Uganda’s official secrecy and unexpected events

It’s been an eventful month of May we’ve just put to bed in Uganda. I had been planning to write a series of articles looking back on Uganda’s 50 year independence history through the memories of the Pop music songs of decades and years gone by.
In the aftermath of the Gen David Tinyefuza letter to the Editor (no pun intended), the state moved to try and put a lid on coverage on the man we must now refer to as a renegade general. Understandably so.

Anybody with an average knowledge of Uganda’s history since 1966 knows that anything can happen when an army general gets disgruntled. The NRM government was forced to take measures to contain the situation, one of which was the closure of two media houses for nearly two weeks.

The government would wish for nothing more than for Ugandans to return to their routine daily chores, sports and entertainment pastimes and maintain as normal a situation as possible.

That is its duty and from a state’s point of view, a justified wish. It is not being paranoid over nothing. However, one cannot run away from these developments. Many of us who have lived long enough in Uganda to have witnessed major turning points know that history acts on its own logic and according to its own schedule.

In Uganda, apparent calm has often sat alongside deepening tensions. I remember as children arriving at Lake Victoria School Entebbe for classes as usual in June 1979, only to be told by our teacher for English that there had been a change of leadership. Uganda had a new president called Godfrey Vinaisa”. (I heard it as “Vinaisa”, until I saw the front page of the government-owned Uganda Times newspaper the next day publish a photo of President Binaisa.)

The Ugandan public for most of its history has been a passive onlooker as events were being decided by men who did what must be done. That’s why this political turmoil has always caught us unawares.

As the Tanzanian army and Ugandan exile ground entered Uganda in late November 1978 and started to roll out their plans to take Kampala, residents of Kampala City danced away in night clubs.

As one of those revelers at the time Andrew Kasirye, now a Kampala lawyer, once told me, the talk on Kampala dance floors was that “Let’s dance! We shall push the Bakombozi [the term for the Tanzanian troops at the time] won’t get to Kampala”.

In January 1971, President Obote’s staff at his Parliament Office had been busy preparing his personal effects and planning the itinerary for his flight to Singapore to attend the Commonwealth heads of state and government summit and after that, to pay a state visit to India.

A young intelligence officer called Yoweri Museveni sat anxiously at the reception at Parliament Avenue. He repeatedly requested to see the president, but the presidential staff and aides were too busy to make time and absent-mindedly asked Museveni what the matter was about.

Museveni had an intelligence report and was trying to urge President Obote to order the arrest of the army commander, Maj-Gen Idi Amin. Museveni’s explanation was lost amid the commotion, the closing of windows, locking and unlocking of drawers and safes and phone calls to the presidential escort unit.

That was the reason why, as soon as the January 25, 1971 coup took place, within 24 hours Museveni was preparing to slip out of the country. He must have known that Amin either knew he had been trying to get him arrested or would soon find out.

Accidents happen, warnings go unheeded and as the then Vice President Paulo Muwanga explained at a press conference, the shooting heard from Bugolobi on July 8, 1985 had not been a coup attempt but, Muwanga claimed, an “uncoordinated movement of troops.”

Even without discussing coups, military campaigns even today involving powerful armies such as the British Army and US Army in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and other hot spots often go wrong.

To require the population to collectively bury its head in the sand and carry on as normal is an internal security measure governments take; but these measures do not always change the facts at play or events unfolding, if they are indeed unfolding.

So what has all this got to do with Uganda today and what am I getting at? “Inciting the people”? Mischievously trying to provoke the state? No. Just casting my eye back into history and reminding us all that the media closure and search have now ended, although the circumstances that led to the shutdown have not yet changed.

Even before Tinyefuza wrote his letter, for several months there had been in Kampala what came to be termed “coup talk”. Everyone from media commentators to Members of Parliament, cabinet ministers, army officers and civil society groups was engaged in speculating about a coup in Uganda.

‘Languishing’ soldier
A Ugandan army general is still on the loose somewhere in London. We don’t know when he’ll return, if he’ll return or what he’s up to or who he is talking to about what, in London. The allegations he made in his letter to the best of our knowledge have not yet been publicly addressed by the President.

But in the meantime, we can all relax and get back to our work, worship, worry and weariness of everyday life. Forget Tinyefuza. Forget coup talk. Like the Ugandans dancing the evenings away in late 1978 Kampala nightclubs, the Bakombozi cannot get here. “Life is good, wild and sweet/Let the music play on (play on)” as Lionel Richie sings in his 1984 hit “All Night Long”.

That’s exactly what the late Radio Uganda disc jockey Andy Simon Kaweesa was doing that Saturday morning, July 27, 1985, during his “Weekend Club” music and requests show.
The previous night, July 24, 1985, President Obote had given his personal secretaries work to do and he left the office at about 11pm and the secretaries left later.

They were amazed to hear an announcement the following morning that Obote had fled to Kenya and the government was overthrown. This is the history of Uganda as it has always been. So full of intrigue, but most of that intrigue kept away from public view until the volcano finally erupted and spilled lava all over the country.

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Museveni’S report to Obote

In January 1971, President Obote’s staff at his Parliament Office had been busy preparing his personal effects and planning the itinerary for his flight to Singapore to attend the Commonwealth heads of state and government summit and after that, to pay a state visit to India.

A young intelligence officer called Yoweri Museveni sat anxiously at the reception at Parliament Avenue. He repeatedly requested to see the president, but the presidential staff and aides were too busy to make time and absent-mindedly asked Museveni what the matter was about.

Museveni had an intelligence report and was trying to urge President Obote to order the arrest of the army commander, Maj-Gen Idi Amin. Museveni’s explanation was lost amid the commotion, the closing of windows, locking and unlocking of drawers and safes and phone calls to the presidential escort unit.

That was the reason why, as soon as the January 25, 1971 coup took place, within 24 hours Museveni was preparing to slip out of the country. He must have known that Amin either knew he had been trying to get him arrested or would soon find out.

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