THE REAL MUSEVENI ONE MUST = KNOW <= o:p>
Who is this man who has mortgaged Uganda '=
s
future around himself, selfishly disregarding every institution, every pers=
on,
and every thing as long as he remains in power? Does he love power all that
much or does he fear crimminal charges that he faces if he leaves power? Who
was the hand behind the murder of prominent Ugandans during Idi Amin's rule
between 1971 and 1979, doing that in order to tarnish Amin's standing among=
the
world?
He has sowed the seeds of anarchy in the Great Lakes region of central Afri=
ca
where there was once stablity. Northern Uganda has remained a wasted land
wasteland and kept deliberately behind on orders of Museveni. Hundreds of
Acholi have had their lips and ears cut off by Museveni's special hit squads
and cleverly blamed on the elusive leader of the LRA, Joseph Kony. Since the
beginning of Nov. 2005, western tourists and aid workers have been killed in
Northern Uganda on orders of Museveni in a move to play on western
governments's feelings of insecurity and have the killings blamed on Kony.
According to a recent top secret Central Intelligence Agency report, that it
was Museveni who masterminded the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the deliberate
killing of thousands of Tutsis and Hutu civilians in order to blame it on t=
he
Hutu-dominated government. Who shot down the aircraft carrying Presidents
Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi on 6 April
1994? Who engineered the assassinations of President Laurent Kabila of Congo , President Melchior Ndadaye of Burundi , and
Major-General Fred Rwigyema, the first commander of the Rwandan Patriotic A=
rmy?
Sincerely why has the CIA only recently realised that it was Museveni who
exterminated the Tutsi of Rwanda in that genocide or the hundreds of thousa=
nds
of Congolese civilians between 1996 and 2002? Why did the world fail for a =
long
time to connect the Rwanda massacres in which bodies were found without sku=
lls
and the thousands of skulls discovered in Luwero Triangle a decade earlier?=
International
investigators say that the helicopter carrying John Garang of the SPLA/SPLM
came down inside Uganda and not southern Sudan. Why is the Ugandan governme=
nt
refusing to cooperate with the investigators into the crash, if it was a cr=
ash?
Who removed the altimeter of the helicopter from the cockpit before take-of=
f on
30 July 2005 from Uganda to Sudan ? With popular
unrest against him growing every week and demonstrations breaking out among
Makerere University students, the respected Bataka elders of Buganda
, and supporters of Dr. Kiiza Besigye who was arrested on 14 Nov., 2=
005,
Museveni is now desperate.
What will a desperate Museveni do if he is not stopped by local pressure an=
d if
necessary military intervention from the international community? It is
important for decision makers, diplomats, and the wider Ugandan public to k=
now
whom they are dealing with.
If we are not careful, Museveni's psychiatric condition will worsen as the
political pressure leading to 2006 mounts, the man will start doing crazy
things like burning Uganda's historic sites and buildings like how the Roman
Emperor Nero, who was mad, ordered the burning of Rome! The sequence of
Museveni's strange decisions and erratic public statements is convincing ma=
ny
Ugandans that Museveni could be clinically mad.
How can a normal man who is educated tell the authorities to cut down Mabira
forest to clear land for "investors" when he knows how this will
upset the environment and climate? A confidential report from British
intelligence cabled to London on 27Oct.,2005 out=
lined
Museveni's deteriorating mental condition and said "He has a viracious
appetite for all kinds of pleasures, and the instincts of a killer untroubl=
ed
by remorse. He can be engagingly charming one moment, and ruthlessly destru=
ctive
the next. Someone affected by hypomania sleeps little and is ceaselessly
physically active." Many people are still puzzled by what happened at =
the
High Court buildings in Kampala on Wednesday 16 November 2005 when 30 armed=
men
wearing black T-shirts and camouflage trousers entered the compound of the
Court and beseiged it in front of a crowd of onlookers, diplomats, journali=
sts,
and supporters of Colonel Kizza Besigye. Many equated it with the abduction=
of
the late Chief Justice Benedicto Kiwanuka at the same High Court buildings =
in
1972 by unknown men. Who abducted Kiwanuka? Was it Idi Amin's soldiers? Read
this document after which the High Court incident in November 2005 will make
sense and add up.
We appeal to Museveni's staff and aides, ministers, army commanders and oth=
ers
around him to take maximum caution. Museveni might be unbalanced mentally b=
ut
he is also very cunning. He knows that his aides and close ministers and
commanders are the same people who will be testifying against him once he is
overthrown or is no longer in power. We appeal to these people in Museveni's
inner circle to take maximum caution because at this rate he is going to st=
art
bumping them off one by one to silence them. It is not Kiiza Besigye who is=
in
danger from Museveni. It is Museveni's own inner circle. This is the most
dangerous time in Uganda since 1966! This intelligence briefing issued as a
national duty to help Ugandan voters, political parties and the internation=
al community make the appropriate decisions. Millions of =
people
even many of the leaders in the DP, FDC, UPC do not yet really understand w=
hom
they are dealing with. It is a horrifying story of a cunning mind that ruled
Uganda for 20 years
Material for this dossier on Museveni has been sourced from newspaper archi=
ves
in the Library of Congress, the British Library, websites, a number of
informants within the state security agencies in Uganda, academic publicati=
ons
and books, and a number of contacts in Uganda, Sincerely we want to thank in
particular the staff of the British Library who have been helpful in locati=
ng
reference documents.
3.168] "Those who said of their brethren whilst they (themselves) held
back: Had they obeyed us, they would not have been killed. Say: Then avert
death from yourselves if you speak the truth." --- The Holy Qur'an
MUSEVENI'S ORIGINS
Museveni's origins are mysterious. Many versions of where he was born and h=
is
true nationality are claimed. Those who know him view the vague picture
surrounding his origins as deliberately created. He one time said that he w=
as
born in Mbarara hospital and does not know his exact date of birth. That wa=
s in
Mbarara in 1992, April. But later he changed and said it was Ntungamo! This
ignorance of his exact birth date is not typical of a man who otherwise boa=
sts
of having an incredible memory and ability to recall events that many people
have forgotten.You see, this unclear picture of Museveni's origin comes from
the stigma that Rwandese and Ugandans of Rwandese origin have been subjected
to.Yoweri Kayibanda, a.k.a, Rutabasirwa was born around 1943 in Butare, Rwa=
nda.
Let him stop lying us that he was born in Uganda ! The
most informed sources who have known Museveni since his early child hood in=
sist
that he and his mother, the late Esteri Kokundeka, came to Uganda from Buta=
re
town where he was born around April 1943. One of these sources Gertrude
Byanyima the wife of Boniface Byanyima, the national chairman of the Democr=
atic
Party says Museveni came to Uganda as a child from Rwan=
da .
He spent part of his early teenage life in the Byanyima family home in Mbar=
ara
town in western Uganda . Byanyima used to pay
Museveni's school fees or at least part of it. Let him deny it! One time wh=
en
she was speaking to party supporters at her home in Mbarara on 2 March, 199=
6,
Mrs. Byanyima said:
"Museveni is just like us here. He came here at 16 and it's us who bro=
ught
him up. He was never a good academic performer. The cupboard you see there =
[in
a corner of the living room] was Museveni's library. When you check in it y=
ou'll
find his books, a lot on imperialism, with his former names Yoseri
Tubuhaburwa."
When Byanyima claimed that Museveni "came here at 16", it was not=
so
clear whether she meant that Museveni came to Uganda at the age of sixteen =
or
that he first visited the Byanyima home at that age.
After she made that claim, some of Gertrude Byanyima's children Martha, Win=
nie,
Abraham, and Anthony wrote a joint letter where by they apologised to Musev=
eni
for any embarassment caused to him by their mother's claim. But mark you, t=
hey
did not specifically refute or question the substance of what she said!
Gertrude Byanyima referred to Museveni as "Yoseri" rather than
"Yoweri" and said those were his original names. It should be not=
ed
that during his university days, Museveni used the initial "T" fr=
om a
name Tibuhaburwa he had given himself. In full, it comes from the Runyankore
expression "Obwengye Tibuhaburwa", meaning intelligence is natural
born, not learned. In a thesis which he wrote in 1971 titled Fanon's theory=
on
violence: its verification in liberated Mozambique ,
the author gave his byline as "By Yoweri T. Museveni." Many people
from western Uganda hold this same view of Museveni's Rwandese roots and am=
ong
them are the Banyarwanda of western Uganda or the Rwandese refugees who liv=
ed
for forty years in Uganda before returning to Rwanda in 1990. Most of these
people give his origins as in Rwanda . Some of t=
hese
people who know Museveni point out the fact that his mother never spoke any
Ugandan language fluently in all her life, but only Kinyarwanda, the nation=
al
language of Rwanda .
Many times Museveni has been challenged to prove his Ugandan roots by showi=
ng
the public any graves and burial sites of any of his grandparents in Uganda=
but
he has always avoided commenting on that. Those challenging him to do so br=
ing
up the issue because they know that there is nothing to show and want to put
him in an embarassing position. The rumours around Museveni's origins grew
intense in 1992, leading him to appear in army combat uniform before a live
national television audience where he listed a number of Runyankore names t=
hat
he claimed were his. In Feb. 1994 while on a visit to Gulu, Museveni addres=
sed
a public rally. Some teenagers from St. Katherine Girls' Secondary School b=
egan
to shout at him complaining that his NRM government was filled with
Banyarwanda. "Look at him," they remarked, "He is a Munyarwa=
nda
proper!" Museveni heard the comments and commented: "These girls =
are
saying I am a proper Munyarwanda. Maybe they bore me and they are in a bett=
er
position to explain to us." The embarassed headmistress of the school,
Beatrice H.A Lagada suspended six of the girls. Museveni, though, did not
confirm or refute the girls' claim.
In 1966, Museveni suddenly back slid from many of the fundamentalist Christ=
ian
views he had once held. This, he says, after British missionaries in Uganda
whom he knew advocated non-aggression in their response to the unilateral
declaration of independence by Southern Rhodesia ( Zimb=
abwe
) in 1965. Museveni and some of his friends favoured an armed struggle to
overthrow the Rhodesian government of Prime Minister Ian Smith. Something is
not right here. Museveni had been a fanatical believer in the message of the
Bible. That all changed suddenly in 1966 and he then swung around to embrac=
e a
totally opposite out look to life which had armed struggle at its core. In =
his
later years and after assuming the Ugandan presidency, he would give his
rejection of the gospel as coming from his disagreement with white missiona=
ries
over how to respond to the political crisis in Rhodesia=
.
That would have been a good reason to present, but this change in Museveni =
ran
much deeper. Where he had once been sober and strict in his lifestyle, he
started becoming sexually promiscuous, a development in his character that
would have nothing to do with the declaration of a white supremacist regime=
in Rhodesia .. We want to know the reason be for this dra=
stic
change.
Museveni's mother
During her years in Ankole in the mid 1960s, Mus=
eveni's
mother had become a convert to the born again Christian faith. She sometimes
visited Bweranyangye Girls' Secondary School and took part in mission outre=
ach
programmes in Ankole. Many people who observed her became convinced that her
eldest son had taken his personality from her. She was eccentric and was fo=
nd
of wearing woollen clothing. In some way Esteri Kokundeka was ahead of her
time. The main fashion of the day among the ordinary women in Ankole at the
time was the traditional robes. Kokundeka on the other hand took a liking f=
or
European fashions and so stood out as odd whenever she went about in public,
wearing woollen clothes and western-style dresses, some of them above the k=
nees
in length. At first some people wondered who this strange woman was, who wa=
s so
different from the rest of her contemporaries in a society that was still v=
ery
traditional. She did not have an education and had not traveled widely out =
of
her home area but looked to be very modern. Moreover she was a modest woman=
and
a devout Christian.
In between periods of depression and silence, she experienced high energy.
During her excited phases that was when the common village fellas started to
feel that she might be mentally disturbed. What was beyond doubt at the time
was that Museveni's mother was suffering from some kind of mental disorder.=
She
certainly showed all the signs of what they call bipolar disorder. (Madness, to call a spade a spade.) Bweranyangye Girls'
Secondary School in Ankole, where her daughter Violet was studying, is a pl=
ace
where Kokundeka used to visit a lot to preach. She was dreaded and shunned =
by
many of the girls. They saw her as a tyrant, a complicated and extremely
difficult woman to get along with. On some occasions when she visited the
school, girls would avoid meeting her and hide in the dormitories. She did =
not
display the normal affection and motherly traits that would be expected in a
parent, even toward her own children. She was not affectionate and was too
unreasonable and hard to understand. Many became convinced at Bweranyangye =
that
Kokundeka had a mental problem.
In 1967, she did have a mental breakdown. The details of that are not so cl=
ear.
But she was admitted at the Butabika Mental Hospital on the outskirts of
Kampala that year. Her mental disorder combined with the series of traumatic
experiences in Rwanda that affected her so drastically as to lead her to re=
ject
her son, are the rock on which the crisis in Museveni's life originated. Th=
at
crisis in Museveni's life lies at the root of the personality that we shall
examine in forthcoming pages.
People who knew him during the mid 1960s say the change was brought about by
rejection from his mother, Esteri Kokundeka. It was not Rhodesia
, for God's sake!
How she rejected him, why she rejected him, and when she rejected him is
something we don't know. I will not lie that I know. But it seems to have b=
een
very painful to him to rock the foundation of his whole entire life. Maybe =
he
had tried to probe her to tell him who his real father was and she dismissed
his questions.
Maybe he persisted with his questions and in impatience, his mother finally
disclosed to him the circumstances of his birth. What brought her from Rwan=
da
to Uganda reportedly either still pregnant with Museveni or when he was sti=
ll
an infant? Those who knew Museveni's mother all through her life in Uganda
remarked at how bitterly she hated and resented Rwanda =
.
In 1982 during Museveni's guerrilla war, one of Museveni's most trusted
commanders, Kahinda Otafiire, was charged with smuggling her out of Uganda
through Rwanda and then on to Nairobi, Kenya where she would see her son.
Museveni's mother protested vehemently saying she hated Rwanda and did not =
want
to go there ever again in her life. After repeated begging, Otafiire manage=
d to
get her into Rwanda from where the two went on to Kenya=
.
This gives us an interesting look into Museveni's origins.
Sincerely why should his mother resent and hate Rwanda so much unless she h=
ad
once lived there or had heard too much about it or maybe had experienced en=
ough
about Rwanda that even to talk about Rwanda made her feel so bad? It is one
thing to hate Rwanda . It is quite another for y=
our
son's commander and aide Otafiire to want to take you safely out of Uganda =
to
Kenya at a time of high risk and yet you would rather remain in harm's way =
in
Uganda than set foot in Rwanda.
What was it about Rwanda that Museveni's mother hated so much?
We can guess the following things.
She knew Rwanda much better than the average illiterate village woman. She
definitely hated the country. She seems to have either lived there for some
time or even originated from Rwanda . She seems =
to
have had such a terrible experience in Rwanda that her outlook toward that
country was clouded by all sorts of resentment. What terrible memory was th=
is?
Was she raped as a girl or young woman or sexually molested by someone in <=
span
class=3DGramE>Rwanda ? Or even more traumatic, had she become pregna=
nt
while in Rwanda by a relative, so that she had to live with the stigma of
having an incest sexual relationship hanging over her and bringing her
distress? Did she become pregnant by a brother, a father, and uncle and una=
ble
to stand the shame of the affair, decided to flee Rwanda for Uganda
, bringing with her the illegitimate son? Maybe this could explain h=
er
hatred of anything to do with Rwanda . If this is
true, we have the correct understanding why she rejected the young Museveni=
. An
ordinary terrible event in Rwanda like clan or tribal fighting or a dispute
between two families would have made her resent the Rwanda society at large=
but
bring her closer to her son.
But she resented both Rwanda and rejected her son. Our conclusion is that s=
he
might have concieved her son with a close relative, or
a servant in the homstead in Rwanda and there is a chance that this might e=
ven
have been a forced sexual encounter. She would then see her son and in him a
reminder of the ashaming incident in Rwanda that led her to abandon her home
and flee the country for Uganda . So it seems th=
at she
must have directly or indirectly told Museveni of the circumstances of his
birth and parentage and once he knew this, a deeply traumatising personal
crisis shook him. Sincerely it is not easy dealing with such ashaming news,
more so from your own mother. Museveni's biological father was an itinerant
Rwandan peasant called Kayibanda. Current sources indicate that Kayibanda l=
ives
in Tanzania while others say he lives in Butare town in Rwanda
. Other reports have it that Kayibanda died in Tanzania in the 1990s=
. We
are not sure and where we are not sure, we shall not pretend to know.
According to some reports, Kayibanda and his wife Esteri Kokundeka came to
Uganda when Museveni was a toddler. There is a story common in Ankole but
difficult to prove for its accuracy, about how Museveni's parents ended up =
in Uganda . This version has it that Museveni's mother wa=
s of
royal Kinyarwanda Tutsi stock. Apparently during one of her many idle momen=
ts
at the royal court in Rwanda , she was seduced b=
y or
seduced one of the court workers, a Mutwa named Kayibanda. Museveni was the
result of this laison, making him paternally a Twa and maternally a Tutsi.<=
br>
Her proud Tutsi royal family had to quikly chase her for ashaming them. So =
she
fled to Uganda for ever. Because of the disgrace she had brought upon herse=
lf
by this liason with a despised commoner, she, the commoner, and their son
Museveni were banished and fled across the border into =
Uganda
. Being desperate to find means of supporting the woman and their ch=
ild,
Kayibanda the journeyman was given employment as a herdsman by a young catt=
le
owner named Amos Kaguta. Kaguta was also of Rwandese stock and his brothers=
are
reported to have remained in Rwanda when he migrated to Uganda
. It was not long before Kayibanda eyed on Kaguta's wife. Kaguta ang=
rily
banished Kayibanda from his home and Kayibanda fled to Tanzania with Kaguta=
's
adulterous wife. But Kaguta retained Kokundeka and her child Museveni as his
wife and child. Kayibanda and Kokundeka had a second born child, a girl who
later got married to a Rwandese Ugandan named Nathan Ruyondo. Ruyondo would
became a Ugandan civil servant in the town of Masaka .<=
/span>
Museveni, therefore, had one direct sibling, this girl who got married to
Ruyondo. The day before he started his guerrilla war in 1981, Museveni
travelled to Masaka and spent the night in his true sister's home, on 5 Feb=
.,
1981. He used Ruyondo's Peugeot 304 to drive to the Kabamba army barracks f=
or
the attack the next day, 6 Feb., 1981. When he narrates his attack on Kabam=
ba
in Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni describes R=
uyondo
as "one of my acquainatnces."
Acquaintance indeed!
How with a sensitive life-and-death attack coming could he borrow the car o=
f an
ordinary "acquaintance" without being worried that this acquainta=
nce
could betray him to the authorities, if the car's ownership was traced back=
to
Ruyondo? These are all his lies. This Peugeot 304 belonged to Museveni's
brother-in-law, something he never admitted because in Masaka town, it was
commonly known that Ruyondo's wife was pure Rwandese. And so for Museveni to
even hint at a close relationship with Ruyondo or to admit that Ruyondo's w=
ife
was his direct paternal and maternal sister, would have confirmed to many t=
hat
Museveni is really Rwandese.
Kaguta, having retained Esteri and Museveni later had a child in 1949 with
Esteri. She was named Violet Kajubiri because she was born in the "yea=
r of
the jubilee", the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Protesta=
nt
church in Uganda . Meanwhile, in the late 1950s =
there
was heavy activity of Arab hides and skins traders, especially in the cattle
corridor of western Uganda . These Arab traders =
had
traveled back and forth along the route between the East African coast of K=
enya
and Tanzania and the western interior of Uganda for several generations. Th=
eir
ware was hauled over this long distance by among others Yemeni drivers who =
came
from families that had settled in Mombasa along Kenya '=
s
Indian Ocean coast. In his 1997 book Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni conf=
irms
this trade link between the East African coast and Ankole when he explains =
his
early years:
"In the days of my early childhood...cattle were literally central to =
our
whole lives....For clothing I wore the skin of a premature calf...although =
at
the time it was no longer the common way of dressing. Even before the Europ=
eans
came, people were wearing textiles brought by long-distance travellers from=
the
Swahili coast." (page 4)
One of these Mombasa Yemeni lorry drivers met Museveni's mother who was kno=
wn
to be a little loose and a child was born to them in 1960 named Salim Saleh.
That is why Saleh who is also known as Caleb Akandwanaho has never used the
name Kaguta as his middle name even after he became a senior government
official. That by itself is more proof to the idea that Kaguta is not Saleh=
's
father. When Museveni came to power in 1986, rumours that he was Rwandese f=
iled
Kampala . You think Salim Saleh would not have u=
sed
Kaguta's name in order to be respected if Kaguta was really his father?In a Boston Globe article published on 1 May, 2005, a
former U.S ambassador to Uganda Johnnie Carson referred to Caleb Akandwanaho
(Salim Saleh) as Museveni's "half-brother"This fact whih was wide=
ly
known in Uganda is one of the signs that Museveni's blood father was differ=
ent
from Saleh's. The name of Salim Saleh's biological father is not known. May=
be
he can tell us himself.
During the 1979s exile, the Museveni family lived in the Upanga Estate next=
to
Sebender Bridge in the Shimo la Udongo area of Dar es S=
alaam
, Tanzania .
They teenager Saleh was very close to the Arab and Somali community although
the rest of the Museveni family was polite but distant from their Arab and
Somali neighbours. These Somali and Arabs regarded Salim Saleh as one of th=
eir
own. Many people assumed that he was a Somali or coastal Tanzanian.
Saleh in his younger years was slim and light-skinned in complexion and you
ould easily see the phycical features of one with Arab and possibly Somali
blood. You look at Saleh's flat hips and curly hair properly next time when=
you
see him. You will see! It was only in the 1990s as he grew too bulky and his
HIV condition began to darken his skin, that he
started to blend in more with the general Ugandan population. Museveni beca=
me
close to Colonel Gadhaffi of Libya because he used Saleh's Arab blood to
convince Gadafi that he was really pro-Arab causes. We shall see later why
Gadhafi also became close to the Toro kingdom through another of Museveni's
manipulations. Meanwhile when Museveni came to power in 1986, his biological
father Kayibanda came to Uganda from Tanzania to visit his son and share in=
the
new-found recognition and fame as President. Museveni gave his father a
blasting that he never forgot! He gave him money and angrily told him never=
to
come back again. Museveni's mother came to Uganda pregnant with the boy
Rutabasirwa. That is Museveni's real name. Forget the Museveni nickname. His
middle name was adopted from his stepfather Kaguta and he only began to use=
the
middle name Kaguta after he became president. According to Museveni's inner
family members, Kaguta's brothers live in Rwanda .
This proves that even Museveni's half-sister Kajubiri is Rwandese and not
Ugandan as we assumed all along. It was strange for many years that Amos Ka=
guta
did not seem to have immediate relatives in Uganda and yet there were never=
any
reports of any of them having died and been buried in U=
ganda
. In addition, during the 1930s and 1940s and even right up to the
1950s, there was tremendous prejudice among the Banyankole tribe of the Ank=
ole
kingdom Uganda against Rwandese, particularly the Tutsi. Ths prejudice ran =
much
deeper among the peasants. You think with Esteri Kokundeka being a Rwandan
Tutsi, it would have been possible at the time for her to get married to a
Munyankole man, more so if she already had a child from another man? Not
possible! Only when you know that Kaguta is a Rwandese Tutsi then you see w=
hy
Kokundeka got married to him. One of Museveni's closest childhood friends w=
as
Eriya Kategaya whose mother was Rwandan Tutsi and fathe=
r
a Munyankole. The bias that the Banyankole felt toward the Banyarwanda at t=
he
time would have made it difficult for Museveni and Kategaya to be so close,
unless at least one of Museveni's parents was Rwandese.
In the 1990s, Museveni made a habit of publicly promoting the Runyankore
Museveni's school days and first job
Museveni attended Kyamate primary school, Mbarara High =
School
, and Ntare School , all of then Anglican Protestant schools. During=
his
time in secondary school, his schoolmates found him strange and many though=
t he
might be mentally unstable. His radical views and eccentric behaviour while=
at
Ntare School made him stand out. He was an ardent member of the school's
debating club and Scripture Union, the study group of the Anglican church i=
n Uganda . Members of the Scripture Union found him to be
domineering and even in a religious setting, he was always trying to force =
his
views on the association. Instead of a conciliatory Christian stance when
others expressed views contrary to his, Museveni during unguarded moments
displayed a militant attitude. Museveni's behaviour at Ntare School in Mbar=
ara
was similar to that of his mother's. Even when his friends and classmates m=
ade
an allowance for his behaviour being part of the normal turbulent teenage
years, some of it was not. One time in 1965, Museveni called a strike which
became so violent that a prefect in the school was beaten to death. Museveni
was arrested and taken to the Mbarara Police Station. He was taken to the
Mbarara district commissioner at the time, Edward Athiyo. When Athiyo saw t=
his
young boy who was so thin and had no buttocks almost, he could not believe =
that
Museveni could cause such chaos. So Athiyo ordered Museveni to be given 12
strokes of the cane and released. That is how people went on underestimating
Museveni for many years. They always think he is weaker than he looks,
politically and physically. It was troubling because Museveni did not do th=
ings
on the spur of the moment. He thought things out appeared to know what he w=
as
doing. But what he did was not the acts of a normal person.
One of the persistent statements that Museveni had started making was that =
he
was determined to be the president of Uganda one day in the future. He was
laughed off as a clown by his schoolmates who saw this as one more of his
characteristic outbursts. He kept mentioning this time and time again. He w=
as
ignored and dismissed by onlookers as out of his mind, as usual. Something =
that
has never been analysed is his obsession with being Uga=
nda 's
head of state that began to rule Museveni from his late teens. The young man
was too ditermined to be president that one has to ask sincerely why be so
consumed with being leader of a ramshackled African country without any oth=
er career
ambition? He never explained what he planned to do when he achieved this dr=
eam.
There is not definite evidence in this regard, but it can be assumed that
Museveni went through a terrible experience as a teenager either being mock=
ed
for not having no ethnic and family roots or wat=
ching
with deep envy his friends and other schoolmates with families and a sense =
of
social belonging and he with none. What was also known by people at the tim=
e is
that Museveni's mother was widely rumoured to be a part-time prostitute. Th=
at
is part of the reason she came to have four children from three different m=
en.
Museveni was teased and mocked over the fact that his half-brother Saleh wa=
s an
Arab and these insults cut deeper into Museveni. The rumour that she was or=
had
been a prostitute persisted everywhere she went, to the point that it seeme=
d to
have at least a grain of truth to it. A humiliated Museveni must have devel=
oped
a great need to compensate for his too shameful background. There could only
have been one way to do this and that would be to become the powerful head =
of
state, thus rising even above the traditional kings of Ankole, Toro, and
Bunyoro of western Uganda whose subjects he lived and studied among. To be
president required simple Ugandan citizenship which he could claim to have.=
One
did not beyond that need to be from a particular ethnic group because the
presidency was not hereditary. He had to dominate and d=
omineer
those who had insulted and mocked him. After sitting his advanced level exa=
ms
in 1966, he passed to go to Makerere University in Kampala in 1967 to read =
Law.
