Governance by consensus was thrown overboard from 1966

In an article which appeared in the Sunday Monitor recently, the writer claimed that in the months preceding the 1966 Crisis, a number of cabinet ministers used to hold meetings in the then vice president’s home at Kololo to plan a coup d’etat.
Although this information was based on an interview with a member of the vice president’s houseshold, it has not been independently verified.
However, there is repertoire of circumstantial evidence, which tends to support the claim for a coup d’etat. All the ministers who were alleged to have been attending the night meetings were arrested on the orders of Dr Milton Obote while attending a cabinet meeting on February 22, 1966.
Secondly, in March 1966, Dr Obote told a reporter of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, John Bulloch, that a general court martial would be held arising from charges that a military escort was sent to arrest him and confirmed that in October the previous year troops and arms were moved from Jinja to Kampala without his knowledge.
Lastly, in a confidential report to the minister of Internal Affair, which was laid before Parliament on July 26, 1966, Justice R E G Russell, who investigated the conduct of the five ministers, said he was satisfied that there had been bitter rivalry within the Uganda Peoples’ Congress and that the five detainees wished to see Dr Obote superceded and assume control of the government.
Indeed the rivalry within the governing party started immediately after independence when John Kakonge, the secretary general of the party, was excluded from the cabinet due to his rivalry with Grace Ibingira, the party’s legal advisor. This rivalry led to the emergence of two factions of youth wingers loyal to each of the two leaders. The factions became so powerful and uncontrollable and their behaviour was characterised by fights at the party’s headquarters.
In 1964 at the party’s general meeting, which was held in Gulu, Ibingira defeated Kakonge to become the secretary general. Kakonge got lost in the political wilderness and to make himself relevant, he embraced communism, which he expounded openly, while Ibingira became America’s pin-up boy, which must have unsettled Obote.
Indeed at a rally held in Mbarara in March 1966, Dr Obote claimed that Ibingira had received $1 million for the purposes of overthrowing the government.
Once he became secretary general Ibingira turned his guns on Obote and started organising party elections with a view to controlling the party through the branches. Later, Obote attributed the movement of troops and arms from Jinja to Kampala in October1965 to Ibingira’s brother, Maj Katabarwa.
By February 1966, Obote’s fall was imminent, especially after the National Assembly passed a vote of no confidence in him with only Kakonge abstaining. Obote moved to the north ostensibly to inspect government projects, but in reality to escape arrest.
Although in his statement Obote claimed that an escort was sent to arrest him, it was the Army commander Shaban Opolot, who was sent. It is ironical that the person who saved Obote from arrest, Sir Edward Mutesa, the president, was in the end the most mistreated by Obote after he prevailed.
When the plotters briefed the president about what was happening, he dissuaded them from arresting the prime minister and instead advised them to pursue their objectives through the motion of no confidence before the National Assembly.
When Obote knew about this change in plans, he returned to Kampala stealthily and called a cabinet meeting on February 22 at which the five ministers were arrested.
Uganda has never been the same again. In particular, governance by consensus was thrown overboard.

Mr Mulira is a lawyer.
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