|
The Last part
101. Later in the second half of 1979, I learnt from a Tanzanian Colonel of a most chilling curious event which had it occurred, all the officers of the Kikosi Maalum would have been wiped out, killed. The Colonel told me in my residence in Dar es Salaam that after the end of the Moshi Conference, a message was sent to the TPDF in Masaka. The message was to assemble the Kikosi Maalum officers and to ask them whether they accepted Lule and the UNLF or not and that should they refuse to accept Lule and the UNLF, they were all to be shot. I could not believe what the Colonel was telling me. David Oyite-Ojok who was at the meeting said that the assembly was held and the acceptance of Lule and the UNLF was put to the Kikosi Maalum officers. David explained that he as acting head of Kikosi Maalum in the absence of Tito Okello in Dar es salaam, gave the tactical answer that they accepted Lule and the UNLF hoping that political matters would be sorted out between the UPC President and President Nyerere. 102. In June 1979 President Nyerere came one day to my residence with the surprising invitation that I go with him the next day to Mwanza to meet President Lule and his Ministers. I told the President that I was an outsider and pleaded that he should leave me out of the meeting. The President responded with the words: "I want Lule and the Ministers to know that you and I are together on all matters." I went to Mwanza and witnessed the spectacle of a weak and fractious Administration. 103. The Mwanza meeting was dominated by accusations and counter accusations by President Lule and the Chairman of the National Consultative Council (NCC) and Ministers supporting the two. They even raised the matter of governance under the provisions of the 1967 Constitution which was the position of President Lule but President Nyerere shot that down by saying that the only person who had the right to govern Uganda under the 1967 Constitution was Milton Obote. I understood the political meaning of what President Nyerere was saying to mean that Obote could have, with the assistance of Tanzania just as the UNLF was enjoying, re-instituted, after the fall of Amin, the UPC Government under the 1967 Constitution. As I listened to the accusations and counter accusations, I saw clearly that the UNLF leaders for whatever reason they became the Government of Uganda, had lost Nyerere's confidence if any ever existed. 104. At lunch break, President Nyerere took me and President Lule to a room. President Nyerere asked President Lule whether it was true that he was planning to appoint a Bishop as Vice President. President Lule answered that the matter was under consideration and no decision had been taken to which President Nyerere said, "I advise you to appoint Milton". Before I could respond, President Lule reacted and said that although I had supporters in Uganda, I also had enemies and that he could not guarantee my security but he would offer me appointment as Ambassador to the UN and I would go to New York without returning to Uganda. That reaction angered President Nyerere who tersely asked who was guaranteeing Lule's security and his Ministers. He then said that Tanzanian forces were in Uganda to guarantee the security of every citizen of Uganda. I told the two Presidents that I was not looking for a job and would not accept to be Vice President or Ambassador to the UN. 105. In the afternoon, the Mwanza Meeting continued with accusations and counter accusations. The Meeting ended without taking any meaningful decision to heal or bridge the rift in the UNLF Administration. I asked Paulo Muwanga not to return to Uganda that same day and he agreed. We discussed, at night, in depth the rift in the UNLF Administration. We concluded that it was a matter of time before the Administration fell or disintegrated. We also agreed on a tentative programme of campaign to be launched on the fall or disintegration. 106. The hollowness of the UNLF was exposed on the night its National Executive voted to remove its Chairman. They proposed Paulo Muwanga a member of the UPC as a possible Chairman when the UNLF was actively campaigning to destroy the UPC and the other political parties and establish a one-Party State. Second, they proposed Godfrey Binaisa as a possible Chairman when at the formation of the UNLF, Binaisa was considered to be unfit to attend the Conference ad was locked out. Just as the UNLF Administration itself depended on Tanzanian power in Uganda, Binaisa also on being elected Chairman and President, depended on the Gang of Four. Like the charlatans of today, the UNLF also removed the voice of the people of Uganda from the governance of their country. Although the NEC of the UNLF removed Lule allegedly for making appointments without the approval of the National Consultative Council (NCC), the UNLF and the Gang of Four were openly inconsistent on a very serious issue, when President Binaisa removed the Army Chief of Staff and posted him as Ambassador to Algeria without the approval of the National Consultative Council. 