In his A'Level exams, he scored three principals: DDD in History, Economics,
and Literature. What he got in the compulsory supplementary subject, General
Paper we do not know.
One day a journalist should ask him at a press conference to tell us how mu=
ch
he got in General Paper. But even if Museveni got only DDD in his principal
subjects, he knew many things because he used to read widely. So there is a=
big
chance that he scored highly in General Paper. Someone can even assume that=
he
got a Credit 3 or maybe Distinction 2. But you can see why he feared to tel=
l us
how much he got in A-Level when he wrote the Mustard Seed because if Uganda=
ns
knew he got DDD they would wonder about the only man with a vision to rule
Uganda! DDD even in the 1960s was not a result to make you celebrate with
delicious chicken. Makerere at that time was one of Afr=
ica 's
most prestigious institutions of higher learning. But Museveni was unable to
complete his first year there. Museveni has claimed the reason he did not
attend Makerere University , saying that he orig=
inally
put his first choice as Dar es Salaam and Makerere only as a second choice.
According to a source then working in the Office of the President at that t=
ime,
Museveni got a mental breakdown at Makerere. In a panic, Uganda
's Prime Minister Milton Obote quickly had a letter written and arra=
nged
for Museveni to be flown to Sofia , Bulgaria in eastern Europe where he was
admitted in a psychiatry hospital. Because of this, he was unable to contin=
ue
at Makerere. Explain why did Obote get involved in the personal matters of =
an
obscure student from western Uganda ? The reason=
is
that Museveni had been a youth winger and member of the ruling Uganda Peopl=
e's
Congress party. Obote was well known for his loyalty to even the young peop=
le
affiliated with his party. President Obote rang up his Tanzanian counterpart
President Julius Nyerere and said he wanted Nyerere to recommend "this
illustrious young man" Museveni to the University of Dar es Salaam . A letter was later written to President Nyere=
re
formally requesting him to help gain admission for Museveni at Dar es Salaam . It is not clear what triggered off Museveni's
mental breakdown. Maybe it had something to do with his mother's breakdown =
that
same year and therefore was part of a cycle of mental breakdown by mother a=
nd
son or was an incident isolated. It is not known. Much later in life as
President, Museveni was hostile to Makerere University in a funny way. Some=
now
trace that hostile feeling back to the haunting memories it gives him of his
mental illness in 1967.
At Dar es Salaam University between 1967 and 1970 he studied law for his fi=
rst
year but owing to his insignificant performance, he was transferred to the
Political Science department for the remaining two years at the university.=
On
the first day of the law class, the lecturer asked each of the students to
stand up and introduce themselves. They did so in turns. Museveni was seated
right at the back of the class. When it came to his turn, he stood up and s=
aid,
"I am Yoweri Museveni of Rwanda ." Some
Ugandan students in the class were surprised, as most of them had always
assumed that he was a Ugandan from Ankole. Knowing his stubborn ways, they =
dismissed
this statement as one of his pranks and attempt at humour. He soon became
involved in radical nationalist and leftist politics. During his second yea=
r at
Dar es Salaam University in Sept. 1968, Museveni visited the military camps=
of
the Mozambican independence group, Frente de Liberatacao de Mocambique
(FRELIMO), and acquainted himself with their goals. There are some people w=
ho
doubt his claim to have seen combat action in Mozambiqu=
e ,
but anyway let us give him the benefit of the doubt. At Dar es Salaam University , Museveni was one of the leaders of a radi=
cal
student association, the University African Students' Front (UASF), a
discussion group that advocated pan-African unity and advanced the struggle=
for
Africa 's independence. The university published a Marxist magazine called =
Che
Che, whose main theme was revolutionary causes and African liberation. In o=
ne
of its issues, Museveni wrote an article in which he compared President Nye=
rere
to the 19th century German leader Otto von Bismarck. An aide to Nyerere read
and was impressed by the article and sought out this Museveni who had
understood Nyerere in such visionary terms. A mentor-protégé
friendship between Nyerere and Museveni soon grew.
In 1969, Museveni visited Makerere University from Dar es Salaam University
where he was a student. He went to speak at a seminar on African liberation=
.
He had recently returned from Mozambique where he watched the FRELIMO
guerrillas train and was impressed by their level of organization and in
particular, their interpretation of the role of a soldier in Africa
's independence struggles. In a speech to the students at Makerere,
Museveni passionately argued that war the highest form of political struggle
could only be conducted by political fighters not by politically neutral
soldiers. This speech at Makerere spelt out Museveni's beliefs and because =
he
emphasised them so forcefully, we can surmise that he had now come to the
conviction that war was to be, henceforth, his principal vehicle for the
pursuit of his ambitions and the application of his political ideas. One day
late in 1970 while at Dar es Salaam University ,
Museveni suffered another mental breakdown. Like the breakdown in 1967, it =
was
not a breakdown caused by fatigue, stress, or any result of a work overload=
. It
was a breakdown that was definitely triggered off by mental illness. This t=
ime
he was flown to a psychiatric hospital in Oman in the Middle East
. After undergoing treatment, Museveni returned to Dar es Salaam . After completing university in Tanzania in Ma=
rch
1970, Museveni applied for and got a job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
President Obote met Museveni again in Aug. 1970 and was impressed enough by=
the
young man that he had him transferred to the Office of the President at the
parliamentary buildings in Kampala . There, Muse=
veni
joined a branch of the Ugandan intelligence service, the General Service Un=
it.
Prior to its founding in April 1964, the General Service Unit was an off sh=
oot
of the Protocol Department in the Office of the President. This branch was
called the State Research Bureau and was headed at that time by Picho Ali. =
His
brother, Albert Picho Owiny, was also a youth activist with the ruling UPC
party. Museveni also worked with the head of the research department in the=
President's
Office, Wilson Okwenje (who later became the minister of public service and
cabinet affairs in Obote II regime in 1980.)
Museveni's official title was Assistant Secretary for Research.
Among the other young men in the research department of the President's Off=
ice
were Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, Zubairi Bakari, Kintu Musoke, Yuda Katundu, Mich=
ael
Micombero-Mpambara, Kasendwa-Ddumba, Erifazi Laki, Edward Rugumayo, Moses
Musonge, John Ateker Ejalu, Abbasi Kibazo and many others. The overall dire=
ctor
of the country's intelligence services was Obote's own cousin, Naphtali Ake=
na
Adoko. Museveni's colleagues in the General Service Unit found him to be too
impatient and quarrelsome in dealing with people. He was always secretive in
the office and appeared to find it difficult to trust people. He never open=
ed
up to his colleagues and they felt sure he was holding back much of himself
from them. It was Picho Ali who knew best how to deal with Museveni.
Ali was an extremely intelligent young man with good command of English. He
would dismiss Museveni's petty bickering with one single word which would l=
eave
Museveni boiling like a volcano and the rest of the office cheering. Like i=
t or
not, Museveni was not popular. Explaning in the Daily Monitor newspaper of =
Kampala
on 16 Oct., 2005, Wilson Okwenje said:
"It was in my capacity as head of research in the President's Office t=
hat
I met Yoweri Museveni for the first time in 1970. He had come to us after
graduating from Dar es Salaam University . We wo=
rked
together up till the military coup of 25 Jan., 1971.
At that time, as an assistant secretary, he was just another face in the cr=
owd,
as a matter of speech, although I came to know that he harboured political
ambitions and I suspected that he was using his work at the President's Off=
ice
as a stepping stone."
The question is, how was Museveni "using his work" as a stepping
stone to his real ambitions? It goes without saying that someone in that
position would have enjoyed a certain amount of access to secret government
files and information. He had security clearance and made sure that his
position benefitted him in a far-reaching way than just gaining an office d=
esk
for administrative experience. In 1970 unknown to most people, Museveni had=
began to collect weapons for reasons known to himself.=
How
he got the arms in the first place without being questioned or arrested, is
equally unknown but he used his security clearance to get them in without
causing sucpision. Museveni kept the rifles and pistols hidden in a locatio=
n in
Salaama near Kibuye along the road to Entebbe . =
He
also tried to recruit some of his friends into what was a future armed
struggle. Many of them did not take him seriously that a junior intelligence
officer actually meant what he said when he claimed to privately own guns a=
nd
was planning an armed struggle.
Murder of Brigadier Pierino Okoya
On 25 Jan., 1970, the commander of the army's Second Infantry brigade,
Brigadier Pierino Yere Okoyo and his wife Anna Akello Okoya were shot dead
outside their home at Layibi, just outside Gulu town by unknown assailants.
Brigadier Okoya was buried together with a sheep. Okoya had been one of the
most vocal in criticising the army commander Idi Amin for fleeing the scene=
of
an 19 Oct., 1969 assassination attempt on President Obote at Lugogo in Kampala . As soon as news of the attempt on Obote's li=
fe
became known, Brigadier Okoya drove from Jinja, 80 km from Kampala and gave
orders for the army to remain in the barracks and restrain themselves. Okoya
accused Amin of being a coward and wanted disciplinary action taken against=
the
army commander. He went on to suggest that Amin might have had something to=
do
with the assassination plot. At the time Okoya was shot dead, Amin had been
flown to his hometown of Arua toward the border with Sudan by an Acholi pil=
ot.
Obote ordered an inquiry into Okoya's murder. The first suspects in the Oko=
ya
murder were four men Captain Frederick ("Smutts") Guweddeko, an
airforce officer; Patrick Mukwaya, a businessman; Siperito Kapalaga, also a
businessman; Fred Kyamufumba, a flight technician; and two other men, Kalul=
e L.
Lutalo and Sebastiano Lukanga. These men were allegedly paid of murder Okoy=
a.
Two young women Milly Nantege and Mary Kajjansi =
who
were girlfriends of two of the accused, were also arrested and tortured to
obtain confessions since it was assumed that they would know something about
the plot.
President Amin appeared before the panel investigating the murder of Okoya =
on
15 May, 1971, less than four months since coming to power. Speaking before
Justice Richard Dickson, Amin said he did not ask Captain Guweddeko to recr=
uit
civilians to assassinate Okoya. On 16 June, 1971, an 86-page report by Dick=
son
was published in which it was stated that the killers of Okoya remained unk=
nown
to that day. According to Guweddeko speaking in 1972, he had been arrested =
at a
barber's shop in Wandegeya, a trading centre just outside the city. He said=
a
police C.I.D officer tortured him continually in order to force Guweddeko to
admit that 'it was General Amin who gave them the money to hire people to k=
ill
Brigadier Okoya,' The People newspaper said. Investigations following the c=
rime
revealed that the kind of bullets that had been used to kill the Okoya coup=
le
were to be found in only two sections of the security forces, the army barr=
acks
in Mbarara and the General Service Unit intelligence agency.
This brings two scenarios. The first thinks that the person who ordered Oko=
ya's
murder was either connected in some way with both the army in Mbarara and t=
he
General Service Unit or one of them. The other scenario thinks that the mas=
ter
planner behind the murders used people in the army based in Mbarara or agen=
ts
in the General Service Unit. It is the combination of Mbarara and the Gener=
al
Service Unit that makes the picture more interesting.
To add pepper to salt, The People newspaper, owned by the UPC party, quoted=
a
government statement issued on 13 April, 1972 in which the government expla=
ined
reports of missing people allegedly murdered by the military regime:
"Most of the people reported missing, the statement says, are from [the
southwestern Bantu and Hamitic] Ankole and Kigezi districts, which districts
were areas of concentration for recruitment to the defunct General Service
Unit." (The People, 14 April, 1972). This i=
s the
UPC paper speaking, mind you. We get from it we get credible and independent
proof that the General Service Unit intelligence agency was not dominated by
officers and agents from Obote's northern Nilotic Acholi and Langi tribes as
most people think but by agents mainly "from Ankole and Kigezi
districts." We had some well known characters in GSU from the west in =
the
shape of Michael Micombero-Mpambara from Kigezi and the Yoweri Museveni from
Ankole. Let us focus on Museveni the thin man without buttoks who caused the
Ntare strike in 1965. Okoya was murdered in Jan. 1970, at a time that Musev=
eni
would have still been a student in Tanzania . So=
how
could he feature in the killing of Okoya unless we are telling nice fiary
tales?
You see you must always know how a triky man thinks. Museveni was not like =
you
and me. It seems he grew old be fore his time especially in matters to do w=
ith
state security and the workings of the government system. While most of his
classmates were leading ordinary lives and harbouring ordinary career
ambitions, Museveni was different. Too different! By 1966 he was already af=
lame
with the passion of African revolution. He followed news events in Uganda
keenly and behaved much older than his age. On 30 July, 2005, in Mbarara,
Museveni told a bridal giveaway party ("Okuhingira") that he had
first planned to wage war against the Obote government in 1967. "I was=
to
start the war against dictatorship when I was still a student at Ntare Scho=
ol
in 1967 when Obote abrogated the constitution, but mzee [James] Kahigiriza
advised me not to because it would cause more problems," Museveni said.
The date he referred to there was actually Feb. 1966 not 1967 if your have =
seen
his explanation in Sowing The Mustard Seed. By t=
his age,
Museveni had developed an understanding and appetite for armed struggle and
political violence. It is common knowledge that Museveni as a student at Da=
r es
Salaam not regular in the time he spent at campus. We said before that he h=
ad
visited the guerrilla-held areas of Mozambique in 1969 where his encounter =
with
the FRELIMO guerrillas made a deep mark on him.
Even more important but which Museveni does not refer to it publicly, he had
joined the intelligence service earlier than he openly admits. This had
happened while he was still a student at Ntare School .=
In the chaos atmosphere following the attempt on Obote's life in 1969 the y=
oung
Museveni who is so cunning calculated that killing Okoya would inevitably b=
ring
the blame on Amin. In a book published in 1976 to explain the Israeli side =
to
the 1976 hostage crisis at Entebbe , the deputy =
editor
of the Israeli airforce magazine, Y. Ofer, revealed details that appear to
spare Amin of Okoya's murder. The book titled Operation Thunder: The Entebbe
Raid: The Israeli's Own Story, mentioned this de=
tail
on page 60. Read it yourself and see:
"One day when a Ugandan brigadier-general named Okea [Okoya], a member=
of
the Acholi tribe, had been murdered, President Obote planned to exploit the
assassination to oust Amin, and he started the rumour that the [army] Chief=
of
Staff had been involved in it. Idi Amin was then in Cairo...[The Uganda
minister of defence, Felix Onama...investigated the matter and learned that
Obote was planning to detain Amin on his return to Uganda on the trumped-up
charge of having assassinated the brigadier-general."
We should bear in mind that Museveni had secretly been acquiring arms in 19=
70
and hiding them at Salaama. We canot rule out the chanc=
e that
he might have at least hired out guns in Jan. 1970 for the assassination of
Okoya. A big evidence linking Museveni's
possible role in Okoya's murder came in Aug. 1985 shortly after Obote was
overthrown for the second time.The elderly father of the late Okoya told a
tribal meeting in Gulu that his son had not been murdered by Amin.
Even more surprising speaking also in Gulu nine years later in 1994, the fo=
rmer
Ugandan head of state General Tito Lutwa Okello told a public gathering that
Amin did not murder Okoya. Tito Okello had escorted President Museveni on 1
Feb., 1994 for the opening of the Koch Goma health centre in Gulu. Okello w=
as a
Lieutenant-Colonel in the 1960s army under Obote and knew enough about the =
army
and Uganda 's politics to know what he was talki=
ng
about. Speaking in Luo language in Gulu that day to his own tribesmen the
Acholi, Okello added something intriguing.
He said: "There are some people who up to now know who killed Okoya but
they are quiet. Okoya was killed in the same way that Colonel Omoya was
killed... right now you have started to gang up again under the system and =
the
people who killed your sons." Who was Okello referring to when he said=
the
people who murdered Okello were in Uganda at the time he spoke, in 1994? Th=
is
was a political murder. Okello did not mention people by name. He could only
have remained silent about their identity if they were influential within t=
he
Acholi community and he did not want them to be shunned by their tribesmen,=
or
the killers were in the government at the time and he did not want to invite
their wrath. It was one of the most puzzling statements made by a political
leader during the 1990s. Okello criticised the Acholi for ganging up
"under the system and the people who killed your sons." Was he
referring to the Acholi rebel leaders like Alice Lakwena and Joseph Kony? If
that is the case their rag-tag armies and rebel groups were a joke and you
could not say they were a "system."
By early 1994, both of these Acholi rebel leaders had come to be regarded as
too weak to seriously threaten the Museveni government and so it was pointl=
ess
for Tito Okello to bother about cautioning the Acholi over these rebel lead=
ers.
Okello said also that the Acholi had "started" to gang up under t=
he
system that had brought suffering to them and killed their sons. By stating that he could only have been referring to the Nati=
onal
Resistance Movement government under President Yoweri Museveni. An
Acholi-led military coup and government headed by Okello himself had ruled
Uganda six months before Museveni came to power and the Acholi supported th=
at.
For 30 years, the Acholi had given their support to the UPC and DP governme=
nts
of Milton Obote and Benedicto Kiwanuka. So they could not have
"started" giving their support to a system and got Tito Okello's
criticism, unless he saw them as supporting a new system that they had
historically not supported or known. Tito Okello's intriguing statement in =
Gulu
in Feb. 1994, clearing of Amin's role in Okoya's murder by the Israeli airf=
orce
magazine boss in 1976 tells us that it was not Amin. Because the bullets wh=
ich
shot Okoya and his wife came from the GSU or from Mbarara barracks makes on=
e to
believe that it was Yoweri Museveni who killed both Brigadier Okoya and Col=
onel
Omoya in 1970. You see when the Acholi hate Museveni for 20 years we can wo=
nder
if there can be smoke without fire! Acholi have shunned Museveni with more
rebel groups than all other tribes and this can make one to wonder if maybe
they possibly know that Museveni killed their Acholi military sons. On 7 Oc=
t.,
1970, President Obote, President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and President Juli=
us
Nyerere of Tanzania went to Makerere College in Kampala to attend a ceremon=
y in
which it was to be officially made a university; the University of East Afr=
ica.
The heads of state were applauded. But when Amin was introduced, he receive=
d a
standing ovation and cheers from the students assembled for the occasion.
On 11 Jan., 1971, President Obote summoned Amin to his office and told him =
that
the army had overshot its budget by 2,691,343 Pound Ste=
rling
. He also told Amin about the report into the killing of Okoya. Five
days later on 16 Jan., 1971, Amin called a news conference and said that Ob=
ote
planned to have him arrested using intelligence agents. Sincerely why should
Amin do this, addressing a press conference charging that the
commander-in-chief was planning to have him arrested, an action in breach of
army discipline? Amin was definitely aware that the climate in Uganda had
turned too political than usual. By addressing a press conference, he tried=
to
appeal for support directly from the public where, he must have known he
enjoyed sympathy to make such a direct charge against the President worth t=
he
risk.
FRONASA takes on Amin (1971 - 1979)
On 25 Jan., 1971, Major-General Idi Amin came to power in a coup staged by
officers and men of the Army. Most of the coup makers were Muslims from the
West Nile or of Sudanese Nubian origin.
On the same day as the coup, Museveni and a group of friends opposed to Amin
fled to Tanzania . Those ones were Zubairi Bakar=
i,
Abbasi Kibazo, Erifazi Laki and Yuda Katundu. These were GSU spies like
Museveni. They later decided to launch an armed insurrection against the new
military regime. The Amin coup was one of the most popular events since Uga=
nda
won independence from Britain in Oct. 1962. You could think as if Uganda had
won the World Cup. Mamoth crowds greeted Amin everywhere he went in Kampala , as he drove himself in an open jeep accompan=
ied by
troops. The coup was most welcomed and popular in Bugan=
da .
Some people have wondered why Museveni and his fellas speeded to exile the =
next
day after the coup. How did Museveni instantly see that Amin was a dictator
when the champagne was still flowing and people were drinking like fish and
dancing like night dancers on the streets? Unless he tells us that he has a
sixth sense like a magician. Museveni has always tried to appear a hero by
claiming that he was one of the few who decided that they could not serve u=
nder
Amin's dictatorship. In Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni says on the after=
noon
of the coup he sat down with his friends and calmly saw the legacy of Idi A=
min
(before it was even a day old!) and they concluded that they could not work
under the Amin "system", a system that was yet to even get full
control of Kampala, let alone the rest of the country. One cannot judge the
character of a regime on its first day unless you are God and Museveni is n=
ot
God. The answer to the puzzle is that Museveni had been part of a small tea=
m of
intelligence officers pressing Obote to arrest army commander Idi Amin.
Museveni's colleagues Laki, Kibazo, Bakari, and Katundu were intelligence
officers like him. The army's former quartermaster boss a Langi army office=
r by
the names Lieutenant-Colonel David Oyite Ojok, had also been one of those
urging Obote to arrest or at least put Amin under control. Tensions were
building in the army and some in the UPC government felt Amin was becoming a
threat to Obote. Obote, as usual, had been indecisive over this issue. But =
at
the urging of Museveni and others, Obote ordered the arrest of Amin while t=
he
president was attending a Commonwealth summit in Singap=
ore .
Museveni, like Oyite Ojok, fled Uganda shortly after the coup because he kn=
ew
Amin would have arrested him had he stayed around Uganda and keep him in ja=
il
like a rat.
Museveni also knew he had a case to answer over the murder of Okoya because=
he
had been trying to pin the blame on Amin and now Amin was in power.
If Museveni killed Okoya and it was Okoya who had accused Amin of deserting
Obote on the day of Obote's escape from an assassination, then with Amin no=
w in
power there would have been nothing for Museveni to fear. If anything, Amin
might have offered Museveni a prominent position in the new government and =
Museveni,
with his well-known love for power would only too willingly have taken up s=
uch
a position. Museveni who killed Amin's chief critic Okoya could only have w=
on
himself Amin's support. But you see a guilty man runs before they raise the
alarm so Museveni fled immediately into exile. Let him explain the Okoya mu=
rder
and you will see how his heart beats with fear and guilt.
Amin's huge popularity
As we saw even before he took state power, Amin was too popular even from t=
he
reception he got at Makerere University on 7 Oct., 1970 when he accompanied=
the
three East African presidents to the inaguration of the university. Amin's
taking of power on 25 Jan., 1971 had been greatly welcomed in the most heav=
ily
populated and most politically and economically populated part of Uganda , Buganda . Many hundreds of thousands of Bagan=
da
welcomed Amin's coup to the extent that he could even be made a prince if he
had wanted to. Removing the man who the Baganda never forgave for humiliati=
ng
their late king, Edward Mutesa II and abolishing the kingdom they were so l=
oyal
to made the Baganda madly in love with Amin. Spe=
aking
during his first press conference to local and international journalists on=
26
Jan., 1971, Amin warned the public against removing portraits from governme=
nt
offices and other public buildings previous leaders including that of Obote=
the
leader he had just deposed. If it was him, Museveni would have called them
swine and removed all the photos for sure! If these portraits were removed =
Amin
said, "Then you will not be able to write the history of the
country."Amin even said that Obote was a good man "but he was wro=
ngly
advised by his selected and trusted people." Everyone wondered when he
said this! Amin appointed Ben Kanyanjeyo, from Ankole, as his Press Secreta=
ry.
A student association founded during the Obote regime and regarded as a
recruiting pool for youthful supporters of Obote, the National Union of
Students of Uganda (NUSU), continued to exist even after Amin took power. At
the time of the coup, the national president of NUSU was Omwony Ojwok. Even=
the
UPC paper The People continued publication even after the coup up to 1973. =
Amin
made Baganda mad with happiness on 31 March, 1971 by returning the body of
Mutesa from London to Uganda where he was accorded a state funeral with full
military honours. Amin came from the small Kakwa tribe in the West Nile near
the border with Sudan . He was also from the min=
ority
Muslim faith. But overnight, by the Jan. coup and the return of the Kabaka's
body for re-burial, Amin had won the hearts of the tribe and people whose
loyalty mattered the most in Uganda . He spoke
Luganda, the language of the Baganda fluently. They even said his physique
resembled a Muganda. In Aug. 1972, Amin announced that Ugandan Asians holdi=
ng
British passports would be given a month and a half to pack up and leave
The Asians from the Indian sub-continent controlled the economy of Uganda in
the areas of retail and wholesale trade and their dominance was resented by
indigenous Black Ugandans all over the country. With the announcement that
these Asians were to be expelled, Amin's popularity, already at its greates=
t in
Buganda , now spread to the rest of the country,=
until
Uganda was like a nightclub with dancing everywhere. Booze flowed like the
River Nile and Lake Victoria . The expulsion of =
the
Asians could even have been greater for Ugandans than the 1971 coup itself.
This is because a Ugandan leader had shown the balls to deal with the
resentment that Ugandans felt at having won independence but still dominate=
d by
the Indians whom they regarded as foreigners. A lecturer at Makerere University , Phares Mutibwa, in his 1992 book Uganda S=
ince
Independence, commented: "Praise of Amin was not confined to the Bagan=
da
or indeed to the African population; even some important members of the Asi=
an
community added their voices to the general euphoria at Amin's emergence.&q=
uot;
(Uganda Since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hope=
s,
Phares Mutibwa, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1992, p. 84). Everyth=
ing
Amin did as president between 1971 and late 1972 was
like a midas touch for the majority of Ugandans. He had been brought to pow=
er
with British and Israeli support and was too popular in the West throughout
1971 and the first half of 1972. To make matters worse for the anti-Amin ex=
ile
groups, in Sept. 1972 at the Munich Olympic Games, John Akii-Bua shocked
everbody except himself by winning Uganda 's fir=
st
Olympi gold medal in history. Akii-Bua's victory was like the end of the wo=
rld
for sports lovers! It sparked off national celebrations like those at the t=
ime
of the 1971 coup and independence celebrations in 1962.
Amin, a former East African heavyweight champion and keen sports lover embr=
aced
the Akii-Bua victory. Akii-Bua was given a new car a Peugeot 604 brand new =
and
a house by the government, while a road in Nakasero was named in his honour.
Many sports fans in the country gave credit to the president for this sports
glory of Akii Bua because he loved sports.Amin was too popular in 1972 that=
he
could even move without bodyguards like any other civilian.With such genuine
support for Amin in Buganda and Uganda like wildfire, the anti-Amin groups
based in Tanzania faced a serious challenge. Removing Amin was now going to=
be
much more difficult than Uganda sending a man to the moon. Or
Uganda manufaturing a car.
In March 1971, Museveni formed the Front for National Salvation (FRONASA), a
Marxist guerrilla group along with the four friends who had fled Uganda sho=
rtly
after the coup. But before FRONASA, Museveni and six of his collagues opera=
ted
a rebel group called "Commitee Seven" because it was made of seven
people not because of Museveni's name. Museveni was asked to be the liaison
offier for Committee Seven in Tanzania because he knew Tanzania like the pa=
lm
of his hand. But after some time Committee broke up and a new group called
FRONASA was founded. FRONASA in its original form became redundant and then
dead between March 1973 and Sept. 1976. Museveni got a part-time job in Aug.
