Africa’s ageing leaders don’t know when to quit

THE old taxi park in central Kampala, Uganda’s noisy, traffic-clogged capital, is a huge patch of bare earth and mud filled almost entirely with minibuses. Battered, often still with old Chinese names painted on the side, these are the core of the city’s transport system. Each day, they bring thousands of commuters into the city.

Yet this is also, curiously, a centre of politics. To enter the rank, drivers must pay a fee of 120,000 Ugandan shillings (roughly $34) per month to the city council. In November, hundreds of them surrounded President Yoweri Museveni’s convoy to demand a reduction. The ageing president conceded; from January, the fee will be cut by a third. But that may not mollify the drivers. “We are still not happy,” says Waiswa Mubarak, a 30-year-old driver. “According to us youths, he has to retire. If he doesn’t, we will force him to.”

Mr Museveni, aged 73, has been president since 1986, longer than four-fifths of Ugandans have been...Continue reading