NRM BUSH WAR MEMORIES: Otafiire; the bush mobiliser

He recruited Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema (RIP) into the bush war and survived Idi Amin’s 1974 public executions of captured rebels. In this eleventh part of our continuing series of Bush War Memories to mark this year’s heroes day, R0 014 Col. Kahinda Otafiire, chief political commissar throughout the five-year bush war and current minister of lands, water and the environment, recounts to William Tayeebwa the role he played to rally the population to support the liberation struggle

Sometime in 1972, when I was in my first year at Makerere University, a group of ex-students at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania including Yoweri Museveni, Mwesigwa Black and others contacted us.

I remember that the late Kisimba Matsiko, who was president of the National Union of Students of Uganda (NUSU), initiated me into student activism. Our mission was to fight Idi Amin. Mind you, Amin had actually not done anything bad to me personally. But as a student activist, I just did not like him. The fellow was so bad that he left you no option not to hate him.

His functionaries were arresting people, throwing them in car boots, people were disappearing and the economy was in shambles with no sugar, nothing at all. Besides, the man’s way of doing things was tomfoolery and he was such a buffoon. There was no government—just a bunch of buffoons marauding around.

Working with Museveni

Actually, nobody recruited me into the struggle against Idi Amin. I did not have to be recruited. I was a student political activist all along and we were excited about democracy, freedom and equality. We read books and got all these ideas.

My first contact with Yoweri Museveni was when he was working in president’s office in the early 1970s because he used to come around. At the time he was preparing to run against John Babiiha in Ankole, we used to listen to his speeches.

Later, I was to work more closely with him when he had gone into exile in Tanzania. I started recruiting people for FRONASA (Front for National Salvation) between 1974-76. I am therefore one of the founding fathers of FRONASA.

However, between 1974-75, FRONASA run into difficulties when our comrades were executed publicly in several towns in the country. I used to go to Tanzania as someone who was participating in the war, but I was based mainly here in Uganda.

In 1976, we reorganised. I was elected to the national executive of FRONASA as treasurer and we spent the whole of 1976 and 1977 re-organising and recruiting from all over the country. That is how I ended up recruiting the late Fred Rwigyema, Ivan Koreta (Maj. Gen) and many others. I did not go into exile, but remained here doing coordination work, which was basically intelligence work until the war of liberation in 1978-79.

After the war, I joined the Foreign Service and was posted to Beijing, China as second secretary. But the way the politics were going here, we could see that we were headed for a second confrontation.

In July 1980, I quit Beijing to come and participate in the elections, which were scheduled for September 1980. They did not take place as earlier planned and instead took place in December 1980.

Of course Milton Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) rigged and so we decided to re-launch the struggle. We decided to fight the government of the day because we did not feel that the problems of Uganda were being addressed. Yes, Amin had gone, but the situation was not different. Clearly, the question of democratisation, of security for people and property and many other issues were not addressed. We could see that we were in the same circus as before. We therefore decided to embark on an armed struggle again.

To the bush

I personally did not join the bush war until June 1981. In January1981, I had been sent to do some mobilisation work in the southwestern region.