Saleh rescues Museveni at roadblock

Saturday, October 11, 1980, then vice chairman of the Military Commission and minister of Regional Cooperation, Mr Yoweri Museveni, now President of Uganda, was arrested at a notorious military roadblock at Kireka on Jinja highway about two miles from Kampala.
The soldiers forced Mr Museveni, his wife Janet and their son Muhoozi Kainerugaba to sit on the ground by the roadside from about 6.30pm to around 4pm when his younger brother, then 2nd Lieutenant Caleb Akandwanaho aka Salim Saleh led a section of his friends and Museveni’s escorts and rescued them.

Why Museveni was arrested
Before the 1971 coup that toppled president Milton Obote and former army commander Idi Amin became president, Mr Museveni had briefly worked in the president’s office.
However, while in exile in Tanzania were both Obote and Museveni had sought refuge, they found themselves on opposite sides.
There was no love lost between the two men. And so Museveni and his supporters did not want Obote to return to the presidency. Equally, Obote and those who supported him did not want Museveni to become president.
Swords had been drawn. The animosity that existed between the two groups meant that for one to be, the other had to be eliminated.

However, former president Obote had an upper hand. For, he had the support of the army which was led by his cronies as well as political machinery led by Paulo Muwanga.
Obote and his supporters saw Museveni, who had a sizeable number of the Front for National Salvation (Fronasa) military loyalists in the national army, the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) as a major obstacle to Obote’s return to the presidency and they had to eliminate him.
Museveni proved to be a hard nut to crack. Speaking about his opposition to Obote, President Museveni writes on page 115 in Sowing Mustard Seed, his autobiography: “I supported his (president Godfrey Binaisa’s) removal because then, we would be able to confront Obote without a third force confusing matters. Binaisa had proved only a hindrance to our freedom of action.”

He also asserts that after the ouster of Binaisa, “two clear forces now emerged on the Military Commission. Numerically, we were in a minority on the Commission because I was the only active anti-Obote member. Paulo Muwanga, Oyite Ojok and William Omaria were pro-Obote. The other two, Tito Okello and Col Zed Maruru, while not necessarily pro-0bote, were not actively against him either. So I was left alone to hold the line against Obote”.
On page 123 of his autobiography Mr Museveni describes a possible attempt to kill him.

Museveni, wife narrate arrest
He states: “Earlier on, just before the elections, the UPC had gone to the extent of arresting me, my wife and son and detaining us for about five hours at a roadblock at Kireka, near Kampala. They kicked us and made us squat on the ground and I think they meant to kill us. This was when I was Vice Chairman of the Military Commission, in effect the Vice President of the country, which shows the primitive nature of the people who were running Uganda’s State affairs at the time. If one does not agree with someone, how does it solve the problem to hold him at a roadblock? On that occasion, some of my comrades used force and rescued us.”

Janet Museveni also wrote about the arrest of Museveni in 1980. On page 105 in her autobiography, My Life’s Journey, Janet writes: “One day, Yoweri and I drove with Muhoozi. We intended to pick up our vehicle which was in a garage at Kireka and then return to the city. As we drove, we encountered a roadblock which was heavily manned and the soldiers stopped our car. When they discovered that the person in the car was Museveni, they made us pull over to the curb and told us to wait. In the meantime they called Bazilio Okello, who was staying at Nile Mansions Hotel. The soldiers asked what they should do with Museveni and received orders to detain us until they could send soldiers to arrest us.” Bazilio Okello and his men were having a meal at the hotel and the waiter, who was serving them, heard them gloating how they had ‘got Museveni’. The waiter, who knew Museveni, made an SOS to then Second Lieutenant Salim Saleh, who was at Museveni’s official home in Kololo, an affluent Kampala suburb.

The rescue
“He informed him that Museveni was detained at a roadblock and if no one went to rescue us, we would be arrested and most likely killed,” Janet writes on page 106 of her autobiography.
Saleh immediately mobilised his military colleagues and drove to the roadblock to rescue his elder brother.
At the roadblock, Janet writes in her book: “Saleh, Rwigyema and the others jumped out of the car with their weapons cocked and ready for a shoot-out. Yoweri, Muhoozi and I quickly jumped into the car and sped off away from the roadblock and from mortal danger.”

The rescue mission
Speaking to the June-September 1993 maiden edition of the Veteran Year Book, the defunct National Resistance Army (NRA) magazine, Saleh recounted the rescue mission.
At the time 2nd Lieutenant Saleh was stationed at Kidepo military detachment in Karamoja sub-region, but had come to Kampala on a 14-day official leave. In Kampala, he was staying at Museveni’s home in Kololo.
Saleh recounted: “I had hardly spent a week in Kampala when he [Museveni] left us at home to drive his wife and son to some place I do not remember. At around midnight I was asleep after taking some drinks, when I was woken up by somebody. I think it was the housegirl. She told me that Mzee had been arrested at a roadblock together with the wife and son. I could not believe it. So I woke up, put on one pip on the shoulder and forgot the other one.”

He added: “Then I got into a vehicle and went to the late (Captain Fred) Rubereeza because he was senior to me in hierarchy. I asked him what to do. He said that he was going to ring Paulo Muwanga (chairman of Military Commission) and I told him, you must be mad. How can you call the man who arrested him?”
It was at this moment that an infuriated Saleh decided to take charge and rescue Museveni and his family.
“I proposed that we should move onto the roadblock and crush it. And if we are killed there that is good for us and for him (Museveni) because we had always warned him to increase his security, but he did not listen. Rubereeza and my senior comrade Sam Katabarwa hesitated,” Saleh said.

He further recollected: “For me, I decided to go to the roadblock. I gathered a few of his [Museveni’s] escorts and moved in with my friend late Rwigyema. We moved to Kireka roadblock and I said ‘we have come to get this man’. The soldiers there said that they were ordered not to release him. When I threatened to shoot they told me to sign my order on a paper they had. I wrote my initials, rank and name. Then we drove off quickly to Kololo and I went to sleep. I don’t know what he [Museveni] felt, but for me I felt that trouble was brewing. And unfortunately for me, the paper which I had signed during the rescue was taken to Oyite Ojok (army chief of staff]. I think he ordered my arrest.”
Three days after the rescue of his brother, Saleh was arrested. He was tricked into going to Mbuya Military Barracks where he was arrested and tortured for two weeks. When Museveni learnt about Saleh’s ordeal, he confronted Muwanga and it is said that the irate Museveni vowed that if his brother was murdered, Muwanga and Ojok would also lose their lives.

The bush war
About two days later, Saleh was released by Ojok. Saleh returned to Kidepo. When Museveni led 42 men to launch the Bush War on February 6, 1981 after the disputed 1980 elections, Saleh was in Kidepo where he was detained.
Saleh later escaped and hid in Kampala where then Lieutenant Edward Katumba Wamala, an officer of the UNLA, who had thrown in his lot with Museveni’s NRA rebels, smuggled him to Luweero where he joined the rebels in mid-1981.