SV: {UAH} Pojim/WBK: 1966-68: Most turbulent years of Obote rule

".....The introduction of a new Constitution seems to have left some of his colleagues with a bad taste in the mouth as on May 24, 1967. Senior minister Adoko Nekyon, who was also Obote's cousin and president of the National Association of the Advancement of Muslims, left cabinet. Also leaving the cabinet at the same time was Godfrey Binaisa, the Attorney General.

Parliament was turned into a Constituent Assembly to adopt a new Constitution, which was done easily.
After the adoption of the new Constitution, another senior minister disagreed with the president.
According to the 1968-69 African Contemporary Records by Colin Legum and John Drysdale, "On July 10, 1967, president Obote dismissed Mr Cuthbert Obwangor, his minister of Planning and Economic Development …following a public disagreement over the new Constitution."

....."

 

GOOK,

Why was Adoko Nekyon always all over, in and out, in and out?

Any explanation?

Noc'la gaumoy

"WE FORM THE CULTURE THAT FORMS US"….noc'la gaumoy.

Den torsdag, 6 augusti 2015 13:26 skrev Gook <grakanga@gmail.com>:

Ocen,

Look at the policy instruments of that govt. the direction it was taking and the achievements it made amidst all those other destructions!

Bujangali was already in discussion, the Africanisation of trade and administration!

What policy document and or action has the present govt devised and carried out in the past 30 years of peace good will and " clearheaded ness"?

If that govt hadn't been " rudely interrupted" by Amin et al...how far would we be by now? 

Would comparing ourselves to Singapore be off the mark?

Just thinking aloud!

Sent from Gook's iPatch!

"What you are we once were, what we are   you shall be!"

An inscription on the walls of a Roman catacomb.

On 4 aug 2015, at 17:56, john kwitonda <kwitonda4@gmail.com> wrote:

kawenkene had planned the attacks earlier. he planned the crisis to achieve this forced unitary? no wonder Uganda will nver go anywhere with this system. it only produces killers and corruption

On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 6:50 PM, Moses Nekyon <musanap@gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/PeoplePower/turbulent-years-Obote-rule/-/689844/2697346/-/l1oerxz/-/index.html

1966-68: Most turbulent years of Obote rule

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To achieve his goal of a unitary state, Milton Obote (R) suspended the 1962 Constitution first before going on to oust Kabaka Muteesa II (L). FILE PHOTO 

By Henry Lubega

Posted  Sunday, April 26   2015 at  01:00

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In September 1968, Milton Obote marked a decade in elective politics having joined the legislative assembly in 1958. The Lubiri attack in May 1966 was the last nail in the coffin of what had been said in the Uganda Legislative Council (LEGCO) 12 years earlier.
On May 16, 1958, in the LEGCO he said: "If the government is going to develop this country on a unitary basis, how on earth can a government develop another state within a state? Does the government really think that when self-government comes to this country the state of Buganda will willingly give up the powers it has already got now in order to join with other outlying districts, or provinces? I don't think so." That was according to the pamphlet Dr Obote's Decade: Ten Years in Parliament, published by the Milton Obote Foundation.

Less than a decade later, when he was at the helm of leadership, he ensured there was no state developing within the State.
To achieve his goal of a unitary state, he suspended the Constitution first before going on to oust the Kabaka (Muteesa II). With the suspension of the Constitution and trouble fomenting within his party, Obote went on to arrest five of his senior and close ministers Grace Ibingira, Dr Emmanuel Lumu, George Magezi, Balaki Kirya and Mathias Ngobi.

Barely two months later, on April 15, a new temporary Constitution, commonly known as the 'pigeon hole' constitution, was introduced which paved way for an executive president and abolished the post of prime minister.
The introduction of a new Constitution seems to have left some of his colleagues with a bad taste in the mouth as on May 24, 1967. Senior minister Adoko Nekyon, who was also Obote's cousin and president of the National Association of the Advancement of Muslims, left cabinet. Also leaving the cabinet at the same time was Godfrey Binaisa, the Attorney General.

Parliament was turned into a Constituent Assembly to adopt a new Constitution, which was done easily.
After the adoption of the new Constitution, another senior minister disagreed with the president.
According to the 1968-69 African Contemporary Records by Colin Legum and John Drysdale, "On July 10, 1967, president Obote dismissed Mr Cuthbert Obwangor, his minister of Planning and Economic Development …following a public disagreement over the new Constitution."

Tightening grip on power
With this trend of events from his political allies, Obote sought ways of tightening his grip on power. On September 8, 1967, a new act – the Public Order Act – came into force.
It was aimed at checking protests by the opposition and it divided the now abolished kingdoms into administrative districts as Obote had hinted in his LEGCO speech in 1958.
Buganda was divided into the four districts of Masaka, West Mengo, Mpigi and Central Buganda. The same Constitution also provided for preventive detention.

Having purged those he thought to be his enemies and put them in Luzira prison, Obote was left with the Buganda problem which came about following the attack on the palace resulting in the exiling of Kabaka Muteesa II.
He was left with two issues to deal with; the Buganda question and making the new constitution work.
But the situation in Buganda remained a thorn in his flesh. In February 1968, while coming from Luzira prisons, Obote survived an attack when the vice president's car was mistaken to be his. A group of discontented Baganda, led by a Dan Kamanyi, ambushed the convoy close to Silver Springs Hotel in Bugolobi.

