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Plot was hatched in dingy structure in the back streets of Ugandan city
The plot against President Moi was hatched in a dingy two-room backyard structure
in the heart of Kampala. The building on Burton Street has since been demolished.
The Fera headquarters — equipped with two computers and two typewriters — was hidden on the backyard, shielded at the front by small businesses. To gain entry, one had to pass through a short stretch of a dark alley between two buildings.
One of the rooms served as Dr Jood Mafokeng’s herbal clinic.
This led cynics to argue that Fera was posed no serious threat to the Kenya Government. Yet the flipside may be that such a setting provided the requisite secrecy and ultimate protection for the rebels.
Those who unmasked Fera say so much money used to change hands here. And because of this, they say, a good number of top military Ugandans were immersed in this deal against President Moi. The money is said to have come from Libya, North Korea, and Cuba through their missions in Kampala.
Of interest is Mafokeng and his Ugandan sidekicks, who had an iron grip on the finances to the extent Odongo was hardly in charge. Yet the UN High Commissioner for Refugees unwittingly supported Fera by paying the so-called refugee allowances.
A former Special Branch mole recalls that in 1994, just after the World Cup finals, about 118 rifles were conveyed to the Burton Street secretariat. The mole and Mafokeng were among those who received the brand new AK-47s delivered in a Land Rover.
The arms were ferried to the "Baghdad Camp" the same evening. In the arsenal were also rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and pistols.
It is in this two bed-roomed house that the Kenyan mole operated from, and when he was unmasked, he escaped through the Busia border with documents that revealed the subversive designs crafted by top officials of the Uganda’s National Resistance Movement.
The mole stole Mafokeng’s documents after he fell out with Odongo early 1995. The documents revealed minutes of Fera leaders’ meetings, names of recruits, planned attacks and names of financiers. There were also details of oath and the "five-system" treatment Mafokeng employed on the troops prior to attacks on Kenya, say intelligence sources.
The dusty Burton Street faces the Pioneer Mall, Kampala’s first-ever mall, which hosted a bar where Fera leaders and sympathisers held meetings. Odongo, the mole and a number of Kenya’s Opposition leaders assembled here to strategise against Moi.
Ironically, the mole and spies at the Kenyan High Commission in Kampala also met here to review their progress. The mole used the two public booths outside the mall to pass on messages to his masters in Kampala and Nairobi.
Incidentally, the mall is sandwiched between Burton and Williamson streets. It was on Williamson Street that Odongo was nearly kidnapped by Kenyan intelligence. He escaped into a high-rise building, and was rescued by Ugandan military intelligence from an ally’s clinic.
Sources within the Kenyan intelligence say there was a plan to bomb Burton Street in a desperate bid to smoke out Fera. "We looked at this option but before we could exact it, the Fera leaders were deported to a third country," says an intelligence official.
The Fera training camps were on Mt Elgon, Mbale and the Nakivale Refugee Camp, which hosted Rwandan and Kenya refugees pushed out by ethnic clashes.
It was a perfect setting for recruitment and training. All Kenyan dissidents, including Odongo and Wangamati, were registered as refugees and benefited from Sh1,700 monthly allowances from the UNHCR.
The boys took an oath of allegiance to Fera administered by Mafokeng. The troops, who have since returned to Kenya, say they were forced to feed on a concoction mixed in their own blood.
"We were told to drain blood by slicing our fingers and letting it into a pot containing a mixture of meat from land and marine creatures. We did this in rounds while sitting around a fire, and when the food was ready, we ate it together," says a returnee. The ritual was intended to bottle up the troops and instill some level of fear, togetherness, and camaraderie.
Those planning to stage a raid smeared their bodies with the concoction on the eve of the attack as a way of protecting themselves from bullets.
Mafokeng called this treatment the "Five System", saying it took five years to develop and was administered in five stages.
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