Targets guerrillas
wanted to bomb
Guerrillas training in Uganda had
identified the Office of the President at Harambee House in Nairobi
and Moi Barracks in Eldoret as the first targets in a bomb attack
that would crumble the then Kanu administration, the Sunday
Standard can now reveal.
Brig John Odongo, the leader of the
February Eighteen Resistance Army, had sent sentries to survey the
targets and identify entry points. All that remained was to
dispatch a contingent of 250 specially trained commandoes to
accomplish the task.
Attacking the barracks was believed to be
an easier task, because FERA had already infiltrated Kenya�s
military ranks.
"After a hit on the ammunition factory,
collaborators in the Armed Forces were to ensure that the attackers
were well out of reach before announcing the destruction, or
relaying signals to the headquarters," says February Eighteen
Movement leader Patrick Wangamati.
The same Intelligence reported that
another target would be the Gilgil armoury, what the FERA High
Command code-named "Victoria Operation". Had the bombing been
carried out, the whole of Gilgil township, including the telephony
industry, would have been flattened.
The guerrillas had planned to also seek
out then powerful Cabinet Minister Nicholas Biwott for instant
liquidation. He was to be killed in an attack on his convoy in the
escarpments oh his way home. Again in this plot, specific points
where to plant explosives had been identified near Biwott�s home in
the Rift Valley.
Given that then President Moi rarely
visited Harambee House, it appears the bombing was hardly targeted
at him but was only intended to fluster the Kanu establishment and
send a signal of FERA�s preoccupation with everything anti-Moi. A
hit on a barracks would have exposed Kenya�s vulnerability, the
movement�s tacticians felt.
The key raids were to be peppered with
periodic attacks on security installations, such as district
headquarters and police stations. Reconnaissance had been carried
out in western Kenya to determine the vulnerability of the
targets.
But there was a snag.
Trained as a military strategist in
Bulgaria and a veteran of Ugandan civil wars, Brig Odongo was in
haste to ferry the boys to Nairobi without any due regard to
logistics.
His troops lacked the requisite arms to
stage a significant raid on a secured installation. In their attack
on the Sirisia divisional headquarters on March 12, 1995, the
guerrillas were armed with only a single and several
grenades.
Universally, rebels out to overthrow a
government target State House, then military installations before
seizing telecommunications and broadcast facilities.
FERA was ill-equipped to threaten such
secured forts. Against a background of indecision, wrangling,
inertia and apathy, raiding these secured areas would have been a
tall order for Odongo�s guerrilla fighters. That aside, the
guerrilla supporters and volunteers were getting
disillusioned.
For instance, after the requisite surveillance of Moi
Barracks, the FERA leadership dispatched several of its fighters,
led by a Lt Walusuna, who was in charge of the Twiga Platoon. They
were mauled in a confrontation with security forces in Saboti, Trans
Nzoia District. Lt Walusuna�s body has never been recovered, his
FERA colleagues claim.
Of interest is the finding that the
Kenyan guerrillas were expected to fight in the same style as
Ugandan rebel Alice Lakwena�s forces. They were to place their hope
and fate in a mystic. A South African witch, Jood Mofokeng,
administered a concoction of African medicine he said had the power
to deflect bullets or turn them into water.
(Lakwena and her remnant,Joseph Kony of
the Lord�s Resistance Army, convinced her troops she possessed
supernaturalpowers that could turn bullets into water, in her
resistance against the Museveni government)
On the eve of their planned attack on Moi
Barracks, Mafokeng immersed the boys in water laced with
concentrates of roots, leaves and other substances. Belief in
Mafokeng�s prank led the guerrillas to attack Sirisia Police Station
armed with only a rifle and three grenades. No one was killed, but
they seized 17 guns and 1,300 bullets.
And, ironically, the Kenya guerrillas
were convinced Mofokeng�s concoction worked. "That thing (herbal
mixture) was real, it worked. Don�t joke, mister," says Enock, a
FERA veteran who declined to give his second name. Enock says he led
the attack on Sirisia.
He was recruited into the movement by a
Kitale mechanic, Alexander Barasa, who was later arrested by Nakuru
criminal investigations officers and tortured on FERA charges. "We
tried (the potion) at Kibichoi and it worked."
