How Museveni tried to remove Moi
Standard InvestigationS Team
In public, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, were the best of friends � hugging, smiling and backslapping. In the secret recesses of their hearts, they were the bitterest of foes.
For more than six years, Museveni actively plotted to overthrow the Moi Government while Moi actively engaged in counter-insurgence, sending his intelligence officers on cattle raids into Eastern Uganda.
Moi�s was retaliating to Museveni�s regional expansionist scheme to bring four Eastern Africa nations under his thumb at a time when the Kenyan leader had yielded to internal demands for multi-party democracy.
The guerrilla units that would have taken power in these four countries were trained in Uganda and supported by the country�s top leadership as payback for the contribution of their nationals to the victory of the National Resistance Army in 1986.
According to Museveni�s plan, pieced together by the Sunday Standard after intensive investigations, Kenya was supposed to be the first government to fall in a domino-like chain of military takeovers in the region covering Rwanda, Zaire and Sudan.
The Kenyan troops would then be used in the operations in Rwanda, then Zaire, and then Sudan.
In the end, the troops that had been marshaled for the Nairobi takeover ended up fighting in Rwanda and some became part of the Rwanda Patriotic Front.
Museveni�s point man in Kenya was John Steven Ochieng Amoke alias "Brigadier John Odongo", who gained notoriety when then President Moi revealed plans to destabilise the country through a clandestine organization, the February Eighteen Revolutionary Army. The Kampala government flatly refused requests by Kenya to extradite Brigadier Odongo.
By 1994, 1,000 Kenyan guerrillas had been trained in military techniques, jungle warfare and paramilitary commando operations. Although the Ugandan leader had seconded his own brother, Lt Gen. Salim Saleh to FERA as its strategist, his imperial designs were checked by one problem: there were no credible Kenyan leaders willing to lead a military assault on Nairobi. His preferred choice, Michael Wamalwa Kijana was a reluctant icon.
Confidence
"He (Museveni) gave us confidence even when the boys felt low and the leaders were not doing much," says the eventual February Eighteen Movement�s political leader, Patrick Wangamati.
Military officers in Uganda and Libya, the two sponsors of the guerrilla groups, felt that time was running out for Kenyan guerrillas. The Rwandese rebels were waiting for the completion of the Kenya mission before embarking on their own against Juvenal Habyarimana�s regime.
The man around whom FERA was organized, the Bulgaria-trained Brigadier John Odongo, was a hopelessly inept leader, according to one of his aides. Museveni was particularly exasperated by him and appalled by his tardiness.
"He would wake up one morning and decide that the boys should be ferried to Nairobi to launch attacks," says Wangamati. "This was not possible without enough reconnaissance and surveillance."
Apart from the 12-point manifesto that FERA had developed years back, it had not crafted any tangible action plan of how to grab power. Neither did it appear to have a clue on how to conduct state affairs were it to topple the then Kanu regime in Nairobi.
Brig Odongo�s ambiguous and unilateral approach to issues led to a near revolt in the FERA ranks. Several times, when the FERA leadership questioned Brig Odongo, he decided to shift his base from the training camps to Kampala.
Odongo, now 66, the son of a peasant farmer in Gem, Nyanza District, was hardly skilled in managing guerrilla warfare despite his training in military strategy in Bulgaria. He was even worse in administration and public relations.
Yet, he was destined to be the ultimate leader, chiefly because he was the architect of the movement.
One day, Museveni reprimamded Brig Odongo for decisions he felt were inherently dangerous. "He told us Moi had complained to him that he was harbouring guerrillas," Wanagamati revealed last week.
"Museveni had given Odongo permission to start fishing in Lake Victoria, but the opportunity had not been exploited. Museveni felt Odongo was a non-starter," says Wangamati.
Were FERA to take over the government, it was not clear who would become President, according to intelligence sources. Some people within FERA felt that Wangamati, as the leader of the political wing, should be the President of Kenya while Odongo would have taken up the position of the military commander. But FERA�s rank and file appeared to have little faith in Odongo. The troops felt the indolence on the part of their leaders was only helping to endanger their lives. Their fear revolved around Kanu�s security apparatus that was so ruthless against perceived dissidents. What if Kanu sent agents to kill them? Indeed as indolence seized FERA, the enemy had his own counter-plan. President Moi was upping pressure on the international community to admonish Museveni for sponsoring anti-Kenya elements. Kenya, says intelligence sources, financed insurgence in Uganda.
�The string of cattle raids in eastern Uganda was hardly spontaneous. It was instigated by the Nairobi regime to fluster Museveni. At the same time, "there were reports that Kenya planned to close its borders with Uganda, and this was a threat to Ugandan exports passing through Kenya" according to Wangamati.
Former FERA guerrillas said that at one time, they were raided by a contingent of the Kenya military dressed in NRA military camouflage at the Mt Elgon training camp. Dozens of FERA recruits were killed in the "friendly" exchange.
Plot hatched
Of concern to Uganda, and particularly to Museveni, was the slowness Odongo appeared to operate. Almost six years since the anti-Moi plot was hatched, nothing was off the ground to account for his seriousness in staging a military uprising. And the situation looked even more overcast.
In fact, a number of Kenyan boys had become so disillusioned with Odongo to the extent they were now fighting alongside Fred Rwigyema, the founder leader of the Rwanda Patriotic Front who was killed in the early stages of the invasion to be succeeded by Paul Kagame. Some were training among the forces opposed to Zairean leader Mobutu Sese Seko.
To put the mission back on track, a frustrated Yoweri Museveni began shopping for a leader, arguing that the movement needed a person who could guide and give direction to the FERA assignment. He sought somebody political, one able to strengthen the February Eighteen Movement, the political wing of FERA.
