Yoweri Kaguta Museveni,
Museveni was born to cattle farmers and attended missionary schools. While studying political science and economics at the University of Dar es Salaam (B.A., 1970) in Tanzania , he became chairman of a leftist student group allied with African liberation movements. When Idi Amin came to power in Uganda in 1971, Museveni returned to Tanzania in exile. There he founded the Front for National Salvation, which helped overthrow Amin in 1979.
Museveni held posts in transitional governments and in 1980 ran for president of Uganda. When the elections, widely believed to have been rigged, were won by Milton Obote, Museveni formed the National Resistance Movement. The resistance eventually prevailed, and on Jan. 26, 1986, Museveni declared himself president of Uganda. He was elected to the post on May 9, 1996, and his backers won control of the National Assembly in legislative elections held the following month. Museveni was reelected in 2001 and again in 2006 after a constitutional amendment passed the previous year had eliminated established term limits for the presidency. He was reelected again in 2011, although the opposition and international observers noted problems with the polling process.
As president, Museveni helped revitalize the country, providing political stability, a growing economy, and an improved infrastructure. He instituted a number of capitalist reforms and supported a free press. Although Museveni initially rejected multiparty democracy, arguing that it would degenerate into tribal politics in a poor African country, he accepted the results of a 2005 referendum that overwhelmingly supported a return to multiparty politics; the next year the country held its first multiparty elections since 1980. Museveni also implemented measures to combat AIDS. Uganda, in fact, was one of the first African countries to have success battling the illness.
In his foreign policy, Museveni often generated controversy by supporting rebels in other African countries. He backed Laurent Kabila, who deposed Mobutu Sese Seko in neighbouring Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1997, the Tutsi exiles who were fighting against the government of Rwanda, and a group, headed by one of his former schoolmates, battling the Islamic fundamentalist rulers of Sudan. Museveni justified his support of rebels by stating that his goal was to achieve regional integration in both politics and economics and that the downfall of corrupt regimes was necessary to bring about such a union.
Ironically, corruption was also an issue in Uganda under Museveni. Over the years, foreign and domestic support for Museveni waned in some quarters, with corruption being cited as one of the problems; Museveni’s growing intolerance with dissenting views was another commonly cited criticism. He also came under fire for his lack of success with eliminating the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a militia led by Joseph Kony that terrorized northern Uganda for decades. Although the LRA was largely forced out of the country, the group continued to commit atrocities in neighbouring countries.
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Kabila was born into the Luba tribe in the southern province of Katanga.
He studied political philosophy at a French university and attended the
University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where he met and formed a friendship
with Yoweri Museveni, the future president of Uganda. In 1960 Kabila became a youth leader in a
political party allied to Congo’s first postindependence prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. In 1961 Lumumba was deposed by
Mobutu and later killed. Assisted for a time in 1964 by guerrilla leader Che Guevara, Kabila helped Lumumba supporters
lead a revolt that was eventually suppressed in 1965 by the Congolese army led
by Mobutu, who seized power later that year; in 1971 Mobutu renamed the country
Zaire. In 1967 Kabila founded the People’s Revolutionary Party, which
established a Marxist territory in the Kivu region of eastern Zaire and managed
to sustain itself through gold mining and ivory trading. When the enterprise
came to an end during the 1980s, he ran a business selling gold in Dar es
Salaam.
In the mid-1990s Kabila returned to
Zaire and became leader of the newly formed Alliance of Democratic Forces for
the Liberation of Congo-Zaire. As opposition to the dictatorial leadership of
Mobutu grew, he rallied forces consisting mostly of Tutsi from eastern Zaire and marched west toward
the capital city of Kinshasa, forcing Mobutu to flee the country. On
May 17, 1997, Kabila installed himself as head of state and reverted the country’s name to
the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
As president, Kabila initially
banned political activity but in May 1998 promulgated a decree that established
a national constituent and legislative assembly. The subsequent arrest of oppositionists,
however, undermined the apparent move toward democracy, and allegations of
human-rights abuses against Kabila’s forces continued. In August 1998 the
Banyamulenge, people of Tutsi origin who had helped bring Kabila to power,
launched an open rebellion in the eastern part of the country. Resentful of
Kabila’s seeming favouritism to members of his own ethnic group and fearful of
reprisals from rival factions, they were supported by the governments of Uganda
and Rwanda, which had been angered by Kabila’s
failure to prevent raiders from threatening their borders. Though a cease-fire
was reached in July 1999, sporadic fighting continued.
On January 16, 2001, Kabila was shot
by a bodyguard at his presidential palace in Kinshasa. Initial accounts stated
that he was killed during the attack, but Congolese officials denied the
reports. On the 18th, however, it was announced that Kabila had died while on
an airplane en route to Harare, Zimbabwe. On January 26 his son, Joseph Kabila, was inaugurated as Congo’s
president.
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