Museveni vs Besigye:

An American daily newspaper, the New York Times has published an incisive article that attempts to explain how President Museveni and Dr Kizza Besigye, once close friends, fell out and how their political rivalry has almost turned the tide in national politics. Here is a slightly

edited version.

Before the tear gas and street riots, the violent arrests and hospital visits, President Museveni and Dr Kizza Besigye were close friends, a future president and the doctor to whom he entrusted his life. They fought together to free their country from dictatorship. Now, as Uganda undergoes its most raucous political convulsion in years, with broad-based demonstrations and dissenting officials testing President Museveni’s 25-year hold on power, the passions from a feud that began long ago between the friends are playing out on the national stage.

Unlike the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, which were borne of popular uprisings, the protest movement in Uganda has been driven by a single man, Besigye, who may know the president and how to get under his skin better than any politician. Besigye did not light himself on fire, like the Tunisian man who set in motion the Arab Spring, or take up arms like the rebels in Libya. Instead, after losing badly to the president in yet another election he has run the last three times Besigye simply said he was going to walk to his office, rather than use his car, to protest rising commodity prices and corruption.

The resulting demonstrations were meek, Besigye was practically alone on the first day but President Museveni’s government responded with overwhelming force, eventually locking up hundreds of opposition supporters, killing others and at times using tear gas and water cannons to disperse as few as six protesters at a time.

With each clampdown, the protests became larger, fueled by outrage over the repression. Besigye, once seen as a political dud, was suddenly
credited as an alchemist, and President Museveni, long seen by the United States as a liberal ally, exhibited a more draconian side.
The protests have since fizzled, but the political row has not. Opposition lawmakers boycotted the president’s recent inaugural address, Besigye has appeared in court on numerous charges, and the police remain heavily deployed.

Many have wondered why the president would inflate such a seemingly insipid challenge. His critics, some of whom were once close to him, say this is the real Museveni, an arrogant and at times ruthless ruler who has silenced political opponents to stay in power this long.
But they also say that the feud is personal, tied to the president’s relationship with Besigye and his wife, Winnie Byanyima, whom Museveni
has known since childhood.

The history may shed light on the depth of the political movement. It was the winter of 1980, after nearly a decade of Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship, when Besigye, then a young doctor, started attending rallies for a popular and charismatic new political figure, Museveni.
“He was a young person who in himself attracted us as young people,” Besigye said. “He was saying the right things that struck a chord with
us, about what kind of government Uganda deserved.

We started to see him as one of the shining torches.” When Museveni’s new political party came in third in the general elections that year,
he started a guerrilla movement in the bush. Activists like Besigye were hunted down, and Besigye says he and others were locked in the
basement of a popular Kampala hotel.

He escaped and in 1982 found the rebels in the bush and was welcomed by Museveni, who made him his personal doctor. “I lived next to him in a tent,” Besigye said, “and stayed close by him until the end of the war.” Besigye said he also met Byanyima. She was a young
rebel officer close to Museveni in the bush while his wife and children were living in Sweden.

Years later, Besigye and Byanyima would marry. After Museveni triumphed and became president in 1986, Besigye was named minister
of internal affairs.