{UAH} There is no way Mengo could have planned a coup in 1966

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There is no way Mengo could have planned a coup in 1966

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By Peter Mulira

Posted  Thursday, June 25  2015 at  01:00

In Summary

It is preposterous to attempt to tag Kabaka Yeka to the crisis because by the time Daudi Ochieng moved the motion of no confidence in the prime minister, Kabaka Yeka had long dissipated. Only Ochieng and Amos Sempa sat in the National Assembly on the KY ticket at the time.

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Mr Faustin Mugabe's article in the Sunday Monitor of June 21 ("Police officer tips Obote on coup plot by Muteesa") in which he claimed that there was a planned coup in 1966 engineered by Sir Edward Muteesa and the Mengo establishment contained a number of exaggerations and misrepresentations which need correction. For Mengo to be able to mount a coup, it must have had an army it controlled or a section of the national army, which was almost 90 per cent Nilotic in composition under its beck and call.

Indeed, the sequence of events starting with the detention of the five ministers at a cabinet meeting exonerate Mengo in the planning of a coup. The five ministers who were arrested were all members of the governing Uganda Peoples Congress, which as we all know, was at loggerheads with Mengo. Secondly, only one minister was a Muganda so if Mugabe is to be believed, it meant Mengo had more control over non-Baganda ministers than those from Buganda. To believe this would be naïve.

This leads us to the evidence of the detainees themselves. It was a legal requirement that an inquiry would be carried out in the conduct of the detainees and a confidential report made to the minister of internal affairs. On July 27, 1966, during the debate on the Deportation (Validation) Bill, the Attorney General, Godfrey Binaisa, revealed to the National Assembly that in his confidential report, Justice Russell, who had been appointed to carry out the inquiry, said he was satisfied that there had been a bitter rivalry in the ruling political party UPC and that the five detainees wanted to see Dr Obote superseded as leader of the party and assume control of the government.

Binaisa also revealed that evidence given at the inquiry showed that the former minister of state Grace Ibingira had made it clear that he and other members of the Bantu group were opposed to the Nilotic leadership and there was a secret plan to overthrow them. While Ibingira could have been framed, the question still remains as to why Binaisa would cover up Sir Edward and the Mengo government.

Mugabe overlooks the fact that after Obote usurped power on February 22, only Muteesa and Mengo stood on the side of constitutionalism while all the MPs who had earlier passed a resolution to censor the prime minister went into hiding. On February 28, Sir Edward wrote to Obote complaining that "Our first duty is to the people of this country. The people decided in their wisdom that the best way to serve them is through the means laid down in the Constitution, which they themselves made." On February 3, Sir Edward wrote that he could not be a party to an illegal exercise and that "every wrong step we take adds to the burden of the people of the rest of Africa."

These were not words of a coup maker and, indeed, the actions of Muteesa's Katikkkiro, Joash Mayanja-Nkangi, speak volumes. Responding to the criticism that the Mengo establishment had not been confrontational enough in opposing Obote's actions, Nkangi issued a statement on March 10 in which he calmly reposed: "The Lukiiko knows that the Constitution belongs to the people and considers that it is still in force and that is why the Lukiiko asked Dr Obote to reinstate it." One would expect that leaders of a failed coup would be scampering for their lives instead of sitting around and issuing temperate statements.

Perhaps one member of the Lukiiko spoke for many while moving a motion supporting Sir Edward's stand on March 7 when he said: "It was absurd to see that the prime minister had suspended the Constitution after an allegation by himself earlier that the reason why the five ex-ministers had been arrested was because they planned to overthrow the Constitution." It should be noted that up to his time, Obote had not claimed that Sir Edward and Mengo had been behind a coup attempt although he must have known about Sir Edward's approach to the British High Commissioner on February 9, seeking military assistance should things get out of control. This suggests that the association of Mengo with a coup attempt was an afterthought.

The 1966 crisis must be traced to the wrangles within UPC, which included the Kakonge-Nekyon confrontation over communism, Kakonge- Ibingira rivalry for primacy in the party, the drive to form a southern group UPC, rival camps within the army and Obote's insecurity in all this. Soon after things calmed down, Obote visited Mbarara where he held a rally at which he claimed the Americans had given Ibingira one million dollars to take over power in Uganda. We need more research on this subject.

It is preposterous to attempt to tag Kabaka Yeka to the crisis because by the time Daudi Ochieng moved the motion of no confidence in the prime minister, Kabaka Yeka had long dissipated. Only Ochieng and Amos Sempa sat in the National Assembly on the KY ticket at the time. The motion was supported by 66 members with one abstention, which suggests cross-party support.

Mr Mulira is a lawyer. peter.mulira89@gmail.com

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