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Part four
76. On return to Dar es Salaam, I locked myself in a room for a whole day to think of what I would report to President Nyerere. I decided not to raise any complaint because it was clear to me that the 300 men could not have been taken to Musoma and made to sail to Jinja without the approval of the President. 77. That January, 1979 I received in my residence Yusuf Lule sent by President Nyerere. He was the first proof of what I had told President Nyerere in December that many Ugandans in exile despite opposition to Ujamaa policy would come to Tanzania for the opportunity to return home. I exchanged views at length with Lule on various matters. I asked him whether he had come to join the war against Amin. He avoided the question and answered that his health was not good. 78. In the same January, one of those who was to organise the Conference at which the UNLF was formed wrote a letter which was published in the Tanzanian main English Daily, the Daily News. The letter was a thinly veiled attack on Tanzania for planning to impose the UPC as Government of Uganda by military force. The writer alleged in the letter that he and his friends had condemned Vietnam for invading Cambodia, overthrowing Pol Pot and imposing a new Government. It was clear that to the writer, Amin was preferable than UPC. What the writer of the letter did not know was that there was, in fact, no plan by Tanzania to impose the UPC as Government of Uganda. 79. In that same January, 1979, Masaka Town fell to the Kikosi Maalum and TPDF took Mbarara and the whole of Ankole. Museveni then began a recruiting spree centred mainly at the refugee camps in Ankole into the army he was to use in his Luwero war. 80. In early February after discussion with President Nyerere and with his approval I sent Teams of mobilisers to Masaka and to Mbarara. A week later, I sent a Team of economists to Masaka with direction to go to Mbarara. 81. Then at the end of February and early March, I received at my residence in rapid succession, the mobilising Teams and the team of economists. I also received Paulo Muwanga who was the political Commissar of the UPC army (Kikosi Maalum in Masaka). 82. In March, I received from the Director of Intelligence an Invitation letter inviting me to go to a Conference in Moshi together with 5 UPC members. I contacted the UPC members in Zambia. They had not received any invitation to the Conference and could not easily raise air tickets to Tanzania. I contacted President Kaunda who agreed to raise air tickets for the Zambian based UPC members. 83. The Government of Tanzania had given the responsibility for organising and convening a Conference to four men who later earned the opprobrious name of "The Gang of Four". One of the Gang had served in Amin's cabinet and another had been appointed by Amin to an office in the East African Community. The Gang of Four not only took over the control and direction of the UNLF after it was formed but also claimed and continue to claim even now that they were the ones who removed Amin. Today, two of the Gang of Four are Ministers in the dictatorship of the charlatans. 84. The Government of Tanzania agreed to the Team of economists to go to the Conference but not the Teams of mobilisers and Paulo Muwanga. I pleaded with President Nyerere to allow Paulo to go to the Conference and he agreed. I wrote a goodwill Message to the Conference and wished it success. The Director of Intelligence took my letter to President Nyerere. On the same day, President Nyerere came to my residence, he came with a letter he had himself written to me. The President spoke to me most passionately urging me not to go to the Conference. He told me that there would be no one in the Conference who could erase what I had done for Uganda and that the Kikosi Maalum was may army whose participation in the war, will enable the people of Uganda to give me much praise for their liberation. 85. As President Nyerere spoke to me, I gained the uncomfortable impression that the President was under some great pressure but could not put my fingers on whatever was bothering the President. Before he left me, I put two requests to him and he accepted both. The first request was for him to arrange for the students who left their studies in the Universities of Dar es Salaam and of Zambia, went to war and were in Uganda with Kikosi Maalum. The students had their organisation. The second request was for him to agree to the women whose husbands were fighting on the frontline and who had their organisation to go and attend the Conference. 