Uganda: Museveni’s routes to staying in power beyond 2021

it wouldn’t be a surprise to see President Museveni, or immediate family, stay in power past 2021. The question is how.

President Yoweri Museveni being inaugurated in 2016, 30 years after he first came to power

Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was confirmed as the winner of Uganda’s presidential election for a fifth consecutive time on 20 February 2016. However, if the president is to stay in office beyond the next set of elections in 2021 he will have to overcome a constitutional impediment. Article 102 (b) of Uganda’s 1995 Constitution states that “a person is not qualified for election as President unless that person is not less than thirty-five years and not more than seventy-five years of age”.

President Museveni will be 76 in 2021. But in the last year, Museveni, indirectly and from a distance, has been testing out strategies to either keep himself in power or anoint a successor.

Born again?

In December 2016, Justice Steven Kavuma, Uganda’s second most senior judge was rumoured – though this has been denied by Uganda’s judicial authorities – to have sworn an affidavit that he was in fact four years younger than his official age. At 69, Kavuma appeared to have found a new lease of life just as his retirement age of 70 loomed. His announcement drew much hilarity on Ugandan social media, but was there an ulterior motive for his actions?

Kavuma, a founding member of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), served as State Minister for Defence in the early 2000s and was described as “hugely partisan” by a former Supreme Court judge. The process behind his appointment as Deputy Chief Justice in 2015 was challenged in the courts. “There is no doubt he enjoys the confidence of Museveni”, Nicholas Opiyo, a Kampala-based political analyst and human rights lawyer, told ARI.

Could he therefore have been testing the water for the president? Museveni’s official birthday is 15 September 1944 but given his well-documented upbringing to rural, illiterate parents, the date was estimated by reference to local historical events. Museveni only needs to be one year younger to stand again in 2021.

The idea of altering one’s age is not as surprising as it might sound according to Opiyo, who notes that “the practice is commonplace among civil servants who do not want to retire upon clocking up their mandatory retirement age”. This point is reinforced by a letter dated 6 February 2017 from the Ministry of Public Service (MPS), which indicated that “many requests” had been made by officers to change their dates of birth, particularly those coming up to retirement.

For now, the MPS has been clear that the dates declared at the time of initial appointment will be used, but Museveni will undoubtedly be watching what unfolds with interest.

A repeat performance

Elsewhere, the wheels are already in motion for a tried and tested approach. In August 2016, a private member’s bill was presented to parliament by NRM MP Robert Ssekitooleko. The bill, which was subsequently thrown out by the speaker, Rebecca Kadaga, without being debated, proposed raising retirement ages for judges and life tenures for members of the electoral commission.

“It was widely, and correctly, perceived as a first step towards undermining and eventually amending Article 102 (b) of the Constitution to remove the presidential age limit”, wrote Dr Busingye Kabumba, a constitutional law expert at Makerere University, though Ssekitooleko denies this.

Uganda has history of such shenanigans. After the presidential elections in 2001, Museveni faced a constitutional impediment to re-election: the country’s two-term presidential limit. A sustained and successful parliamentary push for constitutional reform ensued. Museveni consistently distanced himself publicly from this campaign, but was widely considered to be directing it behind the scenes. The removal of term-limits was passed by parliament in 2005 alongside the reintroduction of multi-party politics.

In Uganda’s 10th parliament, the ruling party has the two-thirds majority – excluding NRM-leaning independents – required for constitutional amendments. Even outspoken critics, like Rebecca Kadaga, are unlikely to oppose what Museveni wants. According to  Opiyo, “she is combative on soft issues, and for the purpose of raising her political capital when it benefits her, but in matters crucial to the president, she has always given in”. A trade-off that sees the removal of age limits coupled with the reintroduction of term limits (with Museveni starting afresh) is a possible approach, and one that would deflect some criticism at home and abroad.

A family affair

The removal of age limits might not be the only change to Uganda’s political system ahead of elections in 2021. With the NRM so dominant in the legislature – the main opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) holds less than 10% of seats – Uganda might look to move towards a new democratic model.