1974 in Moshi in Tanzania . When FRELIMO came to=
power
in Mozambique in 1975, Museveni says he sent 28 young men to the newly
independent country for military training in the hope of inflitrating them =
back
into Uganda . He taught development studies and
economics at the Moshi Co-operative College and later moved to the capital =
Dar
es Salaam in Sept. 1976. In Dar es Salaam , Muse=
veni
lived in a flat located a row or two overlooking another flat where Uganda =
's
future head of state Colonel Tito Okello lived. Museveni was given 50,000 U=
.S
dollars by President Nyerere, who had developed interest in Museveni after
Museveni claimed Nyerere was Bismark. Nyerere detested Amin and was determi=
ned
to support any group or person who launched a campaign to oust Amin.
By 1972, FRONASA had 200 young recruits. The Africa Contemporary Record edi=
ted
by scholar Colin Legum wrote about FRONASA: "It was formed in March 19=
71
by a group of Obote's student supporters who felt that his policies of
preparing for an orthodox army invasion of Uganda would not work...Obote did
not disown them or their methods; nor did they disown Obote." (Africa Contemporary Record, Annual Survey and Documents, 197=
2-73).
The FRONASA manifesto was mailed from Kenya late in 1972 to sympathisers in=
side
Uganda .
The manifesto had four main objectives:
1) To stop the senseless murder, rape and looting of the people of Uganda a=
nd
all other forms of brutality; 2) to ensure an enlightened government for the
people of Uganda that will guarantee peace, security and dignity and all ot=
her
human rights as set down in the United Nations Charter of Human Rights; 3) =
to
salvage what remains of the economy of Uganda and nurse it back to health; =
4)
to work relentlessly to improve the image of Uganda in the eyes of the worl=
d.
Museveni while in Tanzania had quickly moved to integrate himself in the
Tanzanian intelligence community. He did so believing that Tanzanian intell=
igence
was respected by Nyerere and had the president's ear. Museveni also did thi=
s in
order to gain the upper hand among the Ugandan exile community. He informed=
the
Tanzanians of the activities of his fellow exiles and was also kept informe=
d of
the Ugandans' plans and lifestyles. Already you can see how this Museveni of
yours was as far back as that time. The man knew that in this militarised
atmosphere of Tanzania and Uganda the ultimate decisions were always going =
to
come from the military and he had to be within range of that power structur=
e if
his prospects in a future post-Amin Uganda were to be bright. That is how he
has always been able to outsmart both his colleagues and his rivals. All al=
ong,
Museveni had insisted that the best way to remove Amin was not by a direct
military attack on Uganda . He instead favoured a
gradual process which he described in Communist way as a
"protracted people's struggle" involving grassroots
participation of the peasants and masses.
The ousted president Obote and most other exile groups favoured the approac=
h of
engaging Amin's army in battle or launching a sudden invasion and hoping th=
at
the disgruntled Ugandan population would rise against Amin. Most people have
asked as to why Museveni and Obote preferred different approaches to ousting
Amin. It was Obote's belief that the UPC as a party was still the most popu=
lar
political group in Uganda inspite of Amin's widespread popularity. The UPC
might have lost much popularity in the central Buganda area and a few other
places following the 1966 crisis and the abolition in 1967 of the kingdoms.=
But by and large, the UPC was still organised and therefore to Obote it sti=
ll
enjoyed nationwide support. Therefore, the best way to oust Amin would be f=
rom
Obote's view to launch a surprise military strike and following it the
population would rise up and Amin's government would fall. How do we explai=
n as
to why was Museveni so serious on a protracted
struggle against Amin, unlike the UPC and Obote who preferred a direct mili=
tary
invasion of Uganda in the hope that Ugandans would rise against the Amin
government? Once you know Museveni's obsession with power there is nothing
surprising anymore. It was not like him to prefer to gradually build suppor=
t in
Uganda . There was another reason. Museveni
who harboured political ambitions of his own recognised that he was an unkn=
own
factor in Ugandan politics. Nothing he could do at that stage could =
win
him enough support across Uganda to make him president.This bitter truth
disturbed him right up to the end of the 1970s. As we said earlier, he had
expressed ambitions to one day be president of Uganda since his high school
days. He never hid that ambition and in Tanzania it was burning as hot as e=
ver.
It was impossible that such an ambitious person could prefer a gradual proc=
ess
to oust Amin if an immediate and daring raid on Uganda could achieve that g=
oal
within a few days or weeks.
Explain how come he advocated the gradual approach?
Museveni was realistic enough about his chances to know that a strike at Am=
in's
regime followed by the downfall of the military government could only favour
Obote. Instead of Amin, Obote would be the natural replacement since it was
Obote's government that Amin had overthrown. Uganda 's<=
/span>
neighbours in the East African community, Kenya and Tanzania , would have
supported Obote's return, since that would restore the landscape in Uganda =
to
what they were familiar with. Museveni was an unknown figure in Ugandan
politics and it was unrealistic to imagine that Amin's downfall would see
Museveni chosen to succeed Amin. Museveni hoped to use a gradual struggle to
undermine Obote's support in Uganda , which he k=
new,
as a former GSU intelligence officer, was widespread and was the real barri=
er
standing in the way of Museveni's ambitions. The removal of Amin, by itself,
would be no consolation to Museveni if this returned Obote to power. An att=
ack
on Uganda by FRONASA guerrillas in conjunction with Kikosi Maluum a guerril=
la
force loyal to Obote was launched on 17 Sept., 1972. President Amin got to =
know
beforehand of the invasion. He even knew the codeword they planned to use:
"The Cow is about to Calve." Museveni secretly passed the codewor=
d on
to Amin's security so that the invasion would fail and he gets credit for
opposing a military invasion. That is why most of Obote's Kikosi Maluum
suffered casualties when the attack was repulsed by government troops loyal=
to
President Amin, but Museveni survived without even fighting.
What fighting did he do?
One of his friends Black Mwesigwa was so bitter with Museveni for betraying
FRONASA and not doing actual fighting when the others in FRONASA were fight=
ing.
Little did Mwesigwa know that he was dealing with a sna=
ke.
The Africa Contemporary Record reviewed this abortive invasion: "There
were a number of miscalculations and mistakes on Obote's side to account for
the failure of the invasion. It came at a time when a strong current of pop=
ular
support was running in Amin's favour over the impending Asian
exodus...Expectations that the invasion would lead to popular uprisings were
not fulfilled." (Africa Contemporary Record, Annual Survey and Documen=
ts,
1972-73, page. B277). Obote and his supporters in Tanzania had not understo=
od
how quickly the political climate had changed since Obote was last in power.
They had not understood that Amin's simple education and his public image a=
s a
jokster and simple-minded crowd pleaser resonated with the majority of Ugan=
dans
who could not relate with the academic socialist and pan-Africanist ideolog=
y of
the former Obote government. Moreover the squence of events in Uganda and t=
he
moves taken by Amin to consolidate his first wave of support had revealed t=
his
army general to be much more alert and politically savvy than people expect=
ed.
Museveni understood better than Obote what was going on in Uganda
, hence his view that a gradual effort was what was needed to remove
Amin from power. But we need to remember that Museveni also betrayed his own
fighters to Amin's army so that he could be seen to be special at predicting
disaster.
How was FRONASA going to overcome the huge obstacle, namely Amin's populari=
ty?
How were they to convince enough Ugandans to start doubting Amin so they as
FRONASA could achieve their goal of gaining power? In the history of Uganda
this question is not explained. It is agreed that Amin was initially welcom=
ed
by huge crowds and was very popular, but within a few months, he turned aga=
inst
his people and began what is termed his "reign of terror".For sur=
e it
seems people don't care to ask as to why a leader who was enjoying such gen=
uine
support across much of the country, who traveled with only a handful of
bodyguards should turn around and begin to terrorize the very people who ha=
d so
welcomed him to power and continued to support him. The only reason to expl=
ain
the terror that was going on in Uganda after late 1971 was that these were =
acts
of sabotage by anti-Amin guerrilla groups. FRONASA, operating from Tanzania=
as
well as inside Uganda , adopted a covert method =
to
achieve its objectives. Most of the intellectual leaders of FRONASA like Er=
iya
Kategaya and Augustine Ruzindana, Jack Maumbe Mukhwana did not know that
Museveni was carrying out violent sabotage behind their back. This is a cru=
cial
part of Ugandan history known by very few people. Museveni was a plotting,
far-sighted fellow. He was a non-drinker a non-smoker, and had no time for
leisure. He sensed that regular political organisation and a conventional
approach to politics would not work to his ends. He had to try something ra=
dically
and horribly different.
What he did kept a top secret even from some of his senior commanders and
political associates was to engage in covert activities that would undermine
Amin's international credibility while at the same time eliminating the
challenges that Museveni would face in his quest for power. Thus the Museve=
ni
doctrine called for a process of elimination of rising to the top by bringi=
ng
down those at the top. Becoming the only towering natio=
nal
figure by eliminating instead of competing against those who were also
heavyweights. That's what Museveni tried to do to Colonel Kizza Besi=
gye
in February 2001 when he hatched a plot to shoot down the plane carrying
Besigye to a campaign stop in Ajumani, but it was aborted when Besigye's
campaign aide Okwir Rwabwoni insisted on being with Besigye. Okwir's brother
Noble Mayombo who was part of the plot pleaded with Museveni that he could =
not
face his family if his brother was killed by the government and he was part=
of
the plan.That is why there was a scuffle at Entebbe Airport as military pol=
ice
and military intelligence tried to seize Rwabwoni so he could escape the
assassination. You can see how Museveni works when he spread the false story
that Besigye intended to kill Rwabwoni and blame it on the NRM government.<=
br>
Read more of this doument then you will be left wondering at what kind of m=
an
is Museveni. Museveni's doctrine in 1971 was to be effected through politic=
al
assassination. It was not mere assassination; the assassinations had to be =
carried
out in such a way so as to achieve the maximum revulsion among the populati=
on
and international opinion against Amin. A prominent Ugandan would be kidnapped, killed, mutilated in the most grisly way an=
d then
have this act leaked to the exile community as proof that Amin was a brutal
dictator.
With its manifesto published, FRONASA settled down into full-time guerrilla
work. Some of the original members of FRONASA were Raiti Omon'gin, Yoweri
Museveni, James Karambuzi, Joseph Bitwari, Severino Kahinda Otafiire, Haruna
Kibuye, Zubairi Bakari, Abbas Kibazo, Victor Amanya, Samuel Kagulire Kasadh=
a,
Jack Maumbe Mukhwana, Eriya Kategaya, David Kagoro, Yoga Adhola, Fred Ruber=
eza
Nkuranga, Ahmed Sseguya, Chefe Ali, John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, Augustine
Ruzindana, James Kanagwa, Abwoli Malibo, Rev. Fr. Christopher Okoth, Valeri=
ano
Rwaheru, Martin Mwesiga, William Mwesigwa a.k.a Mwesigwa Black, David
Livingstone Ruhakana Rugunda. The field commander of the FRONASA military
forces between 1976 and 1979 was Chefe Ali.
Museveni undermined the Amin government using agents he would place within =
the
system. Recounting to the Sunday Monitor of 8 May, 2005 his experience of
working for Amin, Professor Edward Rugumayo who was appointed Amin's second
minister of education in June 1971 recalled his first meeting with Museveni=
in
Sept. 1972:
"Shortly before the invasion [of guerillas from Tanzania in Sept. 1972]
[Ruhakana] Rugunda came to me with a person I had not known before. He
introduced him to me as Museveni. I had never seen him before. We discussed=
a
number of things. Then the next day Museveni came alone. We discussed a num=
ber
of things like Who was Who in the army, who oppo=
sed
the regime. He was interested in the army in particular."
This was Museveni in his true form. He wanted to find out the centre of pow=
er
in the army and who in the Amin government was disgruntled. And he did not =
want
his colleague Ruhakana Rugunda to know what he was thinking and planning. T=
his
is why he came alone the second time to meet Rugumayo. Most of Museveni's m=
ore
intellectual colleagues in FRONASA were kept in the dark about what FRONASA
really did. They remained convinced that it was an intellectual group resis=
ting
Amin's rule. Had they taken the time to read Museveni's written material, t=
hey
would have realised that he was very differrent in outlook from them. Viole=
nce
lay at the heart of his every mission.
Museveni's doctrine of political violence
In that 1971 paper Fanon's theory on violence: its verification in liberate=
d Mozambique , Museveni outlined many of the political b=
eliefs
and military doctrines that would shape his career. The very title of the
thesis, focusing on violence as a political instrument, begins to define hi=
m.
On page 5 and 6 of the thesis, Museveni states: "This is the
interpretation Fanon put on the role of the revolutionary struggle, whose
highest form is armed violence, in the lives of former colonial subjects. T=
his
is what I wanted to test in one Sub-Saharan area. I used Nangade district of
Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique , as my experi=
mental
area. Nangade district is in North-Eastern Mozambique. It is inhabited by a
Bantu-speaking people, the Makonde. The Makonde, according to many reliable
accounts, are fearless and brave people...But it is worth pointing out that=
the
imperialists, and other bourgeois confusionists, have been spreading the lie
that the Makonde are 'the brave people of Mozambique'; that the other tribes
like the Nyanjas ae soft people. This is a bankrupt way of looking at thing=
s. " Museveni was saying in this paper that he went =
among
the Makonde people and subjected them to brutal violence in order to test or
prove his point that the idea of bravery or cowardice is not inherent, but
rather borne of conditions to which people are subjected. What was this
violence that Museveni put the people of Mozambique 's<=
/span>
Nangade district through? He does spell it out in grisly detail on page 8 w=
hen
he notes: "Hence in Mozambique, it has been found necessary to show
peasants fragments of a Portuguese soldier blown up by a mine or, better st=
ill,
his head. Once the peasant sees guerrillas holding the head of the former
master, the white man's head cold in death, the white skin, flowing hair,
pointed nose and blue eyes notwithstanding, he will know, or at least begin=
to
suspect, that the picture traditionally presented to him of the white man's
invincibility is nothing but a scarecrow." If that is the way Museveni
looked at the world in 1971, then it was going to be visible in his actions=
in
Uganda in the following years.
Deaths of Martin Mwesiga, Valeriano Rwaheru, Raiti Omon=
'gin,
and William ("Black") Mwesigwa. It is generally well-known
that some of Museveni's best boyhood school friends were Mwesiga, Mwesigwa,=
and
Rwaheru. Museveni himself has said that many times. They all died in the 19=
70s
during their guerrilla struggle against Amin. Milton Obote claims that their
deaths were mysterious, speculating that they knew Museveni well, were prob=
ably
as ambitious as he was and therefore he had to get rid of them, seeing them=
as
threats to his ambitions. We shall examine the circumstances of their death=
s to
acertain whether or not Obote's claims are founded. During the invasion, on=
e of
Museveni's closest friends, William ("Black") Mwesigwa was killed.
Museveni's former colleague in the intelligence services, Picho Ali, wasalso
arrested by Amin's army and later killed for attempting to overthrow the
government. Picho Ali, as was seen earlier in this narrative, was a constant
thorn in Museveni's side during their intelligence service days just before=
the
Amin coup. Museveni felt humiliated and overshadowed by this very intellige=
nt
young man. There are several reasons for believing that Ali was betrayed by
Museveni to Amin's forces as a way of settling the scores between Museveni =
and
Ali. Sources in the 1970s anti-Amin struggle have said that because Museveni
had an insider relationship with Tanzanian intelligence, he was able to
anticipate the moves being made by the other exile factions opposed by Amin=
and
engaged in an armed struggle. Several times during the 1970s, several leadi=
ng
exiles like Ateker Ejalu, Major Patrick Kinumwe, and Robert Serumaga who he=
aded
armed groups attempted to invade Uganda from Kenya and Tanzania through Lak=
e Victoria . But no matter what security precautions and=
what
secrecy they tried to maintain, their plots were always uncovered and the b=
oats
and other landing crafts were more often than not bombed by the Ugandan arm=
y.
They could not understand or explain their unending misfortunes until after=
the
end of the war against Amin in 1979. That was when agents in Museveni's FRO=
NASA
force told them that all along, it was Museveni who would was learning of t=
hese
plots through his contacts with Tanzanian intelligence and leaking them to =
his
contacts in Amin's intelligence. That is how Obote's former information
minister, Alex Ojera, another former minister Joshua Wakholi, and Picho Ali
were captured by Amin's forces in 1972, based on information secretly suppl=
ied
to the Amin army by Museveni himself. More will be explained about this in =
the
coming sections of this document.
This is how Mwesigwa met his death.
In Sowing the Mustard Seed, Museveni mentions the death of Mwesigwa on page=
71.
It occurred during the abortive September 1972 invasion of Uganda from Tanzania :
"The whole invasion experience had been very traumatic for our movement
and there were many recriminations...I was accused of militarism, dictatori=
al
tendencies, and so on.
Of course I felt a sense of personal responsibility sin=
ce
about half of the people in my platoon were killed, including my good
friend Mwesigwa Black. At first I thought that perhaps I should not have
associated myself with the plan; but as soon as I reflected on that, I real=
ised
that such a course of action would have been totally unhelpful to us."=
In
this passage, Museveni casually mentions the death of one of his closest
friends going back to secondary school, a friend who was with him right to =
the
end. It is hard to believe that the death of someone who presumably meant so
much to Museveni could be stated in a single line, before Museveni returned=
to
trying to justify the course of action he had taken. In later years, people
from families close to both Museveni and that of Mwesigwa remarked at how
indifferently and, to some degree, even cruelly Museveni treated Mwesigwa's=
son
when this young man approached him for assistance once he had assumed the
presidency. Mwesigwa would have been a senior member of Museveni's fighting
section because of his education and courage. And yet we are told by Museve=
ni
that Mwesigwa was killed in action in Mbarara. Doubts about the circumstanc=
es
of Mwesigwa's death gain credulence when the circumstances surrounding the
deaths of Museveni's other friends are examined. In Sowing The
Mustard Seed, Museveni explains the deaths of Mwesiga and Rwaheru starting =
on
page 78 under the sub heading "Tragedy in Mbale" which happened
shortly after Museveni says he re-entered Uganda in Dec. 1972. According to
Museveni, Mwesiga was killed in the eastern Ugandan town of Mbale
. Judging by the flow of events he outlines in his book, Mwesiga died
either very late in Dec. 1972 or Jan. 1973. Museveni narrates: "Martin
Mwesiga, [Wukwu Mpima] Kazimoto and I travelled to Mbale to join the group,
without knowing that its presence had been detected...As we were driving aw=
ay,
we saw a suspicious-looking Peugeot 404 coming out of a nearby road, but we
continued on our way to Mbale. When we got to Mbale town the same Peugeot
pulled up alongside our car for a few seconds and then drove off...At around
5:00 p.m., we saw a contingent of about 15 military policemen coming through
the estate....They surrounded the house in an unprofessional manner, without
cocking their guns.I had the car keys and one of the soldiers, poking a rif=
le
into my side, told me to open and enter the car. Taking them by surprise I
jumped over the hedge."
Museveni then narrates how he escaped from the soldiers pursuing him while =
his
unfortunate colleagues were killed.
The story so far is believable, even though it remains to be explained how =
in
that tense and fear-filled atmosphere of the siege, Museveni could have been
able to tell that all 15 military policemen had "in a very unprofessio=
nal
manner" not bothered to cock their guns. These are the same soldiers of
Amin whom Museveni in another context would have been sure to describe as
trigger-happy, willing to shoot innocent civilians at a moment's notice,
presumably suggesting that they went about with their guns cocked. Museveni
also tells of how "taking them by surprise", he jumped over the
hedge. If these were violent soldiers who, as Museveni would have it, shot
innocent civilians on sight without provocation, how much more would they h=
ave
shot on sight anybody in or around that house they suspected of being a
guerrilla.As such, Museveni could not have taken them by surprise. They had
come to arrest or kill the suspected guerrillas and there could have been no
surprise whether in the overall sense of knowing what they had come to achi=
eve
or in the sense of somehow relaxing once they got to the house and forgetti=
ng
to keep their guns trained on Museveni. Museveni next tells of how that eve=
ning
after the incident he was walking near the Mbale army barracks when he met a
young man walking in the opposite direction "who asked where I was
going."
He continues: "I told him that I was going to town to catch a bus to <=
span
class=3DGramE>Kampala . Who was I, he wanted to know? I told him tha=
t I
was a student, and he advised me very strongly not to proceed any further in
that direction. I should instead go back where I had come from. When I asked
him why, he told me that some guerrillas had fought a battle with some sold=
iers
in the town. Two of the soldiers and two of the guerrillas had been killed =
but
one of the guerrillas had escaped. It was then that I realised that my two =
colleagues , Martin Mwesiga and Wukwu 'Kazimoto' Mpima=
had
been killed."
A sister of Mwesiga's, Margaret Kyogire, told a Ugandan newspaper 30 years
later that during all that fateful day her brother had been cheerful and
relaxed while Museveni was quiet, pensive, and tense. Secondly, Museveni gi=
ves
a most unconvincing explanation of the brief chat he had with the young
stranger later that evening. Considering the danger he had just escaped and=
not
knowing what had happened to his friends after his narrow escape, Museveni
would not have been heading back towards the barracks to find out what had
happened to them. Or if he did so, he would hardly have entered a casual
conversation with a strange man in that area at 7:00 p.m., with the sun hav=
ing
gone down and darkness setting in. And when the
stranger asked who he was, Museveni claims on page 80 of his book that he
replied that he was a student. On page 79, Museveni had mentioned that in a
discussion just prior to his escape he had wanted to open fire on the milit=
ary
policemen but "Martin Mwesiga, however, dissuaded me, arguing that,
firstly, we had student identity cards..."
If they had student identity cards, it is definite that after Mwesiga and M=
pima
were shot dead, their bodies were searched by the military police for clues
about who they were, what they were doing in that house in Mbale and whom t=
he
friend who had escaped might be. All through the first pages of Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni is at pains to elaborate on=
his
exceptional instincts, his quick sense of judgement in all sorts of situati=
ons
and how these qualities have helped him survive endless danger. Bearing in =
mind
all that, how would he the ultimate survivor have
risked his life by talking to this stranger, especially when the stranger b=
egan
asking the sorts of questions that would have put Museveni on guard? This m=
an
tells Museveni what had happened and just so happens to be speaking unknowi=
ngly
to the one guerrilla who managed to get away. In his narration, Museveni do=
es
not say what effect it had on him that this young man who was inadvertently
saving his life was also unaware that he was speaking to the guerrilla who =
had
just made a dramatic escape. The usually suspicious and resolute Museveni is
unconvincing when he tells us that he acted on a total stranger's advice to
turn around and simply walk back toward the place he was coming from without
for a moment wondering who this stranger might be. He could have been a spy=
, a
soldier in plain clothes, or a friendly and well-meaning citizen and Museve=
ni
would have wondered whether he might be lured into an ambush.That is what m=
akes
Museveni's version of the story hard to believe.
As for Rwaheru's death, which took place shortly after Mwesiga's, there is =
also
in that story an element of distortion as well from the way it is given to =
us
by Museveni.Museveni narrates it on page 84 of his book:
"A few days after [Daniel] Kangire's arrest, at around 11:00 a.m., whi=
le
Rwaheru was at Kyambogo with [James] Karuhanga, a platoon of Amin's soldiers
surrounded the house. Karuhanga, who was in the sitting-room, was arrested =
and
told to show the security men around. Meanwhile, Rwaheru had locked himself=
in
the bedroom and when the soldiers failed to open the door, they demanded th=
at
Karuhanga tell them who was inside. Karuhanga told them that it was his wife
who had been frightened by their coming to the house. Meanwhile, Rwaheru
climbed on to a bed, cut the ventilator netting over the door and lobbed a =
stick-grenade
into the midst of the soldiers who were crowded into the corridor of the
house....Karuhanga fled into the toilet and locked the door. The grenade
exploded, killing all the men in the corridor. Rwaheru then opened the bedr=
oom
door and lobbed another grenade into the sitting-room, killing more of the
enemy. In all he killed eleven of them. Unfortun=
ately,
when he was preparing to throw a third grenade, it exploded in his hands and
killed him.
James Birihanze a graduate of literature from Dar es Salaam University
, had also been in the house that day, but we have never been able to
find out what happened to him as his body was not recovered from there. He =
may
have run out of the house wounded and died in another place. After bringing=
reinforcements, and realising Rwaheru was dead, Amin's=
thugs
entered the house and got Karuhanga out of the toilet where he had hidden
himself. In March 1973 Karuhanga was publicly executed in front of his pare=
nts
in Mbarara." A vivid account, no doubt.
What Museveni does not tell us is how he, who was nowhere near the scene, g=
ot
to know all these details about what happened that day. All the guerrillas =
in
the house that day --- Karuhanga, Rwaheru, Birihanze
--- died without speaking to Museveni or their relatives. Had Karuhanga the
sole survivor told anyone the story of what happened that day, it could only
have been to the army or the intelligence services under interrogation.
Even then, Karuhanga would not have known what was going on in the locked
bedroom where Rwaheru was hiding. Nor would Karuhanga, who was locked up in=
the
toilet, have seen how the grenade killed Rwaheru. There is no way Museveni
could have learned of what happened in enough detail to describe what happe=
ned
to Rwaheru, who had locked himself inside a bedroom, climbing "on to a
bed." Certainly under the circumstances of complete destruction by
grenades, Museveni would have had no way of knowing how it was that a third
grenade exploded in Rwaheru's hands and not, say, in his pocket, the floor,=
or
on a nearby table. None at the scene escaped alive to tell the story. And y=
et
Museveni gives the sort of detail that only an eye witness could have. How =
did
Museveni come to know all these details, if he was not there that day or not
distorting what happened? How, given this clear distortion, are we to belie=
ve
in the first place that these men died on the day, in the place, and in the
manner described by Museveni? Eleven soldiers were killed by Rwaheru and yet
Museveni says the army brought in reinforcements. This can only mean that t=
here
were some soldiers who took part in the action who went back to their barra=
cks
and returned with other soldiers. There is, regardless, a small detail that=
is
most questionable. Museveni says "After bringing reinforcements, and r=
ealising
Rwaheru was dead, Amin's thugs entered the house and got Karuhanga out of t=
he
toilet where he had hidden himself." If Rwaheru was accidentally blown=
up
by the grenade he was holding in his hands while inside the house, then his
shattered body would have been where he was blown apart, inside the house.
Therefore the correct sequence of events would have been that the soldiers
first entered the house and then realised that Rwaheru was dead, not first
realised that Rwaheru was dead and then entered the house.
