Word: museveni
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...Museveni traveled a long intellectual road to that success. He had no inkling, growing up among the Ankole tribe in southwestern Uganda, he says, of the damage the British rulers of the country were doing. Born in 1944, he was named Museveni, meaning He of the Seven in honor of Ugandan soldiers who fought in the 7th battalion of the King's African Rifles during World War II. His father owned more than 50 cattle--wealth enough to send his children to school--and for 12 years the young Yoweri attended missionary schools that preached government service, not farming...
Then, in the heady 1960s, as a student at Tanzania's University of Dar es Salaam, Museveni plunged into the African freedom movement. He learned guerrilla tactics with the Frelimo rebels of Portuguese-ruled Mozambique. He discovered pan-Africanism and Lenin. "Lenin wrote that imperialism was the economic penetration of backward areas by advanced countries. Colonialism was the political superstructure of this," says Museveni. "The message to us was, Until you get rid of both, you'll never be free, and you'll never develop...
...living in socialist Tanzania in the '70s taught Museveni just how flawed communism was. "Lenin talked only about money going out," he says. "He didn't talk about the wages a company paid that stayed inside the country, or the money paid for power and light, or the raw materials it bought or the taxes it paid. Lenin missed this." Even more important, Museveni saw firsthand that nationalized enterprises didn't work. "Communal property was nobody's property," he says. "So nobody worked. The problem was motivation. None of these fellows had a stake." He opens his eyes wide...
Because he despises failure, Museveni converted to capitalism. Africa needed to create wealth, he decided, and for that, nothing beat Adam Smith. Private enterprise was quite simply the most suitable means of modernization. Yet he remains at heart a socialist who would prefer a more egalitarian system. Although he understands how the economic world works today and he wants Uganda to be part of it, he does not really admire it. Even now, he calls Uganda's capitalists "cows for the state to milk...
Armed with an economics degree, Museveni returned to Kampala in 1970 to serve in the government of Prime Minister Milton Obote, only to flee back to Tanzania when Idi Amin staged a coup a year later. He taught economics while building a guerrilla force among the exiles that eventually joined the Tanzanian army to oust the homicidal Amin in 1979. When Museveni ran for President in 1980, he was humiliated in an election he claims was fraudulent, which put the ruthless Obote back in charge. Museveni took to the bush...