COMMENT | DAVID JACKSON OBOTH | Why does the President seem to dress casually, even when he is handling serious state matters? I bet many people have not figured out why this iconic leader does what he does. There was widespread mummering when he changed his official national portrait from the one in which he is donning a suit to what would pass as a casual outfit – his favourite white shirt.
A few weeks a go I wrote about how his daughter Natasha Karugire barely outsmarted him to get him to dress in a modernized white blazer which is not very different from his favourite Uganda-made shirt, for his 50th wedding anniversary.
There has to be a reason why the President maintains this look. Why does Ssabalwanyi preffer the casual look when it comes to fashion and and message is he sending out?.
You see him in an oversized white shirt matched with a black pant, feet in sandles, and on a cold day he throws in an oversized army jacket complete with a scuff. It doesn’t matter who he is meeting within the country and where he is officiating as guest of honour. His herdsman’s hat will be on his head.
Doesn’t this dress code bother the head of state? The man whose wardrobe budget is in billions? Many would argue it should. But if you run your mind through his own, intrinsically, you will notice that the President has operated on a far superior state of mind compared to many Ugandans in the political, religious or cultural spheres. He rides alone like an eagle, and he prefers to look different like the lion with a mane. What better way to prove that than to take up a different outlook?
In October 2014, I was part of the MTN Marathon team that welcomed the President in the remote villages of Karamoja to commission the freshly constructed water facilities using the MTN Marathon proceeds.
A few of us were standing at the commissioning site waiting for the arrival of the President. I was in company of then Brigadier Nakibus Lakara who was overseeing security in the Karamoja region, Robert Kabushenga, then from Marathon partner Vision Group, Anthony Katamba, then MTN, Head of Legal and Corporate Affairs and Mazen Mrue MTN CEO then.
It was approaching 4pm and nimbus clouds hovered over the Karamoja plains, a sign eminent storm was in the offing. The President had spent two days already in the region, and news reaching us, was that he had set up a tent in the jungle where he was residing.
A few minutes later his lead car showed up and soon the General was stepping outside his vehicle. He then nonchalantly walked toward us where we had formed a line to welcome him and shook our hands.
As he responded to Nakibus’s salute his eyes were on some hills a distance away from where we were.
Pointing at the hills he asked if they were the ones he knew very well. He mentioned the names of the hills one by one as Gen. Nakibus nodded his approval like a gheko.
Obviously, the president’s interest and attention was more on his soroundings than the occasion for which he had honoured us with his presence. What does that say? What interests Gen. Museveni is not what would ordinarily interest an ordinary person.
To understand the president well and to know why he does his things the way we see him doing today, one must go back to who he was during his youthful days.
Right from Ntare school to Dar es salaam university he was known to be a loner who would sit alone and think deeply about African politics. In his book The Mastard seed, Museveni admits that he was not one taken up by things that appealed to the youths. He stayed away from alcohol, discos, and relationships with opposite sex.
Instead he was bothered by the primitive ways of his people such as the way they were grazing their cows and the hygiene at the kraals. He would find himself mingling with the cattle keepers teaching them ways of keeping their animals healthy and more productive. Not many young people of his age would think of such.
The President we know very well today is a man who knows all parts of Uganda like the back of his hand. North to the South, East to west. If that places him in a more entitled position as the President if the country, then who can take that away from him?
The man dedicated his life from childhood through youthhood and even part of his adult years when he was fighting the protracted to war to discover Uganda in its entirety. The journey was not only about discovering the country, but also the ways of its people, who is who in the country and how to handle the different entities.
Today when you see the President dressing casually and meeting diolomats in sandles, inviting all and sundry to his Rwakitura country home, the President is simply demonstration his superior state of mind. No one else deserves this country more than he does.
He will take you around his farm and show you how healthy his cows look, dressed in the same attire he will use to show up in Parliament or any official function. No one will challenge him for that?
Some say he thinks the country is his. Others think he probably dresses that way for health or security reasons while other think he is just a stubborn old man. It doesn’t matter what any one thinks about the President’s dress code. One thing is clear. President Museveni gets away with anything he does because he operates at a far superior state of mind than his critics.
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Jackson Oboth is a Development Communications Specialist, Journalist and a Public Relations Practitioner.