Clearly, Museveni is not telling the truth in his narration of the death of=
his
friends. This makes it difficult to believe much of what else he has to say=
in
his book about some of the other colleagues who were close to him, were
outspoken, and who somehow died during the 1970s. If on the other hand
Museveni's description of what happened to Rwaheru is accurate, then it see=
ms
to follow that Museveni was working at this stage with government intellige=
nce
agents and might even have directed them to the house where his friends and
fellow guerillas were staying. These intelligence agents would then have
briefed him on what had happened. It lends credence to Obote's claim that
Museveni had a direct hand in the death of his equally ambitious comrades. =
In April
1990, Obote published a paper titled Notes on Concealment on Genocide in
Under section 32 of the Notes titled "The Real Museveni" Obote gi=
ves
this assessment of his former protégée:
"Museveni has a thirst for power in its most naked form. He believes
intensely in violence as a means of governance and for holding power...Both=
on
personal and public Affairs, there is no ethic, moral values or law which he
would not either discard, flout or bend in order for him to achieve his
designs...Ugandans, who, for whatever reason, have not seen Museveni as a
killer or think that they would be safe because they are close to him are in
for a rude shock. Museveni kills not only those he sees or regards as his
enemies but also those closest to him. I cite some examples:
In Tanzania in the early 1970s, a number of Ugandans who were very close to
Museveni disappeared and have not been seen again. They included Mwesigwa
Black, Raiti Omongin, Miss V. Rwaheru (Museveni's housekeeper) and Martin
Mwesiga.
In the case of Martin Mwesiga, his sister Margaret, who was living and work=
ing
in Arusha, personally told me in 1974 in Dar es Salaam the murky story about
the disappearance of her brother.
The gist of Margaret's story is that on several occasions in 1973, she asked
Museveni about the whereabouts of her brother, who until he disappeared, was
always with Museveni. Margaret told me and others that on each such occasio=
n,
Museveni gave her a different version of where Mwesiga was, ranging from
Mwesiga being alive and well but on a mission abroad to Mwesiga undergoing a
secret course. Late in 1973, Margaret said, Museveni told her that her brot=
her
had died in a battle in Mbale in Feb. 1973. One of those present when Marga=
ret
gave this account was Enoka Muntuyera, the father of the present Commander =
of
the NRA, Major General [Gregory Mugisha] Muntu. Enoka and another Ugandan t=
old
Margaret that they had stayed in the same hotel as Museveni and Mwesiga in =
Tabora , Tanzania , in April 1973."
We pause here to assess what Obote claimed.
Obote quoted Mwesiga's sister named Margaret Kyogire as saying on each occa=
sion
that she asked about her brother "Museveni gave her a different versio=
n of
where Mwesiga was." The last version he gave her confirming Mwesiga's
death appears to be the one about a battle in Mbale in Feb. 1973. In the
account Museveni gives in his autobiography that has already been discussed,
Mwesiga's death would have occurred late in Dec. 1972 or at the latest,
sometime in Jan. 1973, not Feb. 1973 as he told Kyogyire. As has been stated
and made clear already, Museveni is regarded, even by his enemies, as
possessing an extraordinary memory and can recall events and places in minu=
te
detail. Museveni, according to Obote, told Mwesiga's sister Kyogire that Mw=
esiga
died in Feb. 1973 but Enoka Muntuyera and "another Ugandan" had t=
old
Mwesiga's sister that they had stayed in the same hotel in Tabora as Museve=
ni
and Mwesiga in April 1973, confirming that Mwesiga was alive after the Mbale
incident. Museveni and Mwesiga even came together to Makerere University in=
mid
1973 to visit Museveni's half-sister Violet who was staying at a flat of a
British lecturer. As for Raiti Omon'gin, the truth about his death sheds
further light on the death of Mwesiga. Omon'gin, from Karamoja, had been a =
UPC
Youth League leader in the early 1960s. He got involved in the anti-Amin
struggle shortly after the 1971 coup. According to Museveni, Omon'gin died =
or
disappeared in Sept. 1972 during the guerrilla invasion of Mbarara. This is=
the
way he explains it:
"Although nobody had fired at us during this encounter, I lost not onl=
y my
driver but also a few others of our comrades, including Raiti Omongin, who
simply fled into the valley and across the opposite hill. We shouted after =
them
but they did not return. I kept hoping they would find their way back to us,
but we did not see them again." (Sowing The Mustard Seed, p. 66)
Having just explained the disappearance of Omon'gin on page 66 and giving t=
he
impression that he lost contact with Omon'gin, Museveni goes on in the very
next page to contradict himself. Here on page 67, he gives another version =
of
the death of Omon'gin:
"We stayed in the forest until 2:00 p.m., resting and reflecting on our
losses, while Amin's soldiers randomly lobbed shells at us with light morta=
rs.
Many of my comrades, not to mention Obote's supporters, had either been kil=
led
or lost in the stampede created by the 106mm gun in the morning.
These included close comrades such as Mwesigwa Black, Raiti Omongin, Kahunga
Bagira, and others who were all subsequently captured and killed by Amin's
troops in the days that followed." (Sowing The Mustard Seed, p. 67)
Having first stated that Omon'gin simply disappeared, Museveni now positive=
ly
affirms that Omon'gin and others were captured and killed by Amin's troops.=
How he came to confirm that Omon'gin was captured and killed, Museveni does=
not
explain. Margaret Kyogyire traveled to Dar es Salaam from Arusha in 1974 to
seek Obote's help in getting her other brother, Sam Magara, into Dar es Sal=
aam University .
In Obote's house that day was another Ugandan, Enoka Muntuoyera.
During their conversation, Margaret Kyogyire told Milton Obote that Museveni
killed Omon'gin. She said that her brother Martin Mwesiga had told her that=
he
witnessed Museveni shooting Omin'gin. According to Kyogyire, Valeriano
Rwaheru's sister Hope was also present when the shooting took place. At that
time, Hope was Museveni's live-in girlfriend. Museveni later departed with =
both
Mwesiga and Hope and nothing has ever been heard about the two again.
Writing in The Monitor newspaper on 8 Feb., 2004, Yoga Adhola, a UPC member=
but
who for a time had joined FRONASA, recalled a meeting of a few radical Ugan=
dan
exiles in Nairobi in 1975: "Something else to note happened at this
meeting. At the end of the meeting, the chairman called for the customary a=
ny
other business (AOB). Museveni who was seated just next to me, on my left,
raised his hand to speak. 'There is this question of the death of Raiti
Omon'gin.' Museveni said. 'People say I killed Raiti Omon'gin. Yoga here can
defend me on this issue...'
'No. I cannot,' I interrupted him."
Museveni's statement here confirms that rumours regarding his hand in
Omon'gin's death had already become well known.
Secondly, the fact of these rumours and Museveni's failure during this Nair=
obi
meeting to state that Omon'gin had been killed by Amin's army --- as he wou=
ld
later claim in his book Sowing The Mustard Seed --- confirm that Omon'gin w=
as
murdered by somebody other than Amin's army.
Thirdly, Adhola's blunt refusal to speak for Museveni and defend him during
that meeting regarding Omon'gin's death, indicat=
es
that Adhola and some other people believed or at least suspected that Musev=
eni
murdered Omon'gin.
The inconsistencies in Museveni's account of what happened to his close fri=
ends
in the guerrilla struggle are glaring enough to do more than simply question
his history- and story-telling skills.
Writing in a Ugandan newspaper, the Daily Monitor on 4 July, 2005, Francis =
A.W.
Bwengye, a lawyer, former head of the Uganda Freedom Movement guerrilla gro=
up
and a former presidential candidate in the 2001 presidential election,
observed:
"For a long time...Museveni and his colleagues...have been feeding
Ugandans on quite a number of stories as to how the armed resistance...star=
ted,
how it was fought, who fought where and who killed who.
In some instances cold-blooded murders and political assassinations have be=
en
blamed on those who never committed them, or circumstances regarding them h=
ave
been intentionally distorted or covered up to escape the long arm of the la=
w or
future vengeance of the followers and relatives of the victims.
Even Sowing The Mustard Seed by...Museveni, a bo=
ok
that would have been a source...of information...generally left out certain
scenarios, situations, and unexplained events." (e=
mphasis
added)
Given what Bwengye said about Museveni's tendency to distort the history in
which he is an actor, Museveni's explanation of the mysterious disappearane=
s of
practically all his close friends presents a disturbing insight into the
motives and mind of the real Museveni.
[4.129] "And you have it not in your power to do justice between wives,
even though you may wish (it), but be not disinclined (from one) with total=
disinclination,
so that you leave her as it were in suspense; and if you effect a
reconciliation and guard (against evil), then surely Allah is Forgiving,
Merciful." --- The Holy Qur'an
How Museveni met Janet Kataha
By 1972, as Obote mentioned, Museveni was living=
with
Hope, sister of Valeriano Rwaheru. For all intents and purposes, Hope was h=
is
wife. Living in the same house --- presumably to share the cost of rent, si=
nce
they were refugees --- was another couple, Black Mwesigwa and his wife Janet
Kataha. After Museveni murdered Mwesigwa, he started to befriend Mwesigwa's
wife, Janet Kataha. Here, it is unclear whether he murdered Mwesigwa because
the equally ambitious Mwesigwa was a potential rival within their guerrilla
group or because Museveni sought to get Janet for himself. Nevertheless, he=
and
Janet became close. Janet started to view herself as Museveni's rightful ma=
te
and began to pressure him to explain as to how come if he was devoted to he=
r he
stuck his guns with Hope.As already explained, according to sources close to
these four people in 1972 Museveni killed Hope because she, along with Mart=
in
Mwesiga, was an eye witness to Museveni's murder of Raiti Omon'gin. Followi=
ng
Hope's murder, Museveni and Janet Kataha gradually grew closer and became m=
ore
or less wife. But Museveni had got a child with Hope, a boy named Muhoozi
Kainerugaba. Museveni and Janet would later have three daughters: Natasha
Kainembabazi, Patience Kokundeka, and Diana Karemire. If this is how he dea=
lt
with the colleagues, friends, and even wife closest to him and with whom he
endured the greatest uncertainty, took the greatest risks, and shared the
deepest hopes, how would he deal with his enemies? It is clear from what we
have discussed that Museveni is not what he has passed himself off to be for
all these years.
But who is he?
The answer to this question, once understood, casts a dark and frightening
shadow over Uganda and the Central African region.
Idi Amin's reign of terror
The massacre of Acholi and Langi solders, 1971
Following the 1971 coup, telexes were sent and phone calls made to Acholi a=
nd
Langi pilots and technicians who had been sent for training abroad and were=
out
of the country at the time of the coup. The messages urged to return home
immediately. Soon after returning, they were massacred or disappeared one by
one.
Allegations were made by the Ugandan exile community in Tanzania that betwe=
en
4,000 and 5,000 Acholi and Langi officers and men had been massacred through
much of 1971 following the Jan. coup. Amin in responding to questions about=
the
killing of Langi and Acholi officers, always denied involvement and blamed
atrocities on guerrillas backed by Obote who were based in Tanzania
. On 12 Oct., 1971, the Uganda Argus newspaper published a front-page
interview of Amin in which he refuted an interview given to the British
Broadcasting Corporation by Naphtali Akena Adoko, the former director of
intelligence, in which Adoko said three-quarters of the pre-coup army had b=
een
killed. Said Amin: "I will say that a few soldiers=
were
killed during the military takeover in exchanges of fire while they were
defending themselves from each other." On 18 Feb., 1972, the Ug=
anda
government issued a statement further denying the allegations. The statement
said that there were only 6,000 soldiers in the Uganda Armed Forces at the =
time
of the military coup. "This is common knowledge and needs no elaborati=
on
or proof," the statement read. It added:
"It would not have been possible for 4,000 to 5,000 Langi and Acholi to
have been overpowered and annihilated as claimed by a mere 1,000 troops
comprising the balance of the armed forces....
It has been claimed that the only survivors of the original 4,000 to 5,000
Langi and Acholi soldiers are the 23 men alleged to have escaped massacre at
Mutukula and fled to Tanzania . This allegation =
is yet
another example of how the facts have been falsified. Within the Mubende
battalion alone with a total strength of 1,400 troops, there are today 973
Langi and Acholi soldiers. Some of these troops have been in the army for
upwards of twenty years...Furthermore, many of t=
hem
have recently been promoted to senior ranks and appointed to responsible po=
sts
throughout the Uganda Armed Forces. To mention but a few: Lt. Colonel Mwaka,
Major Tarensio Okello, Major [Pangalasio] Onek who incidentally was the par=
ade
adjutant during the recent celebrations of the first anniversary of the Sec=
ond
Republic; Captain Odur, Alele, etc."
The government is not aware of the thousands of persons that are alleged to=
have
disappeared since the establishment of the Second Repub=
lic .
A number of persons that were presumed dead or missing at the time of the
military take-over have turned out to be the very persons who have either b=
een
writing back to their colleagues or friends in Uganda or who have since joi=
ned
the ranks of guerrillas and are actively campaigning against the government=
of
Uganda. There is ample evidence that some of these persons paraded at Panga=
le
as escapees from Mutukula prison. Oyite-Ojok who claims to be their rebel
leader has in the past year been writing numerous letters to members of the
Uganda Armed Forces with the sole intention of destroying their morale and
pitting them against the government of Uganda...There is obvious similarity
between the contents of Oyite-Ojok's letters and the reports of the
stage-managed interviews which have appeared recently in the Tanzania
Standard."
Yet even as hundreds of thousands of people continued to support the new
military government and Amin remained popular, rumours were beginning to sp=
read
countrywide that this 6ft. 4in. giant of a leader was, in fact, a murderer =
of a
cold-blooded and bone-chilling kind. In mid 1971, there were reports that A=
min
had carried out a purge of Acholi and Langi officers and men in the Uganda
army, having thousands of them massacred and secretly buried in western
They then returned from Kikagati and back to the Rest House and then, accor=
ding
to Kamya's testimony given in 1972, they went to an undisclosed destination=
. A
cook at the Rest House, Muhamud Kawooya, said that on 9 July, Siedle was pi=
cked
up by four men wearing shirts that looked like army uniform. The account be=
st
known to the public and in the history books is that the two Americans were
last seen alive on the night of 7 July, 1971 as they entered Mbarara's Simba
battalion barracks where they were murdered.
Amin and his soldiers were blamed for the murder of these Americans which t=
hey
committed allegedly to cover up the massacres of the Acholi and Langi. From=
the
eye witness accounts quoted above, we see that the two Americans were actua=
lly
alive even on 8 July. David Martin, a correspondent for London
's Observer newspaper and author of the 1973 book General Amin,
interviewed a former officer in Amin's army who had since fled into exile in
Tanzania . He was named as Lieutenant Silver Tibahika. He was from the Baki=
ga
tribe in southwestern Uganda , although he lived=
in
Mbarara. The interview, published in London's Observer newspaper on 9 April,
1972, had Tibahika claiming that Stroh and Siedle were murdered in the Mbar=
ara
barracks by two Muslim officers, one Colonel Ali and one Major Juma. The Af=
rica
Contemporary Record reported Tibahika's testimony this way:
"He gave a detailed account of how they [Stroh and Siedle] had been
murdered. [Tibahika] put the blame on [Lieutenant-Colonel] Waris Ali and
[Major] Said Juma, and precisely located where the car [a Volkswagen Beetle
owned and driven by Stroh] could be found." (Africa Contemporary Recor=
d, ibid., page B280) this way: " Record reported Tib=
hika'
. Tibahika, speaking from Tanzania , described t=
his
further detail to the Observer of what happened to the Americans: "They
had been slashed to death with pangas [machettes], then burned, and the rem=
ains
buried in a nearby bush to be later exhumed and thrown into a river. Their =
car
was burnt and then later taken to Mountains of the Moon, 250 miles northwes=
t of
Kampala . There a party of school children found=
it
and Judge Jones and his assistants identified it from the number plates and
parts of the chassis. Nicholas Stroh was killed because he was so proud.&qu=
ot;
On the surface of it, it would appear that Lt. Tibahika's narration matches=
the
facts as they happened.There is, but, a problem with the reliability of the=
facts.
Firstly, Tibahika told the Observer that "Nicholas Stroh was killed
because he was so proud." This goes directly against the generally held
view that the Americans were murdered by the Amin regime in order to suppre=
ss
the findings of their investigations into the massacre of thousands of Acho=
li
and Langi soldiers. Secondly, a separate report on what happened to Stroh a=
nd
Siedle was given, contradicting Tibahika's claims. A former Ugandan army
officer, who spoke anonymously, gave the International Herald Tribune newsp=
aper
of 3 Sept. and 4, 1977 "detailed evidence" of how the two America=
ns
had been "slaughtered" in Mbarara barracks. This officer said the=
two
men who murdered Stroh and Siedle were Captain Stephen Taban, who was the c=
hief
technical officer in the Uganda Airforce, and Colonel Dusman Sabuni, who la=
ter
became Amin's minister of Industry and Power. If we bear in mind that Lt.
Tibahika gave a "detailed account" of how the two men died and who
killed them, and yet here was another former Ugandan army officer giving
directly contradictory but supposedly "detailed evidence" about t=
he
same incident, it creates the problem of how credible the two claims were. A
further element in this story must be borne in mind: Tibahika was, like Mus=
eveni,
from western Uganda and most of the core of FRONASA wer=
e
from the western part of the country. Furthermore, it introduces the questi=
on
of either misinformation about the facts or perhaps even brings into questi=
on
the whole basis for pinning the blame on the two men's deaths on the Amin
regime. To complicate matters even further, President Amin commissioned an
inquiry into the circumstances of the two Americans' deaths. A British-born
judge, David Jeffreys Jones, headed the inquiry. He left the country for Ke=
nya
but posted his report to Uganda from the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa .
Solid proof of Tibahika's background that enforces this point,
came on 25 May, 1972 during the hearings into the two murders. On that day,
Lieutenant-Colonel Ali defended himself against Tibahika's accusations that=
it
was Ali who had ordered the murders: Ali said Tibahika had worked under him
before he was sent to Makindye military police prison in Kampala
. Ali also revealed that Tibahika was once a member of the now disba=
nded
General Service Unit of the 1960s. (The People, 26 May, 1972) Titled
"Commission of Inquiry into the Missing Americans Messrs Stroch and Si=
edle
held at the Conference Room, Parliament House", part of which read:
"From paragraphs 9 and 10 of the [Tibahika] affidavit, it is obvious t=
hat
the two Americans died an unnatural death. They were in fact murdered by
personnel of the Simba Batalion of the Uganda Armed Forces. The culprits
included the [Commanding Officer Mbarara] Waris Ali, his second in command
Major Said Juma, Lt. Silver Tibahika, and Stephen Taban."
By the way, Tibahika was mentioned in the report as one of the killers of t=
he
two Americans and yet in his interview with David Martin of the Observer,
Tibahika had pointed the blame at Ali and Juma. Jones also named as one oth=
er
culprit Ali Fadhul who as a brigadier Amin would later name his Minister of
Provincial Administrations. Three different sets of people were separately
accused of murdering the Americans. In all three instances, the evidence gi=
ven
was "detailed" and seemed to have been from credible eye witnesse=
s to
the murders. Tibahika claimed that Major Juma owned a Volkswagen Beetle car
while Ali said Juma actually owned a Datsun. How could all three versions of
the story appear to be authoritative and yet they were completely in confli=
ct
with each other? The only constants in the story are that two Americans were
murdered and that the murders took place in Mbarara's Simba battalion barra=
cks.
This conflict in the versions can only be explained when subversion and
sabotage by an exile group or guerrilla force is factored in as spreading t=
hese
accounts as part of their disinformation campaign.
On 25 May, 1972, Lieutenant-Colonel Ali gave perhaps the most damning fact =
of
all about Tibahika: "Later, he [Ali] said, he [Ali] learned that Lt.
Silver [Tibahika] had run away, but he did not know any reason why Lt. Silv=
er
decided to ran to Tanzania...He did not know why Lt. Silver is trying to
involve him into this matter of the two missing men." (The People, 26 =
May,
1972) We should ask the most important question: if Waris Ali, Said Juma,
Stephen Taban, Silver Tibahika, and Ali Fadhul were all implicated in the
murder of the two Americans by Judge Jones' report, explain as to why is it only Tibahika who fled into exile shortly after =
the
report was published and not any of the other men? Convince us as to why did
Tibahika go into exile in Tanzania when his name was mentioned in Judge Jon=
es'
report as one of the accomplices to murder, unless he knew that he was in
friendly territory in Tanzania? Tibahika later returned to Uganda in 1979 as
part of Museveni's Tanzanian-backed FRONASA fighting force during the war to
remove Idi Amin's government. This, more than anything else, suggests that
FRONASA killed the two Americans on orders of FRONASA's leader, Yoweri
Museveni. From Colonel Ali's statement about Tibahika's past as a GSU agent=
---
an intelligence agency Museveni once worked for and from the inference draw=
n so
far --- it is clear that Tibahika was probably a FRONASA saboteur assigned =
to
the Amin army but working secretly with Museveni to undermine Amin from wit=
hin
the army.
A piece of evidence that proves that Museveni knew and was in touch with
Tibahika is found in Museveni's own book Sowing The Mustard Seed, on page 5=
1:
"During my stay in Bukoba [in northwest Tanzania ]=
I made trips with Ojok to the Ugandan border trying to make contact with the
people inside the country. We went to Murongo to wait for a
Lt. Silver, for whom I had earlier left a message in Mbarara, but he
failed to turn up. After waiting fruitlessly for some time, Ojok said that =
he
knew a policeman at Kikagati who might be of some help." This clear li=
nk
between Museveni and Tibahika naturally suggests that FRONASA was the hand
behind the murder of the majority of Acholi and Langi army officers in 1971,
and not Amin as has been widely assumed. Tibahika might well have been the
killer of the two Americans and was trying in his testimonies made in exile=
to
put the blame on Amin's army. Notes found in Stroh's car had details of
interviews conducted by the two Americans with eye witnesses to the killing=
of
160 Acholi army officers in late June. If Tibahika and therefore FRONASA we=
re
involved in the murder of the two Americans, it follows that they were kill=
ed
to hide the evidence of the murder of the 160 Acholi officers, the testimon=
y of
eye witnesses to which was contained in the notes discovered in Stroh's car=
. It
would have been the natural tactical move by a ruthless guerrilla like
Museveni. But having done a mediocre work of it, they ended up with conflic=
ting
versions of the story. Museveni knew perfectly well that the death or even
disappearance of just two Americans would be enough to swing the U.S. state
machinery into action and if an accusing finger could be successfully point=
ed
at Amin, this would achieve FRONASA's goal much better than a month of figh=
ting
on the battlefield. The full facts and significance of this method of plant=
ing
FRONASA agents in institutions for them to sabotage the government from wit=
hin
will be explored when we come to what happened in the 1980s in Uganda under=
the
second Obote administration.
On 11 July, 1971, in another denial of involvement in the murder of Acholi =
and
Langi soldiers, there was a departure from simple denials by the president.
During a state visit by Amin and the First Lady Sarah Mariam Kibedi Amin to
London at the invitation of the then British Prime Minister Edward Health, =
two
days of riots broke out in the Simba battalion barracks in Mbarara protesti=
ng
at the harassment of Acholi and Langi soldiers.The riots spread to the Moro=
to
barracks in northeast Uganda and to Magamaga barracks in Uganda's second
largest town Jinja where the unrest was at its most intense. Two days later=
on
13 July, 1971, the acting army commander, Lt. Colonel Charles Arube, said i=
n a
statement that guerrillas had attacked several army units and killed 17
soldiers. On 14 July, 1971, President Amin issued a statement in London in
which he said Mozambican-trained guerrillas and Tanzanian troops had attack=
ed
Jinja and Moroto on 11 July and 12. Amin added that three Chinese advisors =
had
participated in the attacks.
Some analysis is required here.
If it is true that there was an uprising across the country in protest at t=
he
killing of Acholi and Langi officers and men, at the very least it shows two
things: either the Ugandan army was still made up of troops from many diffe=
rent
tribes. As such, these tribesmen were angry and shocked at the killing of t=
heir
comrades and this led them to rise up in protest. That in itself suggests t=
hen
that Amin's army was truly a national army, representing the broad section =
of
the country's ethnic makeup. This would make it a professional army and not=
a
band of "thugs" as Museveni and other opponents of Amin tried to =
make
it appear. Or alternatively, if Amin's opponents were correct in arguing th=
at
from the beginning Amin was eliminating the Christian Acholi and Langi
tribesmen from the army in gruesome massacres and replacing them with Muslim
Nubian, Sudanese, and West Nile tribesmen who were loyal to him, then by mid
1971 the army had taken on this new ethnic composition. If the army was now
dominated by Amin's illiterate Muslim West Nile and Nubian tribesmen, it le=
aves
open the question of who then it was that was rioting and protesting the
purging of the Acholi and Langi from the army. If it was these Sudanese,
Nubians and Amin's own tribesmen from the Lugbara and Kakwa who were riotin=
g,
it reveals something very important. It shows that these soldiers from Amin=
's
tribe and the others from Sudan , far from being
vicious killers and indisciplined thugs as we were made to believe, were in
fact patriotic, well-behaved, sensitive, humane people who were hurt that A=
min
was killing their fellow soldiers just because they happened to be from Obo=
te's
tribe.
To see it either which way presents a problem for Museveni's version of
history. In the preamble to their manifesto, FRONASA laid all the blame for
what was taking place in Uganda on Idi Amin and his army: "While the
people go short of items from salt to medicine the army has all it requires.
General Amin has let the army loose among the people where they have gone o=
n a
spree of rape, murder and looting. The most barbarous soldiers have been th=
e ones
most highly rewarded with promotions. The death toll currently stands at
83,000, a figure representing a cross-section of the population of Uganda ." The FRONASA manifesto states in its pre=
amble
that "While the people go short of items from salt to medicine the army
has all it requires." In the very next sentence, FRONASA charges that
"General Amin has let the army loose among the people where they have =
gone
on a spree of rape, murder and looting." Obviously the authors of the
FRONASA manifesto were not alert to the contradiction and dishonesty in the=
ir
claim Sincerely if FRONASA stated, the Uganda army had "all it
requires", convince us as to why would Amin let the same well-paid
well-facilitated army loose on a population which up to that time still
supported Amin? Sincerely why should someone risk losing all that support w=
hen
the army that had all that it required and was h=
appy
with the way things were and therefore there was no need for the president =
to
divert its attention by unleashing it loose on the population?
Sincerely things do not add up!
And now in July 1971 we see this army rioting, not against the civilian
population, not rioting over a lack of food or over delayed wages, but riot=
ing
in support of the very Acholi and Langi soldiers that such a brutal army wo=
uld
have been eager to eliminate. The events started with the murder of America=
ns
Siedle and Stroh, then turned into riots protesting the massacre of the Ach=
oli
and Langi, and finally with Amin and the army commander saying that the army
had been attacked this time not by guerrillas loyal to Obote, but by
Mozambican-trained guerrillas.Who would these guerrillas be who were traine=
d in
Mozambique, possibly backed by Tanzania and backed up by Chinese advisors? =
Who
else but the FRONASA guerrillas led by Yoweri Museveni! Furthermore, if Ami=
n's
army was protesting the killing of soldiers from Northern Uganda related to
Obote and as the FRONASA manifesto stated, Amin's army was loyal to him, th=
en
the killing of the Acholi and Langi soldiers would not have been Amin's
directive either or else these rioting soldiers who were loyal to Amin woul=
d be
supporting rather than opposing him. It could not have been the same army to
kill the Americans as a way of hiding the evidence of their murder. The rea=
son
is that in the first place, the army would have not been murdering the Acho=
li
and Langi and as such would have nothing to hide from the American
investigators. All logic and the military intelligence which for once did n=
ot
blame the attacks on the army units on Obote-based guerrillas, leads rather=
to
Mozambican-trained guerrillas backed by Chinese advisors who were obviously=
a
Marxist-driven group. This attack on the barracks and the murder of the two
Americans, it follows, was the work of FRONASA.
