From the grace of State House Entebbe to exile in Lusaka: Revealing Dr Milton Obote’s 20 quiet years

For the 20 years that he lived in exile in Zambia, Apollo Milton Obote kept a low profile. Almost never seen in public, limited associates, gave less than five media interviews and strictly adhered to his asylum conditions.
To date, many Zambians do not know the late Ugandan president lived in Lusaka. He was “too quiet”. Many know the busy-and-famed Obote Avenue in Kitwe town than the man after whom it is named.

Obote spent most of his time at home reading, chatting with comrades – mainly from the liberation era, family and the Ugandans here.
“President Obote was a friendly person and I am one of the people who used to visit him regularly, and a number of other friends of his from old times, just to give him encouragement to live on,” said Vernon Mwaanga, a renowned Zambian diplomat and politician, in an interview.
Dr Okiror Oumo, Uganda’s High Commissioner to Zambia during the Obote II government and resident in Lusaka since 1985, explained that “Dr Obote kept his communication to the minimum” while he was here.

He was endowed with many capacities, but he spent most of his time reading and was “writing his memoirs,” said Dr Oumo.
Born in 1925 in Uganda, Obote was president of the East African nation twice, each time toppled. He led Uganda to independence in 1962 but was ousted by Idi Amin in 1971, forcing him into exile in Tanzania but returned and was re-elected President in 1980.

He was again toppled by his army commander, General Tito Okello, in 1985. For the second time, Obote ran into exile.
This time, Zambia was to be his home until his death in 2005, aged 80, in South Africa – a country he fought to liberate. He had been take there for treatment.

Zambia’s open arms
“Milton Obote had been a fellow fighter for Southern Africa’s freedom and so we had to receive him. My task was to look after Milton Obote. For 20 years, he lived in Zambia. He lived humbly,” wrote Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s president between 1964 and 1991, in his KK’s Diary column, which was published in The Post newspaper.
He added: “I received no complaints or pressure related to Milton Obote getting asylum in Zambia. Nobody protested to me.”
To prove Kaunda’s statement that “we willingly received him”, upon their arrival in late 1985, Obote and his entourage that included about eight or 10 of his ministers was accommodated at State Lodge in Lusaka.

About 200 to 300 “young people” that came with Obote were kept in various parts of Lusaka, according to Dr Oumo, and “some are still here to this day”.

Keeping up with presidential status, after State Lodge, Obote was moved to house number 15 Dunduza Chisidza Road in Lusaka’s posh-and-quiet Longacres suburb.

It became his home until his demise. Mwaanga explained the significance of the new Obote residence. “The house used to be the late Mainza Chona’s house when he served as Vice President of the Republic of Zambia.”

Even now, the house is opposite the Vice-President’s residence and about two kilometres from State House.

Keeping a low profile
Mwaanga said Obote led a “very quiet life” while in exile and was “almost never seen in public places”.
According to him, Obote mainly associated with the Ugandan colleagues he came with, most of them “very highly trained” doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants and teachers, who often kept him company.

Mwaanga, Zambia’s foreign minister at different times under three presidents, explained that Obote was very conscious that he was in exile and kept a very low profile, which was one of the conditions of the asylum given by the Lusaka Government.
The conditions were meant to avoid creating complications and denting the relations between the governments of Zambia and Uganda. Mr Mwaanga admitted, “I think he succeeded in doing that.” Despite Obote’s quiet lifestyle, President Yoweri Museveni was still dissatisfied.

“The Uganda government of president Museveni raised issues with us about Obote from time to time and we assured them that we will not permit him to take part in politics because that was part of the asylum conditions given to him by the previous government and we inherited those conditions,” recalled Mwaanga about his stint as Foreign Affairs Minister in the Frederick Chiluba government that succeeded Kaunda’s.

Notwithstanding the Obote ‘issue’, ties between Kampala and Lusaka were cordial.

“No! (It didn’t strain the Zambia-Uganda relationship) because Obote didn’t participate in Ugandan politics from here.That would have violated his asylum conditions,” Mwaanga insisted.

Ironically, President Museveni was in Lusaka for the historic 2001 summit that agreed on the transformation of Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to African Union (AU), but did not visited Obote, his predecessor who lived a stone throw away from the hotel he was lodging.

