Why Ghost Heads Must Roll in Uganda
Two weeks ago, Uganda People’s Defence Forces spokesman Maj Shaban Bantariza, by and large a decent man, announced what he billed as a major breakthrough for the army.
Bantariza stated that a notebook found in the pockets of a top rebel commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army killed by the UPDF contained several telephone numbers – among them those of Wanyama Wangah, former news editor of the country's only independent daily, The Monitor, and talkshow host Andrew Mwenda.
Mwenda is unusually outspoken, and is Uganda's premier investigative journalist. His talkshow programme on Monitor FM lives dangerously close to the edge, and courts controversy like no other.
Many times in the past, he has hosted rebel leaders. The announcement by Bantariza was therefore as dramatic as the revelation that the Pope is a Catholic. Many journalists publish their phone numbers and encourage whistleblowers and rebels to get in touch to explain their grievances.
Indeed, if you are a political reporter in Uganda, you should begin to worry if dissidents don't have your number.
The Bantariza revelation, however, makes sense in the light of two other military events. One is the investigation into so-called "ghost" soldiers, headed by Lt Gen David Tinyefuza. The other is the court martial of former Army Commander Maj Gen James Kazini, and several previous commanding officers for dereliction of duty, subversive conduct, and corruption. The corruption allegations revolve around inflating the payroll with ghost soldiers.
The leaks from the Tinyefuza probe sound shocking. There were phantom brigades that didn't exist, supposedly fighting rebels in the north. Their salaries, to the tune of billions of shillings, were allegedly pocketed by corrupt officers.
But to Monitor readers, a lot of this information is old hat. The paper had chronicled these excesses, and many others the military leadership is still too afraid to confront, over the years. For its efforts, it came under constant harassment by the government – which maintained that the stories of ghost soldiers and corruption were designed to give comfort to the rebels.
The political needs of the day, however, now require selective exposure of the rot in the UPDF. So Tinyefuza's mandate is narrow, and the officers are being tried in a court where the reporting of proceedings can be controlled.
Critics believe ghost soldiers were tolerated for political reasons. For example, it allowed the government to manipulate the figures to achieve the "right" number of soldiers who were laid off the force in the 1980s in order to win donor support. But the most explosive question is what happened to the billions of shillings in ghost soldiers’ salaries. Regime opponents claim some of the money went into a political slush fund that was deployed in the 1996 and 2001 elections.
It's no coincidence that Mwenda is the only journalist to ever lay his hands on a large body of evidence on the sources and use of the ruling Movement’s slush fund.
Most important, Uganda is set to end one-party rule by the Movement. This will also end the UPDF’s function as the de facto militia of the Movement, in part because of its history as the armed wing of President Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Movement rebel organisation in the early 1980s.
Lt-Gen Museveni announced early in the year that he had retired from the army. When he's elected leader of the rebranded National Resistance Organisation, and with the return of multiparty politics, the UPDF can no longer be an election machine or backdoor source of political funds.
The book can only be closed on the old UPDF and its controversial role in politics over the years through a limited probe into corruption in the force. This will take the thunder out of the inevitable clamour for an independent investigation in the accusatory environment of a future multiparty regime. And a few heads will roll to quench the public thirst for justice.
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Charles Onyango-Obbo is managing editor in charge of media convergence at the Nation Media Group.
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