“I expect the next move for the NRM will be to immunise the presidency from adult suffrage and make ascendancy to the position the choice of parliament,” political analyst Angelo Izama told ARI. If this succeeded, the NRM would all but guarantee that its chosen candidate would be the president and remove any risk of losing out in presidential polls, which historically have produced closer results than those at the parliamentary level.

Museveni would still require a resolution to his age-limit conundrum if he wants to remain in charge, but a system where the president is indirectly elected could also open the door further to family succession.

A handover of power from Museveni to his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba has long been mooted in Ugandan political circles. Talk of the “Muhoozi project” was revived in mid-January 2017 by a reshuffle in the defence sector that saw several senior “historicals” replaced by military officers of Kainerugaba’s generation. This included the president’s son going from being the head of Special Forces Command to State House, where he will serve as a special presidential advisor for special operations – a move that suggests Muhoozi is being prepared for the political and administrative rigours of the presidency.

Anna Reuss, a Kampala-based political and security analyst, does not believe there is a fixed plan, but acknowledges that “without doubt he [Museveni] is positioning his son, and other family members, in anticipation of a possible succession”.

If not his son, could Museveni’s wife be the next president? Izama believes so. “Janet Museveni is second to her husband when it comes to political experience, has served as a two-term MP, and is a long-serving member of the cabinet. She is also a force in the NRM party and instrumental in state-business relations”, he says. If the system is changed before 2021, “a more direct and less controversial route will open for Janet Museveni”.

By keeping the presidency within the family, Museveni would also be able to maintain a degree of control, and use his patronage networks even if he were officially out of office.

How, not if

Museveni has not publically commented on his future but a close look at the political manoeuvrings since his re-election in 2016, and even before, indicate that he is already trying to find a way to extend his time at the helm into a fourth decade. “Many will not support another term”, says social media commentator Grace Natabaalo, but at the same time the majority of Ugandans will not be surprised to see Museveni, or an immediate family member, confirmed as president in 2021. The more pertinent question, and the one to watch, is how they go about getting there.

UGANDA'S IGP KALE KAYIHURA THREATENS JOURNALIST

A Renown investigative journalist, manager and editor of the  online news site the ‘INVESTIGATOR’ Ndawula Stanley has called upon President Museveni over death threats to him and his family by police chief Kale Kayihura.

Below is a later from a journalist to Museveni about an impending criminal activity on a reporter.

Your Excellency, please accept my apology in advance to reach you through this means of communication. As the fountain of honor, I am well aware of competing national demands, its’ not possible to gain private access to you, hence the reference as above.

I’m a writer; reporter aged 45 years, to this end, the CEO at the Investigator Publications (U) Limited running an online newspaper www.theinvestigatornews.com, my meaningful and gainful living. Over the last two decades, I have practiced journalism without any glitches. Hence my concern about recent episodes on the Late Wilberforce Wamala and AIGP A.F Kaweesi, for unclear and unknown reasons I started encountering serious life threats from police operatives and the Inspector General of Police, Gen. Edward Kale Kayihura.

The Genesis

Your Excellency, specifically, from March 20th 2017, I started receiving terrifying telephone calls and subtle messages through parties unknown to me concerned security and police sources. The aggregate were warnings to me to watch my back because of the salient information I share in the court of public opinion had clues on who committed the brutal offence. More ominous is that an action of last resort to stop me may be at best a kidnap, and worse to torture me into a vegetated state. As a loyal citizen, I am simply following Your Excellency’s open outcry of criminal infiltration in police. To this end our editorial team resolved to run supportive investigative stories, pointing out the rot and where possible, name and shame the culprits, which would be helpful to IGP to ‘clean his house.’

