“I Have Got Stamina!” Yoweri K. Museveni, Masculinity and the Physical Right to Rule in Uganda

In a video clip that went viral on social media in 2020, Ugandan President Yoweri K. Museveni dances (with, in our opinion, impressive jumping) to the rhythm and the words, “I have got stamina!” (from “The Greatest” by Sia). Museveni was performing masculinity and asserting his right to continue his hegemony in Uganda. In this chapter, we locate Museveni in the discourse on masculinity as having to continually assert itself in the face of contestation from various sources. We contend that as age was taking its toll, as younger opponents are emerging, and as the economy resisted, Museveni was forced to re-inscribe his masculinity through various stunts. Underlying these stunts was a dramatization of power and body performance to power and control. Using the frame of veteran masculinity and a socio-biographical analysis of his reign, we argue that Museveni represents an understudied phenomenon of the physical right to rule in Africa. We explore his (and his generation’s) claim of having put their bodies on the line as justification for power, as well as his turn to violence. We contend that Museveni highlights masculinity’s capacity to reinvent itself in the wake of multiple challenges to it.