The manifesto also cited the murder of a number of prominent Ugandans. The
acting director of Uganda Television, James Bwogi, disappeared on 24 Aug.,
1971.
They included one Mulekezi, a former district commissioner of Bukedi distri=
ct
in eastern Uganda ; and one Nshekanabo, the mana=
ger of
the government-owned Rock Hotel in Tororo in Bukedi district. Mulekezi and
Nshekanabo both disappeared on 23 Feb., 1972. According to FRONASA, Nshekan=
abo
had been trying to persuade a group of unruly soldiers to pay for the drink=
s they
had drunk and the Rock Hotel's bar. Among the others purportedly murdered by
Amin's regime and providing justification for the launch of their struggle =
were
John Kakonge, the former secretary general of the Uganda People's Congress
party; Ali Kisekka, former cabinet minister in the Obote government James
Ochola; one Sebalu, the UPC administrative secretary in Ankole, Nekemia
Bananuka, and the lawyer Patrick Ruhinda. The president of the Uganda
Industrial Court , Michael Kabali Kaggwa was mur=
dered
in Sept. 1971. His charred body was discovered in his burnt out on 10 Sept<=
span
class=3DGramE>.. A prominent politician and early pre-independence e=
ra
agitator Joseph ("Jolly Joe") Kiwanuka, and many other public fig=
ures
were cynically murdered by FRONASA assasins on orders of Museveni. FRONASA
reported that a Roman Catholic priest, Father Clement Kiggundu, the former
editor of Uganda 's oldest newspaper, the Cathol=
ic
Munno, had disappeared and his burnt body was found in his car on 15 Jan.,
1973. The postmortem on his body revealed that Kiggundu had died before bei=
ng
burnt. The doctors who performed the postmortem disappeared a few days late=
r.
It is worth bearing in mind that Michael Kaggwa and Fr. Clement Kiggundu we=
re
murdered in exactly the same way --- they were shot dead first then their
bodies placed in their cars and burnt. FRONASA said the two men were dragged
off by the soldiers commanded by one Colonel Toloko and never seen again.
How did FRONASA come to know of all these incidents and in such detail?
After the aborted attempt to overthrow Amin on 17 Sept., 1972, there follow=
ed a
wave of murders of prominent people in Ankole in western Uganda
. Businessmen, chiefs, lawyers, army officers, and other government
officials from Mbarara, Bushenyi, and other towns in Ankole were murdered, =
many
of them mutilated. These shocking killings were blamed on Amin and his army.
What was not explained was something odd --- practically all the people kil=
led
in Ankole that Sept. and till the end of the year were from the majority Ba=
iru
sub-ethnic group. The royal sub-ethnic group, the
Bahima, whom Museveni had grown up among and whom he identified with, were
untouched. Amin would not have known or cared about the differences between
Bairu and Bahima. After all, if support for the guerrillas had come from
Ankole, it mattered not who was a Mwiru or a Muhima. On 13 April, 2005, for=
mer
President Milton Obote narrated this episode to The Monitor newspaper of
"Masaka was a failure, Mbarara was a failure. Our troops fought gallan=
tly
but against heavy odds and were beaten. Many including Alex Ojera, Picho Ali
and Capt. Oyile were captured and later executed by Amin. Amin's army then =
went
from House to house and picked up our leaders and killed them. Among those
killed was [the UPC's administrative secretary in Ankole Nekemia] Bananuka
together with his three sons.
Later, I was told that the man whom our troops picked before Mbarara town w=
ho
was supposed to be part of Museveni's imaginary army, was the one who went
house to house and made Idi Amin's people pick up people like Bananuka.". Here is a suggestion from an independent sourc=
e that
points to Museveni as the hand that directed the soldiers on whose house to
visit and whom to kill.
President Museveni read this article in which Obote stated this allegation,=
but
to date has not responded to it, even after first threatening to sue Obote =
and
The Monitor over this series of autobiographical recollections by Obote. Th=
ese
selective killings that targetted Bairu and left unscathed the Bahima, were=
the
first indications of what extreme measures Museveni's FRONASA was willing to
take in order to undermine Amin's regime. Others victims of this FRONASA te=
rror
were Obote's former Internal Affairs minister Basil Kiiza Bataringaya.
Bataringaya had been part of a delegation of officials from Ankole who met
President Amin and affirmed their support for him following the
coup.Bataringaya's wife Edith was murdered in 1975, her body burnt.
Death of Makerere University vice chancellor Frank Kali=
muzo.
The vice chancellor of Makerere University , Fra=
nk
Kalimuzo, who was a close friend of Amin, was kidnapped and disappeared. Th=
ere
is a direct connection between what happened to Kalimuzo and what happened =
to
Nekemia Bananuka. Explaining what happened to her husband, Esther Kalimuzo =
told
the Daily Monitor newspaper on 6 Oct., 2005 of this sequence of events:
"He had had a friendly relationship with Amin but the coup really worr=
ied
him. He sought an appointment with Amin but was never granted one, which led
friends to warn him to be very careful. Later the same year, Amin came to t=
he
university to be installed as Chancellor and even had a meal in our house.
There was no obvious sign of danger." The problems began close to the
invasion of September 1972. Frank told me he was receiving anonymous letters
threatening him with death. State Research Bureau people came and told him =
that
'You are number two to Ben Kiwanuka, on the list' [of those to be killed].
Friends advised him to flee into exile, but he kept saying 'I have done not=
hing
to Amin.' During that September, just before the invasion, unknown people
surrounded our Makerere house at night then rang the bell. We refused to op=
en.
They went away. The following day, Frank contacted people in security and
reported the incident. He was told: 'we are the ones who sent them. It was a
mistake not to have opened for them.'"
"My husband was immediately arrested and taken to Makindye, where he s=
pent
a day being questioned about bad relations he was alleged to have with some
university students. He met "the students." They could name neith=
er
their academic courses nor their halls of residence. He was told there was =
no
case and he was released the same day. The next day, we went to [the
southwestern town of] Kisoro...While we were there, the invasion happened a=
nd
Mbarara and Masaka were attacked....After the invasion was defeated, we dec=
ided
to return directly via Mbarara and Masaka in a civillian convoy with an army
officer friend at the front....The following day, Radio Uganda, UTV and then
BBC announced that 'Vice Chancellor Frank Kalimuzo has disappeared to Rwanda
with [Basil] Bataringaya and [Nekemia] Bananuka.' We had already learnt that
those two had been murdered by Amin. Frank was shocked to listen to the med=
ia
saying he had 'disappeared' with them!"
Since, as we have already seen, Bananuka was murdered along with others in
Ankole on orders of Museveni, the fact that Kalimuzo's name was given as ha=
ving
disappeared together with Bataringaya and Bananuka to R=
wanda
, when they were in fact already dead, suggests that Museveni's FRON=
ASA
had a hand in Kalimuzo's murder too. Explaining Kalimuzo's disappearance, t=
he
government said he had dissapeared "after being arrested by men
masquerading as security officers." That is indeed what happened. The
State Research Bureau, had it felt that Kalimuzo=
was
cooperating with the guerrillas, would not needed to send him anonymous let=
ters
threatening him with death. They would have come and arrested him in their
official capacity as a state security agency. A pattern that ran through
Museveni's guerrilla activities and method of work was the idea of anynymous
letters, as we shall see much later in this document. Another prominent dea=
th
was Amin's former aide de camp and later army chief of staff, Lt. Colonel
Valentine Ochima, who was killed in Oct. 1972. He had been released from pr=
ison
by Amin on 2 Jan., 1972 along with 12 other soldiers. They were involved in=
a
coup plot against Amin and imprisoned in Makindye military police barracks.
FRONASA falsely claimed that Ochima was taken to the Makindye barracks and
murdered there. Also killed that month in the same barracks was Joseph N.
Mubiru, the former governor of Bank of Uganda, the country's central bank.O=
n 16
Nov., 1972, the former UPC secretary general John Kakonge was abducted and
disappeared, with later reports saying his testicles had been cut off and
stuffed into his mouth.
The murder of Kakonge is one that should be examined.
The charismatic Kakonge, who came from western Uganda ,=
presented more a real threat to Museveni's ambitions to one day be presiden=
t of
Uganda than he did to Obote. When Museveni took power in 1986, some military
officers in Museveni's army told the Kakonge family that Kakonge's death had
been orchastrated by Obote. How so? They claimed that Obote had written let=
ters
purportedly to Kakonge but in such a manner and placed in such a location a=
s to
make sure that Amin's security agents would get to see them and end up
arresting and killing Kakonge. Because the regimes of Amin and Obote were
consistently discredited, it is easy to believe these kinds of reports at f=
ace
value. But the truth is so different. To begin with, it had been claimed by
FRONASA in its 1970s propaganda campaign that Kakonge was murdered on order=
s of
Amin. But, soon after Museveni assumed state power in 1986, his officers be=
gan
to claim that Kakonge was murdered through a trick by Obote. That contradic=
tory
set of explanations alone should have raised the suspicion of the Kakonge
family.
With virtually no exception, all the prominent Ugandans who
"disappeared", presumed dead during the 1970s=
,
were the victims of FRONASA's deadly guerrilla work. As part of their
subversive activities against the Amin administration, FRONASA also used to
compose letters purportedly written from Tanzania by the Obote aide,
Lieutenant-Colonel Oyite Ojok, and listing Oyite Ojok's postal address. Age=
nts
working for FRONASA used to distribute leaflets and pamphlets designed to
spread a message of subversion against Amin using secret guerrilla cells. O=
ne
of the FRONASA cells that Museveni used to achieve this was made up of
Lieutenant Ahmed Seguya and Musa Hussein Njuki. These men operated a cycles=
tyle
machine which they used to reproduce these documents.Oyite-Ojok's address w=
as given
in these letters as "c/o Bhoka Munanka, State House, Dar es Salaam.&qu=
ot;
It is fairly well-known that there was one Ugandan exile who frequented the
official residence of Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and that was Yoweri
Museveni. Obote also was in touch with and maintained a close relationship =
with
Nyerere. But it did not reach the extent of somehow using State House Dar es
Salaam as a personal postal contact. Certainly Oyite-Ojok would have had le=
ss
access at State House than Obote. This rules out or brings into question the
claim that either Obote or Oyite-Ojok were the a=
uthors
of those letters.
In Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni inadvertent=
ly
exonerates Oyite-Ojok and incriminates himself in the matter of those
mysterious letters, when he writes:
"Ojok himself was quite a courageous individual. The problem with Afri=
can
leaders, including soldiers, is not a matter of personality but arises from
their view of the world and of politics. Although Ojok had some good person=
al
attributes, his way of thinking was very different from ours." (page 50) . For Museveni, who rarely concedes positive
attributes in people other than himself --- and especially in someone like
Oyite-Ojok who was very close to Obote and a long-standing rival of Museveni
--- this admission of courage and "good personal attributes" on t=
he
part of Oyite-Ojok positively comments on what must have been a very good a=
nd
decent man in Oyite-Ojok, hardly the kind of person to mail letters to
prominent Ugandans in order to get them arrested or killed by Amin.
These letters were addressed to selected promine=
nt
Ugandans and "leaked" to the state security agency, the State
Research Bureau, in order to lead to the arrest and, if possible, murder of=
the
person in question. Museveni had several calculations by this deadly covert
action. Obote's Kikoosi Maluum armed faction was, as noted already, the main
rival of FRONASA. If these subversive letters were written purportedly in t=
he
names of Obote and Oyite Ojok, not only would they endanger the lives of the
targetted prominent Ugandans; if that truth were ever found out, it would
create a deep hatred and resentment for Obote and Oyite Ojok in Uganda.
On 2 Jan., 1972, The People quoted President Amin as commenting on these
subversive letters being distrubuted in Uganda from Tanzania: "The
President, however, disclosed that a number of army officers have been
receiving what he described as 'dirty correspondence' from Ojok who was a
former Lt. Colonel in the Uganda Army and who is now in Tanzania. The Presi=
dent
regretted the fact that among those officers who=
have
been in contact with Ojok, is Lt. Colonel S. Kakuhikire who works in the
President's Research Office. He received a letter dated 4th December, but n=
ever
bothered to inform the President about it." (page<=
/span>
1)
Amin had now found out that one of his senior officers, Lieutenant-Colonel
Sarapio Kakuhikire had been receiving these letters allegedly from Oyite-Oj=
ok.
Kakuhikire did not deny it and Amin expressed his disappointment at this
silence on the part of Kakuhikire. Did Amin, the world-famous tyrant drag
Kakuhikire off to his death? No. Kakuhikire probably did not think much of =
the
letter he received and knowing that he was not involved in any conspiracy
against Amin, let matters be. In 1977, Museveni
ordered his FRONASA men to murder Kakuhikire. He was kidnapped right in fro=
nt
of the main Post Office buildings in downtown Kampala by Museveni's agents
inside the State Research Bureau and murdered. As usual, the blame was put =
on
Amin.
Sincerely why Amin should murder this officer trained at the Royal Academy =
in Sandhurt, that is assuming Amin was intimidated or env=
ious
of his better training?
He should have chosen to do that toward the end of his rule rather than pur=
ge
him immediately after Kakuhikire's possession of the alleged Oyite-Ojok let=
ter
came to Amin's attention in late 1971. FRONASA had a problem because no mat=
ter
how much they tried to implicate prominent Ugandans in "plots" to
overthrow the government so that Amin killed them, he would not do that. Wh=
en
their scheme failed, they decided to murder these people themselves. Amin w=
ould
ordinarily have had these people arrested and then brought to court, whethe=
r a
civilian court or military tribunal, whether a genuine or a mock trial, but=
it
would have been in his interest to make the public (which still supported h=
im)
believe that he was pursuing the course of justice. That did not happen.
FRONASA turned to abducting prominent Ugandans and making them
"disappear", since they had failed to get them arrested by Amin.<=
br>
"[17.33] And do not kill any one whom Allah has forbidden, except for a
just cause, and whoever is slain unjustly, We have indeed given to his heir
authority, so let him not exceed the just limits in slaying; surely he is
aided." --- The Holy Qur'an
Murder of DP leader Benedicto Kiwanuka
A well-publicised murder was that of Benedicto K=
agimu
Kiwanuka, the president general of the Democratic Party and at the time of =
his
death, chief justice of the Uganda High Court. He is generally believed to =
have
been murdered on orders of Amin allegedly for collaborating with the exile
groups in Tanzania . He was then reportedly drag=
ged
out of the High Court building in Kampala in Sept. 1972, forced into a car
boot, and taken to the Makindye military police barracks where he was kille=
d.
What really happened to Kiwanuka? Two days before Kiwanuka was kidnapped, O=
bote
had allegedly received a letter from him, presumably to affirm Kiwanuka's
support for Obote and the anti-Amin struggle. But, as just stated, these
letters allegedly written by Obote or Oyite-Ojok were actually penned by
FRONASA. A revealing piece of evidence that points to FRONASA's hand in
Kiwanuka's murder came in an interview with the African current affairs
magazine Drum in 1980 by Kiwanuka's widow, Maxensia Zalwango Kiwanuka. Asked
about the circumstances of her husband's death, which at that time she blam=
ed
on Amin personally, she told the reporter V.P. Kirega-Gava: "To prevent
any information from reaching us, some Banyankole who were present as my
husband was being butchered by Amin were killed under mysterious
circumstances." Several questions arise out of Mrs Kiwanuka's intervie=
w.
To begin with, few heads of state in the modern world would personally carry
out executions when they had squads of agents who could easily carry out the
deed while leaving the president looking innocent. There have been claims t=
hat
Amin personally executed many of his victims. This would not be possible if
Amin had vehemently denied any role by his government in their killing.
Secondly, even if this one head of state Amin was the kind to personally mu=
rder
his opponents, almost all accounts of Amin's alleged brutality mention that=
he
surrounded himself with and relied on trusted and vicious Nubian, Sudanese,=
Lugbara,
and Kakwa killers from his West Nile home district and southern Sudan. A few
others have mentioned that Amin's State Research Bureau intelligence service
also employed Rwandese Tutsi refugees who had lived in Uganda since 1959. If
these accounts are correct and typical, what then would Amin have been doing
with Banyankole men at the time he was personally killing Kiwanuka? Yoweri
Museveni had made the Banyankole his adoptive tribe and here a few clues be=
gin
to avail themselves. It would be unusual for Amin, especially when personal=
ly
killing a prominent Ugandan like Kiwanuka, to trust the Banyankole or any o=
ther
tribes from southern Uganda to be at the scene of his deeds.
Amin knew that he was being opposed by the guerrilla leader Museveni. Since=
Museveni
came from Ankole, army and security officers from Ankole were potential
supporters of Museveni. Amin would not have taken the risk of murdering
Kiwanuka while in the company of these Banyankole who might pass details of
these killings by Amin himself to the anti-government groups in exile in
Tanzania or Europe . If indeed he committed the =
deed
himself, Amin in all probability would have been accompanied by only the mo=
st
trusted and loyal of his own tribesmen from the West Nile area. Could these
Banyankole whom Maxensia Kiwanuka referred to in her Drum interview have be=
en
the FRONASA agents working for Museveni and whom he later ordered killed to
cover up his role in Kiwanuka's murder?
After all, if Banyankole security agents in the company of President Amin c=
ould
be killed to prevent any information from reaching Kiwanuka's family, so too
could security men from any other tribes. Amin who came to power through a
military coup would know enough about conspiracy to be aware that anybody, =
even
people from his own tribe, could pass information on to Kiwanuka's family
either for money or after becoming disgruntled with Amin in later years. In
1974, a Tanzanian intelligence officer, Deusdedit Kusekwa Masanja, captured=
in
Uganda gave an account of Kiwanuka's death to Drum which published it in the
March 1974 issue of the magazine. Masanja said he witnessed Kiwanuka being
killed in the Makindye military police barracks in Kampala on 28 Sept., 197=
2.
The most striking part of Masanja's account was his failure to reveal that =
Amin
personally killed Kiwanuka or the failure by Drum to mention that, if indeed
this is what happened. Any credible news agency or publication would know t=
hat
an eye witness account of Amin's personal hand in the murder of his former
chief justice would be the news story or news feature of the year, if not t=
he
decade. Sincerely why was this not mentioned, if Amin was responsible?
Former FRONASA assassins more than 30 years later admitted that Kiwanuka had
been abducted and murdered by FRONASA. According to these former FRONASA
agents, Kiwanuka was abducted from the High Court buildings and killed by
FRONASA. On 16 July, 1987, the Citizen, a weekly newspaper with ties to the
Democratic Party explained in some detail what happened to Kiwanuka: "=
He
was abducted on the 21st September 1972 from the High Court Chambers by thr=
ee
armed men in civilian clothes. He was driven in a Pegueot 504 No. UUU 171 towards Kampala International Hotel. Since the=
n not
a shred of light has been shed on the manner in which he was killed nor the
place where the murder took place."
A government report on Kiwanuka following his kidnap said: "He was
arrested at the High Court by three persons posing as security officers. Th=
eir
true identity and the fate of the Chief Justice remain a mystery." The
three men who abducted Kiwanuka were FRONASA assassins and according to for=
mer
FRONASA fighters, at least two these three men sent by Museveni to abduct a=
nd
murder Kiwanuka were from the Baganda tribe. Museveni, even after he took p=
ower
in 1986, continued to use the method of assigning Baganda hit-men to
assassinate prominent Baganda.
The role of John Wycliffe Kazzora in Museveni's guerril=
la
activities. On 2 Dec., 1972, Amin met three senior Roman Catholic
leaders in the country who had come to him to petition him over 58 white
western missionaires who had just been expelled from Ug=
anda .
Amin issued a warning to the clergymen about letters that they were alleged=
ly
distributing in collaboration with the guerrillas to "spread confusion=
in
the country." These three leaders were Emmanuel Cardinal Nsubuga, the
archbishop of Kampala , Bishop Ddungu of Masaka
diocese, and Bishop Kyangire of Gulu diocese. One of these letters was
reportedly written by a Ugandan lawyer and businessman based in Nairobi nam=
ed
John Wycliffe Kazzora. It had been written to Cardinal Nsubuga seeking his =
help
in the struggle to overthrow Amin. Three days later on 5 Dec., 1972, a lett=
er
appeared in the Daily Nation newspaper of Nairobi by Kazzora in which he de=
nied
having written the letter referred to by Amin. Kazzora said that letter was=
a
forgery. It was important for Kazzora to clear his name. But sincerely why =
did
Kazzora take that move? His British-influenced pretensions and mannerisms
notwithstanding, Kazzora was by and large a respectable man whose law pract=
ice
was established and to be seen to be part of conspiracies against the Uganda
government would not have done him any good. After all, following the 1971
military coup, Idi Amin toured the country including in Aug. 1971 the Ankole
area where Kazzora originated. The UPC newspaper, The People of 17 Aug. quo=
ted
Kazzora addressing Amin on behalf of the people in the area: "Kazzora, congratulated President Amin and the members =
of the
Uganda Army and Airforce for their successful take-over of the Obote corrupt
regime. He told the President that he could have taken over the government =
many
years back but because of his sincerity...the General did not do so until it
was absolutely necessary."
Amin, aware of Kazzora's education and influence --- he was the first lawye=
r in
Ankole --- respected him and sought to involve him further in national affa=
irs.
In one instance, Amin ordered that Kazzora represent Uganda in a regional
meeting of the East African Airways. In a letter dated 22 Sept., 1971, a few
weeks after his praise of Amin, the President's staff wrote the following
letter: "His Excellency the President of Uganda has directed that at
tomorrow's meeting of EAA Corporation board of directors J.W.R. Kazzora wil=
l represent
Uganda instead of [Adrian] M. Sibo. Make arrangements that will enable Kazz=
ora
to participate as a full member representing Uganda .&q=
uot;
That was the relationship between Amin and Kazzora. But suddenly by 1972 it=
had
all changed. Kazzora was now firmly anti-Amin and was by that time in exile=
in Kenya .
Kazzora became one of Museveni's most ardent and important supporters in his
campaign against Amin. What happened to turn this from mutual respect betwe=
en
Amin and Kazzora, to one's fleeing the other into exile, in fear for his li=
fe?
How did Kazzora, a prosperous lawyer, come to be entangled in Museveni's da=
rk
world of guerrilla subversion? Museveni mentions this in Sowing the Mustard
Seed:
"It was at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi that I accidentally met the Kaz=
zora
family in December 1972...Soon after this first meeting with Kazzora, and h=
is
agreement to work with us, Amin put pressure on the Kenyan government which
obliged him to leave for England . Kazzora had t=
hus
already left by the time I returned to Nairobi in Jan. 1973, but he nominat=
ed
Janet to work as a liaison and courier between himself and me." (page 87)
It is interesting the way Museveni says he "accidentally met the Kazzo=
ra
family." Kazzora, wealthy, from Ankole, well-educated, with important
contacts in Britain , was just the sort of ally
Museveni needed for his guerrilla campaign. Museveni orchestrated a false
series of events and by that manipulated Kazzora into believing that Amin
wanted to murder him and so Kazzora fled into exile. Then with him now
established in Nairobi , Museveni
"accidentally" met him and thus began many years of collaboration
between the two men. Museveni once again gives himself away by stating in h=
is
memoirs that soon after their first meeting at the Nairobi Hilton,
Kazzora would have been so suddenly convinced to join Museveni in fighting
Amin. It would have been one thing for Museveni to meet Kazzora in Nairobi =
and
their casual conversation about the state of affairs in Uganda led Kazzora =
to
agree with Museveni that Uganda was in a crisis; it would have been quite
another thing for this one accidental meeting to create such resolve in Kaz=
zora
that it was sufficient to turn him into one of Museveni's closest allies.
Museveni had to have worked toward just such an outcome by manipulating Kaz=
zora
into detesting the same Amin he had so lavishly praised only the previous y=
ear
and whom Amin also regarded as an important official in the Uganda governme=
nt.. The letter Amin quoted on 2 Dec. in his meeting with
Ugandan church leaders in which Kazzora was mentioned, followed by Kazzora's
denial of any involvement in subversive activity in his 5 Dec. letter to the
Daily Nation, and finally this "accidental" meeting with Museveni=
at
the Nairobi Hilton Hotel later that Dec., provide the clearest proof of all
that Yoweri Museveni --- not David Oyite-Ojok or Milton Obote --- was the
author of these letters whose purpose was to stir up trouble against Amin. =
And
of course, Museveni did not write the truth of how he really met Janet Kata=
ha.
The entry of Janet Kataha into Museveni's world, according to him, began wi=
th
her role as a courier. This, as we have just seen, is not true. As has been
said, Amin well knew what Museveni was doing and what he was capable of.
Following the 17 Sept., 1972 guerrilla invasion of Mbarara, a civil servant
named Francis Gureme, who at the time was an undersecretary in the Ministry=
of
Tourism and Wildlife, was summoned by Amin for questioning. Gureme had driv=
en
toward Mbarara that Sunday morning and ran into the invasion underway. Amin
wanted to know that Gureme had driven to Mbarara for. As Gureme explained i=
t in
an article in the Sunday Monitor on 30 May, 2004, "Amin...questioned me
closely about what I had been doing in Mbarara that Sunday and whether I had
met Museveni." During the 1970s, the national intelligence agency, the
State Research Bureau dedicated a desk headed by Adam Bizegeni, whose sole =
duty
was to monitor Museveni's guerrilla activities.
Murder of foreign minister Michael Ondoga
Another prominent death in point was that of the former foreign minister and
former Ugandan ambassador to the Soviet Union , =
Lt.
Colonel Michael Ondoga. He was a brother-in-law of President Amin by virtue=
of
Amin's marriage to Ondoga's sister, Kay Adroa Amin. On 12 Feb., 1974, Amin
summoned a cabinet meeting at which he invited a French film crew to record=
the
proceedings. Apparently, there had been growing slackness among cabinet
ministers and Amin who postured as a strict disciplinarian would not have t=
his.
He criticised the cabinet and singled out for the harshest words Ondoga, who
sat uncomfortably during the meeting. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in
upheaval and Amin told Ondoga that this situation could not go on. On 19 Fe=
b.,
1974, Amin announced the appointment of Princess Elizabeth of Toro as the n=
ew
minister of foreign affairs. The government-owned Voice of Uganda newspaper
reported the new appointment the next day, 20 Feb.: "Ambassador Elizab=
eth
Bagaya has been named Uganda 's new minister of
Foreign Affairs. She becomes the country's first woman ever to be appointed=
a
minister. She takes over from Lt. Col. Michael Ondoga who is to be assigned
other duties...The President, General Idi Amin
announced the appointment while addressing Makerere University students
yesterday. He said he had acted on recommendation of the Defence Council.
