Is the current Generals’ rumblings the new version of ‘Uncoordinated troop movements’?

Last week came news reports that once again turned the spotlight on a herd of elephants in the Ugandan room that simply refuse to go away. The first was the decade-long rumour in the country that President Yoweri Museveni is preparing, as his final political act, to have his son, Brig. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, succeed him as Uganda’s head of state.

The second elephant was the rumour and widespread belief that there are major splits within the army and that the presidential guard --- formerly the Presidential Protection Unit, re-named the Presidential Guard Brigade and today called the Special Forces Group --- is an army within the army, has the best equipment and training, is commanded by the President’s son.

Brig. Kasirye Ggwanga, a former Uganda Army officer and now presidential adviser on Buganda security, had told the Daily Monitor in remarks published on May 2 that any attempt to impose the President’s son on Uganda as head of state would cause instability in the country.
“Let me warn that boy [Brig. Kainerugaba], not even to think of taking over Uganda. Uganda will take care of itself,” said Brig. Ggwanga.

The Coordinator of the national intelligence services, Gen. David Sejusa (better known to the public as Tinyefuza), in an April 29, 2013 official letter to the Director-General of the Internal Security Organisation asked that ISO investigate reports of a plot to “assassinate people who disagree with this so-called family project of holding onto power in perpetuity.”
Ordinarily, most army generals like most Ugandans would quietly protest any perceived attempts to pave the way for a Muhoozi Kainerugaba presidency, but they would resign themselves to it.

What makes this a critical national matter is what Gen. Sejusa intimated: A plan to assassinate one by one senior or older army officers who might stand in the way of a Muhoozi presidency.
It is this fear that is concrete enough to make Sejusa and Ggwanga speak out. Sejusa knows or strongly suspects something and his way of preempting it was to come out in the media and turn it into a national discussion.

Certainly, to write a letter officially to the ISO director-general and to acknowledge having authored the letter, suggests that Sejusa was serious about his allegations. If there is indeed a plan to have Kainerugaba succeed his father and a series of assassinations and stage-managed attacks on military installations carried to blame or to clear out of the way those opposed to the “Muhoozi Project”, then from the point of view of Sejusa an army court martial trial itself is irrelevant, since it too will be part of the process of clearing the way for Kainerugaba.

There has been a history in recent years of army officers uttering controversial and sensitive public statements. Some like Kahinda Otafiire and Ggwanga have tended to be ignored. Others like Henry Tumukunde and Sejusa have attracted closer scrutiny and court martial action. Sejusa knows that Tumukunde has just ended an eight-year time oscillating between house arrest and appearances at the Makindye court martial. But he decided to speak out, anyway.

That can only mean that Sejusa has on his mind more than just the usual outspoken critique on the direction Uganda is taking. There might be a threat level high and real enough to him and some army and political colleagues he mentioned, that the risk of being taken before the court martial, on balance, is the much more preferable alternative.

The first time Uganda saw a situation like this was in late 1970. The country was filled with rumours of tensions within the army and rumours of the imminent arrest of the army commander, Major-General Idi Amin.

Nothing was ever clarified by the government and the rumours continued unabated. To defend himself, Amin turned to Israeli military advisers training Uganda’s new airforce and these provided him with intelligence updates.

Eventually, the heightening tension turned into concrete moves to have Amin arrested after President Milton Obote left for the January 1971 Singapore Commonwealth summit and a state visit to India.

Army factions loyal to Amin then clashed with a section of the army that was being prepared by the British to stage a military coup and replace Obote with Obote’s own cousin, the Director-General of the General Service Unit intelligence agency, N. Akena Adoko. A self-defensive maneouvre turned into a counter-coup, which itself turned into what we now know as the January 25, 1971 military coup that brought Amin to power.

The next time this happened was in late 1984 with splits deepening in the ruling Uganda People’s Congress party and the national army, the UNLA. A section of the army, the senior Catholic Acholi officers, felt that their future was under threat for various reasons, from enforced retirement to bitterness at the appointment by the Defence Council of Col. Smith Opon-Acak as the Army Chief of Staff to replace the late Major-General David Oyite-Ojok. Going strictly by the criterion of qualification and seniority, Opon-Acak was the most suited to be Army Chief of Staff.

What was too much...
But politically, the coincidence of he being a Lango, like President Obote and the Oyite-Ojok and Opon-Acak having served in the Uganda Army in the 1970s under Amin, was too much for the Catholic Acholi to take.

It turned into a low-key protest, became a mutiny and then mutated into an outright military coup in July 1985. Early in July 1985, shots rang out in the Bugolobi army barracks area.
It later emerged that this had been an attempted coup but which at a press conference a few days later, the Vice President and Minister of Defence, Paulo Muwanga, brushed off as an accidental instance of shooting, “uncoordinated troop movements”, he termed it.

Sejusa has now spoken and let it be known that he and others oppose the “Muhoozi Project”. Ggwanga has said so too. It is all out in the open now, so there will not be instances of senior army officers dying in motor “accidents”. But the tensions will keep increasing, until when and until what at this point only God knows.

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Gen. sejusa wrote that...
My earlier msg. delivered to H.E through you concerning intelligence concerns about the likely consequences of what the public has dubbed the Muhoozi project issue that is becoming divisive and creating fertile ground for causing intrigue especially in the Army. As you recall, in that message I gave detailed intelligence information on some of those claims, like the so called project of the son being fast tracked outside the law to hold serious positions many of which he may not be qualified by the set standards (sops) like experience in command, seniority or aptitude, etc. I also raised the concerns of many serving officers on the informal involvement of Gen. SS in many affairs of state especially in the Army, considering that he is formally retired from the Army.

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CDF Nyakairima wrote...
In his document he claims that through the Director General Internal Security Organization (DGISO) he delivered a message to H.E The President in which he highlighted Intelligence concerns about likely consequences of what the public has dubbed the “Muhoozi project”. In the document he states that the issue is becoming divisive and creating fertile ground for causing intrigue especially in the UPDF. The General further states that the so called “Mbuya Barracks attack” was conducted by some senior officers in the UPDF. As the Chief of Defence Forces of the UPDF, I am not aware of such concerns neither does the Intelligence Community. The statement therefore is not only false but misleading.