[UAH] Lule rises and falls in 68 days - Thought and Ideas - monitor.co.ug

Yhttp://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/ThoughtIdeas/Lule-rises-and-falls-in-68-days/-/689844/1884194/-/o5qrubz/-/index.html

In Summary

President for two months. Wednesday June 19 will mark the day Prof Yusuf Kironde Lule, the fourth president of Uganda, was ousted from power by the National Consultative Council, the post-Amin legislature. His reign from April 12, 1979 to June 19, 1979 is the shortest of any Ugandan leader. Veteran politician and UPC party ideologue YOGA ADHOLA looks back at the dramatic rise and fall of Lule in just 68 days. Henry Lubega also assesses the last 24 hours of the former Ugandan leader.

It is said in August 1978, then Uganda president Idi Amin's Chui (leopard) battalion was getting ready to rebel against him. The next month, the Simba (lion) Battalion based in Mbarara was also at the point of rebellion.

Amin devised a stratagem which would contain these brewing rebellions. When the stratagems were not working, Amin ordered the invasion of Tanzania in the form of the occupation of the Kagera Salient.
In response, the Tanzanians decided that enough was enough. They were not just going to repel the invasion. They were going to fight and get rid of Amin once and for all. As the fighting drew near Kampala, the Tanzanians caused a conference of all Ugandans against Amin in Moshi, Tanzania to come up with a political organisation to take over government upon the fall of Amin. That conference in effect chose the leader of Uganda.

Much as Obote's excellent record in the struggle against Amin should have deserved him a prominent role in the post-Amin era, this is not what came to pass; instead of Obote, it was Prof Lule whose "involvement in the anti-Amin struggles could be measured in a span of a few weeks spent in hotel rooms and caucuses" who was to become president of Uganda after the defeat of Amin.

Tony Arvigan and Martha Honey tell us in their book, War in Uganda: The Legacy of Idi Amin, that Prof Lule arrived in Dar es Salaam accompanied by Dr Bisase, a Mombasa-based dentist during the weekend of March 10, 1979 and booked into a beach hotel outside town. They later moved into the centre of town and were provided Tanzanian security guards as well as transportation.

At the time, it was widely circulated that Lule and Nyerere were friends, dating back to the days when they had studied together in Edinburgh. This was not true at all. The two knew each other casually, but the story of deep friendship was politically convenient and, therefore, could not be denied until much later.

Prof. Lule did meet Nyerere and it is said Nyerere advised him to do two things. One, go to the Moshi conference as an individual, and not part of any anti-Amin group; two, work with Obote since Obote had the largest contingent of forces fighting at the front.

At Obote's home
Lule spent the whole Sunday, March 18, at Obote's residence "where they discussed developments in Uganda and prospects for the future". Tony Arvigan and Martha Honey report that "Obote found Lule evasive about his plans and ambitions. Lule denied he had come to Tanzania because of the unity conference, saying rather he was doing work for the Association of African Universities".

The next day, Lule and Grace Ibingira went to visit Nabudere at the University of Dar es salaam. On this occasion, Tony Arvigan and Martha Honey tell us, Lule said he had come to Tanzania to do Ugandan refugee relief work. He, however, did indicate he had met both Obote and Nyerere. Nabudere briefed the duo on plans for the Moshi Conference.

And that was about all Lule had done in the struggle against Amin. In sharp contrast, Tony Arvigan and Martha Honey tell us that Obote opposed Amin right from the beginning, and never looked back on his word.

While others had to take back their initial support for Amin, "for eight years Obote and his lieutenants did little else but dream and scheme Amin's downfall, and for their own return to power. While many other Ugandans either came to terms with Amin, at least in the early years, or found comfortable careers abroad, Obote single-mindedly worked to overthrow the Field Marshal".

Admittedly, Tony Arvigan and Martha Honey add: "Obote's schemes while numerous, were also characterised by a high degree of ineptitude, indecisiveness and just plain bad luck." However, this admission notwithstanding, there is no denying Obote was the most serious threat to Amin. It was, therefore, not surprising that as the war got to the stage of entering Uganda, Obote constituted the centre-piece of the war propaganda from Tanzania and targeted the anti-Amin forces in Uganda.
How then did Lule eclipse Obote?

It all began when the war had passed Lukaya and the Tanzanians were getting concerned about the inadequacy of their resources to prosecute the war. By this time, the British government had decided the time was ripe to remove Amin.

"Britain undertook to assist Tanzania in several ways. It gave several million pounds ostensibly to help rehabilitate the Kagera Salient, but knowing that the money might find its way into the war effort.
It also put some rather ineffectual pressure on British oil companies, urging them to cut off supplies to Amin. This, the companies were willing to do for a couple of days.

Britain's role 
Most importantly, Britain acted as a messenger between Kenya and Tanzanian governments. 
In their book, Tony Arvigan and Martha Honey point out that Britain forcefully conveyed to Nyerere Kenyan fears that "Tanzania was attempting to install Obote. Nyerere heeded these concerns . . ." 
The same point was made much more forcefully in the memoirs, Time to Declare of Dr David Owen, the British Foreign Secretary at the time. But the Amin issue did not go away.

