When Revolutions Betray Themselves: A Prophetic Trilogy of Museveni’s Irony and Lubogo’s Oracle

Ugandan President, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni

By: Isaac Christopher Lubogo

 

Introduction:

 

In the grand theatre of African memory, where echoes of revolution collide with the silence of betrayal, unfolds a trilogy both haunting and unflinchingly prophetic. This is not merely a dialogue—it is a resurrection of ideology, a confrontation of self, and a courtroom of conscience where time dares to put a freedom fighter on trial.

 

What happens when a man who once stood atop the hill of liberation returns decades later—not as a liberator, but as the very symbol of what he once despised? What happens when the bush warrior of 1986 meets the philosopher of 2025—uncompromising, unafraid, unbought?

 

In this electrifying trilogy:

 

Museveni of 1986—young, idealistic, thunderous in his promises—meets a mirror forged in intellect: Isaac Christopher Lubogo, an oracle of unfiltered truth.

 

Ghosts of Pan-African giants—Sankara, Nyerere—rise to weigh the man against his mission.

 

Finally, Museveni of 2025, crowned and cautious, faces the ultimate philosophical cross-examination from a generation that refuses to forget.

 

 

Here, irony dances with ideology. Legacy wrestles with truth. And one question echoes through each page like a sacred drumbeat:

Did the revolution eat its own dream?

 

This is not fiction.

This is not history.

This is the future staring into the past, demanding an answer.

 

Welcome to the Prophetic Trilogy where power is stripped bare, and truth takes the podium.

 

 

Opening of the deeply philosophical, prophetic, and ironic debate between Lubogo and Museveni of 1986, titled:

 

 

“When the Revolutionary Meets the Reflection: Lubogo vs. Museveni, 1986”

 

Scene: A shadowy coliseum of minds—no time, no space. Only memory, ideology, and conviction.

 

Lubogo (stepping forward):

Comrade Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of 1986… a man forged in the crucible of the bush, with a Kalashnikov in one hand and the Fundamentals of Revolutionary Change in the other. You, sir, declared before the world:

“This is not a mere change of guards. It is a fundamental change in the politics of our country.”

Do you still remember those words? Or has time eroded them into decorative relics for dusty museums?

 

Museveni 1986 (standing tall, eyes burning with revolutionary fire):

Young man, I fought to dismantle a system of impunity, nepotism, corruption, and tribalism. We sacrificed blood so Ugandans would never again be ruled by fear and deceit. I would never betray that.

 

Lubogo (with piercing irony):

And yet, here we stand—under the shadow of your future self. The halls of justice echo with the silence of censored truth. Your regime—yes, yours—has nurtured a dynasty that the very Milton Obote you once defied would now admire with envy.

 

Museveni 1986 (shaken, defensive):

No, no! I would never silence the press. I would never cling to power. I fought for democracy, not dynastic ambition. The people must always come first!

 

Lubogo (philosophically):

And yet, the people you swore to serve now murmur in quiet markets and whisper through WhatsApp threads, too afraid to speak in public squares. Oh Revolutionary of 1986, has the seat of power proven so sweet that you abandoned the bush’s bitterness?

 

Do you recall what Nyerere once said?

“No nation has the right to rule another, just as no man has the right to rule another indefinitely.”

Yet, you rule.

You fight not for liberation now, but for legacy.

 

Museveni 1986 (stammering):

But—surely there is stability in experience. The bush taught us that—

 

Lubogo (cutting in, sharply):

The bush also taught betrayal, didn’t it? Not every comrade made it to the table. And history, dear Kaguta, has a way of mocking those who rewrite it while still alive. You accuse others of overstaying, yet you outstay even the parables.

 

Kwame Nkrumah said:

“Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all else shall follow.”

But what follows when the political kingdom becomes a personal estate?

 

Museveni 1986 (with soft defiance):

I acted for the good of Uganda!

 

Lubogo (calmly, almost prophetically):

So did Milton. So did Amin. So did the Pharaohs. Intention divorced from reflection is tyranny wrapped in principle.

 

What if I told you, dear Yoweri of 1986, that in 2025 you would walk in the rain—not as a revolutionary baptized by hope, but as a monarch drenched in irony?

 

Museveni 1986 (quietly):

You lie.

 

Lubogo:

No, I mirror. You once stood for the people. Now the people stand in line… for food, for justice, for permission to speak.

You once said you would hand over power with joy. But now, even the sun fears to rise on a Uganda without you.

 

 

(Continued: “When the Revolutionary Meets the Reflection: Lubogo vs. Museveni, 1986”)

 

A sudden hush. The air quivers. Out of the thick shadows walks a tall, lean figure—eyes aflame with purpose, dressed in fatigues, yet crowned with intellect. It is… Thomas Sankara.

 

Sankara (voice like thunder wrapped in poetry):

Yoweri, I greet you not as a president, but as a brother in the struggle. But tell me… what became of the struggle?

Where is the Uganda where the teacher earns more than the minister?

Where is the Uganda where land belongs to the people, not investors wrapped in foreign flags and local betrayal?

 

Museveni 1986 (confused, defensive):

We needed foreign aid to build. Development required alliances. The geopolitical winds were shifting.

 

Sankara (sternly):

Alliances? You mean economic colonization in neckties.

When I rejected the IMF, it was not for pride—it was for independence.

You, comrade, once rejected puppetry.

Yet now the strings are invisible, but you dance still.

 

Lubogo (stepping forward):

He dances, Brother Sankara, on the graves of promises.

He who once said “Africa’s problem is leaders who overstay in power” now builds dynasties in the name of stability.

Tell me, Kaguta—does the man who overstays see the chains he’s forged from patriotism?