Those I have privately shared with the above predicaments advised that I appeal to the court of public opinion. I followed this hunch and made the alarm on social media platforms. I admit here that the investigator runs the series code-named ‘CIP Records’ (Crime Infiltrated Police Records). Along the way, the newspaper published a laundry-list of Gen. Kayihura’s most trusted operatives, namely SSP Nickson Karuhanga Agasirwe and SPC Hajji Abdu Ssemuju aka Minaana’s criminal records. Both of them have murder files written to their names and they were the very people at the center of Kaweesi’s murder investigations. Further to this was a report that the duo had arrested and presented ‘fake suspects,’ who, suggestively, had no idea of the location of the scene of crime in Kulambiro. The Advisory Columns too pointed at how best police can clean their image.

On the evening of April 8th 2017, I had received a telephone call from one Charles Etukuri, a journalist with New Vision and, ostensibly, Gen. Kale Kayihura’s social media Platforms’ Manager. This caller wanted to meet me. At my prompting he gave me a hint on the meeting agenda as sent by the IGP Gen. Kayihura. The following day, I requested two personal confidants one from Okello House and another from OPM to join me for the evening mchomo to witness a journalist being used to frustrate fellow journalists’ professional works. Indeed, Etukuri came and told me the IGP wanted to talk to me over the ‘negative’ stories about police. I told Etukuri that the IGP should summon me to his office but through his assistants or PRO’s office, but not through journalists. He further informed me that even the First Son, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba was bitter with me. He warned that I stop the series or I will be stopped.

The following day, the same caller, insisting that we travel to Jinja where, the IGP was to see me. I reiterated that I had no intention of meeting the IGP but in case he wanted to see me, there are channels through which he could use to see me, like officially summon me to his office. The threatening retort was I quote ‘If you can’t look for the IGP, he will look for you and you wouldn’t like the idea’. Noticeably, I started seeing trailers on my foot prints including friendly insider telephone calls from police and security operatives as well as crime journalists, advising me to switch places. The civil but yet more overt action is the recently secured interim court order from Court by the IGP stopping me from publishing stories about Kaweesi murder investigations.

On Saturday 22nd 2017, I received two calls. One was advising me to stay indoors and another warned me to momentarily leave the city. Both callers told me that Col. Atwoki Ndahura of Crime Intelligence had succumbed to the IGP’s pressure to have me kidnapped. Tired and angry, I called Col. Ndahura who only picked on the third attempt. I asked him where they wanted me to report instead of tracking me with the use of arguably crime-laced operatives. He first denied knowledge of the development but I insisted with facts. He opened up and said I had become a stress to the IGP and the police work in general. I told him that the methods they were using only fitted the times of the fallen regime of Idi Amin. He promised to talk to the General whom he described as ‘very bitter and stressed.’

That same day, I had an appointment with a musician, Joseph Mayanja aka Jose Chameleon at Lubowa-based Quality Supermarket. While there, a detective attached to Crime Intelligence came first and took position at a nearby restaurant. Shortly afterwards, Chameleon came with his kids and a young man whom I know very well, is a police informer. Joseph explained how he wanted the Investigator to help him ran campaigns of his forthcoming concert. To say the least, I was shocked that he had called me over such a minor issue. He knows who handles that docket and they are friends. Even more shocking, was the telephone call I received from a friend from security circles, he advised me to escape, “you are just 10 minutes away from being kidnapped.” I confronted Jose Chameleon but he denied having any knowledge of the same. On my insistence, a fidgety and nervous Joseph evacuated me in his car. When we reached Entebbe Road, there was heavy traffic. At the end of my tethers, I jumped ship onto a boda-boda which helped me to flee towards the direction of Entebbe.

At Kajjansi, I called my friend who drove me up to Busega through the under-construction Entebbe Express Highway. My security situation was deteriorating under my very eyes. I had earlier talked to CMI Boss Col. Abel Kanduho who openly told me he couldn’t help. I had also reached out unsuccessfully to Security Minister Gen. Henry Tumukunde’s assistants, and Your Excellency’s personnel. Efforts to reach Gen. Salim Saleh were also futile. I was advised that either I seek your attention and or think of leaving the country. I know of many Journalists who have left Uganda because of similar life threats but I am not about to jump ship.