According to sources, the Ugandan leader was interested in the then Ford-Kenya boss and later Vice-President Michael Kijana Wamalwa. But when Kijana failed to attend a meeting with Museveni�s emissary in London, he asked for an alternative choice.
The then Kwanza MP George Kapten, instrumental in guerrilla recruitment, was another possible choice. But his adversaries felt that his differences with Wamalwa jeopardised his position as a Luhya leader.
Roads Minister Raila Odinga was also approached. He was hardly interested because, allies say, he could not place in perspective the "constituency of this resistance movement". Although Odongo and Raila were reputed to know each other, the latter was not keen using military force to oust Kanu.
The impasse forced the war councils, established to arm Bukusu youths during the politically-instigated ethnic clashes of 1992, to consult extensively. Yet it emerged that most Bukusu leaders were either deeply involved in Kanu or plainly cowards.
Wangamati, a son of a polygamous peasant, was ready to take charge. Having chaired some of the war councils, and having financed the Bukusu reprisals dur-ing the ethnic clashes, he was an easy pick.
In fact, the jigsaw appeared to fit when it became clear that, on Minister Elijah Mwangale�s devices, Wangamati had fallen out with Moi.
"Moi used to call me tajiri (rich man) because he felt I was bankrolling the Opposition," he says.
In the late 1980s, Wangamati, then chairman of the Webuye Town Council, had been a pawn in Western Province political battles for supremacy pitting Mwangale against Moses Mudavadi, the all-powerful Local Government Minister. Wanagamati, to Mwangale�s chagrin, had sided with his foe, Mudavadi.
His closeness to opposition leader Masinde Muliro only helped to strengthen Moi�s resolve to disregard Wangamati as an ally and a Kanu pointman in Bungoma District
Lacklustre
Wangamati was a self-made man. His father, disappointed with the lacklustre academic performance of his elder sons, decided against educating the younger offspring. "He got disappointed but I offered myself to go to school," he said a week ago.
Wangamati never went beyond Class Eight, yet at the age of 35, he would become the Webuye Municipal Council chairman on its creation in 1974.
But what made Wangamati a hot choice to lead FERA, so to speak, was that he financed the Bukusu counter-attack in the politically fanned violence that pitted the community against the Sabaot.
Using his modest wealth, he formed war councils in Sirisia, which was the epicentre of the fighting. He led boys to acquire arms in eastern Uganda to protect their own because, it was assumed, the Kanu regime was arming the other protagonists, the Sabaot.
Somehow, Wangamati�s admission into FERA appeared to complicate matters in the movement. Rather than work together as a team, Wangamati and Odongo appeared to operate at cross-purposes. "It was more like FERA and FEM were at war," says one former guerrilla commander.
Wangamati and Odongo were different in their approach to governance. Brig Odongo was convinced of the necessity of military attacks, a sort of military take over of Kenya. Wanagamati was out to transform the movement into what he termed a "pressure group" to make Moi more tolerant and force the creation of a government of national unity.
"My idea was not to remove Moi but to force him to be more democratic," says Wangamati, at one time top Moi confidante in Bungoma District.
Wangamati was a gifted grassroots organizer and shrewd political schemer, skills that were critical to getting close to the centre of power. "My idea was to convert (the movement) into a pressure group, to tell the world that people were discontent with Moi."
The loyalty of the troops notwithstanding, Moi also had plenty of money to stage counter-offensive operations against Uganda and the insurgents. This he made clear at a meeting between Museveni and FEM/FERA top brass in Kampala. Wangamati�s fear was that the Kenya Government was so strong that a ragtag military outfit could hardly topple it.
Odongo, a veteran of Uganda war, felt that any government disliked by its subjects could be toppled. Idi Amin, despite his immense hold on the citizenry, had been toppled by a ragtag assembly of forces sponsored by Tanzania. Obote was also pushed out by mostly child soldiers. "Odongo was not a good strategist," says Wangamati. "He was not convincing. I could not work with him.
In fact, it was these divergent interests that eventually consigned FERA to the dustbin in the mid-1990s. "We had a lot of problems," Wangamati says now. "I would say the boys were organised more than Odongo."
Despite the fact that the movement was structured along specific military tasks, such as departmental commanders, Odongo used to take unilateral decisions in total disregard of peer advice. This was happening when the troops did not have even resources to operate.
"Volunteers in Kenya were getting tired with the lethargy," says the leader of the political wing. However, the FERA leader was unfazed by all this. He wanted his troops in Nairobi.
Such scuffles only helped to nurture inertia and lethargy in the movement. This fluid situation gave birth to another key player in the name of Jood Mafokeng, a South African who had been a resident of Busia for years from the apartheid days.
FERA guerrillas who have since returned say Mafokeng was generally not a politician but a master schemer and strategist. "We went through oaths administered by Jood," says Bramwel Kizito, a Standard Eight drop-out who escaped the clashes and joined FERA in 1992. Mafokeng was a man in passionate love with African medicine. He was convinced that if well applied, his concoction had the potential to transform bullets into water. He preached this gospel to the recruits who believed him.
But it wasn�t just the boys; Odongo also blindly trusted Mafokeng and he would do anything he said, according to Wangamati, who according to Kenyan intelligence sources was a mere stooge in the FERA arrangements. His powers were relegated to merely drafting Press releases.
When it became obvious that Odongo and Wangamati were too weak to launch a guerrilla war, and when the UN and foreign nations started putting pressure on Uganda, Museveni threw the FERA leader into detention. Some of the troops were rounded up and conscripted into the armies of Rwandese and Congolese rebels while others were given work in Uganda�s prison industries. | 
