The 1964 army mutiny

The year 1964 saw army mutinies across East Africa with demand for Africanisation of the military and salary increment, coming out as key demands by soldiers. These mutinies were irrespective of the fact that the army played a pivotal role in the new governments, necessitating that their welfare is upheld above all else.

According to historian Samwiri Karugire, the military was central in filling the gap created by a toothless Judiciary, an ineffective Parliament and a struggling civil service.
“With a Parliament rendered absolutely impotent, a demoralized civil service, a judiciary whose decisions were circumvented by retroactive legislation, a system of local government paralysed by intense factionalism and an electoral system that had been reduced to a mockery, Uganda had become an anachronism. As the government heavily depended on the army to endorse these assassin policies, the importance of the men-in-uniform increased enormously…” Karugire argues in The Roots of Instability in Uganda.

In light of the above, the government was expected to hold dear welfare of the army, but this wasn’t the case. For instance, even with the exit of colonial masters in the East African countries of Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, their presence was still felt in key sectors of the now autonomous nations.

In Uganda, discomfort was heavy among the Uganda Rifles, as British officers held onto key military command positions with attractive pay to go with. To the Ugandan soldiers, this was a hindrance to their career progress, made worse by the meagre income they were getting.

By 1964, a section of Ugandans also realised that the army was dominated by people from the north—a region where Prime Minister Milton Obote hailed from. “The increasing concern for quotas in the army arose from the belated realisation by those outside Obote’s region that the army was becoming the arbiter in Ugandan politics,” notes Karugire.

The British had during the implementation of their colonial project, designated northern Uganda as a recruitment region for the army, while other regions worked plantations to provide raw materials for starving European industries. Even though the new leaders were cognizant of this colonial bias, no effort was made to correct it immediately.

To Prime Minister Obote, for instance, the army was a crucial force to steady the new government and therefore, when fresh recruitments were made, a deliberate move were made to sustain its northern character.

“…When they (recruiting teams) go to the north, they spend there two or three months recruiting, but when they come to Kampala, they spend here one day and they recruit mainly those whom they have directed to come to Kampala because they failed to recruit them in the north,” a Member of Parliament, criticising recruitment at the time, is quoted in African Upheavals since Independence, as saying.

The MP adds: “When they go to Masaka, they spend half a day to recruit only about three people –two of them probably being those Northern people who are living in Buganda. When they go to Mbarara, they spend there half a day to recruit only three people. This sort of recruitment must be stopped. They must give us quotas.”

Kabaka Muteesa, a partner in the coalition government, knew that the Northern character of the army posed a genuine threat to Buganda’s interests and thus worked to secure the Kingdom’s standing in the new nation.

Since both Obote and Muteesa had different interests in the character of the army, little care was paid to the soldiers’ demand for pay raise or its africanisation.
The soldiers, however, knowing their worth in the new government, would not sit by without lifting a finger.

Prof. Samwiri explains that the army was being used by government to quiet detractors and the army made use of their critical status to advance their interests.
“…this sectional army was increasingly being used by the government to silence its critics and the army, however uneducated as the bulk of the Ugandan army was, increasingly saw that the government was in office largely because of its support. It did not take a great deal of imagination on the part of the army to conclude that instead of propping up quarrelsome politicians who clearly had no support for the populace, it could supplant them,” historian Samwiri explains.

Therefore, in January 22, drawing inspiration from their Tanganyika counterparts, the army in the eastern district of Jinja kicked off the 1964 mutiny. They arrested and detained British officers and Interior Minister Felix Onama who had travelled to the area to deliver government position to the rank-and-file.

Premier Obote, in a bid to prevent the spread of the mutiny to the rest of the country, sought the intervention of the British soldiers. At least 450 British soldiers from the Guards and Staffordshire Regiment, enclosed the First Battalion barracks at Jinja and seized the gun room.

“Obote’s government called in the British forces to deal with the mutineers and establish peace and order in the barracks—something that did not go down well with militant wing of the ruling party who felt irked by the idea of recourse to foreign troops from the former masters to settle their domestic problems,” says historian Phares Mutibwa in The Buganda Factor in Uganda Politics.

Changes
Although the demands of the army were met a few days later, several changes were made as well. “The whole army was disbanded after the mutiny and everyone in it dismissed save for 100 men,” notes Mutibwa.

However, historian Samwiri argues that the changes made in the open, were implemented differently in the ‘dark’. “…when the army mutinies took place in Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda in 1964, in Kenya and Tanganyika the mutineers were tried and jailed, and others dismissed from the army, but in Uganda, they were publicly dismissed and privately retained because nearly all of them came from Obote’s region and their demands were met; assured of such treatment, discipline steadily went downhill as soldiers felt they could get anything they wanted however unreasonable’,” he explains.

Obote could have retained the soldiers because they were from his region, but the bigger explanation could have been the growing tension between Buganda and the central government.
Buganda was increasingly becoming uncomfortable and frustrated by the Obote-controlled army and the prime minister, aware of that opposition, needed the army at his disposal in case of any upheaval.

Expulsion and invasion
This discomfort exposed a crack in the coalition government and the uneasy relationship between Buganda and central government. The relationship between the army, that was largely northern in character and Buganda, would weaken, as the country moved farther away from 1962.

Therefore, when two years later, the army stood by Prime Minister Obote and far away from president and Kabaka Muteesa in what became the 1966 Buganda Crisis, political spectators should not have been shocked.
But before that Crisis, Buganda would expel the central government from it soil and set the pace for an invasion and plunder of the Lubiri Palace.
Continues tomorrow.