born in a government hospital to fail to know his exact date of birth, all on the account of a faulty record keeping and storage – both colonial and post-colonial,” Museveni wrote.

Museveni contradicts himself on the account of poor record keeping regarding his birthdate. When he says that he invited an old veterinary officer, Serugendo, to Rwakitura in the investigation of his birthdate, Serugendo was precise in specifying the dates for cattle mass vaccination as 24^th and 28^th of November 1944.  Therefore, this is an indication that colonialists were good at keeping records, and if Museveni was born at a government hospital in Mbarara, his birth records would be found without guessing.

Museveni’s search of his birthdate is a mystery. Museveni labors very much in the book, to prove that by mere luck he came to know his birthdate although through an unnamed witness.

“As Luck would have it, there was an old lady, Tophus Bwankuunku, who kept telling somebody I knew that she knew when I was born. In spite of my busy schedule, I managed to ring her once. I asked her how she knew when I was born…”

What follows is a confusing long narrative popular with Museveni’s style when he wants to tell a lie. The birth certificate of his son, Gen. Muhoozi Keinerugaba, retrieved from Loitokitok General Hospital in Kenya, gives a different account of Museveni’s birth place and names.

The certificate identifies the child’s names as; Muhoozi Keinerugaba Tibuhaburwa wa Rutabasirwa and the fathers names as; Yoseri Tibuhaburwa Rutabasirwa, whose birthplace is Tare, in Rwanda.

Museveni does not discuss in his book, if he ever changed names.Probably he changed Yoseri to Yoweri. But the dropping of other names to acquire Kaguta Museveni remains obscure.  “Banyankore, unlike Baganda, do not have the time to recite the names of all their ancestors for many centuries,” Museveni claims in his book.

However, Banyankore elders disagree with him. Infact, cattle keepers had time to recite their ancestry which would form long poems (Kwevuga).  Museveni was covering up his parental lineage which cannot be traced in Uganda. There are two incriminating facts of his Rwandan origin that Museveni himself hints on. “Mzee Kaguta told me that one of his aunts, Mwangire, used to swear as follows: “Nga emaanzi za Bugala (I swear by the heroes of Bugala).”

Bugala is on the River Kagera on the border with Tanzania.  What connection do we have with the Bagala? Oral history does not tell us. Karagwe of course, has got a lot of Basiita even up to today. Some of Museveni’s relatives who came from Rwanda are known to have settled in Karagwe.

Sodo Aine Godfrey Kaguta, who lives in Sembabule and contested against Sharit Musherure Kutesa in the last parliamentary elections, is Museveni’s brother from the Kaibanda family.

Sodo speaks fluent Kinyarwanda.  Although Museveni mentions Kaibanda as his father’s cousin, it is believed that he is his biological father, instead of Amos Kaguta.His mother was married to Amos when she was pregnant with Kaibanda’s child at the time she moved from Tare in Rwanda.  

“It is amazing to note that for the 68 years I stayed with the late mzee Amos he never once said the name of his father, Kabuguma, or uncles Karacha and Kacuuya. He would, instead say: ‘Ishe- “Kaibanda’ - the father of his first cousin, Kaibanda,” Museveni writes.

Form his own account, Museveni is a man who has lived his life entangled in a deep identity crisis. When he wants to demonstrate that he has no connection with Rwanda, that’s when he uses a person like Gen. Abel Kandiho who has a similar identity crisis to torture innocent Rwandans.