Fera had its origins in Oginga Odinga�s KPU
By Otsieno Namwaya
Save for the sceptics who still argue that the February Eighteenth Revolutionary Movement, whose military wing was known as the February Eighteenth Revolutionary Army (Fera), was probably an imaginary organisation, those who have taken interest in the matter today concede that it was the only resistance movement in Kenya that had made significant steps in terms of setting up military units. And although it was merely heard of in the 1990s, its routes are traced to the late 1960s.
It is believed to have been a spill-over of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga�s Kenya People�s Union (KPU), which was known to be closer politically to the then Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere and Milton Obote of Uganda.
The seeds of Fera were sown in 1969 when the government clamped down heavily on the KPU leaders and their supporters. Some of KPU�s youthful supporters who feared for their lives following the 1969 bloody confrontations between Jaramogi�s supporters and then Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta�s bodyguards went into exile in Uganda.
A youthful Brig John Odongo, who was later to become the military leader of Fera, was among the youthful KPU supporters who in 1970 sought refuge in Uganda. It is not clear how he got close to Obote, but some sources say that Odinga had introduced him to Obote.
When Obote was overthrown by Idi Amin Dada in 1971 forcing him into temporary exile in Tanzania, some of the political refugees his government had sheltered such as Odongo also crossed over with him to Tanzania. It is understood that, though Odongo remained close to Obote, he quickly struck rapport with Museveni who was then a political activist and student in Dar-Es-Salaam.
When the dissidents started planning a rebellion against the Amin regime, by virtue of having been close to Obote, he is said to have been conscripted into Obote�s rebel unit that overthrew Amin in 1978. Odongo thus became part of the Ugandan army when Obote took over power in 1978.
It is here that he gained the military training and experience that were to earn him the title of Brigadier. But while still with Obote, he established close links with Museveni�s National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A). He remained Museveni�s mole in Obote�s army for some time.
He remained with Obote till 1985 when General Tito Okello overthrew the Obote regime. But this time, instead of going into exile with Obote again, he joined Museveni�s NRM. He was again one of the combatants when Museveni blasted his way into power in 1986 when he overthrew Okello.
This created a fertile ground for the actual founding of Fera and other resistance movements in the Great Lakes Region. When Museveni took over power, he admits in his book, The Mustard Seed, he pursued an overt policy of breeding revolutionary movements to take over leadership in the countries of the region. Odongo hoped to capitalise on the goodwill and the Museveni ideology and launch his rebellion against the Kenya government.
At some point in 1990, Museveni is understood to have had a meeting with Odongo in which the so-called Kenya liberation strategy was discussed and a tentative plan of invasion drawn.
At around the same time, Museveni also met other Kenyan political activists such Koigi Wamwere and Adhu Awiti with whom he held similar discussions. It was after this that Odongo founded Fera. Soon after, Koigi Wamwere also founded his Kenya Patriotic Front (KPF) and Awiti established Umoja wa Wazalendo wa Kenya (Uwake). The three groups went ahead to establish military camps in Uganda financed partially by the Museveni government.
The only things that Museveni supplied to the rebel groups in full were the trainers. The interesting thing is that soldiers from Uganda�s People�s Defence Force seconded to train Fera, KPF and Uwake rebels never knew they were training Kenyan dissidents. They were told they were training South Africa�s Africa National Congress (ANC) fighters.
Officially, Odongo started getting support from the Museveni government in 1990 when he started recruiting members of his otherwise small resistance army. The name Fera is believed to have been proposed to Odongo by a Kenyan journalist and lawyer, Raphael Wang�ondu Kariuki, who had gone into exile in Uganda after being detained for four years up to 1986 by the Moi regime.
Wang�ondu is said to have been a great admirer of Dedan Kimathi, the Mau Mau leader who was hanged by the colonial regime in 1957, and the choice of the name February Eighteen was a commemoration of the day the freedom hero was hanged � February 18, 1957. The name was thus meant to give the movement a historical dimension of the country�s freedom struggle.
Having borrowed everything from the strategies that Museveni used, Odongo decided not to recruit members of the army from his Luo community for fear of "the struggle taking a tribal dimension."
Museveni, from the Ankole tribe, opted for former Ugandan President, Joseph Lule, Baganda by tribe, as his political figurehead. His rebellion was launched not from the Banyankole side by from Baganda territory in the Luwero Triangle. This is the strategy that Odongo adopted when he founded Fera. This was not because he was politically astute but because he had both seen the strategy used successfully by Museveni whose allies played a great role in the strategic planning of the rebel movement as you will find later on in this series.
He thus reached out in 1991 to Patrick Wangamati, a Bukusu from Bungoma District, who became both the political leader and spokesperson of Fera/M. The idea here was that, with Wangamati as the political leader of the movement, it was not going to be easy for it to be perceived as Luo movement. Further, the Bukusu had not by then been known as being hostile to the Government and it was therefore going to take the Government time to discover the movement.
In any case, unlike Odongo who had only military training and little understanding of political issues, Wangamati had fair education and a good understanding of politics. These factors made him the perfect political leader of Fera, that is, in the mind of Brig Odongo.
As such, the bulk of the recruitment was done in Bukusuland. And what perfect timing � many of the people in Bungoma were bitter with the Government having just been displaced by the infamous politically-instigated tribal clashes. The people who were recruiting whipped up the emotions of the people. They told the people, if they supported or joined Fera, they would be supplied with weapons for defence against the raiders.
People accepted and enrolled in good numbers and Odongo and Wangamati took them to Uganda for training. Those who could not join the army in Uganda were asked to form war councils � every ten homes came together to form a war council.
Mobilisers in Bungoma used leaflets to convince people to form own councils � each council was supplied with a few AK-47 assault rifles. The councils were meant to supply Fera fighters in the bush with accurate intelligence, food and the identification of young men who could join Fera.
It is now clear that the political upheavals in the Kenyatta and Moi regimes served as fertile ground for the founding of Fera.
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