107. There was a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Lusaka, Zambia in November, 1979. President Kaunda invited me to be in Lusaka at he time of the Meeting. I went to Lusaka with veteran Stephen Mila and we were accommodated at the nearby annex to State House. I met several Commonwealth leaders at the annex. The meeting with President Binaisa was a disaster. After exchange of innocuous views, I told the President that I wanted to spend Christmas with my mother. President Binaisa asked: "Do you want to come to Uganda?" when I said yes, President Binaisa collapsed. I shouted and security and Stephen rushed into the room. We had to get a doctor from the nearby State House to revive the President of Uganda. 108. The first to propose my return home in December, 1979, was a delegation from Teso District. The delegation was led by Mama Irene Emulu and included S. K. Isiagi and Lucy Aseku. The delegation wanted me to fly direct from Dar es Salaam to Soroti Airport. 109. When the delegation from Toro went to Dar es Salaam, it also demanded my return home. When I told the Toro delegation about the invitation by the Teso delegation, a lady in the Toro delegation said that she would want to be present on my arrival but her advanced age may not allow her to go to Soroti. She proposed Mbarara Airport. I sent the two Airports to Paulo Muwanga and John Kirunda who had represented the UPC at the Moshi Conference. Several Party leaders in the Districts sent messages proposing that I go to their Districts first. They included Bushenyi who sent a delegation to Dar es Salaam. Then I received a request from my mother that she wanted to see me the day I return to Uganda. I listed all the invitations and sent them to a relative with a request to go and discuss them with my mother and let her decide. The report I got was that my mother had decided on Bushenyi on the ground that she had been no where West of Kampala. That meant flying to Mbarara. I sent my decision to the National Organising Committee (NOC). 110. It is my belief that on 27 May, 1980 we had in Bushenyi a million people or there about. It was a most appropriate welcome of a hero even if I say so myself. When President Lule and his Ministers flew to Entebbe in April 1979, not even one thousand people were at Entebbe Airport. 111. The people of Uganda knew and still know which political forces delivered them from Colonial rule and again from an atavistic dictatorship of murders, terror and deprivations. The people attested t that fact in the multiparty elections held in December, 1980. 112. The haters of the UPC have sought and are still seeking to subvert the verdict of the people in December, 1980 by their allegations that the UPC President rigged the elections. The inanities of the allegations lie in the fact that the UPC President was not in government and could not therefore rig the elections, second, it borders on stupidity for anyone to even suggest that the UPC left Buganda alone and rigged elections, outside Buganda where the UPC defeated all opponents in 1958, 1961 and 1962. The Congress of the people, when it overthrows the dictatorship of the charlatans, shall again defeat all opponents in any free and fair competitive election. 113. In 1992 when in Zambia, I read the Memoir of the British Foreign Secretary at the time of the war against Amin, 1978/79. This is what is in the memoir and which prove that President Nyerere was under British pressure during the war against Amin and that Yusuf Lule was a British stooge: - "I was told by Merlyn Rees in the middle of the Lord Mayor of London's lunch that he had just been informed that Amin had flown to Dublin. We had agreed we would have to mobilize the police to hold his plane while it was refuelled and then insist that it fly off. If he just flew into Heathrow we had already decided that we would not let him off his plane. Fortunately it all turned out to be a false alarm; Amin never came. But the Amin issue did not go away. Later he was ousted by Tanzanian armed intervention, and we aided Julius Nyerere in the attempt. I will never be sure whether it was wise to do so. The price we extracted from Nyerere for our material support was the promise that a mild, decent former children's doctor should be President rather than Milton Obote. Unfortunately the doctor did not have the necessary authority. The end result was that Obote returned to the Presidency." 114. I know from experience that Memoirs, do not tell the full story nor the core policy. I was, for instance, alone one night with Prime Minister Harold Wilson at Chequers, the country home of UK Prime Ministers. The other leaders who were attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting had had dinner at Chequers and returned to London. The Prime Minister and I spoke at length about Rhodesia. When I later read the Prime minister's Memoir, the account was not quite what I remember. On that experience, I wrote to friends in Britain who included academics and appealed to them to find out why the Labour Government was so much against Milton Obote to force Nyerere to accept a person the Foreign Secretary described as "a former children's doctor" when the person had not been a children's doctor. I asked my friends whether it was normal for British Governments to make such errors. 