Why Gen. Kayihura?

After the above Lubowa incident, I was embittered and, around midnight in frustration, I called Col. Ndahura again. He listened to me for about 40 minutes as I lamented my ordeal. He sounded touched. “Ndugu Stanley, hariwo ekintu kigumire munonga. I’m also concerned.” Col Ndahura promised to call me the following day. On Monday, a one Wilson Nkeiza (whom my sources tell me is Moses Tandeka) called me. He asked to meet me on Col. Ndahura’s advice. That afternoon, we met at a restaurant near Bank of Africa in Ntinda. He asked what I wanted from Gen. Kayihura and I told him, my freedom is what I wanted.

Kayihura
I am now a fugitive in my own home and country at the behest of the IGP, supposedly, a public protector. Adding, I may know of his personal deeds but the newspaper is not concerned and or interested in sharing those in the court of public opinion. Furthermore, it is a duty or a calling to help and support the fountain of honour on this matter of cleaning the rot within the police, as a public protector. Moreover, the newspaper has illuminated scenarios where, the police failed in the investigations. Col Ndahura and Nkeiza, concurred, arguably, that I had no problem but the General. They promised to plead and ‘calm’ him down.

On Tuesday 25th April 2017, Wilson Nkeiza called me and asked me to call Col. Ndahura. The Colonel told me that he was happy for me – Reason? “I have been withdrawn. I’m no longer on your back. I have orders from my boss to let you be… (Further confirming the General’s hand in all this)” He however said, this will only come to pass if I stopped writing and pulled down all the stories from the website. In brief, I am under command to buy back my freedom with a staggering cheque worth my two-decade long professional work, the main source of income for my family and fifteen members of staff as well as my legacy!

Your Excellency, for the last decade and half, I have been practicing and horning this skill as a Crime Investigative Journalist and can proudly add, I have never attracted a court case, simply because I only report about facts. It is surprising that other media houses and writers have made similar reports but are free of any intimidation. As I write this, several people who are suspected to be my ‘informers’ from security circles are facing the same threats yet the IGP Gen. Kayihura has not stated for any of our stories to be false. He simply wants us stop writing about the rot in the police, a matter of public interest, a public service. I will not flee my country, for I have no crime committed. I can’t leave my country because I dared to expose the truth.

The purpose of this letter to the Fountain of Honour, and Court of Last Resort is a humble request to protect my practice and my profession within the laws of the country. I yearn to enjoy my gainful and meaningful living, more so in conjunction with Team of Investigators in our profession; and to this end to retain a modicum of credibility in the court of public opinion. If I may end here, I said earlier Your Excellency; I will not flee my country. That means without your positive response, the unintended consequences of the IGP course is being left to the mercy of my oppressor(s), my children and wider family will be the worse without me.

:http://www.theinvestigatornews.com

THE STELLA NYANZI CASE AND THE STATE OF UGANDA

"its an indicator that those who express critical views of the Ugandan government, especially the first family, can face its wrath", said Maria Burnett, associate director for Africa at Human Rights Watch.

 Nyanzi is popular on Facebook for her relentless criticisms of President Museveni [facebook.com/stella.nyanzi]

Ugandan academic and government critic Stella Nyanzi has been charged with a "cyber harassment" offence after she repeatedly posted criticism of President Yoweri Museveni and his wife on Facebook, according to court documents.

Nyanzi, a research fellow at Uganda's Makerere University, appeared in a court in the capital, Kampala, on Monday after being detained at a hotel on Friday shortly after hosting a fundraising drive to raise money for sanitary pads for schoolgirls.

"Dr Stella Nyanzi has been charged with cyber-harassment and offensive communication (and) using her Facebook posts to disturb President Museveni's privacy, which she denies," her lawyer Nicholas Opiyo told the AFP news agency.

"Dr Nyanzi is within her constitutional rights and we are for an all-out legal battle with the state to defend her rights."

