An interesting political event missed by many people happened near the end of 2022. This event may not have come to light without the intervention of Uganda’s vibrant online press, which occasionally feeds its bug-eyed audience morsels of information that at least intrigue if and when they fail to enlighten. Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s aggressive campaign to succeed his father as president of Uganda had irritated a few people within the ruling party, forcing a backlash from some who signaled they backed President Yoweri Museveni to remain in power. These regime figures latched onto the dominant metaphor of electric power supply, saying they preferred to stay on the main line rather than switch on a stand-by generator they didn’t trust to work. The most forceful of these figures was Kahinda Otafiire, the interior minister who is an intellectual leader of the National Resistance Movement. Otafiire, without mentioning Kainerugaba’s name, once even appeared to mock Kainerugaba when he told a rural gathering that a “dead” generator was useless, a vicious takedown that drew anger from Kainerugaba’s supporters.
So, as it turned out, in December 2022 both Kainerugaba and Otafiire went to see Salim Saleh, the president’s brother, at his ranch in Kapeeka. According to one report, Kainerugaba flew there while Otafiire was driven there, and there were observers in that meeting, urged by Museveni in a bid to calm tensions. Of the historical combatants of the National Resistance Army still alive, only Museveni (RO/ 0001) ranks higher than Otafiire (RO/ 00014). Saleh (RO/ 00016) is just behind Otafiire, who undoubtedly was going to a meeting he didn’t want to attend. To the extent that one wonders why he went to a meeting that was to be mediated by Kainerugaba’s uncle, it can be said that Saleh is probably the only other political figure to whom Museveni could send Otafiire – because one can’t imagine Otafiire being dispatched to the home of the current prime minister or even the vice president of Uganda. Otafiire went to see Saleh probably because he respects his old comrade but also because he knows it would be foolhardy, even for one with deep NRA roots, to disrespect Saleh. There’s no official account of what happened in that meeting, but it was said that the parties departed amicably.
Saleh, whose real name is Caleb Akandwanaho, has come a long way. In nearly four decades he has outgrown a perception of him as the president’s rascally brother to emerge as the most influential power broker, bar none, in a jaded government that now finds itself trying to figure out how to retain power when Museveni inevitably goes. The day Kainerugaba and Otafiire went to see Saleh, Edward Ssekandi, the former vice president, was also there, apparently to discuss the NRM’s fading support in Buganda. There have been numerous other accounts of ranking officials who have gone to consult Saleh over some matter. In fact, as some have suggested, Saleh’s deep and well-built network within the NRM government runs parallel to – but works closely with – the state, reinforcing NRM rule but also placing Saleh in a position of such authority that some analysts see him as a co-president while others see him as a menacing consigliere looming in the background.
Both readings of Saleh’s place in Ugandan politics show a misunderstanding not just of how he wields his power but also of how much power he actually has: neither directly nor indirectly, a lot of it. In the transition from Museveni to another leader, by whatever name called, no figure is primed to be as consequential as Saleh, and the trips to his place by powerful political figures are but one measure of his immense authority. To acknowledge Saleh’s standing is not to say he is important in the eyes of many Ugandans, and yet even those who may despise him must take note of what is happening at this crucial juncture.
Saleh has lived so long under the shadow of his brother that it doesn’t immediately occur to one that today he is sixty-four. He was still a kid when he joined his brother’s clandestine struggle, first against Idi Amin and then against Milton Obote’s second administration. In Sowing the Mustard Seed, the president’s 1997 autobiography, Museveni writes of his sixteen-year-old brother visiting his exiled family in Dar es Salaam in 1976:
At about this time, my younger brother came to visit us in Tanzania. He was born in 1960 and was so much younger than me. My mother had named him Caleb Akandwanaho (‘Akandwanaho’ means ‘God has been my defender’). At the time of his visit he was still in secondary school. I was very worried about the safety of my family in Uganda and so I decided not to send him back, especially as he was the only brother I had. I thought that one day Amin would kill my family simply because they were my relatives – that is how Amin’s regime behaved. With that sort of insecurity in Uganda, I argued that now was not the time for him to concentrate on studies. It was better to keep alive and to make a contribution to the liberation of the country. Therefore, I encouraged him to join the group I had sent to train in Mozambique. As a 16-year-old, he was of course delighted at the prospect. Young people are easily excited by guns, although they may not always know the political implications. My brother took the nom de guerre of Salim Saleh, which was the name by which we knew him from then on.
Try to picture a teenage Saleh being told by his larger-than-life big brother, a rebel leader with a college degree and doubtful means in exile, that he is not going back home after all. The boy does not have a say in this important decision, but he probably adores his brother and trusts him. It is difficult to see a family portrait from the 70s and not think of the boyish-looking Saleh as Museveni’s first-born son. Saleh said at Kainerugaba’s wedding, describing his friendship with his nephew, that they were fond of each other because they “fed from the same spoon.” Museveni, in sending Saleh for military training, took responsibility for Saleh’s life in much the same way a parent sends a child off to a far-off college, and the relationship between Saleh and Museveni almost certainly remained skewed in such a way in the years that followed.
