Oyite-Ojok: One of Uganda’s military icons

Thirty years later. Just more than 30 years ago this month, Uganda also lost one of its leading national heroes, the army chief of staff, MaJ-Gen David Oyite-Ojok, one of the leading lights in the anti-Amin struggle of the 1970s. Sunday Monitor’s Timothy Kalyegira looks at the life of a man who remains one of Uganda’s military heroes.

Last week, the world mourned former South African president Nelson Mandela. Mandela had come to symbolise the anti-apartheid struggle.
Just more than 30 years ago this month, Uganda also lost one of its leading national heroes, the army chief of staff, Major-General David Oyite-Ojok, one of the leading lights in the anti-Amin struggle of the 1970s.

On Saturday, December 2, 1983, a military helicopter carrying Oyite-Ojok crashed at Kasozi in Nakasongola District where he had gone to review the army’s counterinsurgency operations.

His death came as a major national shock. Oyite-Ojok was the last person most Ugandans would have expected to die then and in an apparent accident.

Since the war to oust president Idi Amin, Oyite-Ojok had emerged as a hero to many, a powerful military leader to others, rumoured to be the power behind president Obote, an all-powerful, “untouchable” force in Uganda, in the same league as the then vice president Paulo Muwanga, if not even more powerful.

The country went into a period of national mourning. Radio Uganda and Uganda Television broadcast continuous messages of condolences to the president, vice president, Prime Minister Otema Allimadi and the Government of Uganda.
Crowds in Kampala, Lira and other towns openly mourned this 1979 war hero.

About Oyite-Ojok?
Thirty years since his death, we look back at David Oyite-Ojok, his life, personality, career and the still unresolved question of exactly what caused that helicopter to crash.
Who was this man who continues to intrigue Ugandans three decades after his death?

Oyite-Ojok was born on April 15, 1940 in Loro in the then Lango District. He attended Loro Primary School. For his junior secondary school he enrolled in the Kyebando African High School in Kampala, between 1957 and 1958.
He then went on to Nabumali High School in Mbale District from 1958 to 1962. After joining the army, then called the Uganda Rifles, in 1963, he was sent to the Mons Officer Cadet School in England.

Upon his return, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant that same year, 1963, and posted to the First Infantry Battalion in Jinja, where he served as Platoon Commander, Intelligence Officer, adjutant, and Company Commander.

Oyite-Ojok was then transferred to the Fourth Infantry Battalion in Mbarara in 1966. He was deployed at the army’s General Headquarters in Kampala as a Staff Officer and head of department of the adjutant.

He was later promoted to the army’s Quartermaster General. He spent a year at Cumberley Staff College in England in 1967, and then returned to Uganda.

By this time, as the army’s Quarter-Master General and a cousin to President Milton Obote, Oyite-Ojok was among the most prominent soldiers in the country.

Family life
Not much is known about his personal life. He was married to Rebecca Ojok. She died about two or three years ago in Lira Town. He had a son called Simba, who was somewhat notorious and stubborn student at Namilyango College in the early 1980s.

A brother of his, Lt Col Martin Okech, is said to have been the Director of Music in the Uganda Airforce during the 1970s under Amin.

Like many senior officers in the 1960s Uganda Army, Oyite-Ojok was a multi-linguist. He spoke fluent Nubian, as did the future army commander and head of state, Col Tito Okello and the Commanding Officer of the Second Infantry Brigade, Brig Pierino Okoya.

The future army commander, Idi Amin, for his part, spoke fluent Luo, the mother tongue of the Acholi and Langi.
Maj Gen Amin and Oyite-Ojok were friends and by some accounts respected each other in the army. However, other accounts tell a very different story.

Amin and Oyite-Ojok were both very popular in the army. Amin did not have or show any particular ambition. If he was promoted, so be it; if he was not, he took it in his stride.

On the other hand, Oyite-Ojok was clearly ambitious and saw himself as a future army leader.
He saw in Amin a rival and often tried to impress upon president Obote the threat to his power that Amin presented, although Obote found no real fault with Amin.