Fear for his life
Obote’s reservation however, was not just because of the asylum conditions. According to Dr Oumo, the Uganda government wanted to assassinate some exiled leaders including Obote hence the former president’s movements were “curtailed a lot” and “it was best for him to keep a low profile”.

He was not a man that liked moving around too much, he was a very quiet person but still he had to keep a low profile “because of the threats we kept receiving” from Kampala, Dr Oumo explained.

Kaweche, Kaunda’s son and a friend of the Obote children, also acknowledges that the Obotes led a quiet and normal life.
“Once in a while we would invite him (Obote) to join us like when we would go to Kasaba Bay [for leisure]. But he spent most of his time to himself,” said Kaweche in an interview. We were friends with the family from the time he was president and when they had problems, they came to stay with us, he said. “I don’t remember them getting involved in any issues that would put them in the spotlight,” Kaweche explained.

Security at the Obote home was high. State police and the intelligence kept a close eye on him for his safety. Not everyone could meet the former president, either.

The Zambian government provided the security for Obote and ensured his “security and safety while on the Zambian soil”, said Dr Oumo – a man who quit his ambassadorial post after the Obote II oust.

“What kept him going was the hope that things will be okay one day, again. He kept telling me that ‘we have not failed but we have not succeeded yet’,” Dr Oumo said.

He also helped the former president pen his memoirs, which are yet to be published, dependant on the family.
Former ministers, close friends, aides, Dr Oumo and Mrs Miria Obote kept contact with the outside world on behalf of Obote.

Maintaining links with the Mulugushi crew
Having been part of the Mulungushi Club – a group comprising Kaunda, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and himself – aimed at fighting colonialism in Southern Africa, Obote was not lonely in Zambia, after all.

With a wide network of friends from liberation movements like South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), Namibia’s South Western Africa Peoples’ Organidation (SWAPO) and Zambia’s political elites who were educated at the prestigious Makerere University. Obote had enough friends to chat with.

“Obote never gave interviews until the last two or three years before his demise” because he did not like exposure, according to Dr Oumo.

He was a “very timid and quiet person” but used to work from underneath and very efficient, the ex-envoy said.

After Obote gave an interview to a BBC journalist, Dr Oumo recalled, he told the interviewer “not to interview him again”. It was a like premonition. Not long after that, he died.

In a rare interview with Zambia’s The Post newspaper in 2003, Dr Obote lambasted corrupt African presidents. “Obote said he hoped Idi Amin would live longer so that he could suffer the same way he tortured and traumatiSed Ugandans during his leadership,” The Post quoted the aging statesman.

Though ‘officially’ he was not participating in Uganda politics, Obote was still the head of his Uganda Peoples’ Congress (UPC) from Lusaka.

“He wanted to groom a few people around him and show them the way, but he was going to retire at home and let the young ones take the mantle,” Dr Oumo explained.

Not so rosy
Somehow, Obote’s stay in Lusaka was not all rosy as government rhetoric portrayed.
In 2000, The Post reported that Obote was “sleeping in a garage” for five months because his house was undergoing renovations.

Due to government’s delays to pay the contractor, the renovations were prolonged and he was “sharing the make-shift bathroom and toilet with his security men”, The Post quoted Government sources.

“Sometimes he asks some people close to him to pray for him so that he can go back to his country because he is tired of living like a dog when he is a former president,” anonymous sources told The Post.

But the Chiluba government underplayed the humiliating ‘garage story’ with the junior minister in charge of Obote’s accommodation claiming ignorance about the former president sleeping ‘rough’.

Uganda’s Presidential Policy Commission member Oweyegha Afuunaduula, was quoted by this newpaper, said it did not matter where Obote slept because “even Jesus Christ was born in a kraal”.

But, according to Dr Oumo, Obote was “well looked after by the Zambian government in every respect – transport, accommodation, food” and other requirements. Other than just being a close ally, perhaps, there was another reason Kaunda hosted Obote.

“For a long time, for over 34 years, I bore guilt for the 1971 removal of Milton Obote from office. I felt that if I had not persuaded Milton Obote to go to Singapore, he might not have gone. Perhaps Idi Amin could not have overthrown him. Perhaps the history of Uganda would have been different,” Kaunda wrote in his KK’s diary in 2005.

Consolation, Kaunda wrote: “now, a few days ago, my aide Duncan Mtonga pointed out to me that perhaps Milton’s going to Singapore helped him to survive the coup.”