86. The day the Conference convened was chaotic. While radios were propagating that Ugandans in exile were meeting at a Conference, what was happening on the ground, was very different. It was not a Conference of Ugandans in exile. The organisers wanted uppermost a Conference to make them national leaders and liberators of Uganda. For the Conference to do that, the organisers decided on excluding many from the Conference and including non-existing or imaginary organisations. The UPC and the DP were each allocated three seats, the same as the imaginary Muthaiga Club formed in Moshi by Martin Aliker and grace Ibingira. The students from the war front were locked out and so were the women whose husbands were on the war front. On the pretext and excuse that to allow every exile to attend the Conference, was to flood it with Obote and UPC supporters, more Ugandans were locked out than those who attended the Conference. 87. On the second day of the Conference, I received Olara Otunu at my residence. When Olara Otunu escaped from Makerere, he went to Dar es Salaam where he stayed at my residence. I arranged for him to go to a university in the U.K. He was not alone; many students were equally assisted by me. They include the present Governor of the Bank of Uganda who also stayed at my residence before I arranged for him to go to a university in Britain. Chaapa Karuhanga arrived at my residence after a close encounter with Amin's murder squad. I arranged for Chaapa to complete his degree course in the University of Zambia. Other students I placed in the University of Zambia include the brother of General Mugisha Muntu. 88. I was surprised to see Olara Otunu in Dar es Salaam. He told me that a Tanzanian High Commission official in London delivered to him a Tanzanian Government Invitation to the Conference. His air ticket was also paid by the Tanzanian Government. After we talked, Olara Otunu asked to go to his Uncle Tito Okello who was also specifically told by President Nyerere not to go to the Conference. Tito Okello was withdrawn from the frontline after Paulo Muwanga. 89. When Olara Otunu returned with Tito Okello to my residence, Okello was desperately eager to go to the Conference. Olara Otunu had told Okello that there were some army officers at the Conference who were giving the impression that they had been to the frontline when Okello knew they had not. Okello pleaded with me to appeal to President Nyerere to allow him to go to the Conference. I brought the Director of Intelligence who was outside the residence to the discussion. After hearing from Olara Otunu that Tito Okello was wanted at the Conference, the Director went to report to President Nyerere and returned with the permission for Okello to go to the Conference. 90. It was reported to me by telephone and again later that the Conference was very tense on the matter of the Chairman of the UNLF and that even before names were called for nominations, one could sense that the Conference was divided three ways on the matter. The general mood of the Conference was for Paulo Muwanga to be the Chairman but there were also supporters of Yusuf Lule and Edward Rugumayo. The Tanzanian Minister who was supervising the Conference, sensed that should there be nominations and vote Muwanga would win. 91. The Minister arranged for the Conference to be adjourned and then took Muwanga, Lule and Tito Okello to a room behind the Conference Hall. When the Conference resumed, Tito Okello was the first to speak. Instead of addressing the Conference, he directed his remarks to Paulo Muwanga; that Muwanga should not stand for the post of Chairman and that Muwanga should leave the post for Lule since Muwanga and he (Okello) had a very important task at the frontline. Lule was then elected by acclamation. The Gang of Four led the haters of the UPC in the chorus that UPC had been overthrown in another coup. 92. One of the most inane decisions promoted and taken by the UNLF leaders at the Conference, was to degrade and demean the UPC and then pretend that by so doing they had made the UPC army then on the frontline to be the UNLF army. A new name of the Uganda National Liberation Army was given to Kikosi Maalum and Paulo Muwanga, (not anyone in the Gang of Four) was elected to be the Chairman of the Military Commission of the UNLF to control and direct Kikosi Maalum. The election of Muwanga was an expressed acknowledgement that no one in the Gang of Four or in the leadership of the UNLF had anything to do with the removal of Amin. Conversely, it was also an acknowledgement that the UPC removed Amin. 93. After the Conference in Moshi, the UNLF leaders converged in Dar es Salaam where President Nyerere asked Lule to name a Cabinet. President Nyerere had previously told me that so long as the TPDF remained in Uganda, he would not allow the portfolios of Finance, Defence and Internal Affairs to be filled by someone who was not friendly to Tanzania. The first list of Ministers which Yusuf Lule submitted to President Nyerere had names of very, very old people, including names of people who served in the Colonial Government and who, even Lule himself did not know whether they were still alive or not. 94. President Nyerere came to my residence and told me that he had rejected three ministerial lists submitted by Lule and wanted me to help the UNLF Chairman, Lule to compose a Cabinet. I told the President that since I was not a member of the UNLF, I had no locus standi to get involved in the affairs of the UNLF. I also told the President that the UNLF leaders had jubilated and sang choruses in Moshi that they had overthrown the UPC in another coup which had pained me greatly. The President responded that unless the UNLF leaders worked with me, their Government would be without the support of the people and would not last. President Nyerere also said that it was my idea which he accepted that a Conference of exiles be held and that I should not therefore condemn the conclusions of the Moshi Conference. 