By Nathan Kikku Mubiru
As if Kizza Besigye wasn’t feeling glum enough about his failed banana plants to pot hole demonstration, it can only have been compounded by his greatest career rival, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, scooping up the Non-Aligned Movement chair the night after.
While there are now so many positions that they have mostly lost meaning, it felt fitting- President Museveni has definitively ‘won’ the battle between the two. More interestingly, though, the perception of both men has greatly changed in the 23 years since they first clashed as presidential candidates, with the supposed hero becoming the true villain of the piece.
Of course, little of this could have been predicted when the two met in the early 1980’s in the bush, where President Museveni was master and Besigye was doctor and then state minister to Dr. Kawanga Ssemwogerere and political commissar. Add in Gen. Muntu and David Ssejusa NRA luweero guerilla tree is blooming.
After a tumultuous start to activism (a sign of things to come), Dr Besigye became a box-office attraction in opposition, breaking the hearts of NRA and DP on the way.
Brash, arrogant and a showman in every sense of the word, his declaration of protests against his idol, signalled the arrival of the self-proclaimed ‘Liberator’.
Ugandans were not used to someone so self-confident in their own ability but Besigye more than backed it up in stint at FDC.
In retrospect, Dr Besigye could be castigated for choosing to work for the now-disgraced LGBTQ crusaders , not once but several times. But then, couldn’t every other Ugandan? Dr Besigye was incredibly naive and/or ignorant to the geopolitics at play.
It was at FDC that the cult of personality that has been a centre-point of Besigye’s political career truly began to take shape. He is still adored by FDC and opposition supporters, while he was arguably the most popular oppositionist in Uganda’s history, even as results lagged.
All of this is not to say Besigye is an angel, far from it. Like most elite-level leaders, he is multi-faceted, capable of playing both devil and angel.
Honeymoon Kizza (is there anything better?) and untenable ideas sum up the duality of man in its most extreme form.
The kinship he shares with many of his former colleagues is a testament to his good traits, with the likes of Sam Njuba, Nandala Mafabi, Patrick Oboi Amuriat and Mugisha Muntu having an almost-Godlike loyalty to the man. The first two, in particular, have disparaged Museveni when comparing the two great rivals.
His terrible treatment of FDC secretary general hon. Nathan Nandala Mafabi in the media around September 2023 was him at his absolute worst, and unsurprisingly came a few months before his first ever switch of parties as an oppositionist.
While mostly a pantomime villain – he allegedly hid in a lady’s gomesi while serving a preventive arrest at home! – that was perhaps his one unforgivable controversy.
He did initiate a smear campaign against to pelt Amama Mbabazi in 2016 at the height of the presidential rivalry, but that was nothing compared to the alleged treatment of President Museveni towards his former colleague and supposed close friend.
The pair had known each other since their days together in the bush and diaspora in the 1980s, and Mbabazi was the first person Museveni approached after the liberation war. It was all rosy.
Until it wasn’t. Museveni allegedly felt betrayed that his friend attempted to take the top job. Did he not want his loyal no.2 to have his own moment in the sun?
Long-lasting reputational damage? Not quite. Nothing seemed to come to light, or was pushed back down, around Museveni, with his image instead being seen as the ‘benevolent dictator’, the angel to Besigye’s devil, the light to his darkness.
How this quite happened is bizarre given his violent history nothing government and school.
Besigye’s reputation is like Teflon, but it increasingly appears that the mask is slipping, particularly in light of his visibility.
When questioned about his obvious double standards, Besigye somehow argued that freedom is not for everyone saying: “Every country decides the way they want to live for themselves. If he decides to live in that country, it is what it is. I am [from] a country with democracy installed since years ago, and [I] try to protect that situation.”
An all-time great oppositionist undoubtedly, and the best currently in the field, but almost all of his success comes with mysterious circumstances, numerous questions and controversy far greater than anything Museveni ever prompted. He also is far less loved by former supporters and colleagues – you could forget he even served as NRA political commissar.
The one-time gladiator departing Nakaseero 2026 may signal the end of one of the greatest careers at the top end of the country, with clamour for a move into the international sphere (UN) set to only grow, but he leaves as the people’s champion over his greatest rival and his long-lost friend.