He also announced that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry is to have a
planning section which will assist in the planning of the whole business
industry throughout the country. Also to be formed are the National Chamber=
of
Commerce and Industry and a Corporation responsible for Import and Export
activities. "The tone of the news report on Ondoga's replacement as a
minister was measured, positive, and came as part of a general upgrading of=
the
government's policy-making apparatus. There was none of the angry yelling at
the former minister that the Ugandan exile groups portrayed it to be. Ondoga
was not humiliated or accused of sabotaging the government.
Reader Comments:
Where is the continuation on 2 that is referred to at the bottom of the
article? Also,how is this information going to r=
each
the ordinary Ugandan (owabulijo)? Are there hard copies translated in local
languages that can be obtained in Uganda? It is very important that the
ordinary Ugandan who votes gets this information.
- Posted By Bila on 10/17/2009
Keep up the good work, till not only him, but all of them are gone.
- Posted By JC Amone on 10/18/2009
Murder of DP leader Benedicto Kiwanuka A well-publicised murder was that of
Benedicto Kagimu Kiwanuka, the president general of the Democratic Party an=
d at
the time of his death, chief justice of the Uganda High Court. He is genera=
lly
believed to have been murdered on orders of Amin allegedly for collaboratin=
g with
the exile groups in Tanzania. He was then reportedly dragged out of the High
Court building in Kampala in September 1972 where he was Chief Justice of t=
he
country at the time, forced into a car boot, and taken to the Makindye mili=
tary
police barracks where he was killed. What really happened to Kiwanuka? Two =
days
before Kiwanuka was kidnapped, Obote had allegedly received a letter from h=
im,
presumably to affirm his support for Obote and the anti-Amin struggle. As p=
art
of their subversive activities against the Amin administration, FRONASA also
used to compose letters purportedly written from Tanzania by the Obote aide,
Lt. Colonel Oyite Ojok, and listing Oyite Ojok's postal address. These lett=
ers
were addressed to selected prominent Ugandans and
"leaked" to the state security agency, the State Research Bureau,=
in
order to lead to the arrest and, if possible, murder of the person in quest=
ion.
Museveni had several calculations by this deadly covert action. Obote's Kik=
oosi
Maluum armed faction was, as noted already, the main rival of FRONASA. If t=
hese
subversive letters were written purportedly in the names of Obote and Oyite
Ojok, not only would they endanger the lives of the targetted prominent
Ugandans; if that truth were ever found out, it would create a deep hatred =
and
resentment for Obote and Oyite Ojok in Uganda. On December 2, 1972, Amin met
three senior Roman Catholic leaders in the country who had come to him to
petition him over 58 white western missionaires who had just been expelled =
from
Uganda. Amin issued a warning to the clergymen about letters that they were
allegedly distributing in collaboration with the guerrillas to "spread
confusion in the country." These three leaders were Emmanuel Cardinal
Nsubuga, the archbishop of Kampala, Bishop Ddungu of Masaka diocese, and Bi=
shop
Kyangire of Gulu diocese. One of these letters was reportedly written by a
Ugandan lawyer and businessman based in Nairobi named John Wycliffe Kazzora=
. It
had been written to Cardinal Nsubuga seeking his help in the struggle to
overthrow Amin. Three days later on December 5, 1972, a letter appeared in =
the
Daily Nation newspaper of Nairobi by Kazzora in which he denied having writ=
ten
the letter referred to by Amin. Kazzora said that letter was a forgery. It =
was
important for Kazzora to clear his name. Why? Kazzzora was an ardent suppor=
ter
of Museveni in his campaign against Amin; so much so that one of Kazzora's
cousins named Janet Kataha became a go-between Kazzora and Museveni, taking
messages between the two men. Museveni mentioned this in Sowing
the Mustard Seed: "It was at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi that I
accidentally met the Kazzora family in December 1972...Soon after this first
meeting with Kazzora, and his agreement to work with us, Amin put pressure =
on
the Kenyan government which obliged him to leave for England. Kazzora had t=
hus
already left by the time I returned to Nairobi in January 1973, but he
nominated Janet to work as a liaison and courier between himself and me.&qu=
ot;
(page 87) The entry of Jsnet Kataha into Museven=
i's
world began with her role as a courier. In carrying letters between Museveni
and Kazzora and other partners in FRONASA, she no doubt must have received =
some
briefing to acquaint her with the dangerous nature of the work she was
undertaking. The importance of secrecy, the use of aliases and other false
identities, disguise in her dress, and the content of some of the letters a=
nd
parcels must have all been emphasised to her. For Museveni to eventually tr=
ust
her enough to make her his wife, she must have come to learn some of the mo=
st
secret details of what FRONASA was doing. This fact would become significant
after Museveni came to power, when his wife and family assumed more power t=
han
any First Family in Uganda's history. As has been said, Amin well knew what
Museveni was doing and what he was capable of. During the 1970s, the nation=
al
counterintelligence agency, the State Research Bureau, dedicated a desk to =
the
monitoring of Museveni's guerrilla activities. When the pieces are tied
together --- the role of Janet Kataha Museveni as a courier, the letter
allegedly written by Kazzora to Ugandan religious leaders, Amin's charge th=
at
letters were being written to spread confusion in Uganda, and Kazzora's let=
ter
to the Daily Nation denying he had written the letter --- there is every re=
ason
to suppose that the letter supposedly written to Obote by Kiwanuka just bef=
ore
his arrest, could have come from FRONASA. A revealing piece of evidence that
points to FRONASA's hand in Kiwanuka's murder came in an interview with the
African current affairs magazine Drum in 1980 by Kiwanuka's widow, Maxensia
Zalwango Kiwanuka. Asked about the circumstances of her husband's death, wh=
ich
at that time she blamed on Amin personally, she told the reporter V.P.
Kirega-Gava: "To prevent any information from reaching us, some Banyan=
kole
who were present as my husband was being butchered by Amin were killed under
mysterious circumstances." Several questions arise out of Mrs Kiwanuka=
's
interview. To begin with, few heads of state in the modern world would
personally carry out executions when they had squads of agents who could ea=
sily
carry out the deed while leaving the president looking innocent. There have
been many claims that Amin personally executed many of his victims. This wo=
uld
not be possible if Amin had vehemently denied any role by his government in
their killing. Secondly, even if this one head of state Amin was the kind to
personally murder his opponents, almost all accounts of Amin's alleged
brutality mention that he surrounded himself with and relied on trusted and
vicious Nubian, Sudanese, Lugbara, and Kakwa killers from his West Nile home
district and southern Sudan. A few others have mentioned that Amin's State
Research Bureau intelligence service also employed Rwandese Tutsi refugees =
who
had lived in Uganda since 1959. If these accounts are correct and typical, =
what
then would Amin have been doing with Banyankole men at the time he was
personally killing Kiwanuka? Yoweri Museveni had made the Banyankole his
adoptive tribe and here a few clues begin to avail themselves. It would be
unusual for Amin, especially when personally killing a prominent Ugandan, to
trust the Banyankole or any other tribes from southern Uganda to be at the
scene of his deeds. Amin knew that he was being opposed by the guerrilla le=
ader
Museveni. Since Museveni came from Ankole, army and security officers from
Ankole were potential supporters of Museveni. Amin would not have risked
murdering Kiwanuka while in the company of these Banyankole who might pass
details of these killings by Amin himself to the anti-government groups in
exile in Tanzania or Europe. If indeed he committed the deed himself, Amin =
in
all probability would have been accompanied by only the most trusted and lo=
yal
of his own tribesmen from the West Nile area. Could these Banyankole whom
Maxensia Kiwanuka referred to in her Drum interview have been the FRONASA
agents working for Museveni and whom he later ordered killed to cover up his
role in Kiwanuka's murder? After all, if Banyankole security agents in the
company of President Amin could be killed to prevent any information from
reaching Kiwanuka's family, so too could security men from any other tribes.
Amin who came to power through a military coup would know enough about
conspiracy to be aware that anybody, even people from his own tribe, could =
pass
information on to Kiwanuka's family either for money or after becoming
disgruntled with Amin in later years. In 1974, a Tanzanian intelligence
officer, Deusdedit Kusekwa Masanja, captured in Uganda gave an account of
Kiwanuka's death to Drum which published it in the March 1974 issue of the
magazine. Masanja said he witnessed Kiwanuka being killed in the Makindye
military police barracks in Kampala on September 28, 1972. The most strikin=
g part
of Masanja's account was his failure to reveal that Amin personally killed
Kiwanuka or the failure by Drum to mention that, if indeed this is what
happened. Any credible news agency or publication would know that an eye
witness account of Amin's personal hand in the murder of his former chief
justice would be the news story or news feature of the year, if not the dec=
ade.
Why was none of this mentioned, if Amin was responsible? Former FRONASA
assassins more than 30 years later admitted that Kiwanuka had been abducted=
and
murdered by FRONASA. According to these former FRONASA agents, Kiwanuka was
abducted from the High Court buildings and killed by FRONASA. On July 16, 1=
987,
the Citizen, a weekly newspaper with ties to the Democratic Party explained=
in
some detail what happened to Kiwanuka: "He was abducted on the 21st
September 1972 from the High Court Chambers by three armed men in civilian
clothes. He was driven in a Pegueot 504 No. UUU 171 tow=
ards
Kampala International Hotel. Since then not a shred of light has been
shed on the manner in which he was killed nor the place where the murder to=
ok
place." In February 2005, The Monitor newspaper in Kampala was contact=
ed
by a man who claims he actually buried the body of Kiwanuka in the Luzira a=
rea
of the city. This man was willing to narrate his story, but insisted on the
newspaper first securing an international amnesty for him. This again begs =
the
question of why this man who simply undertook the task of burying Kiwanuka's
body should be so fearful for his life, considering that Amin's regime was
overthrown in 1979 and Amin (assuming he was the one who personally killed
Kiwanuka) died in 2003. What would this man be afraid of? Obviously he knew
that Kiwanuka's killers were in Kampala in 2005 and in control of the
government. Since Amin and his regime had unanimously been blamed for
Kiwanuka's death, any news given by the man who buried Kiwanuka's body would
not change the public's belief that it was the departed Amin who ordered
Kiwanuka's murder, if he carried it out himself. For this man to request
protection before he could speak, raised the
possibility that the people he had to fear by his revelations about what
happened to Kiwanuka were alive, in Kampala, and most probably in positions=
of
power and in the security services. Another prominent death in point was th=
at
of the former foreign minister and former Ugandan ambassador to the Soviet
Union, Lt. Colonel Michael Ondoga. He was a brother-in-law of President Ami=
n by
virtue of Amin's marriage to Ondoga's sister, Kay Adroa Amin. In early Febr=
uary
1974, Amin summoned a cabinet meeting at which he invited a French film cre=
w to
record the proceedings. Apparently, there had been growing slackness among
cabinet ministers and Amin who postured as a strict disciplinarian would not
have this. He criticised the cabinet for their late coming and singled out =
for
the harshest words Ondoga, who sat uncomfortably during the meeting. Two we=
eks
later, Ondoga was kidnapped and his badly mutilated body was found floating
along the River Nile. The western news media and Ugandan exile groups conde=
mned
Ondoga's murder, blaming it squarely on Amin and charging that this was fur=
ther
proof of the president's maniacal dictatorship. Some evidence refutes this
charge against Amin. As already mentioned, Ondoga was the president's
brother-in-law and only the most extraordinary treachery on the part of Ond=
oga
would have led Amin to order the murder of Ondoga. Ondoga's offence, as Amin
himself angrily said during the cabinet meeting, was his lateness to work.
Secondly, Ondoga was kidnapped and later murdered. Had this order come from
Amin, there would have been no need to kidnap the foreign minister. It has =
been
widely claimed that Amin's soldiers and security agents had the habit of
dragging prominent Ugandans into cars in broad daylight and on to their dea=
ths.
Following this tendency, there would have been no need for Ondoga to be
kidnapped two weeks after he was reprimanded by Amin. More than a few minis=
ters
and government officials had been summarily sacked by the president in a
national radio broadcast. This would not have been unusual. Thirdly, Amin h=
ad
criticised his foreign minister during a cabinet meeting filmed by a French
television team. The president well knew that the recording would end up be=
ing
broadcast in France and through much of a western world that was increasing=
ly
hostile to Amin's government. For the goal of discrediting Amin, there coul=
d be
nothing more valuable to the Ugandan exiles than this documentary film. Amin
would have been the last person to order the kidnapping and murder of his
foreign minister, since whoever had watched the recording of the cabinet
meeting would naturally blame the president for the murder. Finally, upon
Amin's death in August 2003, Amin's fifth and former wife, Sarah Kyolaba Am=
in,
was interviewed by London's Daily Mirror newspaper. In comments published by
the Daily Mirror on August 18, 2003, Sarah Amin paid tribute to her late
husband, describing him as a true African hero and a loving father. Amin in=
his
years as president liked to portray himself as a devout family man. He often
participated in motor races with his wife Sarah Kyolaba as co-driver and ev=
en
while receiving foreign dignitaries, his two favourite children Moses and
Mwanga were often present. This image of Amin as an indulgent and affection=
ate
family man is consistent even in the photographs, books, and magazines that
have sought to portray him in the most unflattering light. In 1972 for
instance, a body named the Public Safety Unit was formed to crack down on
violent crime and the Public Safety Unit became greatly dreaded by the publ=
ic.
Amin and the head of the Public Safety Unit, Hussein Marella, insisted that
these unexplained acts of public disorder and crime were being committed no=
t by
the army but by saboteurs. A commission of inquiry was created to look into
allegations that the Public Safety Unit was behind the harassment and murde=
r of
prominent Ugandans. After the commission cleared the Public Safety Unit of =
any
charges, Amin in a Radio Uganda broadcast said that the verdict "proved
that people who used to say that the Public Safety Unit was bad are the very
people who are carrying out those subversive activities." Amin defended
the Public Safety Unit. He was capable of loyalty. It would be unlikely,
therefore, that Amin would have ordered the assassination of Ondoga his for=
eign
minister and brother-in-law over a minor offence and yet the president had
shown loyalty to some among his senior government officials who were widely
feared or grumbled about by the public like the Public Safety Unit head,
Hussein Marella. Incidentally, Amin's statement that those who blamed the
Public Safety Unit were the very people who were carrying out these subvers=
ive
activities throws further light on the fact of what was going on in Uganda =
at
the time and that Amin was aware that his government was being maligned by =
the
guerrillas based in Britain, Tanzania, and Kenya. Speaking to the Daily Mon=
itor
on May 29, 2005, the former Ugandan foreign minister, assistant OAU secreta=
ry
general, and Ugandan ambassador to Britain, Paul Etiang in a series titled
"Serving Amin" said this of the former president: "Amin was
somebody who, if you told him something, he would look straight at you very
deeply and get convinced about it but keep quiet because he wanted to put s=
ome
mystery to it...The way Amin was behaving, no one --- not even his wives I =
dare
say --- could say that he or she had seen the totality of him. Amin in one
place would behave very differently in another place. It would take a numbe=
r of
people with whom he worked to come together and piece the complete picture
together. All the judgements about Amin tend to depict him as a terrorist n=
ot
because that was his nature but because I think those are the only things
remembered about him. I must say that the worst that happened to Amin is wh=
at
would happen to many presidents." (italics =
added
for emphasis) On the morning of August 18, 2003, two days after Amin's deat=
h,
his former vice president General Mustapha Adrisi was asked by Radio France
Internationale to give his verdict of the former leader. Adrisi said he had=
one
problem with Amin --- his propensity for lies and exaggeration, something t=
hat
Etiang mentioned in his recollection of the Amin years. In the same intervi=
ew,
Adrisi said, however, that Amin was not the legendary killer he has been
portrayed to be. Adrisi said Amin was loved by ordinary people and very pop=
ular
all over the country. Another former official in the Amin government was Lt.
Colonel Nassur Abdallah who was arrested in 1979 after the overthrow of Amin
and spent 21 years in jail in Kampala before being released on September 11,
2000. Lt. Colonel Abdallah was widely regarded as one of Amin's most notori=
ous
henchmen. As governor of the Central Province from January 8, 1975 to April=
11,
1979, Abdallah was reported to have ordered crimminals and idlers in Kampala
City to forcibly eat rubber slippers as a punishment for wearing slippers in
the city at a time he was trying to ban the habit. He told this to the Daily
Monitor on July 3, 2005: "The allegations that I made people eat slipp=
ers
whenever I found them wearing [them] are baseless and I have always asked
anybody to come out and challenge me but no one has done so. I never made p=
eople
eat slippers and this is just politics of hatred." Abdallah was also
accused by some of being the killer of Francis Walugembe, the mayor of the
southern town of Masaka, in 1972. Refuting that claim, he said: "That
other story of Francis Walugembe is also fake. I=
never
killed Walugembe and those people in Masaka can tell the truth about me.&qu=
ot;
This accusation of Abdallah is more revealing when it is borne in mind that
another of Amin's close aides, Colonel Isaac ("Maliyamungu") Lugo=
nzo
was said by the exile groups to have personally murdered Walugembe and marc=
hed
the body through the streets of the town. Either it was Abdallah who murder=
ed
Walugembe or it was Malyiamungu or neither of them. If it is true that
Maliyamungu not only commited the deed but dragged the late mayor's body
through Masaka's streets, then there were enough bystanders that day in Mas=
aka
who clearly saw Maliyamungu unashamedly drag the body about. And yet in yea=
rs
following, rumours began to spread in Kampala that Walugembe was murdered b=
y Nassur
Abdallah. The fact that Abdallah's name came up at all even when Maliyamung=
u is
supposed to have been publicly seen parading the dead mayor's body through =
the
streets of Masaka leads to one conclusion: the crime might have been commit=
ted
by neither of the two men. As in the case of the Americans Stroh and Siedle,
there is such a conflict of accuracy in the versions given of Walugembe's
murder that it once again raises the question of who
it was that was distributing this misinformation and whether that party mig=
ht
have been the perpetrator of the crime. Walugembe, like Jolly Joe Kiwanuka,
Basil and Edith Bataringaya, John Kakonge, Fr. Clement Kiggundu, Frank Kali=
muzo
and dozens of others, was murdered by FRONASA. Little thought has been give=
n to
the reports about the mutilated bodies of prominent Ugandan and foreign vic=
tims
of the Amin "terror" found floating along the River Nile, sometim=
es
as far north of Kampala at the Karuma Falls, more than three hours' drive a=
way.
It made no sense for these victims' remains to be driven all the way to Kar=
uma
to be dumped into the Nile when they could easily --- and more economically
with fewer risks of being discovered later --- have been buried in secret m=
ass
graves or military cemetaries, cremeted, or in any other way got rid of. Th=
ere
has never a claim been made that the Nile was believed by these Nubian and =
West
Nile killers to have special magical or ritually cleansing powers so that a
trip to the river was worth the bother and risk of being found out. The Nil=
e is
the world's longest river and on average about a kilometre wide, with sever=
al
turns and rapids, boulders and rocks along its course. It is difficult to
believe that there was always, by some coincidence, an idle person who just
happened to be standing along the river's banks and by chance somehow manag=
ed
to sight what looked like a corpse. This idle person who was otherwise mind=
ing
his own business then and on closer inspection (by swimming or getting a ch=
ance
ride in a boat closer to the corpse) realised that this just happened to be=
a
prominent citizen he had always seen on television and read about in the
newspapers. No single photograph has ever been reported or published in whi=
ch a
single rotting or mutilated body was shown either being pulled out of the N=
ile
or surrounded by shocked villagers and fishermen or police detectives. If it
was not in the interest of Amin's government to display these photographs, =
it
would at least have been in the interest and for the benefit of the exile
community and guerrilla forces to publish these photographs to reinforce to=
the
world the scale of Amin's brutality. These are some of the stories that have
come to the surface since the end of Amin's rule which contradict the gener=
al
assumption that Amin's rule was a reign of terror that he masterminded.
Predictably, these brutalities allegedly committed by Amin's regime came to=
the
attention of a shocked world. Amin's reputation slipped rapidly. On June 10,
1976, President Amin was invited to the Nsambya police barracks as guest of
honour at the passing out parade of newly commissioned officers. Suddenly,
three grenades were hurled at the President's jeep, killing his driver. Whi=
le
in exile in Saudi Arabia in the late 1990s, Amin would explain to his family
what happened that day. The grenade that hit Amin on the back and landed on=
to
the side of the renegade jeep was a shrapnel grenade which was intended to
cause maximum injury to the President and increase the likelihood that he w=
ould
be killed. The explosion was absorbed by the rear tyre of the jeep and by t=
he
ground. Apparently, whoever had thrown the grenade had been either in a pan=
ic,
impatient, or an amateur with shrapnel grenades which are timed to explode
about 10 to 15 seconds after the lever has been released. Amin grabbed the =
body
of his driver and dumped it back into the jeep. Amin then fixed a Motorola
larynx communicator to his throat and roared off toward the Mulago hospital,
all the time issuing orders for army reinforcements at the barracks and the
cordoning off of the entire area around the barracks. Amin had escaped anot=
her
assassination, the 13th of his presidency. Amin and most people at that pol=
ice
barracks did not know who the assailant with the three grenades was. The
would-be assassin at Nsambya that day was Yoweri Museveni. In the commotion=
of
the scene, Museveni escaped to the nearby Kibuli hill for refuge. Waiting f=
or
him there was Prince Badru Kakungulu, the descendant of the man regarded as=
the
father of Islam in Uganda, Semei Kakungulu. This assassination plan was hat=
ched
and required that should it abort, Museveni was to quickly retreat to the
prince's house atop Kibuli hill. The man coordinating Museveni's progress to
Nsambya and back to Kibuli was named Anthony Butele, who would later be app=
ointed
minister of labour in the second Obote government in 1980. Many years later=
in
the 1990s, some people close to Museveni would remark at a deeply felt sens=
e of
frustration by Museveni that he had been unable to get rid of Amin. And yet=
it
was his tendency while speaking in public to remind Ugandans that "we
defeated Amin". This frustration, undoubtedly, sprang from from this
incident at Nsambya when he came so close to personally assassinating Amin =
but
failed. There is every possibility that Museveni might have been involved in
person in a few more of the 14 attempts on Amin's life between 1971 and 197=
9.
In 1976, apart from entering Uganda to try and assassinate President Amin,
Museveni came on a second mission: to survey the countryside and see what l=
ocation
was suitable for him to launch a future guerrilla war, as he had done in
inspecting the Mozambican district of Nangade. The hilly areas of western
Uganda Museveni found to be unsuitable for his preferred kind of guerrilla
warfare. The northern and eastern parts of the country were too flat and
- Posted By Boyi Yobbo on 10/24/2009
How did Kyemba and the other compilers of the Amin record come to catalogue
these grisly acts? How did he get to know in such detail what Amin's killer=
s in
the State Research Bureau had done or were doing? The answer is that Kyemba=
was
fed this information by FRONASA. As a matter of fact, if most names of Amin=
's
supposed murder victims listed in A State of Blood were to be substituted f=
or
Museveni's name, then the true picture of Museveni's callous and utterly
ruthless mind would be understood. As a general rule when reading A State <=
span
class=3DGramE>Of Blood, it is important to bear in mind Kyemba's
connection with FRONASA. In writing that book and highlighting instances of
Amin's supposed brutality, Kyemba would have been laying emphasis on those
deeds done by FRONASA in order to blemish the Amin government. In January 1=
971
when the coup took place, Obote's Principal Private Secretary Henry Kyemba =
was
part of the Ugandan presidential delegation in Singapore. Kyemba flew to
Tanzania with Obote and other aides. While in Dar es Salaam, Kyemba met
Museveni. During their converation, the two men decided that Kyemba returns=
to
Uganda to continue working for the government under Amin. But in that posit=
ion
to know the inner workings of the Amin government, Kyemba would provide
information secretly to FRONASA and generally work to undermine Amin from
within his own office. That is how Kyemba's assessment of the Amin years ca=
me
to match the exact assessment by FRONASA. However, Kyemba did not know that
Amin's inner intelligence was trained and advised by Staasi, the
counter-intelligence service of the then East Germany. Painstaking in their
work and detail, Staasi helped Amin uncover the people working to undermine=
his
government from inside, one of whom was Kyemba and this is what prompted Ky=
emba
to flee into exile in London in 1977 from where he wrote his account of the
Amin years. For clues to what grisly deeds that FRONASA undertook, these
received special mention and emphasis in A State Of
Blood. In a Radio Uganda broadcast on November 20, 1977, Amin issued orders=
for
the following people to be brought back to Uganda "dead or alive"=
to
face crimminal charges at home: Henry Kyemba, former Ugandan ambassador to
France Paulo Muwanga, former attorney general Godfrey Binaisa, former Justi=
ce
minister Godfrey Lule, and former ambassador to the United Kingdom, Fred
Isingoma. This is the way the matter was analysed by the Africa Contemporary
Record: "Amin was silent about his former brother-in-law and ex-Foreign
Minister, Wanume Kibedi, and his other ex-Foreign Minister, Princess Elizab=
eth
Bagaya of Toro. And he did not mention ex-President Milton Obote, whom he
probably fears the most." (Africa Contemporary Record, 1977-78, page B.
446-447) Why did Amin single out Kyemba, Muwanga, Lule, Isingoma, and Binai=
sa,
and not the more obvious opponent of his regime, Milton Obote? The men
mentioned in that November 20 Radio Uganda broadcast were some of the key
figures in the anti-Amin propaganda being spread around the world. Binaisa =
and
Lule as lawyers are likely to have been the people who provided Amnesty
International and the International Commission of Jurists with the
"estimates" of the number of people killed under Amin's rule. Pau=
lo
Muwanga was another architect of some of the assassination plots against Am=
in.
That Amin did not mention Obote among the prominent exiles whom the Uganda
government wanted "dead or alive", reinforces an extremely import=
ant
point: it is that Amin had one of the best intelligence services in Africa =
at
the time. Although many of the letters and phone calls that
"implicated" prominent Ugandan government officials and businessm=
en
were supposedly written by David Oyite-Ojok and Milton Obote, President Amin
was informed enough to know that these "letters" were hoaxes.
