Tarehe Sita: Deception by Uganda’s prophets of ruin

Political prophets of doom are back in a new style, ranting and raving. Yes. If you dare hold a different view from what they prophesy, some will summarily pronounce you to be “foolish and naïve”. 

This is the very verdict pronounced upon Ugandans by human rights lawyer Gawaya Tegulle in his edict, ‘The tarehe sita deception and why a new sheriff must march into town’ which appeared on Page 14 of Sunday Monitor, February 11. 

While we may not judge Tegulle, an advocate of the High Court, we can safely remember that his own Lord, Jesus Christ, knowingly warned us against the threat of false prophets. 

If Tegulle were to be objective he would instead have correctly concluded that since Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF) has consistently and continuously defeated opposing enemy groups, it shall, therefore, continue to defeat future adversaries in tandem with Ecclesiastes 1:9. This is a more logical conclusion to draw from the verse.  

50-year history
For those who have traced the more than 50-year history of the UPDF, even from its initial phases as Front for National Salvation (Fronasa), and later as the National Resistance Army (NRA), its current continental posture is too outstanding to overlook. 

More so, chroniclers of UPDF history will recall the Tegulle narrative of imminent UPDF destruction is not a new gimmick but a most repeated, and certainly a most disproved, false prophecy that has been as much repeated as it has been disproved throughout the last 50 years.

To the extent that, today, doomsday prophesying about the UPDF attracts little attention from historians. They have seen much of such come to nought. The star of the UPDF is shining too bright to hide. Even Daily Monitor, June 4, 2010, announced that UPDF is the most trusted public institution in Uganda.  

All who prophesy an end of UPDF have another tightly guarded secret: they do not want the world to recall the historical long list of their false predictions. Prophets of doom stay in business because their funders want to keep the attacked institutions or personalities demonised to deny them more support. 

The long history of the Fronasa-NRA-UPDF struggle testifies to this sustained campaign of predicting ruin as a subversive gimmick to deny popular support to the revolution.

The list of doomsayer’s subversion is long. For instance, their type rubbished the 1960s revolutionary efforts by students who were sensitising their people to abandon backward nomadic farming ways and to embrace modern commercial farming. The modernising effort has succeeded in parts of Uganda like Ankole and is fast catching up elsewhere.  

Later, when the students teamed up with compatriots and pan-African forces to form an anti-dictatorship broad-based national democratic front in the form of Fronasa, some among the exiled Ugandans and some politicians in Uganda laughed off this calling. Today the contribution of Fronasa, and its continuation as NRA-UPDF, to the liberation of Uganda, is not in dispute.  

Even when the NRA captured power, in 1986, some detractors openly refused to accept it was a fundamental change. Doomsayers sustained a lying campaign to hoodwink the people away from supporting the fundamental change by falsely predicting that another force was about to dislodge the NRA.

Indeed, during public debates and in the media, content of the late 1980s featured remarks like “Twakalaba bamekka, namwe mujja kugenda” (we have seen mightier armies than you getting dislodged, even you [NRA-UPDF] shall likewise be removed from government).

Unfortunately, such fake predictions likely misled chaps like Maj Herbert Kikomeko Itongwa to start or join insurgency, as a fashionable frenzy. Indeed, many were thus deceived by false prophets to believe that if the NRA could succeed by starting the war with a mere 27 guns, those with more arms could do better.

The most spectacular instance of this talk about impending NRA ruin was in 1987, at the height of the stone-throwing Holy Spirit Movement/Army (HSM/A) of Alice Auma ‘Lakwena’.

When Lakwena’s HSM arrived in Busoga sub-region, Opposition meetings and media went into jubilation with expectant narratives by false prophets, of Tegulle’s kind, clad in UPC colours and openly celebrating the impeding ruin of the NRA.

However, there was nothing real for the Opposition to celebrate about the stone-throwing antics of Lakwena’s superstitious troops. For, although they appeared to be advancing, the Lakwenas were in real military terms fleeing, albeit from northern Uganda toward Kampala. It would be a matter of time before they would be annihilated.  

The counter insurgency (COIN) operations similarly brought out dozens of false prophets who predicted eminent UPDF ruin. Today, none of them liars loves to be reminded about the false prophesies they spewed out.

Doomsayers were at it when UPDF decided to deploy to war-torn Mogadishu in 2007. Several predicted that it was “Mission Dead on Arrival”. Years later, UPDF is the most celebrated military forces in Somalia, thanks to its military feats and exploits against the enemy. 

The same prophets of calamity predicted instant failure when the UPDF teamed up with FARDC and embarked on Operation Shujaa in DR Congo. No doom has occurred. Instead UPDF is today a most cerebrated forces in the DR Congo for having accomplished what pompous multinational forces failed to do after decades receiving multi-billion dollars’ worth of funding.                        

Ours was to prove that prophets of ruin have attacked Fronasa-NRA-UPDF since its cradle and they will likely keep at it. It is their way of fighting our people by trying to isolate it and downgrading its combat might.

Recorded history, though, indicates false prophets have been around for millennia. The book of Genesis chronicles how Adam and Eve lived in paradise, in the Garden of Eden, until a false prophet, the Serpent, predicted they would receive extra power and glory if they partook of the forbidden fruit.

Tegulle thus is one among the handful of false seers who have, all this while, predicted doom and hoped against hope for the demise of the Uganda Peoples’ resistance struggle.

Another version of their negative efforts is to attack the Sabalwanyi, with intent to isolate him from the struggle of which he is the embodiment. If there is something the Sabalwanyi, Yoweri Museveni, has consistently done, it is to consistently disprove false prophets, especially those who come in the manner of doomsayers.

The writer, Col Okei Rukogota, is the drector-historical and UPDF diarist