She remains in custody pending a bail hearing.

Nyanzi's arrest and prosecution was an "indicator that those who express critical views of the Ugandan government, especially the first family, can face its wrath", said Maria Burnett, associate director for Africa at Human Rights Watch.

"The manner of Nyanzi's arrest on Friday was more about intimidation than law enforcement," she added.

Nyanzi is popular on Facebook for her relentless criticisms of Museveni, who has ruled since 1986. 

Some Ugandan politicians have been recently saying they would back a proposal to remove the age limit from the country's constitution, the last obstacle to a possible life presidency for Museveni.

Museveni secured his latest term in office last year in a poll that independent monitors said lacked credibility and transparency.

Critics say he has placed relatives and loyalists in key government and military positions and wants his son, a major general in the army, to succeed him. They also increasingly warn that he plans to rule for life.

Anti-government protests are rarely permitted in Uganda and are often dispersed by police beatings, tear gas and the detention of activists.

THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY IN ETHIOPIA

The country’s ruling coalition is controlled primarily by the Tigray ethnic group, who accounts for only 6 percent of the population 

The Ethiopian parliament has extended by four months a state of emergency it declared six months ago after almost a year of often violent anti-government demonstrations.

The widely expected extension comes amid reports of continued violence and anti-government activities in some rural areas.

At least 500 people were killed by security forces during the year of protests, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch group - a figure the government later echoed.

"We still have some anti-peace elements that are active and want to capitalise on disputes that arise among regional states in the country," Ethiopia's defence minister, Siraj Fegessa, told MPs when he called on them to approve the extension on Thursday.

"In addition, some leaders of the violent acts that we witnessed before are still at large and are disseminating wrong information to incite violence."

Opposition parties complain that the emergency powers are being used to clamp down on their members and activities, especially in rural regions far from the capital, Addis Ababa.

The state of emergency, declared on October 9, was a reaction to protests that were especially persistent in the Oromia region. Many members of the Oromo ethnic group say they are marginalised and that they do not have access to political power, something the government denies.

OPINION: The Oromo protests have changed Ethiopia

A wave of anger was triggered by a development scheme for Addis Ababa, which would have seen its boundaries extended into Oromia. Demonstrators saw it as a land grab that would force farmers off their land.

The protests soon spread to the Amhara region in the north, where locals argued that decades-old federal boundaries had cut off many ethnic Amharas from the region.

Crushed to death

The Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups together make up about 60 percent of Ethiopia's population.

The country’s ruling coalition, which has been in power for a quarter of a century, is controlled primarily by the Tigray ethnic group, who make up six percent of the population.

Tensions reached an all-time high after a stampede in which at least 52 people were crushed to death fleeing security forces at a protest that grew out of a religious festival in the town of Bishoftu on October 2nd.

In the following days, rioters torched several mostly foreign-owned factories and other buildings that they claimed were built on seized land.

The government, though, blamed rebel groups and foreign-based dissidents for stoking the violence.

The state of emergency initially included curfews, social media blocks, restrictions on opposition party activity and a ban on diplomats traveling more than 40 kilometres outside the capital without approval.

Authorities arrested over 11,000 people during its first month.

Some provisions of the state of emergency were relaxed on March 15th, two weeks prior to Thursday’s announced extension. Arrests and searches without court orders were stopped, and restrictions on radio, television and theatre were dropped.

HOW AFRICAN LEADERS ROB AFRICA FOR THE WESTERN WORLD

Why does the Western world feed Africa with one hand while taking from it with the other?

The world's wealthy countries often criticise African nations for corruption - especially that perpetrated by those among the continent's government and business leaders who abuse their positions by looting tens of billions of dollars in national assets or the profits from state-owned enterprises that could otherwise be used to relieve the plight of some of the world's poorest peoples. 

Yet the West is culpable too in that it often looks the other way when that same dirty money is channelled into bank accounts in Europe and the US.