 

Museveni 1986 (torn, whispering):

I wanted to protect the revolution…

 

A new voice echoes through the coliseum—measured, wise, and gentle. It is Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.

 

Nyerere:

But the revolution is not your child to cage.

It is a river—it flows. You were meant to guide its banks, not dam its waters.

You once mocked the dictators.

Now their portraits applaud you silently from the walls of history.

 

You fear to hand over power to the unknown.

But remember: “Leadership is not about power; it is about service. If your people no longer trust you, your service is self-serving.”

 

Lubogo (quietly, to Museveni):

Do you remember when you said “No one should lead Uganda unless they have a clean record”?

Now even your name trembles when spoken by the honest.

 

You called Obote a mistake.

History may soon call you a warning.

 

Museveni 1986 (visibly shaken):

But I brought peace! Development! Infrastructure!

 

Lubogo (calm, with gravitas):

Yes… but at what cost?

Peace without justice is just well-organized fear.

Development without liberty is just a gilded cage.

 

What use are roads if they lead to prisons of thought?

What use is electricity if it illuminates only the palaces?

 

Sankara (looking Museveni in the eyes):

You killed the man you once were, Yoweri.

But he stands here… still asking: Was it worth it?

 

Museveni 1986 (a whisper, almost weeping):

I… I don’t know.

 

Lubogo:

Then ask Uganda.

Ask the widow in Karamoja.

Ask the graduate hawking chapati in Nakulabye.

Ask the journalist buried in silence.

Ask the Constitution… the one you rewrote, again and again, until it became a mirror that flatters instead of corrects.

 

Nyerere:

Power is sweetest when it is surrendered.

Legacy is not built by how long you rule, but by how well you prepare others to rule after you.

 

 

Scene fades. Museveni of 1986 stands alone, surrounded by the echoes of the men he once admired. Lubogo disappears into the mist—his final words lingering:

 

“A revolution that forgets its principles becomes the very thing it fought to destroy.”

 

The 2025 DEBATES

 

 

Title: “The Lion and the Oracle: Lubogo vs. Museveni, 2025”

Scene II of the Revolutionary Discourse

 

Setting: The great amphitheatre of the imagined African Union Conclave of Conscience, 2025. A congregation of Africa’s ancestors, spirits of Pan-African heroes, youth delegates, and presidents past and present. In the center: a raised dais. Two chairs. One occupied by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of 2025, the other by Isaac Christopher Lubogo.

 

 

 

 

Moderator (an elderly griot):

The floor is granted to the son of the soil, the challenger of comfort, the orator of uncomfortable truths—Isaac Lubogo.

Beside him, the Father of the 1986 Revolution, now the Architect of Uganda’s Long Reign—His Excellency, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.

 

Let truth sit where power refuses to stand.

 

Lubogo (firm, slow, deliberate):

Comrade Museveni, I come not with hate. I come with history. I come with heartbreak.

You once said in 1986:

“The problem of Africa is leaders who overstay in power.”

Today, in 2025, you sit as Africa’s longest-serving president. Do you not see the irony? Or has your crown grown so thick it muffles your ears?

 

Museveni 2025 (measured, presidential, with a tinge of defensiveness):

I stayed for continuity. For peace. For transformation. Uganda is not yet ready. I am the glue.

 

Lubogo:

But sometimes glue becomes bondage.

You claim peace, but silence is not peace. It is the graveyard of dissent.

You claim transformation, yet your schools are crumbling and your doctors flee.

You promised fundamental change. Instead, you became fundamentally changed.

 

Even Pharaoh, for all his monuments, forgot that people remember the plagues more than the pyramids.

 

Museveni 2025 (gruffly):

Young man, leadership is not a sprint. You confuse impatience for progress. Experience matters.

 

Lubogo (rising, voice soaring):

Experience?

Africa’s youth make up 70% of her body, but are ruled by men nearing the grave.

Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana at 47. Thomas Sankara at 33.

Even you, Sir, took Kampala at 42.

And now you claim none in Uganda is ready?

Then what did you build for 39 years? A nation of dependents?

 

Museveni 2025 (irritated):

You romanticize youth and forget how the world works. Stability is not poetry.

 

Lubogo:

And neither is tyranny pragmatism.

You have outlived your own dreams.

Your words of 1986 haunt you like ghosts knocking on the palace gate.

 

You promised to fight sectarianism—yet you centralized power in kinship.

You opposed constitutional manipulation—yet you tore term limits like old newspapers.

You swore to uplift the poor—yet your ministers dine as peasants fast.

 

Museveni 2025 (quiet):

I did what I had to do.

 

Lubogo (pointing to the audience):

And they now do what they must do—resist!

The youth no longer see you as the liberator.

You are no longer the river—they see you as the dam.

 

(Whispers ripple through the crowd. Sankara’s ghost nods. Nyerere’s spirit leans forward.)

 

Lubogo:

Sir, do not wait to be remembered as Uganda’s Mugabe.

Be remembered as a Mandela—one who left when he could still lead.

Let the ink of your legacy dry before time smudges it.

 

Museveni 2025 (voice low, solemn):

What would you have me do?

 

Lubogo:

Step down.

Step back.

Step aside.

 

Not in shame. But in power.

Make your exit the climax, not the anti-climax.

Retire not as a ruler clinging to breath, but as a father passing the torch.

 

Let Uganda breathe again.

 

Let revolution finally become evolution.

 

The crowd rises. A silence like thunder falls. Even the ghosts clap. Museveni bows—not in defeat, but perhaps… in contemplation.

About the Author:

Isaac Christopher Lubogo is a Ugandan lawyer and lecturer