The Monitor, Oct. 15, 2001
By Charles Onyango-Obbo
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After Gen. Idi Amin seized power from Milton Obote in January 1971, Mohamed Sebaduka and his fellow plotters expected they would be released quickly, as indeed the military regime had done with all opponents of Obote.
However their turn did not come. New year 1973 still found them in jail. Sebaduka and his colleagues took a very conspiratorial view of the delay in releasing them. They blamed Ben Kiwanuka, who had been appointed Chief Justice. They believed that Kiwanuka wanted them to remain in prison, because if they were released they might talk about his role in the 1969 Obote assassination, and destroy his image as a man of peace and the law.
Kiwanuka is dead, so we shall never hear his side of the story. However to this day, he retains such a mythical hold on the imagination of many, Ugandans that very few of them know, or would believe, that he was a tough man, a soldier who saw action in the Second World War, and was actually a decorated officer.
Many people who were involved in investigating the case against the Obote assassins, soon joined the Sebadukas in Luzira. In February of 1970, Amin's soldiers brought former CID former Mohamed Hassan, Wawuyo, Ochungi, and many Obote I government officials and politicians to Luzira.
Sebaduka remembers that in late 1972 very many of Amin's much-feared Military Police arrived at Luzira heavily armed and brandishing ropes. They dragged Hassan and Ochungi out. In the yard of the prison, the red tops pounced on the two, kicking, and clubbing them with gun butts. They then tied them with ropes, threw them on a Land Rover, and drove them away - to their death.
In September 1972, security agents arrested Chief Justice Kiwanuka from his offices. He was never seen alive again.
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In March in 1973, Amin attended a wedding at Prince Badru Kakungulu's home. During the reception, Kakungulu mentioned the case of Sebaduka and his colleagues. As was his custom, Amin "immediately" ordered their release. "Immediately" instructions were relayed to Luzira to release Sebaduka's group. "We were given pocket money, and transport to take us to our homes."
Sebaduka went into the garage business in Ndeeba and did very well. He even had contracts to repair cars from the Amin State House. "I was quite rich," he recalls.
A combined force of Tanzanian forces and Ugandan dissidents overthrew Amin in April 1979. Sebaduka was apprehensive, but he continued doing his business.
In December 1980, the Military Commission of the ruling Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF), which had usurped power from its own government, organized the highly disputed elections of 1980, that were won by Obote's UPC.
Yoweri Museveni was leader of the Uganda Patriotic Movement, which won only one seat (Dr Crispus Kiyonga's) in those stolen elections. Museveni was also deputy chairman of the UPC-dominated Military Commission, a position he held because he was leader of the Front for National Salvation, one of the main armed groups that fought alongside the Tanzanians against Amin.
Sebaduka didn't hang around. As soon as Obote was sworn into office, he fled to Nairobi in December 1980, and lived there in exile for six months. Museveni took to the bush in February 1981 to start his rebellion, and though the Obote government was already cracking down on people suspected of being linked to rebels or were generally opposed to his government, Sebaduka was advised that it was safe for him to return.
For a while he thought he was safe, and his garage, strangely, used to repair cars from the Obote State House as they had done with Amin's.
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Sebaduka's world was shattered again in May 1982, when soldiers of the UNLA arrived at his Ndeeba garage. They arrested and took him to Makindye Barracks, which had become a notorious killing centre during Obote II.
He was in a side room in the garage counting money when the soldiers arrived. What Sebaduka says were "two Acholi soldiers", one of who was an officer leading the group, went into the office. The soldiers looked at the money, and remarked that Sebaduka seemed to have a lot of them, yet they had left nothing back home for their children to eat. He gave them "something small", and left to go with them.
Interestingly Sebaduka says he believes he was re-arrested not because he had shot Obote in 1982, but because some of his relatives had brought up his past so that he could be jailed, and they grab his property. That, however, didn't matter once he was in Makindye. He became the man who had tried to kill Obote. Ironically, that was what was to save him.
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One day in early June 1982 soldiers came with a list to the cell where Sebaduka was being held. The two soldiers who had come into his nook at the garage, was among the group that came to the cell. One of them read the list.
There were 70 people crowded in the cell. When he arrived at Sebaduka's name, according to him, the fellow stopped and went away.
They returned with the list later in the evening and read it out. Sebaduka's name was not in.
All the 67 people whose names were read out were killed. They were beaten to death with metal bars.
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After he had been in Makindye for three months, an officer told Sebaduka that President Obote knew about his case, and wanted to meet him. He waited and waited. The meeting never came.
Throughout this time, soldiers had been picking people from the cell where Sebaduka was being held, but he was always spared.
In October, the soldiers carried out a particularly massive murder. They collected 160 people. They were taken to Kakiri, where Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) rebels had had a clash with the UNLA. "I clearly remember the lorry in which they were taken. It was UWS 855", Sebaduka tells me tearfully.
None of them came back alive.