115. The replies I received from my friends are most worrying. The gist of the replies is that as a result of the UPC policies in the 1960s which saw the living standards of the people rising from year to year and social services expanding rapidly and secondly that the ability of the 2nd UPC Government to rehabilitate the Uganda economy within four years, made successive British Governments to adopt the policy which ensures continued British settlers in Kenya so that Uganda is not ruled by a Party whose performance in government makes the people of Kenya to question the performance of their Government which, if they did, could cause the presence of the settlers also to be questioned. My friends reported that Amin and Museveni were and are British instruments to weaken or even destroy the UPC. 116. During the recent Commonwealth Meeting in Australia, the British Prime Minister repeatedly said, quote; "There are no half measures about democracy". The British Prime Minister was speaking about presidential elections in Zimbabwe. The same Prime minister knows:
117. Why is it that the British Government are very concerned about democracy in Zimbabwe? The short answer is that the Zimbabwe presidential election has provided a very convenient distraction of African, Commonwealth and World attention from dictatorship in Uganda which the British Government supports and from the suppressions of the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the people of Uganda which the British Government also supports and further from the invasion, and occupation and plunder of the wealth of the DRC by the Uganda dictatorship which the British Government also supports. The British Government is sustaining another atavistic dictatorship in Uganda and punishing all the people of Uganda simply because the British Government fears that democracy may again enable the UPC to form the Government of Uganda again and create problems for the British Settlers in Kenya. 118. Fellow citizens and members of the Congress of the people, I am very proud to have been and to be a member of the Congress. The Congress has enabled me to make friends all over Uganda. The Congress has enabled the people of every Ugandan nationality to connect and interact and work peacefully with one another for common causes. The Congress has enabled the people of Uganda to throw away the shame and humiliation of being ruled by a foreign Parliament and foreign people. The Congress has enabled the people of Uganda to have Rural Hospitals and to have greatly expanded primary and Secondary Schools immediately after Independence. The Congress made Independence real when the standard of living of the people rose from year to year. When an atavistic dictatorship interrupted the progress of the people under the leadership of the Congress, the Congress waged a relentless struggle and overthrew, together with its bosom ally in Tanzania, the brutal dictatorship. The mission of the Congress is to fight POVERTY, IGNORANCE AND DISEASE. The success of the Congress is that:
When a dictator declares that he will fight the Congress until he dies, the declaration is to fight the Youth, the women, the farmers, the workers, the people of Uganda and their ideas which no dictator can conquer and will himself die leaving the people and their ideas. Fellow citizens and members of the Congress of the people, as your elected leader, you know that I am in the afternoon, close to evening of my life. I charge you with the experience of struggle behind me, to close your ranks. If for any reason, you have disagreed with any Congress policy, I charge you to return to the fold and argue your ideas. I charge you not to be an Amin or a Museveni who declared death, misery and humiliation to the people of Uganda. I charge you to join and be active in the current struggle against a Terrorist dictatorship. I charge you not to be trespassers like UNLF leaders who never fought Amin but came to table to partake of the meal. I charge you not to give succour to the Terrorist dictatorship by rebelling against the Congress Constitution. I charge you to understand that Article 269 of the charter of oppression has prohibited the Congress Branches to assemble, congress constituency Conferences to meet, congress district conferences and Congress Delegates Conference to meet and each to elect Congress leaders. I charge you to avoid internecine warfare for positions in the face of Article 269 of the charter of oppression. I charge you to realise that there is Glory at the end of the struggle. Be in the struggle Now and disabuse all thoughts of coming, uninvited to the CELEBRATION. MAKE CONGRESS AND YOURSELVES THE HOST. Fellow citizens and members of the Congress of the people, do not abandon the people. I have written this paper and now present it in the spirit of our National Motto: FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY. A. Milton Obote President Uganda Peoples Congress The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
