As President Yoweri Museveni prepares to celebrate his 80th birthday on September 15, 2024, questions about his exact birth date have resurfaced. Unlike many people who take their birthdate for granted, Museveni’s quest to confirm the precise day of his birth has been an intriguing journey that combines personal memories, rural traditions, and historical events.
Museveni’s autobiography, Sowing the Mustard Seed, reveals a decades-long struggle to pinpoint his birth date. Growing up in rural Uganda, Museveni did not initially know his birthday. Life was dominated by challenges such as extra-judicial killings, and survival took precedence over personal milestones. It wasn’t until 1979, following the defeat of Idi Amin, that Museveni began his search for the exact date of his birth, only to find that official records were missing.
Over the years, Museveni relied on oral histories to uncover the truth. His mother, Esteeri Kokundeka, recalled his birth occurring “like three months” before a mass cattle vaccination in November 1944. This clue led Museveni to consult a veterinary guard who confirmed that the vaccination took place between November 24 and 28, 1944, aligning his birth around August or September of that year.
Further confirmation came from an elderly woman, Tophus Bwankuunku, who remembered that Museveni was born in September, the same month she had begun harvesting cowpea leaves in her garden—a reliable seasonal marker. Cross-referencing these pieces of evidence, Museveni concluded that he was born around September 15, 1944.
A Unique Birthdate Journey
Museveni’s efforts to identify his birthday offer an unusual glimpse into the challenges of record-keeping in rural Uganda during the mid-20th century. The absence of birth certificates, reliance on community memory, and use of agricultural and livestock events to determine time reflect a different way of marking life events.
For Museveni, establishing a birth date was not just a personal journey but also a way to connect with his past and provide an answer to his children and grandchildren who were curious about the matter. This approach, combining local knowledge and historical context, reflects a broader narrative of Uganda’s rural society, where oral history and communal memory play a significant role.
Why Does It Matter?
The question of Museveni’s birth date may seem trivial, but it underscores a broader theme of identity and memory in Uganda’s history. It also highlights the limitations of official records and the reliance on oral histories to fill gaps. For a leader like Museveni, whose life has been so intertwined with Uganda’s modern history, the journey to discover his birthdate has become a symbolic story in itself—an effort to document and understand the milestones of a man whose life has spanned significant national transformations.
As Museveni prepares to celebrate his 80th birthday, the story of his quest to find his exact birth date is a reminder of the complexity of personal history in a country where many still rely on oral traditions to record the past. The mystery may now be officially “solved,” but it adds another layer to the narrative of a leader whose life has been marked by both personal and political quests.