Otherwise, Obote would have topped the list of people Amin wanted to face
crimminal charges. Oyite-Ojok, whose names appeared on most of these letters
supposedly indicating that he was working with a particular civil servant or
politician, would certainly have been mentioned by Amin in that November 20
broadcast. Why was Henry Kyemba mentioned as one of those people Amin wante=
d to
have face crimminal charges? The answer is that already explained: Kyemba w=
as a
FRONASA agent working from inside the Amin administration, whose chief work=
of
sabotage became the book, A State Of Blood. Once
Kyemba's key role as a FRONASA man is understood, it unlocks the clear
interpretation of the events in Uganda during the Idi Amin years. We begin =
to
look afresh at all the murder and assassination cases highlighted in the bo=
ok A
State Of Blood and ask why they were highlighted=
. We
start to wonder what propaganda value FRONASA hoped to reap by having their
agent Kyemba publish these stories. We start to =
wonder
if these murders and disappearances of prominent Ugandans, as has been
demonstrated so far, were mainly the work of FRONASA. To understand that is=
to
better understand the Idi Amin years. This story, then, is of how Idi Amin,=
a
man who came to power in 1971 with only the best intentions for Uganda on h=
is
mind and a wish to see Africa strong and progressive, ended up as one of the
most maligned and despised leaders in history. If the contrast between the
truth and the distortion is to be measured, then there have rarely been more
people whose image has been as tarnished as that of Idi Amin. Amin's naivet=
y,
low education, and inexperience were taken advantage of and exploited and a=
s a
result, his regime has gone down condemned in history and even the most
authoritative and respected encycolpedias and works of reference have ingra=
ined
in stone Amin's supposed crimes against humanity. Among Uganda's heads of
state, none before and none since has been as sincere in their motivation as
Amin was. None too has been as naïve as was Amin,<=
/span>
and this more than any other reason, including the allegations that he was a
mass murderer, was to prove his undoing. No matter how many different versi=
ons
of the number of people killed by Amin have been stated and mentioned, on
average the actual number of individual names of people the public knew or =
had
heard about remains between 50 and 120. Various books were published on Amin
and his legacy by different authors representing different political leanin=
gs
and in some cases academic backgrounds. The picture of the number of dead a=
nd
the specific victims listed was always the same: Amin was a butcher who kil=
led
"between 300,000 and 500,000 people" but the actual names mention=
ed
remain less than 200 people. This is indeed astonishing: when we bear in mi=
nd
the legend of evil that Amin has become as recounted in the history books, =
it
is staggering that with reports of "an estimated 300,000 people
killed", there has never been a single list of any kind published or
reported about anywhere in the world that gave the names of the people who =
were
directly or indirectly killed by Amin as many as 200 people! Seldom in human
history has there been such complete deception as this and a deception that=
was
believed and is still believed by some of the world's most brilliant
investigative journalists, police detectives, historians, military analysts,
and researchers. The main lesson for all history from the eight-year rule of
Amin is not in the decline of a once-promising African nation, Uganda. It is
not even in what has been the main story of that decade, the reign of terror
blamed on Amin and his henchmen. When all the distorted history is corrected
one day, when all the facts have been corroborated and revealed, when the m=
any
assumptions and generalisations have been swept aside and the events of Idi
Amin's rule better understood, the most astounding and enduring story of
significance will be how hollow a world this is. It will be the story of how
the world was deceived about the truth of events in an East African country=
and
how this deception that could have been checked by diligent scrutiny went o=
n to
become the permanent record of Uganda and Amin. The tragic history of Ugand=
a,
viewed two hundred years into the future will be understood not in terms of=
the
lives lost and the nation's vibrancy snuffed out, but how possible --- and
unbelievably easy too --- it is to tell a lie to the entire human race and =
that
race believes it. It will be the story that reminds us that no matter how
advanced technology gets, how far wide modern scientific education and inqu=
iry
spreads and what strides are made in the adancement of knowledge, mankind
remains, at the heart, a simple creature, far from perfect. The extent of t=
his
distortion of Ugandan history will be examined further in the next section =
of
this treatise. The answer to this question of who then committed or
masterminded the atrocities during the 1970s can be summarised this way: th=
ere
was no such thing as Idi Amin in the 1970s spreading terror amongst the Uga=
ndan
population and horrifying the world. Idi Amin was Yoweri Museveni. Once tha=
t is
understood, the next chapter of Uganda's dark history is better understood =
in
all its horrible detail. Part 2: The fall of Amin and the UNLF period What caused the 1978 Kagera invasion? On April 19, 197=
8, the
vice president of Uganda, General Mustapha Adrisi, was involved in a serious
motor accident. He was flown by the government to Cairo, Egypt, for treatme=
nt.
Immediately after the accident, rumours began to spread that the accident h=
ad
been arranged by Amin because of "tensions" between the two men o=
ver
the allocation of the scarce foreign currency in the central bank. Accordin=
g to
these reports, even after Adrisi returned to Uganda, tensions with Amin
continued to grow. Amin, the reports said, had to find a quick scapegoat. On
October 30, 1978, President Idi Amin ordered the army to invade Tanzania to
claim the Kagera province for Uganda. It was the climax to more that seven
years of tensions and open hostility between Uganda and Tanzania. When we
examine deeply the invasion of the Kagera by Amin, something about it feels
unreal and hard to believe. Most accounts of the invasion given in newspape=
rs,
magazines, and the history books have said the invasion was an attempt by A=
min
to divert his army from growing tensions and the threat of mutiny. It has b=
een
written that a supposed fallout between Amin and=
vice
president Adrisi led to the maneouvres that in turn resulted in two opposing
factions of the army ending up in northwestern Tanzania. Another theory set
forth to explain the Kagera invasion was presented in January 1979 by the
former President Milton Obote, in a paper which he titled "Statement on
the Uganda situation." In this paper, Obote reviewed developments in U=
ganda
over the eight years since he was ovethrown by Amin. Here are Obote's
observations on what might have happened: "There is plenty of evidence=
to
show that the recent invasion of Tanzania was a desperate measure to extric=
ate
Amin from consequences of the failure of his own plots against his own army.
The immediate story begins in early October, 1978 when Amin was told of a p=
lot
by some officers and men from the Simba Battalion in Mbarara in western Uga=
nda.
The plot was to have him arrested or killed on or about the 9th October 197=
8.
Not long before, Amin had sent murder squads composed of men from the infam=
ous
State Research and the marines regiment to massacre soldiers of the Chui
Battalion in Gulu, northern Uganda on the ground that those soldiers suppor=
ted
General Mustapha Adrisi. Someone within Amin's inner circle sent a warning =
to
the Chui Battalion. On their way to Gulu the murder squads were ambushed and
wiped out. Amin ordered the incident to be given maximum publicity on radio.
The radio told Ugandans that a group of armed robbers had been killed by tr=
oops
of the Chui Battalion. Unfortunately for Uganda, the chief robber himself w=
as
not amongst them. Amin even praised men of the Chui Battalion for what he
called a splendid action. When the Simba plot became known, Amin chose to p=
lot
revenge on Chui for humiliating him. He ordered men of the Chui Battalion t=
o go
to Mbarara to put down a "mutiny". That was when radio Uganda (Ug=
anda
broadcasting Corporation) first announced that Tanzanian troops of a battalion strength had invaded Uganda but that Ugand=
an
troops were not engaging the Tanzanians! In fact the Chui Battalion was mov=
ing
from Gulu to put down an imaginary mutiny at Mbarara and the Mbarara troops
were later tipped to expect an attack from a force which was not disclosed.=
The
Battle which Amin expected to develop between Chui and Simba battalions nev=
er
took place because the two units had discovered the plot to have them kill =
one
another. Amin became desperate. He now had at Mbarara two "Unreliable&=
quot;
units - Simba and Chui. He ordered his most loyal and best armed regiment, =
the
marines, reinforced by a Brigade of newly passed out troops to go to Mbarara
and disarm Simba and Chui Battalions. The subsequent battle saw the
annihilation of the Brigade and the marines withdrew having been seriously
mauled. Radio Uganda kept on with the lies of an invasion by Tanzania while=
in
fact killer Amin was busy planning and ordering his own troops to massacre
themselves. The defeat of the Marines by Simba and Chui compounded Amin's
desperation. He changed tactics. The new tactics was the actual invasion of
Tanzania to be spearheaded by the Malire regiment. Malire began to move out=
of
their barracks on 20th October, 1978. Troops were told that they would be f=
ree
to take back any booty, and loot, women, movable property, cattle and anyth=
ing
they could carry.... ....Amin spoke and continues to speak of a second phase
which would take his troops deep into Tanzania. In his utterances, he wanted
Ugandans and the world at large to believe that his aggression against Tanz=
ania
and his conflict with the people of Uganda,
constituted, one and the same issue. That certainly is not the case." =
That
was Obote's statement on the situation inside Uganda late in 1978. The gist=
of
Obote's account, as with the one given just before it, hinges on a supposed
power struggle between Amin and his vice president. Nobody, it seems, has e=
ver
bothered to ask why in all the years since the fall of the Amin regime, Adr=
isi
has never mentioned any disagreements with Amin or drawn any connection bet=
ween
them and the invasion of Kagera. As already stated in the first section of =
this
story, Radio France International spoke to Mustapha Adrisi on the morning of
August 18, 2003, two days after the death of Amin in Saudi Arabia. Adrisi p=
aid
glowing tribute to Amin, saying the only problem he ever had was that Amin =
was
"fond of telling lies." He did not mention the alleged plot by Am=
in
to assassinate him in the 1978 car accident. He did not then and has never =
even
in several newspaper interviews since the end of their regime suggested that
the invasion of Tanzania was the result of differences with Amin. In that R=
adio
France interview, Adrisi said Amin was loved by the ordinary people and that
Amin was not a killer. Adrisi would not have stated categorically that Amin=
was
not a killer knowing well that he nearly lost his life in a car accident st=
aged
by Amin, if that was a true story. Adrisi as vice president was not such a
powerful force as to constitute a real threat to Amin. Like many officers of
the Uganda Army, Adrisi was very much subordinate to Amin and this is confi=
rmed
in the report on Amin compiled by Israel's Mossad during the July 1976 Ente=
bbe
hostage crisis. Following the overthrow of Amin, Adrisi fled into exile in
Sudan with his large family and only returned several years later, to live a
humble and in some way impoverished live in his hometown of Arua. Once Amin=
was
overthrown and became an international disgrace, there would have been no
further incentive for Mustapha Adrisi to respect or show public support for
Amin. On the contrary, it would have made Adrisi somewhat of a belated hero=
to
play up the story that he had been involved in some kind of power struggle =
with
Amin and that Amin's desperation during that struggle had led him to divert=
his
troops by staging an invasion of Kagera. Adrisi lived a near destitute life=
in
exile in Sudan and any indication that he had stood up to the just overthro=
wn
monster of Uganda would have brought him sudden stardom and even a change in
his desperate financial situation, with wellwishers offering him money for =
his
courage in standing up to fascism. Certainly the Tanzanian government would
have known, through its military intelligence, of this Adrisi bravery and
treated him leniently. Adrisi has never come out and confirmed this supposed
power struggle with Amin. This brings into doubt the credibility of that st=
ory.
As for Obote's claims that Amin encouraged his officers and men to plunder =
not
only the homes of Tanzanians in Kagera in 1978, but also the homes of Ugand=
ans
living close to the border, they are contradicted by something nobody has e=
ver
disputed: when Amin was retreating from the advancing Tanzanian army in the
final weeks of his rule: he did not embark on a looting spree as many Ugand=
ans
had feared. As a matter of fact, on April 10, 1979, the day before his
government collapsed, he drove up north of Kampala toward Bombo town
accompanied by some of his bodyguards. As he headed for Bombo, he kept stop=
ping
and greeting the people who came out to meet him. He gave away much of the
money he had on him to those who came to greet him. He did not have piles of
looted items with him and none of the accounts ever given of his fleeing ha=
ve
ever noted acts of looting or arson on his or his soldiers' part. If, with =
the
certainty of defeat in April 1979 Amin and his troops did not loot Uganda or
carry off herds of cattle or bundles of looted property, it is difficult to
believe that when they were less desparate and still controlled the governm=
ent
in 1978, they would have acted in the thuggish way suggested by Obote and (=
as
we shall see), Museveni in their explanation of the havoc in Kagera. So, as=
we
can now suspect, the rumours of an Amin-Adrisi confrontation were spread by=
the
same kinds of people who had wrecked havoc on Amin and his government
throughout the 1970s decade of subversion. Who exactly, though, would have =
had
the cunning mind to orchestrate this set of events? Upon hearing news of Am=
in's
invasion of Tanzania, Museveni who was in Dar es Salaam celebrated and
exclaimed: "Now my chance to be the president of Uganda has come! I wi=
ll
one day be president of Uganda even if I die in the process." A Langi
woman, Rose Akora, who was in the same place as Museveni in Dar es Salaam at
the time later confirmed hearing him rejoice at the news of Amin's invasion.
Museveni himself in Sowing The Mustard Seed desc=
ribes
his feelings upon learning of the invasion: "Never since Amin's coup in
1971 had I felt so buoyant as I did on the day following the invasion. I kn=
ew
that Amin was finished...I remember walking along State House Drive in Dar =
es
Salaam, on my way to consult with Edward Sokoine, with a feeling of complete
satisfaction about the future course of events." (=
page
93) The account given by Akora who overheard Museveni celebrate the invasio=
n of
Tanzania by Amin and Museveni's own description of his sense of elation at =
the
news, reveal what was going on in his mind. Of all the exiles working to
overthrow Amin during the 1970s or simply living in Tanzania, Kenya, Europe=
, or
North America, none has ever been quoted on record as rejoicing or otherwise
celebrating Amin's invasion of Kagera. All who came out and spoke about it,
without exception, condemned Amin and expressed regret at the invasion.
Museveni alone of all the exiles, is the one who=
not
only did not condemn the Kagera attack; he welcomed it, in his own words,
"with a feeling of complete satisfaction about the future course of
events." No news could have come at a better time for Museveni. He was
starting to tire of the redundancy of coordinating secret guerrilla work th=
at
seemed to produce only negligible results. He was also having to live with =
the
disappointment that came with the realisation that even with Amin's growing=
international
isolation, there was still up to late 1978 no sign that his regime was abou=
t to
collapse. Most important, though, was how these dramatic events fitted into
Museveni's personal ambitions. He had always since his early 20s craved to =
one
day be Uganda's president. In light of these eve=
nts
and all previous events that took place in Uganda under Amin since 1971, we
must approach Museveni with skepticism. If he was so successful at undermin=
ing
Amin's regime and managed to somehow shape world opinion of Amin, then Muse=
veni
was capable of anything. Might he have come up with a scheme to lure Amin i=
nto
attacking Tanzania in order to trigger off a fierce counterattack and, perh=
aps,
a fully fledged invasion to topple the military regime? The answer is sugge=
sted
by Sowing The Mustard Seed, page 92 in which he =
fills
in the blank spaces: "In August 1978, as part of the infiltration proj=
ect,
I visited Uganda again for the first time since 1973. I went with a man cal=
led
Sabiiti to the border area of Kigaragara. We walked across the border at ni=
ght,
made some contacts and went back to Kakunyu village in Tanzania." Would
this have been the time Museveni was finalising his plans to tempt Amin into
invading Tanzania? It seems so, for two reasons. The first we have already
seen: Museveni was the only major exile for whom the invasion of Tanzania by
Amin brought undisguised delight. The second comes in Museveni's vague
explanation of why Amin attacked Tanzania. It is the eye-opening key in
understanding what happened. Here is the way he put it on page 92 of Sowing=
The Mustard Seed: "I think the main factor behind=
this
invasion was the incapacity of Amin and his group. They must have merely be=
en
posturing: it could not have been that they underestimated the capacity of =
the
Tanzanian army...Therefore, the explanation for this blunder must have been=
his
ignorance...President Nyerere's reaction was music to our ears...Nyerere sa=
is
that Amin's attack had given Tanzanians the cause,...and they already had t=
he
will...and the means...to fight, having bought a great deal of Soviet
equipment, including SAMs, MiG fighters and medium-range artillery. Amin ha=
d,
therefore, played right into our hands." Under normal circumstances,
Museveni would have condemned Amin's attack, seeking to convince the world =
that
this brutal leader was a threat to peace and that is why they had decided to
fight him right from the first day. Yet he did not. Instead, Museveni goes =
on
to explain as the reasons for the invasion Amin's ignorance, gullibility, a=
nd incompetence.
Museveni is dismissive and scornful of Amin in that explanation. But he is,
uncharacteristically, neither angry nor condemning. Why does Museveni not
accuse Amin of invading Tanzania? Why does Museveni not tell us that the
invasion was part of Amin's bloodthirsty character and go on to remind us t=
hat
this is the way Amin always was: a murderous butcher for whom human life ha=
d no
value and Tanzanian citizens in Kagera were only the latest of this dictato=
r's
victims? To attribute Amin's invasion of Kagera to Amin's
"incapacity" given the fact that Amin is suppposed to have murder=
ed
500,000 people in a reign of terror in Uganda, is such an understatement th=
at
it proves to be no statement at all, especially from a freedom fighter whos=
e primary
reason for opposing Amin was to stop the bloodletting in Uganda. This set of
reasons advanced by Museveni leads unerringly to one verdict: Amin did not
invade Tanzania because of a power struggle with Mustapha Adrisi; he did not
invade Tanzania because he was an evil, bloodthirsty dictator; and he did n=
ot
invade Tanzania because his indisciplined and poorly paid soldiers got out =
of
hand. He invaded Tanzania because he was deliberately given false intellige=
nce
by Museveni through Museveni's FRONASA agents stationed in Amin's security
system, well knowing that this would be, in Amin's eyes, a "last
straw" by the provocative Tanzania, which required that Uganda take
preemptive action. That is why the usually judgemental Museveni, in this
instance, was almost sympathetic to Amin, only pointing vaguely to Amin's
ignorance, not Amin's dictatorial aggression. Confirmation of this is conta=
ined
in this last line from Museveni's explanation: "Amin had, therefore,
played right into our hands." To do that, Museveni would have had to
supply Amin with false intelligence to the effect that Tanzania was plannin=
g a
definite attack on Uganda. That could easily have been arranged using the
FRONASA agents inside Amin's State Research Bureau posing as intelligence
officers. The scheme would have had to be as plausible as possible, with su=
ch
pieces of "evidence" of an impending Tanzanian invasion as
photographs of guerrillas posing as Tanzanian troops; perhaps faxes or tele=
xes
sent by Museveni from Tanzania purportedly from the Office of the President=
or
the Tanzanian army headquarters. As Museveni explains, Tanzania had just
acquired Soviet military equipment, photographs of which he could easily ha=
ve
obtained from his Tanzanian military intelligence sources. It would not have
been out of question for Museveni to smuggle these photographs --- of Tanza=
nian
army leaders inspecting the military hardware --- to Amin and his senior
military commanders and explaining them to mean that Tanzania had assembled=
its
equipment for an imminent attack on Uganda. Since the war, it has clearly
emerged that the British government and the American secret services gave m=
uch
support to the Tanzanian army in its battle against Amin. Museveni, no doub=
t,
would have known about this from his close association with Tanzanian
intelligence. Sure enough, that November Tanzania launched a counter-attack=
and
on December 9, 1978, President Nyerere announced that the Tanzanian army, t=
he
TPDF, had repulsed the invading Ugandan army and driven it out of Tanzanian
territory and back into Uganda. Atrocities and anarchy in Kagera However, we
still need to find out something. If, as we can deduce, Amin invaded Tanzan=
ia
not in anger or as a brutal, aggressive, inhuman act, who then caused the
havoc, looting, and destruction in the Kagera area? Museveni explains what
happened in Kagera on page 95 of Sowing The Must=
ard
Seed: "All this time, Amin's troops were massed on the north bank of t=
he
Kagera, looting and attacking villagers. Amin declared the Kagera Salient
annexed and his troops looted the Kagera Sugar Mill and Mishenyi Ranch. The
pastoralists of western Uganda believe that it was the cattle of Mishenyi
Ranch...which put a curse on Amin because of the way they were treated. The
cattle were driven all the way to Mbarara,...145=
km
away, and distributed to Amin's clowns." The Ugandan airforce might ha=
ve
bombed Kagera from the air and inflicted damage on the ground. Amin had
announced that he was annexing the Kagera Salient and making it part of Uga=
ndan
territory. He would have had in mind the establishment of an administration
there and a sense of law and order. He could not have been the same leader =
to
instruct his troops to loot the Kagera Sugar Mill and Mishenyi livestock ra=
nch.
Furthermore, Amin has been known to have certain appetites: women, fast car=
s,
and sports. Cars, especially, were a well-known indulgence of the Amin
establishment in general. Cattle and animals of any sort are not what come =
to
mind when the interests and indulgences of Amin and his henchmen are listed=
. What
Amin's troops might have done would have been to raid Mishenyi Ranch, slaug=
hter
cattle, and feast for days on end on beef roast at huge bonfires. The other
thing would have been to ferry the cattle off to Kampala to make immediate
money by selling beef in the city's butcheries. Museveni, in creating this =
lie
about Amin's soldiers, did not stop to think that it would be most difficul=
t to
believe. There almost no single photograph ever taken
anywhere that showed Idi Amin near cattle. The image of Amin's offic=
ers
interested enough in cattle to herd them away to Mbarara and take possessio=
n of
them, does not fit with who they were. If indeed it is true that in the lat=
ter
stages of his presidency, Amin's army was predominantly West Nile and Sudan=
ic
in ethnic composition, then Museveni's false account of the looting of catt=
le
from Tanzania becomes more pronounced. There is no serious tradition in West
Nile and southern Nubian Sudan of cattle. That cattle-keeping tradition bel=
ongs
mainly among the Karamojong, Iteso, and Banyankole-Bahima and Ugandan Tutsi
tribes. As just mentioned, the main value of cattle to Amin's roving bands =
of
soldiers would have been an impromptu feast at the border with Tanzania or
selling the cattle off in Kampala to make quick money. Had Museveni accused
Amin's soldiers of looting cars, jeeps, or electronic equipment like
televisions and music stereo systems from Tanzania, tha=
t
perhaps would have been easier to believe. Drive cattle all the way to Mbar=
ara
to distribute among Amin's West Nile and Sudanese army officers? Not likely.
Which Ugandan army officer, though, has shown the greatest interest in catt=
le
for the longest time and for whom cattle is a ho=
bby,
an obssession almost? The answer can be seen on the back cover or jacket
photograph of Sowing The Mustard Seed as well as uncountable photographs of
Museveni among his cows at his country home in Rwakitura, his ranch at Kiso=
zi,
clearly displaying a love for these animals that exceeds that of even the m=
ost
ardently professional of veterinarians. In narrating what happened to the
cattle looted from Mishenyi Ranch, Museveni gives himself away as the one w=
ho
arranged to carry off the cattle, when he claims that Amin's army took the
stolen cattle 145 km away to Mbarara. So far in this treatise on Museveni, =
we
have seen something of a pattern emerge --- the bullets that killed Brig. O=
koya
in January 1970 came from army barracks in Mbarara; the two Americans Siedle
and Stroh were killed in July 1971 in Mbarara; hundreds of Acholi and Langi
army officers were murdered in 1971 in Mbarara; the September 1972 guerrilla
invasion was launched and centred on Mbarara; the reprisals allegedly carri=
ed
out by Amin's army after the 1972 FRONASA-Kikosi Maluum invasion were mainl=
y in
Mbarara; and now in November 1978 cattle looted from Tanzania were allegedly
being driven by Amin's rampaging soldiers not to Kampala or Masaka or West
Nile, but to Mbarara. Considering that Mbarara was in many ways Museveni's =
home
town, is it not a little too obvious that this all suggests the hand of
Museveni in these events? We get further details of what Museveni ordered h=
is
FRONASA men to do in Kagera, in order to arouse the greatest anger and
determination by the Dar es Salaam government not to simply drive Amin back
across the border, but to come all the way to Kampala and overthrow him. On
page 95 of his book, Museveni says: "On 3 November, Amin's men eventua=
lly
succeeded in blowing up the Kagera River Bridge at Kyaka, having lost sever=
al
MiGs to Tanzanian anti-aircraft fire in the process...As the Tanzanian troo=
ps
moved through the salient, they found grim evidence of its brief occupation=
by
Amin's thugs in the shape of decapitated and mutilated bodies of Tanzanian
civilians." A question must be asked here: Museveni is telling us on p=
age
95 of his book that "Amin's men eventually succeeded in blowing up the
Kagera River Bridge at Kyaka, having lost several MiGs to Tanzanian
anti-aircraft fire in the process." Amin's army was on the ground in
Kagera where they had attempted without success at first to blow up the Kag=
era
bridge but eventually succeeded in doing so. The same sentence says they had
lost several MiG fighter planes to Tanzanian anti-aircraft gunfire. It seems
here that the Tanzanian army and the Ugandan army were in the same area, al=
most
within eye sight of each other. How? The Ugandan war planes were attempting=
to
bomb Kagera mainly and were being met by Tanzanian anti-aircraft fire coming
from the ground in Kagera. How could this be possible, unless Museveni is n=
ot telling
the truth about what was happening then? The same Tanzanian army that was
trying to shoot down Ugandan planes over Kagera might just as well have wal=
ked
over and shot dead the Ugandan army that was trying to destroy the Kagera <=
span
class=3DGramE>bridge or that was looting property in Kagera town. It=
is
these sorts of unquestioned accusations against Amin and his army that have=
so
discredited his legacy because there was little effort made to challenge or
validate them. In trying to understand Museveni, it is important to look fo=
r a
number of clues that he tends to leave along the way, traces of evidence cl=
ear
from his way of doing things. First clue is that he often adopts an indigna=
nt
and fiery moral stand, condemning the acts and blaming them on his political
opponents or rivals. (There is one exception, which we shall examine shortl=
y.) The greater the condemnation by Museveni of a particular atro=
city,
the greater the proof that it was actually done by him. Second, his
pattern of atrocities is usually designed to cause the maximum amount of
revulsion and horror in the minds of those reading or hearing about them. T=
hat,
as we have already seen, is what FRONASA under Museveni's orders did to
prominent Ugandans during the Amin era. If Amin was afraid of a particular =
politician
or guerrilla leader, it would have been enough to have him killed. To mutil=
ate
the body would have achieved nothing further, be it military or psychologic=
al.
As seen already in Museveni's 1971 paper glorifying violence as a political
tool and a psychologically cleansing process, gory details, heads decapitat=
ed,
were as early as 1971 already a chosen Museveni method of achieving the max=
imum
impact. Finally, acts of destruction and anarchy and most of all, atrocities
committed by Museveni in the most horrific manner against innocent civilians
are carefully catalogued and used for reference in order to blemish the
reputation of his rivals and opponents, be they individuals, groups, or
governments. Let us return to Kagera and try to find out who could have del=
iberately
destroyed buildings, looted cattle, and decapitated the heads of civilians,
leaving dozens of headless corpses littered around the countryside and road=
s.
On page 62 into 63 of Sowing The Mustard Seed,
Museveni first mentions the Kagera Salient. This was during the first invas=
ion
of Uganda in September 1972 by the Ugandan exile groups of Kikosi Maluum and
FRONASA. Was Kagera just a territory that FRONASA briefly passed through on
their way to Uganda? Or might it have been a permanent base for the FRONASA
guerrillas? Here is the answer from Museveni: "The part of Tanzania on=
the
north side of the river is known as the Kagera Salient and that is where we
were operating from. In order to transport arms across the border, we would
wade through the river carrying guns on our heads. On our return we would w=
alk
back into Tanzania through the Salient and then, because we were carrying no
arms, we could openly cross the Kagera by the large bridge at Kyaka." =
So,
according to Museveni, the Kagera was a base for FRONASA, a place "whe=
re
we were operating from." That statement by Museveni is a useful guide =
into
who it is that committed atrocities against Tanzanian civilians, cut off th=
eir
heads in order to horrify the Tanzanian army, and then true to form, Museve=
ni
records it in his autobiography for history to once again condemn Amin as t=
he
Butcher of Africa. The full significance of the discovery of corpses without
heads, first seen in November 1978 in Kagera, Tanzania, will be understood =
when
this narration gets to events in Luwero in central Uganda in the early 1980=
s.
