Obote met us in TZ after coup

I came to adore Milton Obote in 1958 when I was in Primary Five. He had returned from Nairobi to run for the Lango region seat in the Uganda Legislative Council elections (LEGCO) which he won.

I loved him particularly for his hairstyle.
The dream to meet my idol came true when I went to State House looking for school fees in early 1960s. My father’s business in Kiwumpa-Kasana, Luwero had been destroyed by the Kamya boycott of 1959.

During the boycott, it was declared that anybody seen dealing with an Indian or just being near them would have their property destroyed and my father’s business was dependent on the supply from the Indians. With this kind of boycott, his businesses collapsed and by the time I joined secondary school, he was unable to meet the fees. Having sat home for three years, I decided to go to State House to look for help.

When Obote turned up at his office, he saw me already waiting and asked his guard to take me in. When I told him my problem he asked the guard to take me to Akena Adoko who wrote a letter to the district of Lango, directing them to pay my fees. This made me – I think – the first beneficiary of State House bursary.

I would again have another chance to meet Obote while I was head prefect at Dr Obote College, Boroboro in Lira. Obote had come to open a dormitory. A few years later, we met again at St Mary’s College, Kisubi, where I went for my A-Level during a Physics demonstration. I wanted to tell him that I am the one whom he had helped get a bursary but I did not get the chance.

By the time I finished secondary school I was already a UPC supporter just like it was the case in almost the whole of Lango district. So when I left Kisubi and joined Dar es Salaam University in 1970, I joined the UPC chapter and became its treasurer. When Obote was overthrown in 1971, I was one of the 12 students who went to the State House in Dar es Salaam to welcome him. During that meeting, he told those of us: “Students, the imperialists have struck again.”

At this time, we were ready to be recruited into the army and those who were ready to go included Osindek Wangwor, Ben Ayo Orech, Anthony Okwengye, Joe Amani, Ojok Kamilo and others. But we later withdrew when Kalema, who had recorded our particulars, returned to Uganda.

When I completed my studies in 1973, I was retained by the university as an assistant lecturer of statistics. During my lecturing period I got a scholarship from NORAD to pursue a master degree at the same university. When I completed it in 1975, I joined the East African Community in Arusha as an economist and later became a senior economist until 1978 when the East African Community broke up. After the break up I went back to my teaching job at the University of Dar es Salaam. It was while there that I got involved in the preparation for the Moshi Conference of 1979 and my eventual return as a member of the National Consultative Council (NCC).

Preparing for the Moshi Conference
Sometime in early 1979, while at the university I met Osindek Wangwor, who inquired whether I was aware of a meeting taking place at the campus. He asked me to look around for a group he called the “Discussion Group”. I joined it and would report the proceedings to Obote.
The first discussion I attended centred on a proposed Unity Conference. I also gathered that the proposed conference was to mobilise support from all Ugandans opposed to Amin’s rule.

I noted down all those present and passed on the information to Ben Wacha who later informed Obote as I had been directed. On the third meeting, the numbers had increased and among the new people was Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who was accompanied by a contingent of body guards. I had earlier known that Museveni was the leader of the Front for the National Salvation (FRONASA).

Museveni told the Discussion Group that his mission was to meet Obote the next day and agree on a joint approach to the Unity Conference, then go back to the war front.
I immediately telephoned Ben Wacha and told him to inform Dr Obote to expect Museveni’s visit the next day, only to learn later that the meeting never took place because of an accident on Lake Victoria in which 111 combatants perished. I also later learnt that Obote blamed it on Museveni, Ateker Ejalu and Tito Okello.

On March 21, 1979, while at work, a call came from Msasani Bay, asking me to go there urgently. When I reached there, I found a number of people many of whom I was seeing for the first time, including Moses Apiliga, Luwuliza-Kirunda, George Obua, Justice Emmanuel Oteng, and Dr Willy W. Anokbonggo. Most of them I learnt had come from Lusaka, Zambia. Those who had come from Nairobi included Chris Rwakasisi and Edward Rurangaranga.

Dr Apiliga took charge of all the groups and briefed us about the Unity Conference, which was slated to take place in Moshi in two days’ time. He instructed us to sub-divide ourselves into several “Discussion” and “Liberation” groups so that we may boost UPC’s participation in the Conference as a party.

Mr Ben Wacha, Mr Fabian Odongo, and myself found ourselves in one faction called the “National Unity and Reconciliation Group”led by Ambassador Eric Otema Allimadi [later became prime minister and minister for foreign affairs in the Obote II regime].

The different groups created were given different names. Luwuliza-Kirunda headed the UPC Lusaka group, there was the Uganda Liberation Group (ULG), and others came from Stockholm, Barbados, United Kingdom, USA, Geneva, Cairo, and other places.

The conference
At the conference in Moshi, the first day was characterised by confusion and chaos; at the centre of it all were Professors Tarsis Kabwegyere, Dan Nabudere, George Kanyeihamba, and Yash Tandon, Andrew Kayiira, and Omwony Ojwok. These had formed a Credentials Committee, under the Chairmanship of Prof Kabwegyere. Those who had not been accredited forced their way into the meeting hall, but Kayira disqualified all of us and ordered us out.

The next day, Saturday March 24, 1979, the meeting got underway with Kabwegyere, telling the delegates to consider the need for national unity in their deliberations. But shortly before it was opened, UPC members under different factions met and agreed that Allimadi should be elected chairman of the conference, while the leader of the organisation to be formed was to be Paulo Muwanga.

Unfortunately, the UPC factions were outnumbered and none of our preferred candidates got the posts we wanted. Sixteen days after the Moshi conference, Kampala fell to the combined Tanzania Peoples Defence Forces and exile forces and at the beginning of May, I received a call, asking me to go to Uganda to attend the first NCC meeting.
I was part of the 30 member NCC which acted as the parliament soon after the liberation war until the 1980 elections when a new parliament was elected. When Paulo Muwanga took over as chairman of the Military Commission, he appointed me as deputy finance minister - a post I held until after the December elections.

Uganda after 1971

A month before the liberation of Kampala, representatives of twenty-two Ugandan civilian and military groups were hastily called together at Moshi, Tanzania, to try to agree on an interim civilian government once Amin was removed.
Called the Unity Conference in the hope that unity might prevail, it managed to establish the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) as political representative of the UNLA. Dr. Yusuf Lule, former principal of Makerere University, became head of the UNLF executive committee.

As an academic rather than a politician, Lule was not regarded as a threat to any of the contending factions. Shortly after Amin’s departure, Lule and the UNLF moved to Kampala, where they established an interim government. Lule became president, advised by a temporary parliament, the National Consultative Council (NCC). The NCC, in turn, was composed of representatives from the Unity Conference.
Conflict surfaced immediately between Lule and some of the more radical of the council members who saw him as too conservative, too autocratic, and too willing as a Muganda to listen to advice from other Baganda.

After only three months, with the apparent approval of Nyerere, whose troops still controlled Kampala, Lule was forcibly removed from office and exiled. He was replaced by Godfrey Binaisa, a Muganda like Lule, but one who had previously served as a high-ranking member of Obote’s UPC.