We see the growth and development of Saleh further along the pages of Museveni’s autobiography: Saleh as a member of the NRA High Command in the bush war against Obote, Saleh as the commander of a mobile brigade that sometimes operates behind enemy lines, Saleh this, Saleh that. What the book fails to mention, predictably, is that by 1984 the NRA had suffered so many defeats at the hands of the national army that it took a lucky turn of events for the rebels to regain a foothold in central Uganda: the premature death in December 1983 of army chief David Oyite-Ojok, by all accounts a capable soldier. But, according to Museveni’s account, Saleh never lost a major battle, and it was Saleh’s mobile brigade, in the battle of Kembogo, that broke the back of Obote’s troops in June 1985. Lt. Col. John Ogole, the hard-pressing commander of the mobile special forces whose first objective was to capture or liquidate Museveni, had launched a major offensive against the NRA in Singo. The failure of that offensive left government troops demoralized and planted the seed for what really was an ethnically charged coup by Acholi military officers against Obote, a Lango:
With the offensive which Ogole had launched in November 1984 already defeated by our successful attack in Kabamba, the second front was an additional nail in the coffin of the UNLA. Ogole, however, would not give up. He pressed on with the remnants of his Special Brigade which had been created for this purpose, and at Kembogo, in Singo, on 21 June, he tried to attack our Mobile Brigade, commanded by Salim Saleh. In that battle, the Mobile Brigade inflicted a major defeat on the remnants of Ogole’s forces. Ogole himself was in command and when his forces were routed, this brought to an end his military effort in the central sector… The mutinous mood in the UNLA spread and, unfortunately, fights broke out on a tribal basis.
Saleh was only twenty-six when the NRA captured power in 1986, one half of the swashbuckling duo that included his departed friend Fred Rwigyema. The next year, when the NRA gave out formal pips, Saleh was given the rank of major-general and put in charge of combat operations. No one doubted his prowess as a fighter, but he was increasingly seen as a rakish figure in military fatigues, chain-smoking and drinking heavily. The president was taking a chance on Saleh in 1987 when he appointed him army commander, and he was removed months later. Saleh himself acknowledged his shortcomings in an interview published in the Daily Monitor newspaper in 2016:
I had developed indiscipline. I was no longer a good face for the revolutionary army. I was retired from active service … on November 27, 1989. I can never forget that day. I took it in good faith.
Still, despite his unceremonious sacking as army chief, Saleh was named commander of the reserve forces. That post, which he held for two decades, brought him close to many veterans of the bush war, including some suffering from trauma who were trying to settle down as civilians. He also came into contact with many widows and orphans of the bush war who will always be grateful for his kindness. It was also during this time that Saleh’s notoriety as a businessman started to grow; the president’s brother was being implicated in many scandals, his transgressions putting the first family under a harsh spotlight.
He was said to own so many properties in Uganda that once there was even a Saleh joke: some people willfully read ‘Property for Saleh’ when they saw adverts saying ‘Property for Sale.’ He told Radio Uganda in 2000 that even he didn’t know how many businesses he owned since he was a shareholder in companies too many to remember. He was said to have interests in businesses ranging from gold mining to the trade in grains.
Two big Saleh scandals emerged in the 1990s. The first, in 1997, involved the procurement of what the press described as junk helicopter gunships from Belarus, with Saleh admitting that he had received a commission of $800,000. Then, in 1998, Saleh was forced to resign his post as a special presidential advisor over allegations that Greenland Investments, a group in which he was a shareholder, had used a Malaysian company to illegally purchase shares in the now-defunct Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB). The acquisition later fell through, with South Africa’s Standard Bank eventually acquiring UCB. A parliamentary committee recommended his arrest and prosecution, but Saleh was not going to spend a day in jail. Museveni said he had forgiven an apologetic Saleh.
And it appears that Saleh, later realizing that he was not such a good businessman, gave up his interests in a range of underperforming companies. Even the one that he kept, Divinity Union, eventually was no more. There can be no doubt that he still engages in major business deals, but clearly with the care and discretion that his previous deals lacked.
It would seem that Saleh’s attempt to rehabilitate himself started not long after the turn of the century, and after he and other military officers were named in a 2001 U.N. Security Council report as the beneficiaries of the illegal exploitation of natural resources in eastern Congo. With his Senior Two education, it was not unfair to describe him as semi literate. In 1998, for example, when his kids were already teenagers, he wrote exams for his secondary school certificate, flunking mathematics but still managing to get his certificate. Two years later, in 2000, he completed his high-school education and obtained the credential he needed if he ever wanted to run for, say, a seat in the national assembly. In fact one of Saleh’s wishes was to become a government minister, and a few times he said thus to well-wishers before and after he actually achieved his goal:
Ninye ndifa ntabiire minista?
