It was a good time for me to leave after 43 years in Foreign Service

Ambassador James Mugume, former Foreign Affairs PS. FILE PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • Long service. It was in 1973 when a young James Mugume, fresh from Makerere University with a degree in Economics, first walked into Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kampala. He went on to serve at Uganda’s High Commission in New Delhi, his first diplomatic posting, then at the UN Mission in New York. Ambassador Mugume returned to Kampala in 2000, first as director, International Cooperation and subsequently as Permanent Secretary (PS) until early last month when he was replaced with Ambassador Patrick Mugoya. Frederic Musisi caught up with him.

You became more active on the local scene during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) days which, notwithstanding the organisation to this date, is synonymous with some unforgettable scam
For me Chogm was an opportunity to display our organisational capabilities and there was so much that went into preparation within limited time. For example, we needed bout 5,000 rooms; fine-tune our infrastructure – roads, venues and the airport, security and so many other challenges.
A committee was set up, led by the current deputy secretary to Cabinet, and my job was to support her, with focus on protocol. The way I looked at it was how the country could organise something we had never organised before.
Preparations started from as far back as 2005, when I took a small team to Malta to see how the Maltese were organising. I later talked to Buckingham Palace [London] and they allowed us to embed some of our people into the British team to understand how to organise such big events. Then in early 2007 the team was embedded in South Africa and later in Kuala Lumpur [Malaysia] where we had to benchmark on beatification.

But we still had issues as we saw them
What would have killed me was accountability; but from the time I was advised by then Secretary to the Treasury that this project had a lot of money. He advised me not to carry all the responsibility; sign memorandum of understandings (MoUs) with all these government agencies.
In the end when media focused on the procurement of vehicles, it was handled by the Works ministry and similarly when all other queries came in, everybody thought I was finished, but fortunately I had my MoUs.
The event itself went smoothly; the creativity, innovation, training and benchmarking that we did taught us a few lessons. So by the time we hosted we were technically ready although media focused on what did not go well, and later queries in the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
From the organisation of Chogm, I don’t think there is any high level conference that Kampala cannot organise.

In the week you handed over office, earlier you were before PAC being quizzed over dubious car deals; Shs97m for car hire, Shs26m for maintenance, Shs265m for fuel and Shs7m to clean the cars. What happened?
What happened was that the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad) had mobilised sponsors for a drought resilient summit that was to be held in Kampala in March 2013.
Just when the conference was about to take off, around February we had this whole debate of the anti-homosexuality law and one of the American funders pulled out. A team from the Igad secretariat came and said they had a shortfall in funding and made four options; abort the meeting, shift it elsewhere, postpone it or government of Uganda intervenes.
The shortage was about Shs400 million. They event went and met the President who directed the ministry of Finance to provide a cash limit of Shs460 million. So the conference went ahead.
In the same period there were two other meetings; International Conference on the Great Lakes Region on the conflict in DR Congo and Amisom meeting in August, all of which were on short notice. When you have few days for a meeting, you don’t have time to call for bids.
In fact, the Auditor General recognised it as an emergency but when we went to Parliament, they raised completely other issues; trying to make you feel as if you are panicking or lying.
For example, when you have an Igad summit, with about nine heads of state, the average unit cost of the conference is about Shs1.5b; because although the heads of state meeting is for two days, there are several meetings that precede that. When it comes to vehicles, they have to be there early, approved by security, washed every day, you have to dress the drivers and feed them. But here we were, PAC focusing on Shs7 million washing cars.

In the 43 years you were in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you worked under a couple of governments. How easy was it transitioning from a foreign policy outlook of one administration to another?
You see, Foreign Service is about national interests. National interests are what come first; personal interests don’t matter sometime. We have two categories of national interests; the first is what they call vital interests—sovereignty; it doesn’t matter whether you are Idi Amin or Milton Obote, this comes first. Second is national security, whether you are Obote or Museveni, not even an inch of the territory of Uganda should be encroached on. Then there are the secondary interests, the negotiable ones, like market access and tariffs. And if you have noticed, across the world diplomats are like a state, it has no soul.

A story is told that you were once a core UPC conformist, but here you are; you continued to work diligently under Museveni
Like I have said, for diplomats political affiliations matter less. The colour of our blood while at work is national interests. It is true, as young people we were revolutionaries and used to belong to the National Union of Students of Uganda; that was very vibrant.
In fact, the brand of politics I see today is very completely different from the politics of our times. We were socialists, wanted a revolutionary state, and very much adored people like Fidel Castro but that was before I joined Foreign Service. A good diplomat should be nonpartisan, and if you want a good foreign policy you should get politics out of it.