International money laundering regulations are supposed to stop the proceeds of corruption being moved around the world in this way, but it seems the developed world's financial system is far more tempted by the prospect of large cash injections than it should be.  

Indeed the West even provides the getaway vehicles for this theft, in the shape of anonymous off-shore companies and investment entities, whose disguised ownership makes it too easy for the corrupt and dishonest to squirrel away stolen funds in bank accounts overseas. 

This makes them nigh on impossible for investigators to trace, let alone recover.
                     
It is something that has long bothered Zimbabwean journalist Stanley Kwenda - who cites the troubling case of the Marange diamond fields in the east of his country. 

A few years ago rich deposits were discovered there which held out the promise of billions of dollars of revenue that could have filled the public purse and from there have been spent on much needed improvements to roads, schools and hospitals. 

The surrounding region is one of the most impoverished in the country, desperate for the development that the profits from mining could bring. But as Kwenda found out from local community leader Malvern Mudiwa, this much anticipated bounty never appeared.

"When these diamonds came, they came as a God-given gift. So we thought now we are going to benefit from jobs, infrastructure, we thought maybe our roads were going to improve, so that generations and generations will benefit from this, not one individual. But what is happening, honestly, honestly it's a shame!"

What is happening is actually something of a mystery because though the mines are clearly in operation and producing billions of dollars worth of gems every year, little if any of it has ever been put into Zimbabwe's state coffers.  

Local and international non-governmental organisations say they believe this is because the money is actually being used to maintain President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in power. 

True or not, it is clear that the country's finance minister, Tendai Biti, has seen none of it. A representative of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which sits in uneasy coalition with ZANU-PF, he says he has no idea where it is going.     

"We have got evidence of the quantities that are being mined, the quantities that are being exported but nothing is coming to the fiscus .... All I know is that it's not coming to the treasury. So that is a self-evident question. It is not coming to us. That means someone is getting it. The person who is getting it is not getting it legally. Therefore, he's a thief, therefore she's a thief." 

Sadly, as Stanley Kwenda has realised, it is typical of a problem found all over Africa. 

The continent is rich is natural resources that are being exploited for big profits, but the money is rarely used for the benefit of the people. Instead it goes to line the pockets of corrupt officials who then often smuggle it out to be deposited in secret offshore bank accounts in the developed world.

So who facilitates these transactions? And how and why does the developed world make it so easy to launder this dirty cash? 

In this revealing investigation for People & Power, Kwenda and the Ghanaian undercover journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, set off to find out. Posing as a corrupt Zimbabwean official and his lawyer, their probe takes them deep into the murky world of 'corporate service providers' - experts in the formation of company structures that allow the corrupt to circumvent lax international money laundering rules.  

It just so happens that the pair's enquiries take place in the Seychelles but, as they discover to their horror, they could just as easily be in any one of a number of offshore locations (or even in the major cities of Europe and the US) where anonymous companies can be set up for the express purpose of secretly moving money and keeping its origins hidden from prying eyes.

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By Anas Aremeyaw Anas

Despite the abundance of resources on the continent, success has been very elusive for many Africans. The narrative is one many are too familiar with: corrupt leaders force themselves into political office, then they work to undermine the progress of their people. 

That is what leaves many African countries poor - corrupt leadership. It hinders progress. 

What has kept this diagnosis of Africa from a cure is not immediately clear. Foreign aid, debt relief and the many notes of economic salvation have been applied. Not much has changed. Dreams fail for many young Africans. The trouble with Africa still looms large.

The need for Africa's troubled state has inspired my career as an undercover investigative journalist. 

Over the past decade, I have tried to focus on human rights violations, corruption and the many ills that plague society. Through many anti-human trafficking and anti-corruption stories, I have come close to answers. 

Exposing bribe-taking police officers, public officials and other corrupt individuals has brought some change. This has been on the ground, yet many of the problems still persist.

This film, How to Rob Africa, takes this further by focusing on what many leaders in high office do that leaves the continent in a bad shape. 

