The Minister of Internal Affairs, Maj Gen Kahinda Otafiire addresses guests during the CSO convention in Kampala on November 2, 2023.
The outspoken Internal Affairs Minister is no guest to controversy or making controversial statements.
One of the last standing original ideologues of the Movement System, the precursor to the ruling National Resistance Movement party, Maj Gen Otafiire has cut a public portrait of candor.
Born in the present-day Mitooma District in 1950, he set out on a path to priesthood but dropped out of the seminary, continuing later with secular education and graduating in 1975.
With a stint as a youth officer and a deployment at Foreign Affairs ministry, Otafiire in the 1970s worked with anti-Idi Amin elements and President Museveni said he helped him create a youth network.
He was among the first 28 members of the Museveni-led Front for National Salvation (Fronasa) rebel group who took training in liberated areas in Mozambique.
Otafiire later joined Museveni 1981 guerrilla war against Milton Obote II government, although NRA/M ended up toppling Tito Okello Lutwa who had six months earlier dislodged Obote.
He was named a junior Internal Affairs minister, which he resigned from after allegedly drawing a pistol on a woman in a bar in 1988.
President Museveni absorbed him in security job in his office for four years, and he emerged from the shadows as the new Director General of the External Security Organisation.
After serving as a delegate to the Constituent Assembly, which promulgated Uganda’s Constitution in 1995, Otafiire snapped up a parliamentary seat in 1996, before a couple of years later being involved in the wars of Uganda’s invasion of Zaire (now DRC) where he, alongside other military honchos, we accused of plundering the countries natural resources.
He said then that his only acquisition from the mineral-rich country was a walking stick. Nonetheless, the International Court of Justice found Uganda guilty of pillaging Congo, fining the country $10b which was negotiated to $325m.
Otafiire was dropped from cabinet in 1999, and warned of causing trouble. He was taken back to the ministerial table in 2003 and named the senior minister for Local Government. He later superintended Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Water and Environment and Lands, Housing and Urban Development dockets.
Since last year, he has been the only vocal NRM historical in government publicly opposed to alleged plan for First Son Muhoozi Kainerugaba, now the chief of defence forces, to succeed President Museveni. He has also openly clashed with leaders of the 11th Parliament, calling them young and saying he would not attend sessions where he is given only two minutes to speak.
In 2016, retired UPDF Captain Donozio Kahonda defeated Otafiire for Ruhinda seat, and a 2020 split of the constituency into two enabled him to return to Parliament the next year. Now Internal Affairs minister, Gen Otafiire has repeatedly said police should not harass, beat or restrict legitimate actions of the Opposition.
He has said he is embarrassed to visit police and prison barracks due to blighted accommodation structures and once mocked now outgone police Spokesman Fred Enanga as a “liar”.
He is the chairman of the Global Pan African Movement.