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In November, almost exactly 13 years to the date when the decision was taken in Rev. Kasasa's house to kill Obote, the president sent a letter to Sebaduka in Makindye.
According to Sebaduka, an officer called and told him he had a message for him from President Obote. The officer read Obote's message to him in which he said "he no longer [had] as case against him," and that he had served his jail term, and been forgiven by a president, so he would not pursue the matter. Sebaduka was startled.
After reading the letter to him, the officer kept telling Sebaduka: "You're lucky, you're lucky. Now nobody is going to kill you."
Sebaduka doesn't know why Obote did this. It conjured that eerie moment on December 19, 1969 when he stood over Obote briefly after shooting, then walked away without finishing him off. Perhaps Obote, acting out of a bizarre Freudian emotion, was paying Sebaduka back for that night.
A few days later, Sebaduka was transferred to Central Police Station.
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On December 12, he was transferred to Luzira. There he met a fellow prisoner from 1970-71. It was Balaki Kirya, who had been detained in Obote 1. Kirya, who was opposing the Obote regime after the 1980 elections had been brought back from Nairobi in unclear circumstances. He is believed to have been abducted. Sebaduka also found there DP member of Parliament, the late Yoweri Kyesimira, who had also been arrested for alleged links to rebels.
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Life in Luzira was kept exciting by rumours and news about the Museveni-led rebellion. Sebaduka remembers that in November of 1983, a week before the charismatic UNLA Chief of Staff Brig. Oyite Ojok died in a helicopter crash on December 1, he visited Luzira Prison and went native.
He asked for the prisoners to be brought out. He said he wanted them to give him information that would lead him to Museveni, about his networks, and his collaborators. Those who came forward with the information, Oyite allegedly said, would be settled in another country with their families if they wished, and be given enough money to live in comfort.
He gave them a week.
However if they didn't, he warned that he would return, form a gauntlet of soldiers, and march the prisoners into Lake Victoria. Those who resisted, he said, would be shot. Those who were lucky and could swim to island, would be considered free men.
A few days later, Amin's controversial aide, Bob Astles, peeped into Sebaduka's cell and said: "Oyite is dead. Obote is about to go. Our freedom is near."
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Finding Sebaduka's surviving co-plotters was a near-impossible task. Many trails led me to a dead end. We were in luck with Paul Juuko. He lives in Bugerere. His two-storey house must have been a magnificent affair once.
Juuko is frail and sick. He carries himself with dignity though, but his circumstances are deeply depressing. He is now a fanatically religious man, and has written seven volumes of Uganda's history, which he hopes someone will be interested in publishing. He has a religious shrine in his downstairs living room. His compound is full of graves; of his children and grandchildren.
He hadn't met for a long term with Sebaduka. They exchange a long emotional hug, and I step back with my photographer in order not to intrude into the moment.
When the war in Luwero began, Obote's soldiers came to arrest Juuko. He escaped.
The UNLA killed two of his children in Bulemezi. Three of them joined the NRA and were killed in Bulemezi.
Juuko too joined Museveni in the bush. He has an impressive record of what happened in the bush. He has fond memories of the late Maj. Jero Bwende with whom he first worked. And his dairy teems with the names of Museveni, the much-loved late Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema, who was the Rwanda Patriotic Front's first commander who died in action in the first days of their attack on Rwanda in 1990; Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye, (Rwanda president) Maj Gen. Paul Kagame, deputy Army Commander Joram Mugume, and on, and on.
I listen to a long story of what led to the assassination, and why he joined Museveni in the bush. When we finally close the subject, Juuko explains to me that: "There was a lot of anger then."
Silence.
Then he continued: "My son, it is right to fight for your country. It is the right thing to do."
Juuko is ill. He is poor. And he says sometimes they go hungry. He has 17 children. We part with difficulty. I give him a present and felt overcome with emotion. I put on my sunglasses and move quickly to the car. We drove in silence for many minutes.
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As Astles had foretold, Obote fell. Not immediately. On July 25, his generals, Army Commander Maj. Gen. Tito Okello and Basilio Okello turned on him and, for a second time, Obote and the UPC government were overthrown in a military coup.
On August 10, Sebaduka and other prisoners were brought to City Square (now Constitutional Square) and released. He was sick, and had swellings on his neck and face. Like the first time, the second time Sebaduka was again saved by a coup against Obote.
They say you can never step on the same water twice in a flowing river.
Sebaduka did.
**These series are an abridged version of the work the author has done on the 1969 assassination of Obote. I would like to thank Mzee Mohamed Sebaduka and Paul Juuko for their co-operation. And John Seromba; you know what you did. Thanks Bayiga Wangola for some of the research. For more information on this project contact the author on e-mail addresses [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED], or cellphones 077-200571, 075-757560 and 071-700157. These series will also be published on the author's website at www.africanews.com/obbo.
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�2001 Charles Onyango-Obbo & Worldwide EP. All rights reserved.
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