Decades into political independence, many African governments remain reliant on foreign aid, yet often as soon as this aid arrives it is spirited away into the personal accounts of the leaders who are supposed to be looking after the interests of their people - and ironically many of those accounts are back in the West. 

It is no surprise that many Africans are left asking the developed world: "Why do you frown publicly about corruption, yet turn a blind eye to its fruits?" 

What we sought to do in our investigation was to point in the direction of money laundering as a substantial contributor to Africa's corruption - or at least one of the most important enabling factors - and the role played by corporate service providers in setting up structures to allow it to take place.   

In the Seychelles, we found how easy it is to rob Africa. We learned about the clever but brazen tricks and scams that can be used (for a fee) to disguise the origins of money and the identities of those who are moving it around. 

We do not say that all of Africa's woes are the fault of others outside the continent. Nor do we assume that criminality is the only reason why Africa, despite its many natural riches, has been kept in poverty.  

But we did come away wondering why the outside world feeds Africa with one hand and takes from it with another. Why cannot the resources for aid be directed into fighting this obvious problem? Is it not about time that something was done to stop those stealing our wealth, and those helping them steal it, from evading responsibility prosecution for their crimes?.

THE TIENS SCHEMES IN UGANDA

WHY IS THE UGANDAN GOVERNMENT SILENT OR NOT CLOSING SUCH SCHEMES OR IS IT PROFITING?

We investigate allegations involving a Chinese billionaire and a controversial alternative health scheme in Africa.

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Living in a poor country with one of the worst doctor-patient ratios in the world - about one for every 24,000 people - it's perhaps no surprise that many Ugandans are tempted by alternative remedies, even though there's often little evidence to support the claims made about their efficacy in treating or preventing disease. But the phenomenon does beg many questions, not least of which are who is really benefiting from the sale of these products and how exactly are they marketed?

We'd heard reports about one particularly controversial business, a complex multi-level marketing scheme run in Uganda under the aegis of a Chinese company called Tiens, which produces food supplements.

Its products, we'd been told, were being inappropriately sold as medications - in some cases for very serious diseases. We had also heard disturbing claims that its sales representatives, or "distributors" as they are known, were being invited to invest large sums of money in Tiens products, when in reality there was little chance of most of them ever making the kind of dazzling returns that the company promised.

So we sent a filmmaking team and Ugandan reporter Halima Athumani to investigate further.

Three years ago a close friend in the UK started to work for a company that sold questionable products at high prices.

She would sell them door-to-door, from 8am to 11pm, six days a week, with the promise that if she sold enough units and recruited enough people into her team, she would be promoted to the position of manager and would no longer have to "work in the field". She received no salary and worked completely on commission. If she had a good sales week the company would insist she spend it on her team. She became obsessed with wealth and often spoke at length about the lavish lifestyle she would lead once her business took off, emulating that of her "upline" manager.

It was only later that I realised that the only money she could make was from recruiting others to join the business. This was an aspect of the job she didn't like to advertise and clearly struggled with.

Over the years, I watched as her health deteriorated, her debts increased and she severed every relationship she had to achieve success. What struck me most about this "job" was that she constantly blamed herself for not doing well. It was as if she had been brainwashed to believe that the reason she wasn't making money had nothing to do with the company's exploitative business model, but was due to her own ineptitude in being unable to sell expensive products to people on their doorsteps.

I could not understand how such businesses thrived and grew. How were distributors sustaining themselves if few were buying the products? Fascinated, I started to investigate these schemes and discovered that most used a business model called Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), which tells people they're going to get rich selling products to friends and family and door-to-door, but also tells them to recruit those very same customers on to their marketing team. It's a model used by many companies - selling everything from cleaning materials to mobile phone subscriptions and dietary products.

So the subject of this investigation, Chinese-owned herbal supplement company Tiens, one of the largest multi-level marketing companies in the world, is by no means unique in using such techniques. What marks it out is that it seems to be targeting so much of its activity in African countries with inadequate healthcare systems, where people are struggling desperately to get medical help.