This bullets-turned-water trick is a
hardly uncommon fighting strategy among guerrillas in Africa. In the
Lakwena case, hundreds of her troops "fell like chicken when
confronted by the NRA", one international journalist wrote in
1989.
The Lord�s Resistance Army, led by Kony,
perceived as a re-embodiment of Lakwena, uses the same trick to
rally his troops. Yet his troops, defined by their barbaric
treatment of captives, have been cut down by Ugandan
forces.
Unable to amass the kind of control she
exercised over her subjects in the 1980s, Lakwena is a shadow of
what was hailed a reincarnation of Joan of Arc. She is hosted by the
UN High Commissioner of Refugees, at Dadaab Refugee Camp in northern
Kenya.
The Odongo fighters � uneducated sons of
impoverished families in Sirisia � had no reason to doubt Mofokeng�s
therapy. Indeed, in rural Bukusu country, ominous incidents are
identified with supernatural powers.
One particular incident convinced the
troops that the concoction was potent. At Kibichoi, about 17
guerrillas met face to face with Kenyan security forces aided by
helicopters. Four rebels were arrested and another three were hacked
to death by residents of Mt Elgon as they attempted to escape back
to their camp, at Baghdad Cave.
"You see, nobody was killed by a bullet,"
says Enock.
Interestingly, Mofokeng, a businessman
with a chain of clinics in Kampala, Mbale and Busia, was once close
to the then Kenyan leader, Daniel arap Moi. Contradicting reasons
have been advanced to explain the parting of ways.
Wangamati says Mafokeng used to complain
that President Moi confiscated his property in Kenya. "He did not
seem to like Moi."
Mafokeng allies say his knowledge in
traditional therapy endeared him to Kanu Power. "Moi believes in
African medicine, and here was a man who was well versed in that
area," says Wangamati.
However, Intelligence sources say the
South African undertook some espionage work for Kenya in the
1980s.
An Intelligence report that sparked the
state crackdown on FERA suspects in 1994 and 1995, claimed that the
South African once owned property in Nairobi, given to him by the
late Cabinet Minister Mbiyu Koinange. It is unclear what kind of
asset he owned, but those close to him claim that apart from
clinics, he had interests in coffee farming in Central
Kenya.
Most of the FERA meetings that plotted
against the Kanu government were held at Dr Mafokeng�s clinic in
Burton Street, Kampala. FERA recruits were received at Mafokeng�s
clinics in Busia, Mbale and Kampala before they were handed over to
their trainers in Nakivale and Mt Elgon caves.
The week the FERA fighters
were to travel to Nairobi, a
disagreement broke out between Mafokeng and Odongo on one hand, and
Wangamati on the other. Mafokeng and Odongo wanted the guerrillas to
leave immediately after he administered the oath and "treatment".
Wangamati opposed them.
"Mafokeng wanted a full lorry of boys to
leave for Nairobi without any proof that enough surveillance had
been done and that the mission was not fraught with peril," says one
of the commanders. Odongo readily agreed to the plan.
"I said no, it is not possible," says
Wangamati. In later years, Wangamati would bear the full
responsibility for FERA�s lethargy. In a briefing to Moi, sometime
in 1994, the Intelligence officers had described the FEM leader as a
"mere stooge, hardly significant to the organisation".
Somehow, dearth of arms and a dubious
leadership would later deal a fatal blow to the guerrilla movement.
FERA is now in tatters. Its troops, lacking meaningful leadership,
scattered in 1995. A number of them returned to Kenya, others were
recruited into either the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) or the
mutinous factions in the war-torn Democratic Republic of
Congo.
"(Odongo) did not address the issue of
logistics, neither did he seek advice from his contemporaries," says
one of FERA�s top commanders. "He just woke up one morning and
decided that the boys should be ferried to Nairobi in a truck, to
bomb Harambee House."
Nonetheless, this approach reflected
Odongo�s style of leadership: rash, unilateral, and cavalier.
Mafokeng, a highly skilled political fixer who was said to be close
to the top echelons of the National Resistance Army, often propped
Odongo. He appeared to be the de facto leader of FERA.
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