Why should I die having never been a government minister?
As it turned out, he was made Uganda’s first ever minister of state for microfinance in 2006. The appointment came not long after his graduation from the Senior Command and Staff College at Kimaka, where a research paper he wrote on food security kickstarted his obsession with commercial agriculture. Saleh thinks that the problem with agriculture in Uganda has everything to do with logistics, how to get inputs to farmers who need them.
Many observers cried nepotism upon Saleh’s ministerial appointment, but Saleh didn’t care. Saleh felt it was a food platform to try to lift as many people out of poverty and he liked the job, even though he struggled to settle into it. He would be at a public event and, forgetting that he was a minister, catch himself attempting to reach for a cigarette. He resigned in 2008, finding the politics of the job unbearable. As a government official, he was required to submit before oversight committees in parliament from time to time, and he found the “rigid bureaucracy” stifling.
One lesson for Saleh during his short-lived stint as a Cabinet member was one that many people close to him put this way: you don’t have to be serving in government to be powerful. They say that Saleh, in the years since he quit his ministerial post, has become powerful not by desiring power and grabbing it but by simply staying alive and knowing his place – as the president’s brother who is almost universally liked in the first family and who has an apparent gift for bringing regime opponents into the NRM fold. Of the 28 men Museveni sent for training in Cabo Delgado in 1976 – fighters with the Front for National Salvation who later became the nucleus of the NRA – only three survive. The others are Gen. Ivan Koreta and Col. Bosco Omule.
As he has grown older, defying many reports of his death, Saleh has come to play an outsized role in the regime’s efforts to extend its grip on power as many of the old guard die or are swept away. With the ouster of former police chief Kale Kayihura and Amama Mbabazi, the former premier,
Saleh is more influential than ever despite literally dwelling in the bush. During the COVID-19 pandemic, which left the government struggling for cash, Saleh, now serving as the chief coordinator of the military backed Operation Wealth Creation, led controversial efforts to review the national budget and, in the process, save a huge chunk of money that could be reallocated toward food security. Saleh’s efforts confounded the Ministry of Finance and annoyed technocrats like Keith Muhakanizi, the former secretary to the treasury who died in 2023. Muhakanizi, an argumentative man even in good times, resisted and, not surprisingly, was later transferred to the Office of the Prime Minister.
Those who mistake Saleh for a co-president probably irritate him because, frankly, he has never seen himself that way despite the undeniable reality of his authority. Whatever authority he has, it is not that of a co-president – because his brother wouldn’t allow it and the term itself is not sufficient to describe Saleh’s curious place.
His stature is based in part on his memory of what others have forgotten or taken to their graves with them: about the NRA’s methods, about survival, about failure, even about Museveni himself. Very few people know the president better than Saleh, and it’s a curious fact that these days the brothers resemble each other (in facial countenance and dress) more closely than at any point in the last few decades. Kainerugaba, who is close to his uncle, goes to Saleh for advice.
Kainerugaba’s February 11, 2022, post on the X platform is instructive, and it came around the time the president’s son faced criticism for appearing to undermine his father’s authority and eight months before he was fired from his military post as infantry commander:
Like my uncle I shall follow my father’s orders till the end. Under his leadership we have built one of the best militaries in Africa!
Whether or not he realized it, with that tweet Kainerugaba was expressing some political truths regarding the Museveni era. One, that Museveni will not tolerate dissent even from his own blood relatives. Two, that Saleh probably has had to suppress his own ambitions and ego in order to rise to his current position of authority.
The key words are till the end. For the rest of us, what happens after the end is what troubles the mind. Mugisha Muntu, a former army chief who later became the leader of the Forum for Democratic Change opposition party, has accused Museveni’s inner circle of mismanaging the political transition, of fiddling with possible scenarios.
Saleh’s most recent act of public duty was to preside over the inauguration in Gulu of Kainerugaba as the new army chief, a post that puts a break on his nephew’s political activities. Saleh, speaking with a casual firmness at the event, appeared to remind Kainerugaba that he was a soldier first and foremost. “We are so happy to see you back in the [military] uniform, because you had gotten lost,’’ Saleh said at the March 28 event. “The man had just jumped out of our bag and he was something else, but now he’s completely [back]. So I asked him, ῾Man, have you come back for good?’ He says, ῾For sure, I have come back for good.’’’
As one thinks of Kainerugaba and his stated quest for the presidency, one also feels compelled to examine Saleh. What is the big picture for him? What does he want? What does the future hold for him?
This is probably why Otafiire goes to see his old comrade in Kapeeka, even though he knows that the chances of disagreeing are high and that the invitation is not fair. He will measure Saleh’s tone, search in Saleh’s arguments for signs of his hopes and fears, and, perhaps more importantly, state his own hopes and fears to a man who may very well have the keys to the kingdom. The rest of us, needless to say, will do well to watch Saleh. ▪