Who was still killing and robbing Ugandans after Amin fell?

In part nine of the series on the fall of Idi Amin's military government, Timothy Kalyegira explains why killings and robbery continued to thrive even when Amin whose regime many blamed for the monstrous evils: -

In the previous part of these series, we read a statement by President Godfrey Binaisa in which he expressed the collective outrage of the National Consultative Council (NCC) – Uganda’s interim parliament – at the former president Yusufu Lule’s claim that elements of the new army, the UNLA, was behind the rampant murders of prominent Ugandans. ***image1***

Lule (RIP) was removed from office on June 20, 1979. The former attorney general in the late 1960s, Godfrey Lukongwa Binaisa, was selected to replace him. At a charged meeting at State House in Entebbe, Binaisa was hastily chosen.

Two rounds of voting were taken and Binaisa defeated Prof. Edward Rugumayo in the second round by 11 votes to 8. Since Prof. Rugumayo, the chairman of the NCC, had been among the most vocal in calling for Lule’s impeachment and was now contesting for the presidency, it should be asked of him if his opposition to Lule was out of principle or because, like any other politician, he simply wanted Lule’s job.

In a December 13, 2007 interview with The Weekly Observer, Yona Kanyomozi, an NCC member in 1979, said, “We also wanted a person with knowledge of how a government works. That is when we brought in Godfrey Binaisa.”

After Binaisa was sworn-in, he was driven to the Nile Mansions Hotel (now Serena Kampala Hotel) in a Mercedes Benz 600 presidential limousine. Seated in the car next to Binaisa was the Minister of State for Defence, one Yoweri Museveni.

In the 1970s, a Ugandan exile Andrew Kayiira founded the Uganda Freedom Union (UFU) to fight the Amin regime. The chairman of the UFU was Binaisa and the Secretary-General was the former Makerere University Guild President Olara Otunnu.

Binaisa, of course, was the attorney general who rose to national notoriety in 1966 when he advised and helped draft the April 1966 “pigeonhole” constitution on behalf of Prime Minister Milton Obote.

On July 2, 1979, the deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Andrew Kayiira, addressed a press conference in Kampala.
Speaking deliberately and cryptically, Kayiira said, “People do not understand why Lule was removed and according to public opinion, this was the first step in bringing back Obote.

People have all along, since Lule’s removal, taken it that Binaisa is the wrong man because he too will probably be booted out by the Council (the NCC) in a similar way and Obote will be given the chair… It is very difficult to join up people who were not working together before and hardly knew one another.”
In these intriguing words, Kayiira told journalists that Lule had not been removed because of any major abuse of power.

Binaisa had not been selected to replace Lule as a stooge to “warm the chair” until former president Obote returned one day to power, as most Ugandans believed.
According to Kayiira, clear from these words, the whole effort at achieving a united front to succeed Idi Amin had been a marriage of convenience. ***image2***

Unknown to Ugandans, behind the scenes there was a bitter struggle for power and, Kayiira was telling Ugandans, this so-called Uganda National Liberation Front experiment would not last.

As we have just seen, Prof. Rugumayo was part of the move to oust Lule, only to forward his name in the rounds of voting to succeed Lule. Binaisa was now the president of Uganda. And the killings continued.

July 10, 1979, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Paulo Muwanga, addressed himself to the wave of killings in Uganda at a press conference in Kampala.

“On the crime wave which has involved many killings, Mr Muwanga attributed it to some elements who have ganged themselves for political or economic reasons to bring about disorder in the country. Some killings, he said, were the making of the members of the so-called Uganda Underground Liberation Movement (UULM) whom the minister accused of freeing prisoners – most of them deadly – at Luzira during the demonstrations,” reported the Uganda Times on July 11.