How 'Gang of Four' hijacked Moshi meet
Dec 28 - Jan 3, 2003
This is the third and second last part of our series on ex-president Milton
Obote's recollections on the 1978-9 war against the Idi Amin regime. In this part,
talks about the 100 Ugandan fighters who drowned in Lake Victoria and how Paulo
Muwango stood down for Yusuf Lule during the Moshi Conference.
The then Uganda president Milton Obote (R) decorates Gen. Tito Okello
(RIP) in the early 1980s (File photos).
When I returned to Dar es Salaam, I found President Nyerere in a furious mood.
The OAU was pressing him to negotiate peace with Amin at a time when Amin's army was
in occupation of Tanzanian territory.
In December, 1978 at a very lengthy meeting in my residence, President Nyerere
gave me an over-view of the war preparations.
His view was that depending on the resistance of Amin's army, TPDF could get to
Kampala and to all parts of the Uganda within three months. He told me that in those
circumstances, he would set up a Tanzanian Military Government for Uganda.
I expressed opposition to that idea. I told the president that it would be most
damaging to the Tanzanian image in Africa and in the world for Tanzania to expose
herself to accusations that they had become a colonial power and was ruling Uganda.
President Nyerere responded that he could not leave the country in a vacuum,
without a government.
Prof. Lule (RIP)
1I suggested to the president that from what he said of the possible overrunning
of the whole of Uganda by the TPDF, within three months, there would appear to be two
ways by which Tanzania could avoid to damage her image in Africa and in the world.
I gave the first way as one of convening a Conference of Ugandans in exile in
Masaka or Mbarara immediately after the fall of either town to the TPDF.
I gave the second way as convening a Conference in either Uganda or Tanzania
after the entire country had fallen to the TPDF.
I proposed that at either conference an interim government composed of Ugandan
could be formed.
To my proposal of an interim government, President Nyerere said that since the
TPDF and police would still be in Uganda, such a government would be seen as a puppet
government and Tanzania would still be accused of behaving as a colonial power.
I told the president that the real problem was how a conference was composed and
that a representative conference of Uganda's political parties would deflect much of
the criticism on Uganda having a puppet government.
We exchanged views at length on a conference or conferences. President Nyerere
expressed the view that a conference of exiles would be attended by two few people
because it was his understanding that many Ugandans in exile were opposed to the
Ujamaa policy.
I disagreed and said that the opportunity to return home would make many to come
to the conference. At the end, the president asked me to write papers on various
aspects of any of the conferences I had proposed and said that he did not want some
Ugandans who had insulted him for not recognising Amin to be in any interim government.
In January 1979 the late Mzee Peter Oola and George William Nyero (now in the
USA) rang me from Tabora town.
Their report was that a deputy director of the Intelligence Service who, we
regarded as unfriendly to us, had gone to the camp and went away with 300 men.
The deputy director had said that the men were wanted for special training
connected with the war. I asked the director of intelligence who was coming to my
residence daily with requests for more and more expansions of my papers, about the
training, which the 300 of my men were going to undertake.
He answered most surprisingly that he was no longer dealing with military
matters.
The answer made me to ask him to tell the president that I wanted a meeting with
him.
Previously, whenever I sent any such request to the president, he would come to
my residence either on the same day, next or within three days.
This time, the president came after 10 days and as soon as he sat down, he said
that he had a very bad news for me and that there had been an accident in which many
men died.
The President then gave me sheets of paper on which the names of the dead were
typed. One hundred and eleven (111) men were listed as dead.
I asked to go the camp immediately and the president agreed. I left that evening
by train for Tabora.
From Tabora town I was taken not to the Ugandan or UPC camp but to another where
I found all the commanders of the UPC army, I had a meeting with the commanders who
told me how the 300 men were taken from their camp.
They confirmed in every detail what veteran Peter Oola who joined the UNC in
1952 had reported to me.
My meeting with the four commanders who had lost one hundred and eleven of their
men, was like a funeral.
All of them were crying throughout the meeting. The account they gave me on that
day and in the following two days were so shocking that even now, I am unable to make
it public.
In my analysis of the account, I concluded that there was a conspiracy to hand
over to some other people the army I and the UPC leaders had so painfully raised and
provided for their welfare.
I could not eat or sleep that first day and night.
During the next two days, I held meetings with the officers and men who had
survived.
As President Nyerere had said, an accident happened because it was believed that
there were armed men around Jinja raised by Museveni and because part of the UPC army
had been forcefully handed over to men who were after glory and not the liberation of
the people of Uganda.
The deputy director of intelligence had lied when he said at the Tabora camp
that 300 men were required for special training connected with the war against Amin.
From the Tabora camp, the 300 men were taken to a camp in Musoma on the shore of
Lake Victoria. On arrival, the men were paraded and addressed by the deputy director.
The address was full of venom against the president of the UPC. He told the men
to forget the past and accept reality.
The reality, according to the deputy director was that Amin was going to be
removed and a new government was to be established in Uganda by the TPDF and composed
of men who had no relation with UPC.
The deputy director told the men that leaders of Uganda's government, which was
to replace Amin, had sent representatives to lead the men to Jinja.
He then introduced Robert Sserumagga as the leader of the representatives and
who also addressed the men in the same vein as the deputy director.
After the parade, on that first day at the Musoma camp, the 300 men staged a
mutiny and demanded to be returned to Tabora.
The officers and the platoon commanders and 50 men were arrested and taken to
jail by armed Tanzanians and denied food for days.
Later the 300 men were taken to Musoma Port where they boarded two ships.
When the men boarded, the two ships set to sail for Jinja, neither Sserumagga
nor two of his colleagues joined them on board.
There is what is called Kagera Channel in Lake Victoria, which flows to the
Jinja Bridge. When the two ships from Musoma reached the channel in the early
afternoon with the bigger ship in the lead, the smaller ship began to wobble
dangerously, and then it capsized when those in the bigger ship were watching.
The men on board the smaller ship were thrown into the strong current and were
drowning as the men in the bigger ship were watching.
There were 120 men on the smaller ship; only 9 survived, rescued by the bigger
ship. Even the men in the bigger ship developed nausea and trauma. I visited 43 men
who were in hospital.
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.
That January of 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.
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.
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.
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).
In March, I received from the director of intelligence an invitation letter
inviting me to go to a conference in Moshi together with five 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.
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" (Yash Tandon, Prof. Edward Rugumayo, Prof. Dan Nabudere and Omwony Ojwok -
Editor).
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 Gangters are ministers in the dictatorship of the
charlatans.
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 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 my army whose participation
in the war, will enable the people of Uganda to give me much praise for their
liberation.
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 [to participate?].
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.
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.
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 UK. 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
Maj. Gen. Mugisha Muntu.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One of the most insane 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.
-Continues next Sunday.
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
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