“I Will Defend Uganda With the Bible, AK-47 and Pen” Museveni Fires Back at Mwenda

President Yoweri Museveni has launched a sharp public rebuke of journalist and political commentator Andrew Mwenda, accusing him of sabotaging Uganda’s economic transformation and acting in the interest of foreign powers opposed to the country’s development.

In a strongly worded statement, Museveni pushed back against Mwenda’s criticism of government-backed industrialisation projects, calling him a “do-nothinger” who “happily cohabits peacefully and gleefully with the neo-colonial status quo of confining Africa to producing and exporting unprocessed raw materials.”

“Mr. Mwenda, thank you for declaring me senile and incapable of judging right. You will, however, discover that at 82, I am still able to defend Uganda and myself with the Bible, the AK-47 and the pen,” Museveni wrote.

The President challenged Mwenda to visit and report on local enterprises he had dismissed, including factories owned by entrepreneurs Magoola and Tugume in Matugga, Kamuli and Ntungamo respectively, as well as Professor Muranga’s banana project in Bushenyi. He also pointed to the Kiira Motors project as evidence of homegrown industrial capacity that critics like Mwenda had chosen to ignore.

Museveni used economic figures to make his case for value addition. He noted that a kilogram of gold exported at 84 percent purity fetches USD 60,000, while fully refined gold at 99.9 percent purity commands USD 168,000. He made a similar comparison for coffee, saying processed coffee sells for between USD 25 and USD 40 per kilogram against USD 2.5 per kilogram for raw beans. He said Uganda now has 10 gold refineries following his ban on the export of unprocessed minerals, with gold exports hitting USD 7.48 billion. Coffee exports, he added, have grown from three million bags to 8.8 million bags, bringing in USD 2.4 billion.

The President also defended government funding programmes such as the Parish Development Model, and cited growth across several sectors including dairy, which he said had expanded from 200 million litres to 5.3 billion litres, as well as fruit, palm oil, steel and banana industries.

Turning personal, Museveni accused Mwenda of leaking internal government discussions, including cabinet matters, to social media in a deliberate attempt to frighten away Uganda’s development partners. He also blamed him for contributing to the country’s power shortages from 2005 onwards, saying Mwenda had helped sabotage a partnership with American Energy Service on the Bujagali Electricity Project in 2003, which would have produced electricity at USD cents 4.9 per kilowatt hour.

“It is to scare away our partners because the likes of Andrew Mwenda are worried by the success of Uganda’s economy, now growing at 6.3 per cent per annum,” Museveni said.

He closed his statement with a Banyankore proverb about encouraging a child learning to walk rather than declaring that the child will never stand, drawing a direct comparison to his approach to industrialisation, including learning from failures. He signed off with his signature rallying call, “Aluta Continua, Victory is certain.”