On one occasion in the mid 1960s, Oyite-Ojok, now a Lieutenant-Colonel, presented Obote a report alleging that Amin was planning to oust the president in a coup. Alarmed, Obote sought advice from Oyite-Ojok on what he should do.

Assassination plots
“Leave that to me,” Oyite-Ojok replied and prepared plans to have Amin arrested. Amin got word of the move and drove himself to Obote’s office at the Parliament buildings in Kampala dressed in full battle fatigues and carrying two pistols.

In late 1969, according to a former Uganda Army source, Oyite-Ojok conceived a plan to assassinate Brig Okoya and have it blamed on Amin. He got Captain Okot of the Military Police and some operatives of the General Service Unit national intelligence agency. (The Military Police barracks was at that time located at the building in Mengo in Kampala that later became the Army Shop.)

Oyite-Ojok is then said to have looked for Baganda soldiers. After the attack on the palace of Kabaka Edward Mutesa I in May 1966, the Baganda deeply resented Obote and Oyite-Ojok calculated that they would be a natural choice in any assassination operation, especially against anybody from the northern part of the country.

He got Captain Frederick (“Smutts”) Guweddeko and Lt Kasule Lutalo who worked at the Gulu Airforce base and made them tortured to confess to the murder of Okoya. A 25kg stone was suspended from their testicles to extract confessions from them, but they refused to yield.

They insisted that they were Christians and that they could not shed innocent blood of anybody and on behalf of anybody. They were later sent to Luzira prison.

Oyite-Ojok reportedly visited them at Luzira and mocked them, calling them fools for failing to implicate Amin and as a result losing the opportunity for promotion and money that he had to offer them. You stay here and rot in jail, Oyite-Ojok reportedly declared.

On Amin’s neck
In mid December 1970, Oyite-Ojok is reported to have tried to liquidate Amin. One night that month, Oyite-Ojok drove alone to the Malire Barracks in his dark green Mercedes Benz car.

He selected a handful of junior soldiers at random: Private John Odongo, an Acholi; Private John Mukuba, a Munyankole; Private Peter Aboko, a Langi; Private Isaac Bakka, a Lugbara; Private James Katwesigye, a Munyankole; and others.

Oyite-Ojok stationed Bakka and Aboko near the Makerere University main gate. Mukuba and Odongo were taken to Bulange, and Katwesigye and another soldier were put near the Uganda Bookshop Press on Balintuma Road on Namirembe, a hill overlooking Kampala City.

These young soldiers were all from the Malire Mechanized Reconnaissance Regiment. Oyite-Ojok told them to look out for a cream Peugeot 403 with two special radio military antennas on it. As soon as they saw it, Oyite-Ojok ordered, they were to shoot at it.

As they stood waiting that night, Bakka turned to Aboko and asked him if the car in question was not that of the Army Commander, Major General Idi Amin. There was only one car in Uganda with that description and this car belonged to Amin.
Bakka asked why Oyite-Ojok should want to assassinate Amin and moreover, why he should involve these soldiers in this illegal action.

Bakka felt that they should defy Oyite-Ojok’s orders. He reminded Aboko of what had happened to Capt Guweddeko and Lt Kasule after the murder of Okoya. If the officers had been tortured, how much more privates like them, now waiting in ambush for Amin?

As they discussed the matter, a cream Peugeot 403 with two antennas suddenly appeared along the Makerere-Nakulabye road past Makerere University. It was about 2am in a cold Kampala.
It was Amin, at the wheel and unaccompanied by any bodyguard.

Amin noticed the two soldiers, stopped, and asked them what they were doing near the university. Bakka told him that they had asked themselves that question several times and for several hours that night.
He opened a back door and off they drove as they narrated their story of how Oyite-Ojok had recruited them and several other soldiers into this plot to assassinate Amin.

He sent them off on leave for 14 days. That day Oyite-Ojok realised that his plan to assassinate Amin had failed but as Quartermaster-General, he could not take action against the soldiers.
These accounts, if true, suggest a darker, more scheming and dangerous side of Oyite-Ojok than the sociable people’s man he often came across as in public.

He was part of the discussions surrounding the arrest of Amin at the time of the January 1971 Commonwealth summit in Singapore.