"Later he was ousted by Tanzanian armed intervention, and we aided Nyerere in the attempt. I will never be sure whether it was wise to do so. The price we extracted from Nyerere for our material support was the promise that a mild, decent former children's doctor should be President rather than Milton Obote. Unfortunately the doctor did not have the necessary authority. The end result was that Obote returned to the Presidency…."

It was in this context that the Tanzanians caused a conference of Ugandans to be convened in Moshi, Tanzania to constitute a political organisation that would assume power upon the collapse of the Amin regime.

Professor T.V. Santhamurthy tells us: "It is important to understand that the Tanzanian government found it necessary to slow down the remarkably swift progress of TPDF in the war against Amin because it was adamant that a Uganda national government and not the Tanzanian forces should replace Amin in control of state power."

To give the conference the appearance of a Ugandan initiative, and simultaneously achieve the objective of marginalising Obote's influence, the organisation of the conference was put in the hands of anti-Obote men. This is the group led by Dan Wadada Nabudere which later came to be known as the Gang of Four. The other members were Yash Tandon, Edward Rugumayo and Omwony Ojok.

While Nyerere made sure that Obote did not go to the conference, Nabudere and his outfit, through a series of procedural hurdles, made sure that most of the UPC members who had gone to the conference were locked out.

Thereafter, although professing to be Marxists, the Nabudere clique made a most un-Marxist alliance with Ibingira, the long-term leader of the anti-national-democratic forces, and with the help of the Tanzanians, proceeded to maneuver Lule's election as chairman of the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) which was formed at the conference.

Clearly the odds against Obote and the UPC were overwhelming. However, as Professor T.V. Santhamurthy, observed in his encyclopaedic book, Obote quickly assessed the situation and came to the view that the newly-formed and constituted UNLF was a heterogeneous group which was hoisted on a petard and was not going to take long before exploding.

This was a stark contrast to the jubilation in the counter-revolutionary camp where people could not see beyond their noses. The forces against national-democratic liberation could not believe their luck with the Pyrrhic victory they had scored against Obote and the UPC. Dan Nabudere and Grace Ibingira described the victory as a coup de grace.

However, the most colorful and representative description was to come from Lule himself. In a moment of extreme elation, at his first public appearance and when he was sworn in as president of Uganda, Lule said in Luganda: "Kyetwayagalizanga embazzi, Kibuyaga asudde" (The tree for which we were searching an axe, the storm has unexpectedly brought it down.)

Luganda miracle
While Lule in his naivety thought by speaking in Luganda, he was communicating in a cryptic manner to the Baganda alone, the message went well beyond its intended audience. The effect of the remark was to dichotomise the politics of Uganda along the old lines: Buganda on the one side, and the rest of the country on the other.

As predicted by Obote, it did not take long for trouble to erupt in the UNLF. At Moshi, led by Ibingira, the anti-national democratic forces had a strategy of using Lule as a proxy while Ibingira stayed on the sidelines waiting to contest the elections. However, a political crisis which was to totally upset this strategy soon ensued.

"Within days of assuming office Yusuf Lule had demonstrated that he was neither agreed with nor was capable of following the unusual power-sharing procedure embodied in the constitution of the Uganda National Liberation Front," notes Tony Arvigan & Martha Honey.

When challenged, Lule defended himself by arguing that the resolutions passed at Moshi and which formed the basis of the UNLF had no legal standing and that he would operate his presidency guided by the 1967 Constitution.

But that was not all, Lule generally treated the Uganda soldiers who had participated in the war as enemies loyal to either Obote or Museveni, leaders of two fighting groups, and consequently refused to allocate funds for paying or even feeding them. He was very contemptuous of the National Consultative Council (NCC), the body set up at Moshi to play the role of an interim parliament.

Then in an attempt to increase the numerical strength of his supporters in the NCC, he appointed 24 ministers and 20 deputy ministers who were to become automatic members of the NCC, and who would easily have outnumbered the 30 members chosen at Moshi. This brought the crisis to a head.

When Lule could not heed to the warnings of the NCC, Nyerere summoned the principal figures in the burgeoning crisis to Mwanza for consultations. At Mwanza, Nyerere categorically told Lule that Tanzania would stick by the resolutions arrived at in Moshi; namely, that supreme power lay with the NCC.
Clear as this message was, Lule did not heed nor did he realise that he had been emasculated from Tanzanian support. He still remained intransigent.

On June 8, an angry NCC adopted a resolution calling on Lule to submit all ministerial and political appointments for deliberation and ratification. After this request was ignored, the NCC met on June 19th to pass a vote of no confidence in Lule, and elected Godfrey Binaisa, a former Attorney General under Obote, to succeed him.

Yusuf Lule had been president for 68 days!