Uganda's ‘Benevolent’ Dictatorship

Abstract

Few contemporary political and socioeconomic transitions on the African continent have been as dramatic or contradictory as Uganda's. Just over a decade ago, the National Resistance Movement-Army(NRM-A) became the second guerrilla organization to assume power in independent Africa (the first happened in Chad). After being sworn in as president of Uganda in January 1986, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni proclaimed the era he was ushering in was more than the usual changing of the guard to which the people of Uganda had become accustomed. It was, he declared, nothing short of Fundamental Change.