When Moi deported Obote family fleeing Amin coup

President Daniel arap Moi’s relationship with President Obote during his second regime in 1981-85 was not very cordial. Moi had mistreated Obote’s family when he was deposed by Idi Amin in 1971.
Obote was overthrown while he was away for the Commonwealth Heads of State summit in Singapore. While returning from Singapore, Obote landed in Kenya before proceeding to Tanzania. His family had been left behind in Uganda.
A few days after the 1971 coup, with the help of a family friend who prefers not to be named, Obote’s family crossed the border and sneaked into Kenya with a plan of proceeding to Tanzania where Obote had settled in exile.

The escape to Kenya
“Shortly after Amin’s takeover, working with my wife, we planned and executed an escape plan for Mama Miria Obote Kalule to Kenya, where she was to proceed to join her husband in Tanzania. In her first escape, she disguised as a Congolese woman and drove herself with her sister across to Kenya,” the family friend narrated.
“Barely two days after her arrival in Kenya, I was at the Parliament building where my office was when I got a call from a Special Branch officer in Malaba telling me that Mama Miria and her children had been deported back to Uganda on the orders of then vice president Moi, who also doubled as the Internal Affairs minister.
“The Special Branch officer told me the plan was to take them to northern Uganda. He asked for my help since he was not sure of their safety as they were to be taken that very night.”

The former senior civil servant says at the time of the call, members of the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) were having their meeting in Uganda. One of the members on the Tanzanian delegation was Joseph Nyerere, a brother to the then Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere.
“Early evening of that day, as the cocktail for the Eala members was just starting, I called Joseph Nyerere on the side and told him about the fate of Obote’s family. I asked if he could help in any way to save the family. He disappeared for a while and I don’t know what he did. Later that evening, the deportation of the Obote family was the lead news item on BBC Focus on Africa,” he recalls.

With the deportation known internationally, the next day, President Amin sent a helicopter to Tororo and picked up the family back to Kampala. During an interview with Daily Monitor last year, Amin’s former press secretary, Idris Njuki, said: “To show the world that Amin meant no harm to the Obote family, a press conference was called at State House and he handed her [Mama Miria Obote and her children] over to her father, Kalule Setala. She went and stayed with her father in Kawempe, Kampala, and for her safety, a roadblock was set up not far from her father’s home.”
Despite the handover to her parents, individuals in the security set-up in the country who were sympathetic to her tipped off the former senior civil servant telling him that Mama Miria’s life was at stake as long as she did not leave the country.

“A second escape plan was put in place, the children were booked on an evening bus with their auntie under pseudo names. The children were to be sedated once they reached Jinja so that they reach the border when they were asleep in order not to be asked any questions by the Immigration officers. The next day, I drove Mama Miria in my car to the border disguised as my wife. As a senior government officer, I flashed my identity card at the roadblocks to clear the way for us. The evening of that day, I returned home, Radio Uganda announced that former president’s wife and children were missing and that government was doing all possible to look for them.”

The Obote family passed through Kenya again. Their second return to Nairobi was planned in a way that the government was not to know of their presence. “A private flight was chartered from Wilson Airport [in Kenya] to fly the family out of the country immediately to Tanzania.”
Uganda’s cold relations with Kenya under President Moi between 1981-85 was partly informed by the treatment of Obote’s family at the critical time in 1971 when he had been forced out of power.

[email protected]