During this period following the Ugandan invasion of Tanzania, Museveni say=
s,
he traveled to Nairobi to meet his Ugandan guerrilla contacts. In December,
Museveni went to join the frontline in northwestern Tanzania. In Obote's
"Statement on the Uganda situation", he roundly criticised Amin's
record and lamented the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives und=
er
the Amin dicatorship. Obote quoted reports by Amnesty International that
accused Amin of murdering hundreds of thousands. The contents of this paper=
are
important in understanding the differences between Obote and Museveni.
Museveni, as already mentioned, went to Tanzania and knew that it was cruci=
al
for him to develop an intimate relationship with Tanzanian intelligence as a
way of understanding what was going on inside Uganda. Obote was not of the =
same
thinking and because he did not see the vital role played by intelligence a=
nd a
command of first-hand information, his paper on the Uganda situation came
across as the ramblings of a disgruntled former head of state. Obote, it se=
ems,
had scarcely a clue at the time he wrote that paper that most of the news of
Amin's supposed killing of "hundreds of thousands of innocent Ugandans=
"
was the disinformation that Museveni's FRONASA had undertaken in order to
undermine the military government. Obote had employed Museveni as an
intelligence officer but somehow was unable to see the value of keeping an =
eye
on Museveni's activities in Tanzania. This shrewdness on Museveni's part wo=
uld
serve him well in the coming years, as we shall see later. The bombing of
Mbarara and Masaka towns By February, Museveni's FRONASA fighters accompany=
ing
the Tanzanian army had entered Uganda in the war proper and on February 26,
1979, Museveni's group received instructions to advance on Mbarara town. (O=
nce
again, Mbarara features prominently in the story of Amin and Museveni.)
Museveni describes the gradual move on Mbarara by the Tanzanian army: "=
;On
the morning of the 27th, we captured Gayaza Hill and went beyond it up to
Masha...18 km from Mbarara. Again there was little fighting because Amin's
soldiers ran away. Our medium artillery, based at a road camp at mile 14,
shelled Mbarara the whole of that afternoon...At midnight on 27 February, we
advanced on Mbarara and by morning we had entered the town. We captured it
easily because there was no resistance...The TPDF battalions fanned across
Mbarara, checking the town up to and including the barracks, which they fou=
nd abandoned."
(Sowing The Mustard Seed, page 99) In his 1980 book, Imperialism and revolu=
tion
in Uganda, Dan Wadada Nabudere mentioned this fact of Ugandan support for t=
he
invading Tanzanian force and the ease with which they gained territory:
"When Tanzanian troops advanced into Uganda they were met by jubilant
crowds. As Amin threatened to punish villagers who were welcoming the advan=
cing
Tanzanian and Ugandan fighters, a unity of purpose was cemented between the
fighters and the people." (page 332) There =
is a
shocking story that Museveni leaves out of his account of the 1979 war --- =
the
heavy destruction visited on Mbarara and Masaka towns by the Tanzanian army.
Starting on February 24, explosions were heard in Mbarara and as citizens l=
ater
came to discover to their horror, many of the best buildings in the town had
been destroyed by explosives. The destruction continued in Masaka. These two
towns suffered the worst damage of any town during that war and the effect =
of
the damage could still be felt 25 years later. The coffee factory at Kakoba
just outside Mbarara town was burnt to the ground. The generally accepted
reports had it at the time that the Tanzanians had taken this opportunity, =
once
they captured these two southern towns, to avenge Amin's bombing of Kagera.
This version of what happens does not measure up to the facts and the logic=
of
the events. To begin with, the Tanzanian army was in general regarded as ve=
ry
disciplined. This confrontation with Uganda was the first and only war it h=
as
ever fought and it is one of the few African armies that has never staged or
attempted to stage a coup against the government. The only known unrest
occurred in January 1964 during army mutinies that took place simultaneousl=
y in
Kenya and Tanzania over pay. Secondly, wherever the Tanzanians were advanci=
ng
inside Uganda during the first few days and weeks, as Nabudere pointed out,
they were being received by jubilant Ugandan crowds. There was every reason=
for
this foreign army to wish to remain popular with the ordinary people since =
this
would not only help boost the morale of the Tanzanian solders but also redu=
ce
on the need to use ammunition. And, according to Museveni, Idi Amin's soldi=
ers
were putting up practically no resistance. The Tanzanian army had come righ=
t up
to the Simba battalion barracks in Mbarara and found them abandoned. In Sow=
ing The Mustard Seed, Museveni does mention this destructi=
on of
Masaka and Mbarara at all, nor even hint at it. Having described in quite s=
ome
detail the entry of the Tanzanian troops into Mbarara almost kilometre by
kilometre, Museveni skips this episiode altogether. It is one of the strang=
est
omissions in the book. Museveni would have it believed that he is a Munyank=
ole,
born and bred there, a proud admirer of the history and traditions of the
people of Ankole. As president of Uganda for twenty years, hardly a week we=
nt
by without him in a speech or public address quoting a proverb or saying fr=
om
Ankole. He attended secondary school at Mbarara High School and Ntare Schoo=
l,
both in Mbarara. Most of his friends and guerrilla colleagues were from the
Ankole tribe. He talks about the community work he did in Ankole during his
student days, teaching peasants and the nomadic Bahima people modern
agriculture and animal husbandry. In the manifesto of FRONASA, he had lamen=
ted
the decline of Uganda under Idi Amin. The third point in the manifesto had =
been
given as one "to salvage what remains of the economy of Uganda and nur=
se
it back to health." Over and over again, Museveni in his autobiography
condemns the hooligans who passed for Amin's soldiers, dismissing them as t=
hugs
and fools whose only preoccupation was looting, rape, and destruction. Ther=
e is
also an additional note to make on this: Museveni, even as he was grateful =
for
the support Tanzania had given to the Ugandan exile community and their rol=
e in
the fight to oust Amin, was not afraid to voice his occasional disagreement
with the Dar es Salaam government and its armed forces over certain policie=
s.
He regularly stated his disagreements with them during their conversations =
and
meetings. Given that background, the destruction wrought on Mbarara and Mas=
aka
towns by the Tanzanian army would have been one of the most distresing
experiences in Museveni's life. Museveni would have turned onto the Tanzani=
ans
and in a state of shock, condemned them ceaselessly over the bombing of his
beloved Mbarara town. He would have questioned what the difference was betw=
een
them and the Idi Amin they had come to fight and overthrow. In his fury,
Museveni would have immediately rang President N=
yerere
and in the strongest possible terms, condemned what the Tanzanian army had =
done
to this southern town. Even if damage had already been done, this crusader =
for
the advancement of Ankole's economic wellbeing and cultural pride would have
demanded an apology from the Tanzanian authorities and war reparations paid.
He, in other words, would have made an issue of it. Pages of condemnation of
this unforgivable misbehaviour by the Tanzanians would have blazed in his a=
utobiography.
Instead, there is the most unusual silence for someone who has always proje=
cted
himself to the public as a leader opposed to any dictatorial tendencies and
destruction of Uganda's and Africa's economic prosperity and specifically a
great admirer of all things culturally and historically Ankole. Why, we must
ask, was there such conspicious silence over the demolition of public build=
ings
in Mbarara by this champion of the rule of law? Who was responsible for this
bombing of most public buildings in Mbarara? The destruction of Mbarara town
was ordered by Yoweri Museveni who then gave the public false reports that =
the
Tanzanians had bombarded the town out of anger at Amin. The forensic eviden=
ce
indicated that this was not the work of tank or artillery shells, as Museve=
ni
claimed, but of dynamite. On February 28, 1979, a day after the fall of Mba=
rara
to the Tanzanian-led force, Museveni visited the home of the Byanyima famil=
y in
Ruti, just over four kilometres out of the centre of the town. He arrived i=
n a
landrover accompanied by Major Kessy, the commander of Tanzania's Special
Battalion, as well as five Tanzanian soldiers. Museveni was dirty from head=
to
toe and told the Byanyimas that he had not had a bath in three months. He a=
sked
that he might take a hot bath. Later during their conversation, an angry
Boniface Byanyima brought up the subject of the destruction of Mbarara.
"If you say you are liberators," Byanyima turned and asked Kessy,
"why are you blowing up the buildings in Mbarara?" On hearing thi=
s accusation,
Major Kessy angrily threatened to arrest Byanyima, whom he accused of being=
a
collaborator with Amin's forces. Museveni intervened and told Kessy to let
Byanyima alone. He did not, however, explain anything further to his old fr=
iend
what had happened to the buildings in the town. Nor did Museveni explain to
Kessy that there had been a rumour and reports in Mbarara that the Tanzania=
ns
had bombarded most of the public buildings and this is what Byanyima was
referring to. Instead, Museveni sat calmly in the Byanyima's living room and
did not comment further on the destruction of Mbarara. This confirms Museve=
ni's
direct role in the blasting of the buildings, as well as demonstrating how =
his
mind works. For Major Kessy to get so angry at Byanyima's accusation and la=
bel
him an Amin collaborator, could only mean one th=
ing:
Museveni must have told the Tanzanians that the buildings had been destroye=
d by
the remnants of Amin's army as they fled Mbarara. Then to the people of Mba=
rara
whom he knew had seen Amin's army flee without destroying any building or a=
rmy
barracks, he could not repeat the same lie. Instead, he started the rumours
that the Mbarara buildings had been demolished by the Tanzanians in retalia=
tion
for the destruction of Kagera by Amin's troops in November 1978. For this o=
nce
in his life, Museveni could not commit outrages and openly blame them on the
Tanzanians in order to discredit Nyerere's government and army, as was his
tendency. Tanzania was a vital ally and for many sentimental reasons, Musev=
eni
revered Nyerere. Also in practical terms, he could not accuse the very
Tanzanians that he depended on to get to Kampala, of blasting the buildings=
in
Mbarara. Major Kessy, knowing the high standards of discipline in the Tanza=
nian
army, took offence at Byanyima's condemnation. He had no idea that seated r=
ight
beside him in the Byanyima's living room was the maniac who had ordered the
blowing up of the town's buildings by his FRONASA forces. However, there was
something more appalling. Having ordered his men to destroy much of Mbarara,
Museveni then led his FRONASA guerrillas to his former high school, Ntare
School, in order to burn it down. When they learnt of his intentions, tearf=
ul
ordinary people in the neighbourhood came out and pleaded with the Tanzania=
ns
to block Museveni from doing what he was about to and spare one of Ankole's
most beloved cultural icons, Ntare School. Now shocked, the Tanzanians
apologised and left the premises. They were left with questions, neverthele=
ss,
and tried to keep the incident a secret amongst the top commanders. Why had
Museveni wanted to bomb Ntare School? Why would a man order the destruction=
of
his former school for whatever reason, if he was mentally normal? What kind=
of
man was this Museveni they were dealing with? These questions haunted the
Tanzanian commanders for the rest of the war. Writing in Notes On Concealment of Genocide in Uganda in 1990, former
President Milton Obote said: "In early 1979 after the capture of Ankol=
e by
the Tanzanian troops, Museveni organized hooligans, mostly from the two Ref=
ugee
Camps, Rusinga and Nakivale, and led them in attacks and massacres of Musli=
ms.
He led the hooligans to the Kakoba Coffee Factory and burnt it down. He also
organized an assault to burn down his former school, Ntare, but this was
frustrated when patriotic Ugandans appealed to the Tanzanian troops to rest=
rain
Museveni which they did. In Mbarara Town, Museveni, the son of an itinerant
immigrant, lived in Omugabe's [traditional Ankole king's] Palace. His reaso=
ning
for the massacres of the Muslims, the burning of the coffee Factory, etc. w=
as
that in so doing the "wrath" of the "wananchi" (citizen=
s)
was being expressed against the Amin regime. What was of greatest importance
was to show in the most unmistaken form that he was the new ruler in Ankole=
and
that terror including massacres were to be instr=
uments
of his rule...When his hooligans were restrained from attacking Ntare School
and after they had dynamited Public Buildings in Mbarara Town, he began to
raise an army." In March 1996, the government-owned New Vision newspap=
er
described this massacre of the Muslims in Itendero village in Kazo, Mbarara=
and
the drownings in River Rwizi this way: "During the purge, an unspecifi=
ed
number of Muslims were either slain, drowned in rivers or banished from are=
as
where they stayed at the time." Allegations that Museveni was the
mastermind behind the massacre of Muslims in Mbarara in 1979 continued to t=
rail
him right up to the 1990s, allegations he tried to ward off. All this retur=
ns
us to the beginning of the story of this extraordinary man. What is it that
drives him? Could this be the militant ideology of Marxism-Leninism that he
espoused starting in the late 1960s? Might it originate from his mental
illness, the bipolar disorder that has dogged him since his teenage years? =
Or
does this extreme ruthlessness have anything to do with his mother's reject=
ion
of him and the dysfunction in his family life and history? If Museveni were
really a Ugandan and a Munyankole, how could he even think of destroying th=
at
part of his life, youth, and experience that mattered so much to him and his
Ankole people --- Mbarara town and Ntare School? And most of all, how did t=
his
most bizzare of behaviour go unreported in the mainstream news media, unpun=
ished
by the authorities, and unaccounted for when he stood for various political
offices in the following years? Museveni returned briefly to Dar es Salaam =
to
meet President Nyerere. Upon coming back to Uganda, he left for the war fro=
nt
in Masaka town and the Rakai area. Here, as in Mbarara, Museveni ordered his
men to blow up public buildings in a show of force supposedly from the ordi=
nary
citizens angry at the Amin legacy. How these citizens would have destroyed =
the
very town they had lived in, worked in, and were to continue living in,
Museveni did not explain. The once beautiful Tropic Inn hotel in Masaka, wh=
ich
was part of the countrywide chain of the Uganda Hotels group, was also targ=
eted
by Museveni. Because it was not as politically important as Mbarara, Masaka
town suffered proportionately greater immediate and long-term damage to its
infratructure than Mbarara. The most telling proof of Museveni's guilt in t=
his
unbelievable destruction of two Ugandan towns can be gleaned from the compl=
ete
silence on the matter in his autobiography. At no time since those bombings=
of
Mbarara and Masaka in 1979 has Museveni ever rebuked the Tanzanians over th=
ese
supposed acts of theirs. Since the 1979 war, Uganda has been repaying Tanza=
nia
some of the expenses it incurred in prosecuting the war. As president since
1986, Museveni --- who has questioned such unfair arrangements as Uganda's
continued supply of cheap electricity to Kenya under the terms of a 1950s
agreement --- has never once wondered why Tanzania should not be compensati=
ng
Uganda, since it is Tanzania that destroyed Masaka and Mbarara and if anyth=
ing,
Tanzania should be paying Uganda recompense. It is a silence on Museveni's =
part
that has never been explained. Museveni's FRONASA forces were also ordered =
into
the small and relatively unknown district of Rakai, further south of Masaka=
. In
Rakai, further inland from Masaka in rural Buganda, something extremely
significant happened that went almost unnoticed, except for the immediate n=
ews
that it created. Apart from the destruction of property, Museveni's FRONASA=
men
embarked on a spree of rape. The origin of AIDS in Uganda In late 1979, a f=
ew
people began to notice residents of Rakai getting sick and their body weight
dramatically dropping to the point where they took on an almost skeletal
appearance. At that time, the superstitious villagers attributed this wasti=
ng
condition to witchcraft. It was left at that. The misery brought on by the
Tanzania-Uganda war diverted the attention of many government officials from
this disturbing new disease in Rakai. However, as the 1980s dawned, the
persistence of the new wasting condition for which there appeared to be no =
cure
or even preventive medicine, started to get to the attention of medical
researchers both from Makerere University and Mulago hospital, and the west=
ern
world. In 1981, Dr. David Serwadda of Makerere University went to Kansenser=
o, a
small township in the area, to find out for himself about this strange new
disease. In 1982, the chief medical officer of Kalisizo Hospital in southern
Buganda, Emmanuel Rwegabo, compiled and sent a report to the Ministry of He=
alth
in Kampala in which he attempted to explain this strange and previously unk=
nown
disease that was now ravaging the Rakai area. Rwegaba's report spoke of
patients from the ordinary walks of life developing such symptins as fever,
night sweats, severe loss of weight, a skin rash, sores in the mouth, which=
all
failed to respond to conventional treatment and resulted inevitably in the
death of the patients. The early name given to this disease was the
"Masaka-Kyotera Syndrome", because of the areas it had hit the
hardest and seemed almost exclusively to originate from. The website iaen.o=
rg
comments: "Kagera is at the epicentre of the African AIDS epidemic. The
first case of AIDS in the region was diagnosed in 1983, although HIV was mo=
st
likely present at least a decade earlier." We should remember that in
Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni had said that =
the
Kagera was a base for FRONASA and him, the place "where we were operat=
ing
from" starting in about 1973. The picture we get of the origin of AIDS=
in
Uganda is that it was reported at its earliest and at its most virulent in
Kagera in northwestern Tanzania, where FRONASA was operating from at the ti=
me
an AIDS-like disease was first reported in 1974, and Rakai in southern Ugan=
da,
where Museveni had sent his men on a campaign of rape in 1979. Returning to=
the
reports that Amin's soldiers had gone on a spree of looting and raping in
Kagera in October 1978, history and justice is on their side for one simple
reason: they did not contract AIDS in quite the numbers that mass rape woul=
ld
have entailed. If it were true that these troops of Amin's army conducted a
terror campaign of rape and six months later were driven out of power by a
Tanzanian-led force, then we would have witnessed a sudden explosion of AID=
S in
Arua or southern Sudan, where most of the remnants of Amin's army fled into
exile. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead there were rumours quietly spr=
eading
that this new disease had been brought to Rakai by the "Tanzanian
soldiers" during the 1979 war. "That's the most feasible
theory," Dr David Serwadda, told Reuters news agency on December 1, 20=
00.
"Even in the neighboring Kagera district in Tanzania, the highest
prevalence rates have been recorded." Since the Tanzanians were widely
regarded as liberators who had freed Uganda from the tyranny of Idi Amin, t=
he
population could not bring itself to judge the Tanzanians harshly over this
matter. Nevertheless, the rumours persisted. The people who first perished =
of
the new disease were the women who had been raped by the FRONASA men during
their rampage through Rakai in early March 1979. Still, almost nobody made =
the
connection. If indeed this disease was brought to Uganda by the invading
Tanzanian army, why did it first become significant in Rakai, which is much
further inland than the places the Tanzanians first set foot in Uganda, like
the border area of Mutukula or the towns of Mbarara and Masaka? Rakai is he=
avily
Catholic and conservative, where matters of sexuality remain taboo. Were th=
is
new sexually transmitted disease to break out in Uganda, the capital Kampal=
a or
the eastern border with Kenya where long-distance goods lorries
and trade go back and forth would have been the more natural avenue. In mos=
t of
Uganda, the public first heard of Rakai in connection with this disease, wh=
ich
the locals called "Slim" because of its severe wasting and weight
loss traits. Why was this new disease --- later to take on the name AIDS --=
- to
break out first in Rakai in Uganda where the FRONASA force had gone on a
campaign of rape and destruction, and not first break out in Tanzania? If AIDS was brought by the Tanzanian soldiers in 1979, that w=
ould
mean that by then it had more or less destroyed a large part of the Tanzani=
an
army and by extension, Tanzanian society. By the time Uganda woke up=
to
the AIDS crisis in 1982, Tanzania would long have been a disaster area. And=
yet
reports on AIDS in Africa first started spreading in Uganda, not Tanzania. A
strange development that was in Rakai after the FRONASA men went there on a
rampage. The fuller significance of this, like most other matters concerning
Museveni, will be grasped when this narrative gets to the 1980s. When the w=
ar
effort in Masaka and Mbarara was completed and the towns secured by the
Tanzanians, Museveni set off for Fort Portal town at the foot of the Rwenzo=
ri
mountains in Toro. Fort Portal was already in the hands of the Tanzanians. =
He
went by a new title: Supreme Commissar. Once he got to Fort Portal, Museveni
took up residence in the main palace of the Omukama (king) of Toro atop a h=
ill
overlooking the town. He had done the same thing in Mbarara. The Moshi unity
conference In March 1979, the Tanzanian government --- stung by criticism t=
hat
it had launched an illegal war on Uganda and so violated the OAU charter ---
hurriedly organised a conference in the town of Moshi By this conference, it
was hoped to create the impression that Ugandans themselves were uniting to
create a common front against Amin. A number of military and quasi-military,
human rights, and intellectual groups --- 22 in all --- assembled at Moshi.
FRONASA and it leader Museveni was there in force. Museveni resided at the =
YMCA
hostel in the town for the duration of the conference. He attended the
conference deliberations with much enthusiasm and at all times wore military
uniform. FRONASA emphasised the intertwined relationship between military
science and political science and insisted that the army be given a say in =
all
future arrangements in Uganda. Many people, especially fugures like Dr. Arn=
old
Bisase and Dan Wadada Nabudere opposed the FRONASA proposals, preferring th=
at
civilians dominate the future politicals landscape of Uganda and that the
military does the bidding of the civilian authorities. Typically, Museveni =
in
his autobiography takes on for himself the credit for the idea of hosting t=
he
Moshi conference. Museveni claims that it was because Nyerere had lost
confidence in Obote. According to Museveni, "the Tanzanians were anxio=
us
to put together a Ugandan front, other than Obote, whom they now knew was a
liability both inside and outside Uganda." (Sowing The Mustard Seed, p=
age
105) Once again, Museveni's distortion of history comes to the light. Accor=
ding
to the Kenyan scholar Bethwell A. Ogot, writing in Building on the Indigeno=
us:
Selected Essays 1981 - 1998 (Kisumu: Anyange Press Ltd., 1999), Nyerere was=
so
set on the idea of Obote as first choice of a post-Amin Ugandan leader that=
as the
Tanzanian army marched toward Kampala in early 1979, Nyerere asked Obote and
the Tanzanian Defence Minister Rashidi Kawawa to fly to Masaka town and get
ready to enter Kampala with the army should it succeed in overthrowing Amin.
"Obote and Kawawa actually went as far as Bukoba, before they were
recalled to Dar-es-Salaam by Nyerere," Ogot noted. Only pressure from
Britain caused Nyerere to withdraw his plan of returning Obote to power in
1979. Tanzania, which was still a poor socialist country, was finding it
difficult to prosecute the war with its own resources and requested its for=
mer
colonial master Britain to help it in the war effort. Britain expressed
willingness but one of its conditions was that Obote should not be returned=
to
power following the fall of Amin. A powerful Baganda lobby in London had
persuaded the British government to block the return of Obote to power. Ask=
ed
whom they would prefer to see as president instead, the Baganda lobby sugge=
sted
the name of Yusufu Lule, a former Principal of Makerere University College.=
At
the Moshi conference, the Uganda People's Congress party --- aware that it =
had
a large following among the Ugandan exile community --- proposed that all
present at the conference attend in their individual capacities. The UPC kn=
ew
that it would inevitably dominate proceedings if this were done. The steeri=
ng
committee rejected this proposal and instead committees were set up. A
Constitutional Committee, which designed the structure of a proposed Uganda
National Liberation Front (UNLF), was set up and this structure included a
National Consultative Council (NCC) which would serve as Uganda's national
assembly of the UNLF period. A constitution of the UNLF was drawn up. When =
time
came to elect a chairman of the UNLF, it was by now assumed that Lule would
easily be chosen. At the last minute, one of the delegates, the former Angl=
ican
bishop of Bukedi, Yona Okoth, stood up and proposed the name of Paulo Muwan=
ga,
a UPC delegate and former Ugandan ambassador to France, as chairman. There =
was
drama and shock at the conference as few had expected this. Belatedly, some=
body
forwarded Lule's name to be formally nominated. Lule was unanimously elected
and Muwanga was named the chairman of a Military Commission of the UNLF.
Museveni was elected vice chairman of the Military Commission. Bearing in m=
ind
that it was British pressure that blocked Obote not only from being named by
Nyerere as the president-in-waiting following the future overthrow of Amin =
but
kept him away from the Moshi conference, the real preferences of Nyerere ca=
n be
seen in who was elected to take up the other powerful positions except that
which Lule was given. At the time of the conference, most delegates did not
foresee what a powerful body the Military Commission would become in the
following months in Uganda. Lieutenant-Colonel David Oyite-Ojok, the former
adjutant-general, was named chief of staff of the proposed Uganda National
Liberation Army (UNLA) while Colonel Tito Okello, Museveni's residential
neighbour in Dar es Salaam, was named the UNLA's commander. Colonel William
Omaria was also named to the Military Commission. Since Nyerere had been fo=
rced
to leave his friend Obote out of the process, he made up for that
disappointment by endowing the Military Commission with the real power to
determine the outcome of events in Uganda and most of the Commission's memb=
ers
were all sympathetic to Obote except Museveni. How did Museveni, at just 35,
come to be named the Military Commission vice chairman? His close relations=
hip with
Nyerere for one might have held the key. Might he have visited Nyerere and
pleaded to be appointed as vice chairman of the Military Commission? This m=
uch
is not known but would not be an impossibility. =
Either
way, he would become one of the best-known figures in the new dispensation.=
He
returned to Uganda after that, visiting the frontline near Mpigi. As we lea=
rned
earlier, Museveni met a number of intelligence from the State Research Bure=
au
who had secretly worked for him and used them to identify other agents from
among the prisoners of war captured by the Tanzanians. When on April 11, 19=
79,
the invading forces captured Kampala and the Amin regime fell,
Lieutenant-Colonel David Oyite-Ojok announced over Radio Uganda that the Idi
Amin "is no longer in power." It was a thrilling moment for most
Ugandans who had lived in fear for more than eight years. At the news of the
fall of Kampala, Museveni became very angry. Why? He had hoped all along al=
ong
to be the man given the honour of announcing the fall of the Amin governmen=
t to
the invading forces. Frustrated that this had not come to pass, he ordered =
his
FRONASA men in Fort Portal to blow up the King's palace. On the surface of =
it,
this decision to blow up the palace might seem like yet another piece of ev=
idence
that Museveni at the core was a mentally unstable and maniacal man. How
- Posted By Boyi Yobbo on 10/24/2009
On the surface of it, this decision to blow up the palace might seem like y=
et
another piece of evidence that Museveni at the core was a mentally unstable=
and
maniacal man. However, there was from his point of view a
certain logic in his taking that action. Museveni knew,
more than most, that the anti-Amin struggle had been at its most deadly and
most effective when it came to undermining the image and credibility of Ami=
n.
His FRONASA guerrilla force might not have achieved the overthrow of Amin in
the way they wanted and at the time they desired; but the permanent blottin=
g of
Amin's reputation in the history books was largely the doing of Museveni.
Furthermore, the destruction and looting rampage in Tanzania's Kagera area =
that
finally persuaded the Tanzanian government to do away altogether with Amin, was the work of Museveni too. And yet he could n=
ot
come forth and publicly reveal his acts of sabotage and manipulation. This =
is
what made him deeply angry and frustrated and he could do nothing about it.=
<=
o:p>