Our Ugandan colleague Halima Athumani had told us that life expectancy in her country is among the lowest across the globe. She described the lack of insurance plans, health centres often lacking adequate doctors or medicine, and the best doctors - those who haven't been tempted overseas - frequently found working in unsanitary conditions with outdated equipment.

In this environment, then, it was understandable why many people might be persuaded that Tiens products offered an accessible alternative to conventional medicine. But on the other hand, we knew its products are only licensed in Uganda as nutritional or food supplements. So how and why would people ever use them like medicines?

From what we knew about the close-knit nature of MLMs, we realised that to fully answer this question meant going undercover. So, equipped with a hidden camera, Halima went to get a check-up at a Tiens "clinic" in downtown Kampala.

The result was worse than we had feared. As you can see in the film, the "distributor", a man called Frank - whom we later discovered had no medical qualifications whatsoever - uses a device called an "Aculife Magnetic Wave Machine" to diagnose Halima with a variety of very serious illnesses for which he prescribes only Tiens products.

Needless to say, Halima is perfectly healthy and the device is a nonsensical toy, but Frank put on a good show and if you had no reason to disbelieve him, the completely spurious consultation would have left you very disturbed and desperately wanting the treatment. Later, when looking through a sales handbook given to Tiens distributors, we also found - albeit after a medical disclaimer - disturbing suggestions that its products could prevent a number of life-threatening conditions such as cancer and HIV/Aids.

Living in a poor country with one of the worst doctor-to-patient ratios in the world encourages many Ugandans to use alternative remedies [Milante/Getty Images]

But there was more to this story than just medical quackery. We also wanted to investigate the allegations we'd heard about Tiens drawing people into a commercial relationship that could take over and ruin their lives.

Tiens products are expensive for most Ugandans, especially when compared with off-the-shelf equivalents, but we'd been told that the company tells customers the products will be cheaper if they become a distributor. Then - once they have been signed up and have paid their fees - the company uses clever psychological techniques to convince them to keep working, even when they are not personally making any money.

So we asked Halima to go to the weekly "training sessions" with her hidden camera.

This, we knew, was risky. I'd spoken to people who had been investigating MLM practices for years and they thought Halima, who would be attending training sessions over several weeks, might actually be in danger of being convinced and recruited.

She was going to be subjected to a barrage by the Tiens motivational speakers. We couldn't be with her the whole time, so we agreed to monitor her with regular phone discussions to check that she was not suddenly having unrealistic dreams of becoming rich through selling food supplements.

Luckily she isn't so easily fooled, and was able to document how Tiens convinces people to stay loyal through reinforcement of the idea that distributors are starting a new life and by its unrelenting "blame and shame" rhetoric about personal failure and not selling enough products. Only their inadequacies and doubts - and those of sceptical family and friends who should, of course, be dropped - were barriers to the recruits achieving great wealth.

When we met up with Michael Halangu, a former Tiens distributor, he confirmed these were the same techniques that had kept him in the business for years. In our interviews he was open about how they fooled him and how much money he lost, but the psychological impact had gone deeper; although he could see all the aspects of the scam, he still blamed himself for not having made a success of it.

But while it is clear that the poor, weak and vulnerable are particularly susceptible to such schemes, even strong people can succumb under enough pressure. Michael is an intelligent and determined man with a college degree, and we even met a university professor among the distributors at one Tiens event we attended.

Eventually, as you will see, we were able to put some of the points raised in this film to a Tiens representative. The company told us about its 5,000 distributors in Uganda and its operations across the African continent and how if people worked hard enough they too could enjoy the cars and yachts and millionaire lifestyles that their top distributors enjoyed. The company was less illuminating about those who hadn't been so lucky - or those of its distributors who, after carrying out bogus medical diagnoses, were happy to con gullible members of the public into buying Tiens products.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2017/02/uganda-health-pyramid-170202054305553.html