It was never our intention to oust Lule - Prof Wangoola

Had he been alive, former president Yusuf Lule would most probably have had a different view on the transfer of power from him to Godfrey Binaisa.

“I have not voluntarily left the presidency. I have been forced out,” he declared in a radio statement that was smuggled out of State House Entebbe and broadcast on the evening of June 20, 1979, triggering off demonstrations in Kampala.

The 18 to 14 vote in the wee hours of June 20, 1979, through which members of the National Consultative Council (NCC) voted him out of office, remains the only time in Uganda’s chequered history that there has been a semblance of peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next.

Word out there has always been that the vote was sparked by what was perceived as an attempt by the president to usurp the powers of the NCC by circumventing it during the course of naming a new Cabinet, but fresh details do suggest that there was more to it.

The 28 groups at the Moshi Conference, which sat from March 24 to 26, 1979, and formed the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF), were basically divided into “militarists” and “democrats”.

The Democratic Party (DP), Save Uganda Movement, Uganda Freedom Union to which Godfrey Binaisa belonged, and a few others were deemed to be democrats, while Yoweri Museveni’s Front for National Salvation (Fronasa) and the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), to which the Kikosi Maalum led by Gen Tito Okello and David Oyite-Ojok were linked, were deemed to be militarists.

While the militarists believed in the establishment of a government headed by another militarist with civilians playing an auxiliary support function, especially in the area of diplomacy and raising the much needed resources for the country’s rehabilitation, the democrats believed in the establishment of a civilian-led government and subordinating the military to civilian authority.

Early fault lines
Prof Paulo Wangoola, who moved the motion that culminated into president Lule’s removal, says matters were further complicated by the fact that even the so called democrats did not agree on the source of the president’s power and to what extent he could dispense that power.

While he accepted the presidency at the Moshi Conference, Lule did not believe that he was bound by what had been agreed upon in the conference. He did not believe that he derived his authority from Moshi, which would have made him accountable to the National Consultative Council (NCC), which was an organ of the UNLF.

“When Lule comes to power he says he is assuming power by the 1967 Constitution. We said no because the Constitution was undemocratically enacted, so you cannot be fighting for democracy when using the dictator’s tool,” Prof Wangoola says.

Less than a fortnight after swearing in, it became evident to most members of the NCC that the president’s comprehension and perspective on governance were far apart.

It, therefore, followed that Lule was for almost all the 68 days in office involved in a power struggle with the NCC.

“Lule refused to accept that he derived his power from the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) and the Moshi Unity Conference. So he refused to respond to the authority of the NCC, which was the authority of the UNLF,” he says.

Members of the NCC felt that he had not only detached himself from them by surrounding himself with old politicians from the 1960s era, some of whom were associated with intrigue, but that he was also deliberately trying to frustrate their operations.

This was borne out of what was deemed as his refusal to okay the official inauguration of the NCC by delaying a meeting at which it was meant to be officially launched.

The NCC through its chairman, Prof Edward Rugumayo, kept on sending messages to the president, reminding him of the need for a formal meeting to conduct business and ensure that the UNLF, as an interim arrangement, was running as had been agreed.

President tells off NCC
After slightly more than one month of haggling, the president finally agreed to meet the NCC. On May 22, 1979, the president addressed them, but in so doing told them off.

He told them that because most of the infrastructure had been destroyed on account of the war, he needed time to work. Lule said he did not have time for NCC as that was a time to work. Prof Lule left very many egos wounded.

“Before that, we (NCC) had thought that well, maybe this seating (is not happening) because the president is busy as there are many important things to be done, but when we eventually sat and he effectively tried to dissolve the NCC by saying it is a time for work and that if we wanted to talk it would be much later after the work was done, we knew that the battle lines had been drawn,” Prof Wangoola recounts.

Despite Lule’s dismissive attitude, the NCC carried on with its business, but it was clear that it would be only a matter of time before the two parties clashed again. That clash came 15 days later.

On June 7, 1979, Lule announces a reshuffle that saw an expansion of the Cabinet to about 40 people, a move that was received with suspicion by members of the NCC, many of whom felt that it had been intended to undermine the council’s authority.

“It (expansion of the Cabinet) was intended to pack the NCC with loyalists because ministers sat on the NCC as ex-officials. Having more ministers than the official members of the NCC was aimed at defeating the NCC,” Mr Wangoola says.

As expected, the NCC demanded for a meeting for purposes of calling president Lule to order. They wanted him to recognise that he was accountable to and subordinate to the voice of the people as articulated by the NCC, which was the interim parliament.