95. The matter of a Conference of exiles generated some lengthy exchange of view. I defended my position by saying that in the papers I wrote, the definitive proposals I made were two. The first was that a Conference be organised by the Government of Tanzania and not by any Ugandan individual or group where the Government of Tanzania would advertise the holding of the Conference widely and not send Invitations to anybody or group. Second, my papers proposed, that no exile be debarred from attending the Conference whether by non-issuance of a visa or through some method when already in Tanzania and at the Conference place. I concluded by telling the President that the Moshi Conference was very different from what I had proposed and that it would be unfair to ask me to accept its conclusions. 96. The response by President Nyerere to my defence, was that he could not see me tolerating the country being messed up by those who became leaders by fluke. He actually used those words and then said that if I could not meet Lule, I should meet the UNLF Vice Chairman, Akena P'Ojok. I did agree to meet P'Ojok who later came to my residence with some members of the UNLF. With P'Ojok and his colleagues, we composed a tentative list of ministers for P'Ojok to take and discuss with Lule. 97. On the evening of 11 April, 1979 Radio Tanzania broadcast the names of persons in the UNLF Cabinet. President Nyerere had sent his confidante and a friend of mine to be with me during the broadcast. Paulo Muwanga was also present. After the broadcast, I blew up and made very strong remarks because the broadcast made it appear that Lule and the UNLF had been fighting Amin from 25 January, 1971. The confidante left to report to President Nyerere who immediately rang and asked Paulo Muwanga to go to his house. 98. 11 April, 1979 was another long night for me. After the broadcast and after Paulo Muwanga had gone for a meeting with President Nyerere, I arranged for the Teams of mobilisers who had been brought back from Uganda and some other UPC members who were in Dar es Salaam to come to my residence. The mobilisers brought back were Samwiri Mugwisa, Chris Rwakasisi and Edward Rurangaranga. There were three others. The mobilisers and others met in my residence that night for hours. I directed all at the meeting to return to Uganda at once and while there, to accept any appointment even that of a Gombolola Chief or lower by the UNLF and together with the Party leaders and members in the Districts, mount a campaign for multiparty politics. Paulo Muwanga returned about midnight when the meeting was concluding. 99. When the mobilisers and others left, Paulo Muwanga gave me what he and President Nyerere had discussed. Paulo reported that in the long meeting with President Nyerere, the President kept repeating and emphasising three points. The first was that 11 April, 1979 was a glorious day for him, the President and Milton Obote who had overthrown a most brutal dictator. The second was that he, the President, was very much pained that his "comrade" Milton Obote was not happy and the third was that he, the President, could not understand why his comrade Milton Obote was regarding Lule and the UNLF as anything other than flies falling on a carcass. Paulo reported that President Nyerere used the word comrade and the _expression "flies falling on a carcass" repeatedly. 100. That night, I discussed at length with Paulo Muwanga the curious events which had occurred since November, 1978. The events included the removal of 300 men from our camp with intention to hand them over to non-UPC members; asking me to write papers on a Conference or Conferences and then assigning haters of the UPC to organise a Conference which ended with the chorus that the UPC had again been overthrown in another coup; the withdrawal of Muwanga himself from the frontline and the Teams of mobilisers from Uganda and who were also not allowed to go to the Conference. We concluded that the curious events suggested that President Nyerere was under some kind of pressure but we could not put our fingers on the nature or source of that pressure. Last part comming up The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