Looking at Uganda’s Foreign Service today, it is choking on political ‘failures’ and NRM cadres whom the President appoints for employments sake rather than serving for the essence of diplomacy
This is a question of misinterpretation. There are no foreign ministries that don’t have political appointees. Foreign Affairs is composed of both political and non-political appointees, but what is important is that whoever comes in follows national interests.
In many countries you have to balance the career diplomats and political appointees. The Constitution allows the President to appoint anyone and my job as PS was not to challenge that, but rather assist by training whoever was appointed.
But I can tell you that among the best diplomats I have had, some were political but they have had the discipline. You can be a career diplomat but undisciplined and you can be political but incompetent; so we try and balance that up. Maybe, the problem is we have had running battles between the career and political appointees.

Something certain observers say is saturating the entire service…
But you see the problem is not limited to Uganda. All foreign ministries everywhere, including of the US, UK, France, name it have political appointees. If you read the history of the ambassador; he is someone the head of state thinks can best represent him. Up to now, there is no other qualification.
In my memoirs, this is something I intend to explore, but it is something you cannot just do away with and is in-built in the system. It is like the tensions between the head of missions and accounting officers, which are inevitable.

Which is another prevalent problem at our missions…
Absolutely; you have a head of mission appointed by the President and an accounting officer appointed by the Secretary to the Treasury to be in charge of the money according to regulations. Each one by doing their work tension is bound to be there and if you don’t see any of that you know there is collusion somewhere.
People have been saying ‘Ambassador Mugume why don’t you solve all these problems’, but it is not that simple. But what I did is to put there structures to mitigate because there is no way to eliminate it.

One of your biggest weaknesses, people say, was you appeared helpless or indecisive; leaving some people to sail away even if they were wrong
What I refused was to appear to be taking sides. Whenever there was a problem, I would tell the head of mission, accounting officers or political appointee to agree to work together according to regulations and with the available resources.
The rule was that if you are to spend money make sure it is spent according to regulations. For example, travel where most problems arise is $5,000 a quarter; now if the head of mission wanted to move money away from utilities to travel, there is no way I would accept that, and it is where most problems came in.

How would you rate your performance in superintending over Uganda’s 35 missions abroad in the 10 years as PS?
I think I have done a good job. The main objective of our presence abroad is national interests and I think we have promoted them. I am sure as you know we are now making a shift to commercial diplomacy, supporting in peace keeping missions, integration, participating in various international protocols on human rights, protecting our values abroad, but the most important thing is always to be consistent.
On human resource, of course some people thought maybe we could have handled the issues differently… but I don’t believe in punishment as way of resolving issues.

There is talk in the ministry’s corridors that you had built cocoons; a group of people who were always right, others who were always protected and in other cases shielded a group of people who were always wrong
No, you see the thing is, like in the case of Brussels, if there is someone who was appointed by the President, we have to work with them regardless of what. We had a disciplinary committee which looked into these issues of who is wrong or right; it always took longer, made some people aggrieved and made others to think that action ought to have been taken precisely as to when, but sometime I had to wait on advice from the technical people.

How hard or easy was it to advance interests of a country like Uganda abroad as a tourist and investment destination while back at home security apparatuses were busy brutalising people?
You know, countries are like bodies. Countries have their own internal problems that they must work on. Right now, our friends in the US are working through this; whether elections were rigged or conduct a recount.
In Africa, we also have our own dynamics but what is important as a diplomat is to say that we are going forward. For example, on the law of the Public Order Management Act; when it started, we actually benchmarked on Germany and UK. For example, in the UK, for you to hold a rally you must get police clearance and insurance for just in case someone is injured or property destroyed.
I was surprised our people did not put that provision in the law and no one brought out that background. One thing I don’t understand here is, yes someone has freedom of assembly, but why take a rally to Kisekka market for example?

A cross section of Ugandans have concluded that we can’t have national interest because everything is about President Museveni, power and how he can retain it
Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the concept. National interests are what benefit the nation and, like I said, there are two categories; the vital interests, our territorial integrity and security, comes first regardless of who is in power and then the secondary interests, of trade, markets, name it because we are a landlocked country.

After 43 years and in a flash came the announcement dropping you. Did you feel you needed to continue serving?
Actually, I did not see it as being dropped. You know, at 65 years it is a good time for retirement, but normally as a disciplined civil servant if the appointing authority says do this, you go that way. Was it a good time for me to retire after 10 years as PS; of course yes. There is no bitterness whatsoever.

We have seen so many experienced career diplomats retiring and disappearing, and for long there has been talk about establishing an institute of diplomacy and international affairs to get them write and teach. How far did you go with the idea?
Actually, when we came up with the proposal of a diplomatic centre of excellence, the idea had four main functions. One is research I myself spent one year as a foreign policy researcher so I know the value of informed research. Research helps in policy development and specialised training.
The second was publication for the young generation, future generation and information for foreign diplomats here, and the third for archiving.
You have talked about retired diplomats, the idea was to give one a one-year sabbatical to teach and research. I hope that my successor will continue to build on this idea. We started it in the building, have a director for it in the ministry and had engaged NSSF for land (two acres) in Lubowa near the UN house.

Do you have any regrets?
No! Is there anything I could have done differently? Maybe, but that as any other human being you cannot do everything right all the time.