The day of the military coup, January 25, 1971 that ousted president Obote, Oyite-Ojok was at the Parliament buildings. He narrowly escaped arrest by the mutineers.
The Israeli military attaché to Uganda, Col Baruch Bar-Lev, asked the Amin loyalists if Oyite-Ojok had been captured or killed. When they said he was still at large, Bar-Lev is reported to have declared, “Then the coup has not yet succeeded”.

Bar-Lev reflected the widespread view that Oyite-Ojok was a powerful and well-trained soldier, able to reverse even an apparently successful coup.

Flees the country
Oyite-Ojok fled the country into southern Sudan via Adjumani and headed for a place called Owiny Kibul. He did not immediately travel to Tanzania, as most historical accounts frequently state it.
At Owiny Kibul, Oyite-Ojok started to put together a guerrilla force that would fight the Amin government, made up mostly of Obote loyalists.

Many of these first recruits into the anti-Amin struggle, however, died of cholera in their training camps. This force, called Kikoosi Maluum, later re-located to Tanzania where with the support of the Tanzanian government of president Julius Nyerere it got better facilities and arms.

In the 1970s now as a guerrilla, Oyite-Ojok made several secret visits to Uganda. While in Kampala, he usually stayed in disguise at the Soweto Hotel on Bombo Road (later renamed the Equatorial Hotel), travelling on a Sudanese passport.
The Kikoosi Maluum operated several high-speed, eight-seater boats from a landing site in Kisumu, Kenya and made incursions into Uganda on Lake Victoria, sometimes sailing as far as Masaka or Mayuge.

The guerrilla force engaged in the business of smuggled Ugandan coffee and with some of the proceeds, bought weapons which they then hid in Mayuge. It might be this experience with smuggled coffee that made president Obote to appoint Oyite-Ojok in the 1980s as the chairman of the Coffee Marketing Board.

who is he?

Oyite-Ojok was born on April 15, 1940 in Loro in the then Lango District. He attended Loro Primary School. For his junior secondary school he enrolled in the Kyebando African High School in Kampala, between 1957 and 1958.
He then went on to Nabumali High School in Mbale from 1958 to 1962. After joining the army, then called the Uganda Rifles, in 1963, he was sent to the Mons Officer Cadet School in England.

Attempts on Idi Amin’s life

In December 1970, Oyite-Ojok is reported to have tried to kill Amin. One night, he drove alone to the Malire barracks in his dark green Mercedes Benz.

He selected a handful of junior soldiers at random: Private John Odongo, an Acholi; Private John Mukuba, a Munyankole; Private Peter Aboko, a Langi; Private Isaac Bakka, a Lugbara; Private James Katwesigye, a Munyankole; and others.

Oyite-Ojok stationed Bakka and Aboko near the Makerere University main gate. Mukuba and Odongo were taken to Bulange, and Katwesigye and another soldier were put near the Uganda Bookshop Press on Balintuma Road in Namirembe, a hill overlooking Kampala City.

These young soldiers were all from the Malire Mechanised Reconnaissance regiment. Oyite-Ojok told them to look out for a cream coloured Peugeot 403 with two special radio military antennas on it. As soon as they saw it, Oyite-Ojok ordered, they were to shoot at it.

However, the soldiers later developed cold feet and when Amin appeared, they instead joined him in the car an revealed to him the assassination plot. Oyite-Ojok’s plan failed and Amin would instead hunt for him.

When Milton Obote missed Oyite-Ojok

On the eve of the 1985 coup, Brigadier Bazillio Olara Okello’s men reached Bombo, where Opon Acak’s last defence line for Kampala was. It was overrun at around 9pm and Opon Acak took off for Kampala, while we were at president’s office.
After failing to get Opon Acak on the Walkie-talkie to get an update on the mutiny, one of Obote’s aides suggested to call the house, but his wife picked the phone and said Opon Acak was home resting.

Out of disgust, Obote (R) lifted some books and banged them on the table, saying, “There you are. These are the type of commanders we have. Oyite Ojok would have reported to me first before going to bed. Let us go and sleep and hope we shall wake up alive tomorrow.”