A few weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, a corporal in a double-cabin pick-up truck and two civilians in a saloon car found themselves arguing over who was to blame in the aftermath of an accident in a Kampala suburb.

The corporal’s vehicle had been hit and now he was being insulted by the culprits, so he drew his rifle and fired at them. Then, as he tried to run away from a gathering mob, he ran over a passenger motorcyclist, seriously injuring him. Fights between motorists on Kampala’s streets are common, but often they end in insults and limp-fisted threats; nothing bloody.

The case of Cpl. Fred Mukanya ended in the violent death of two men. But it is also remarkable because the soldier is the trusted guard of Gen Aronda Nyakairima, commander of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces. In a statement to the press, the authorities wondered how a soldier with a good track record, a man who was not known to solve problems with violence, could do such a thing.

They toyed with the idea that the corporal had been intoxicated when he pulled out his gun — that he had acted under the influence of alcohol. It did not seem to occur to the authorities, reading their statement, that perhaps the soldier had been acting under the influence of something else — a bloated sense of power from being associated with Uganda’s army commander.

Not long after the Mukanya incident, Jennifer Musisi, an official appointed by President Museveni to manage the Kampala City Council Authority, discovered that one of the city’s properties had been commandeered by Gen David Tinyefuza, a career soldier who now dabbles in intelligence.

When Musisi asked Tinyefuza to vacate the house, saying it was the official residence of the Kampala mayor, the general threatened to arrest her. Their exchanges have played out spectacularly in the media, with Musisi battling single-handedly to assert her authority.

The cases involving Nyakairima and Tinyefuza are not related, but they suggest a troublesome idea of power as it is perceived and wielded in Uganda today. It is not a new phenomenon, especially since the history of Uganda is littered with the names of soldiers who have abused their power, often with sadistic results. But this is Uganda in 2011, nearly a half-century since Independence and exactly a quarter-century since President Yoweri Museveni came to power promising an electoral democracy in which the military would be subordinate to civilian authority.

The Constitution of 1995 reaffirms this grand idea, but is it really the case? Internal rules within the UPDF forbid its officers and men from making divisive statements, from resisting civilian authority, but who is there to police someone like Tinyefuza?

According to Col Felix Kulayigye, the UPDF spokesman, only Museveni can do so. “He is not answerable to us,” Kulayigye said in a telephone interview, insisting Tinyefuza is officially a presidential advisor. It did not matter, he suggested, that Tinyefuza is still a serving officer of the UPDF.

Museveni has staked his political legacy on the idea that he is not Idi Amin, and some facts back him up. But three decades after the dictator’s exit, things still happen in Uganda that have a whiff of the dead tyrant, that question the so-called progress from the wild days of Amin, that mock the very idea of a civilised society in which disputes are solved according to the law.

Tinyefuza could have chosen to ignore Musisi, or even asked her to go to court, but he took the bold step of threatening to arrest her. In the press, as elsewhere, the reaction to Tinyefuza’s reaction oscillated between amusement and surprise, and some even seemed to give him a pass. Very rarely was he criticised, much less condemned. And on social-networking sites such as Facebook, where the conflict has been a genuine source of excitement, young men and women even seemed to praise Tinyefuza. One of them, on hearing about the conflict, said gamely, “Don’t you just love Tinye?” She got a lot of positive feedback, by the way.

Timothy Kalyegira, the social critic, said that senior army officers like Tinyefuza enjoy a wide-ranging impunity because they live in a country that has a constant need to compare and contrast with brutal regimes of the past. “There is a feeling that these are better thugs than the Amin people — that these thugs are worldly, they are educated, they are funny,” Kalyegira told me. “But as time goes on, we see all these stories [of violence] here and there.”

It would seem that when Tinyefuza flaunts his power like this, many ordinary Ugandans look for flimsy excuses to explain his behaviour. You get the sense that the Ugandans who “love” Tinyefuza for humiliating Musisi think that he is a funny man, not to be taken seriously.
At the same time, these Tinyefuza lovers, deep down in their psyches, are prisoners of the notion that the general is an untouchable man who deserves to be left alone.

It might be said that the views of these civilians, taken as a whole, amount to a slavish mentality that is heavily premised on the larger-than-life picture they have of the military and its bosses.

Why, then, should Uganda pretend that things have changed since the days of Amin? Is it enough that there is an army code of conduct that seeks, precisely, to forestall a public spat of the kind that happened between Tinyefuza and Musisi? Should Ugandans simply smile and move on when a senior army officer works under his own set of rules? Is this not impunity?

I put these questions to Ladislaus Rwakafuuzi, a Kampala lawyer who has handled political cases. He immediately suggested that I was asking the wrong questions. “Is Tinyefuza alone? He is not alone,” Rwakafuuzi said. “When you have a civilian election and you bring out the army in fully view — tanks and helicopters — then what do you expect from a person like Tinyefuza?”

According to Rwakafuuzi, Tinyefuza, by defying the authorities in Kampala, reinforces the militaristic tendencies of Museveni. Rwakafuuzi put it this way: “The difference between the days of Amin and now is that we hold elections. But the army is still in control.”

To be sure, there have been cases where wayward army officers have been punished for breaking the rules. But they are few and far between, and usually legal action is taken only when the offenders have threatened Museveni’s grip on the army.

The most famous case was of Henry Tumukunde, the rebellious brigadier who has since been silenced by an excruciating court case.
When it comes to unilateral statements of military power, however, Museveni himself has blazed the trail, making countless comments over the years to emphasise his dependence on military might.

Most famously, as Milton Obote grew old in exile, Museveni vowed that Uganda’s first executive leader would be buried “six feet under” if he tried to come back home. Obote, of course, returned to Uganda in his coffin. Kalyegira recalled Museveni’s comment and said, “Six feet under. Can you imagine?”

Fundamentally, the military still plays an outsized role in local politics, a role that may take on ever more urgency as Museveni governs for what is likely to be his last term. Generals like Tinyefuza provide the raw — and real — power that keeps Museveni at the top, that keep his political enemies running scared. The military, far from being put in its place, is still where it wants to be.

“Our army is not a barracks army,” said Aaron Mukwaya, who teaches political science at Makerere University. “It is not isolated from society.”