In retaliation, Internal Affairs minister Basil Bataringaya on April 16, 1968, extended the state of emergency in Buganda indefinitely. But the opposition saw the extension as a political move, not a security one.
Then Leader of Opposition in Parliament Alexander Latim (DP) insisted that, "The only reason for doing so was purely political."

During the annual UPC conference at Lugogo Indoor Stadium in June 1968, Obote (R) got praise and support from Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere (L)

With an attempt on Obote's life, unspecified numbers of MiG fighter jets were imported from Russia, complete with Russian instructors.

Support from Nyerere
During the annual UPC conference at Lugogo Indoor Stadium in June 1968, to which he had invited members of the Mulungushi Club like presidents Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Kenyan vice president Arap Moi, Obote got support.
Addressing the conference on behalf of the club, Nyerere said: "When you consider that one of the serious tasks facing political parties in Africa is the removal of out-modelled and useless institutions and their replacement with modern institutions of government capable of producing fruits of independence for the people of Africa and bearing in mind the problems the UPC had inherited in this respect, I want to suggest quite seriously that the UPC faced a greater problem of institution transformation than any of her sister parties in East Africa, and that therefore the UPC has been more successful than any of her sister parties of the Mulungushi Club- and certainly more successful than TANU [Tanganyika African National Union]."

According to the 1968-69 annual survey and documents, Obote responded to Nyerere's praise of UPC's success in dealing with the out-modelled institutions, saying: "I don't need to waste time arguing with feudalists and those who advocate for class-consciousness, special position and tribal differences."
He added: "Word must go out from this conference that the UPC meant to have democracy in Uganda based on African culture which was understood by the people of Uganda and which was practical in every sense in their daily lives. Any foreigner, who believes they know anything about democracy, should offer his service to his own nation."

Emergency powers

With such rhetoric coming from the president, his next move did not come as a surprise to many when he declared emergency powers through the Emergency Powers Act. This came into effect on November 1, 1968.
The Act covered a wide range of areas including giving the relevant ministers the powers to detain people without trial, restriction of people's movement and the deportation of non-Ugandans. The Act also gave selected ministers powers to amend and suspend any law, including prohibiting strike actions in the country.
Following the passing of the law, the first two victims were Abu Mayanja and Rajat Neogy, an editor of the Transition News magazine. The two were charged with publishing and printing a seditious publication. Mayanja had penned a letter in which he said "there are 'rumours' that the appointment of Africans into judiciary posts was mainly for tribal reasons."

Following their arrest, Prof Ali Mazrui issued a statement criticising the government, saying: "I personally know of no two people who have contributed more to the intellectual liveliness of Ugandan than Abu Mayanja and Rajat Neogy."
"I do not always see eye to eye with either of them. In fact, Abu Mayanja and myself have been part in the main hall of Makerere and the difference between us were real. But Uganda's reputation as an open society was secure for so long as there was one Abu Mayanja free to speak out his mind and a one Transition leading the rest of Africa in sheer intellectual verve. There is a sense in which intellectual freedom is indivisible. One day like this I feel lonely and shaken."

Despite the political vagaries the regime was going through until 1968, it managed to record some tangible social and economic results. One of the most outstanding social achievements was the introduction of social security which required employees to contribute five per cent of their salary and their employers marching it.
In the same vain, the government set out an Africanisation committee which on October 3, 1969, published its first report on the Africanisation of commerce and industry in the country.

In its report, the committee recommended that private companies operating in the country should be forced to Africanise all its positions held by non-Ugandan or Africans within the next five years.
On trade, it recommended that non-Ugandans should be barred from trading in rural areas and should also not be allowed to trade or operate in certain parts of towns across the country.
According to the African Contemporary Records, the ban was aimed at bringing indigenous people into main stream business that had been earlier on been dominated by foreigners, mostly people of Asian origin.
"Measures were to be taken by government to avail the people with financial resources to enable them get involved in trade and other business ventures," the African Contemporary Records says.
To those in the formal employment, the committee recommended that clerical related positions, non-technical and non-executive positions in private and foreign owned firms operating in Uganda should all be Africanised within one year.

All company owners were given up to the beginning of 1970 to implement the committee's recommendation of having those three categories of posts filled by Ugandans.
On July 10, 1969, Jinja was the centre of attraction as the president switched on the last of the 10, 15,000KW generators at the Owen Falls Dam, completing the construction of the Hydro power plant which had started in 1954.
At the function, the Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) stated that by 1972 the demand for power in the country would be more than what is produced.

The 1968-69 African Contemporary Records states that the president directed UEB to prepare for a new scheme for a new power station at the Murchison Falls. The new dam was expected to produce a minimum of 600,000KW and built underground not to affect the falls attraction to tourists.
However, a couple of years earlier, 1966 to be precise, government had approached the World Bank to fund the construction of the Bujagali power project and they were turned away. The World Bank advised the Uganda government to exploit ways of having a joint power project with the Kenyan government.
By the end of 1969, Obote had weathered the political storm from within the party and he had absolute allegiance from the Baganda who remained in government.

lubegah@ug.nationmedia.com

Moses Ocen Nekyon

Democracy is two Wolves and a Lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed Lamb disputing the results.

Benjamin Franklin

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Disclaimer:Everyone posting to this Forum bears the sole responsibility for any legal consequences of his or her postings, and hence statements and facts must be presented responsibly. Your continued membership signifies that you agree to this disclaimer and pledge to abide by our Rules and Guidelines.To unsubscribe from this group, send email to: ugandans-at-heart+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com or Abbey Semuwemba at: abbeysemuwemba@gmail.com.