NRM-Natinal Resistance Movement 1986

Yoweri Museveni was briefly Uganda's minister of defence during the interim government after the fall of Amin. When Obote returns to power as president in 1980, and his party (the UPC) wins a majority in elections widely regarded as fraudulent, Museveni refuses to accept this turning back of the clock. He withdraws into the bush and forms a guerrilla group, subsequently known as the National Resistance Army (NRA).During the 1980s the NRA steadily extends the area of southern and western Uganda under its control. And Okello, after toppling Obote in 1985, proves no match for Museveni.

By January 1986 the NRA is in control of the capital, Kampala. Museveni proclaims a government of national unity, with himself as president. It is a turning point in Uganda's history. A decade later the country is back under the rule of law (apart from some northern regions, where rebellion rumbles on). The economy is making vast strides (an annual growth rate of 5% in the early 1990s and of more than 8% in 1996). There are improvements in education, health and transport. International approval brings a willingness to invest and to lend. The nation, emerging from two decades of appalling chaos, is suddenly almost a model for Africa.

The only flaw, to western eyes, is that this remains one-party rule. It is an essentially pragmatic state in which good ideas from any part of the political spectrum are welcome (even Uganda's kings now have a role restored to them). But the new constitution of 1995 limits executive power to the National Resistance Movement, the party emerging from Museveni's guerrilla army. Democracy is a subject on which Museveni has strong and interesting views. He criticizes western insistence on the multiparty model, seeing it as simplistic to assume that a single pattern can be appropriate in every circumstance. In his view parties in Africa, often based on tribal allegiances, are often likely to frustrate democracy.

Museveni argues instead that the important elements are the benefits taken for granted in a functioning multiparty democracy - universal suffrage, the secret ballot, a free press and the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers. He describes his Uganda as a 'no-party democracy', claiming that people of widely differing views can argue their case to the electorate as competing individuals (it is campaigning as a party that is banned). This is a somewhat utopian blueprint depending, like enlightened despotism, on people of good will at the top. It may be in token of this that Museveni regularly promises a date in the future for the legitimizing of opposition parties.