Lule did agree to the demands, but on his own terms. He insisted that the meeting of June 19, 1979, would take place not within the precincts of Parliament, but at State House Entebbe.

Though the president cited security as the reason behind his insistence on having the meeting outside Parliament, the real reason was that he wanted to drive the message that the president was more powerful than Parliament and that its business could be conducted wherever he chose.

The symbolism was not lost to some members of the NCC who started consultations for consensus on a course of action in case the president did not yield. By midday when the buses left the International Conference Centre for Entebbe, certain positions had been reached.

“We agreed to use ministerial appointments for the president to recognise the source of his power and authority. If he accepted NCC as having authority over him, then it would be automatic to say that then you bring those appointments they must be subject to approval,” Prof Wangoola recounts.

Lule defiant
President Lule was once again quick to dismiss the NCC as “strangers to his exercise of power”. He said Uganda was bound to the 1967 Constitution and not the proceedings of the Moshi Conference.

“He told us that even in terms of the meaning, the word consultative means something which you can consult if you choose, but you are not bound to consult, or even when you consult, you are not bound by its decision,” Wangoola says.

Some of the members found the stand very contradictory. What business did the president have agreeing to a meeting with a body that he did not recognise? Why did Lule and his assistants bother engaging the group of “strangers” in such a debate?

Members of the NCC were furious. Prof Omwony Ojok took issue with the president, saying by referring to the meaning of the word as spelt out in the Oxford English Learner’s Dictionary, president Lule was reducing the NCC to a group of secondary school students.

“The National Consultative Council is an animal which has a historical life independent of what your dictionary says,” Prof Ojok said.

There, however, was an ominous warning from Father Christopher Okoth.

“Your Excellency, Consultata in Latin means a power, a force, which supports you and without which you fall. So even in terms of deep meaning the root of that word means some energy on which you lean and when it is removed you fall,” Fr Okoth is said to have warned.

Crossing the Rubicon
One of the members then moved that the president presents the list for approval, but he declined. The two parties had by their positions crossed the Rubicon.

The options available to the NCC were to either allow its dissolution or become a rubber stamp Parliament at the beck and call of the president, which would signify a return to dictatorship.

Making the president’s working life an operational nightmare or ejecting him from office had never been on the agenda. The NCC had anticipated that the president would take a step back and present the Cabinet and that, save for a few questionable characters, be approved without much of a hitch.

“We had wanted to be helpful to the president. The idea was never to make his life impossible. The point had simply been to make it clear to him that he was accountable to the voice of the people. While NCC was the interim Parliament, we were later meant to have national elections and have a Parliament by adult suffrage. So we wanted the new Parliament to come in when the rules had been set,” Prof Wangoola says.

One of the alternative courses of action that had been agreed upon during the informal consultations ahead of that meeting had been for a motion of no confidence in the president to be tabled in case he remained adamant.

After more than eight hours of debate, it was clear to the NCC that the president would not yield an inch. It was then that the man who had been tasked with executing the duty of tabling the motion swung into action, and in so doing, set into motion the descent of the curtain on the Yusuf Lule presidency.

About 37 years since he moved the motion, Prof Wangoola does not have any regrets, saying he and those who thought like him did the right thing.

Prof Wangoola argues that Uganda can only be said to be democratic once the president is subordinate to civilian authority and mechanisms for peaceful removal of a president through civilian power and authority have been put in place.

“Any right-thinking Ugandan should ask how we missed that opportunity (of creating a dispensation that allows for peaceful change of power through civilian power and authority), which we need to fight for?”

About Prof Wangoola
• Born on Feb 10, 1946, in Nsinze, Busiki County, Iganga District to Aloni Wangoola and Leah Kalende
• Went to Namalemba Primary School up to 1959
• Joined Busoga College Mwiri in 1960
• Joined Makerere University in 1968 and graduated in 1971 with a Degree in History and Political Science.
• Lectured at Makerere University between 1972 and 1978
• In 1978 joined University of Southampton for a Masters’ Degree in Philosophy on Political Economy of Education
• 1979 Participated in the Moshi Conference as one of the two representatives, along with Prof George Kanyeihamba, of the Uganda Group for Human Rights
• 1980 participated in the December general election, defeating UPC secretary general, Dr Luwuliza Kirunda, but was immediately forced to flee into exile
• 1981 – 1996 Worked as secretary general of the African Association for Literacy and Adult Education
• 1995 founded Mpabo African Multiversity, an institution of Higher Education in the mother tongue.