{UAH} BAGANDA, DOMINIC ONGWEN, OBOTE & THE LOST CEREMONIAL PRESIDENCY.
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Indicted LRA war criminal Dominique Ongwen's trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague has seen some interesting twists lately. Some of which Ugandans have long known but kept to themselves. For example that this was a conflict rife with sectarianism on both sides. Ethnic hatred pervasive on both sides. Vicious, barbaric senseless killings on both sides. And also a war that started just when another war had ended in 1986 in the bushes of Luweero district in central Uganda, where 500,000 Baganda were massacred in cold blood under the UNLA regime of Milton Obote in his war with Yoweri Museveni from 1980 to 1986.
What is rarely mentioned outright is that all sides in these two conflicts, the Luweero bush war and the Acholi war, were led by the once so-called Ugandan exiles from Tanzania in the 1970's. They had all come under their infamous armed group called the UNLA (Uganda National Liberation Army). Even LRA's Joseph Kony was a serving soldier in that much dreaded UNLA àrmy. His LRA started with UNLA soldiers from Acholiland. This was the much ill-disciplined force that had taken over Uganda from President Idi Amin in 1979, and then wrecked havoc for seven years without any international outcry except the American Embassy in Uganda. Even the British government trained, financed and supported the UNLA as it slaughtered the Baganda in Luweero district from 1980 to 1986. Museveni himself was initially a defence minister under that same UNLA regime until they quarrelled purportedly over the rigging of the 1980 elections where Museveni first run as an MP for Mbarara municipality and lost. He then went to the bushes to start an armed rebellion even before his election petition was decided on by the High court.
The LRA war was simply the transfer/continuation of that Museveni Vs Obote mayhem from the bushes of Luweero to another location, the Acholi district in Northern Uganda.
Basicallt those who were doing the attacking in the first war in Luweero were now being attacked and on the back foot in Northern Uganda.
The real source of the Museveni-Kony war was the Obote war against the Baganda in Luweero in the 1980's.
Basically both wars are in reality one and the same.
I have also stated before that the LRA was the true soul of Milton Obote's real ideology as evidenced in Luweeri: Tribalism, religious sectarianism, ethnic cleansing, despotism, and the skewed belief that they are the ones entitled to be in power
That was the heretic attitude that the UNLA army came with when they arrived in Kampala hiding behind the Tanzanian forces in 1979.
To this day Ugandans who lived through those UNLA days know them as the worst times in the history of this country: "The Obote II days", or "the dark days of the UNLA" they call it.
Indeed World Bank figures confirm the total economic collapse and the collapse of the state. 1984 is on record for being the year when Ugandans were at their poorest, with Gross National Income per capita estimated at around $200 dollars per person per year. That is about 60 US cents per person per day for survival, (around 2000 Uganda shillings per day at today's dollar rate). Money that they would have to utilize for children's education, clothing, healthcare, transport, housing, electricity bills, clean water if any, and barely a meal a day.
As we all know, the LRA rebel group was basically created after Obote's UNLA army was toppled in 1986. And while claiming persecution since then, in reality Joseph Kony's goal was simply to restore themselves (his UNLA ethnic group) to power under a new formation, and even with the new use of the Lord's name to appear holy and legitimate than another competing group under the famous priestess Alice Lakwena.
Incidentally, they both came from the same region , contained defeated UNLA officers in their ranks, and the Alice Lakwena rebel group also tried to give itself Christian credentials by name as The Holy Spirit Movement.
In reality both were reported to be rife with witchcraft blood rituals, animism and mysterious idolatry.
For some people in the region, after the Alice Lakwena group crumbled, Joseph Kony remained the only military hope for returning to power.
To this day, the only people who can be found openly supporting/defending Joseph Kony (even now on social media) are his own ethnic group, which incidentally is also the same group that dominated the ranks of the infamous UNLA army of Ugandan exiles from Tanzania who run the country to total chaos after President Idi Amin.
In Uganda, the UNLA was commonly referred to as "The Acholi soldiers".
In essence the LRA war was just another unexpected facet of the infighting in the anti-Amin coalition of Ugandan exiles continuing to fight against themselves for power well into the 21st century and upto Central Africa.
Very few historians are able to see this oversight perspective, the bigger picture of the conflict and it's true origins.
When I look at Dominique Ongwen, I see a young man used by Oboteism to fight for their return to power as a sectarian/tribal group.
In brief, all the figureheads of the purported 1979 liberation fought against themselves for power and left a trail of blood for two decades since Amin's departure up to the LRA war. For good measure, they added the 2016 Kasese massacre to the list of their bloodbaths where they are known to have serially committed gross human rights violations during those two decades of anarchy and war that included heinous crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide, from the moment they crossed the border into Uganda, starting with the infamous Mbarara massacre in 1979.
The only reason that this perspective is not public is because these anti-Amin exiles are the same people interchanging themselves in power since 1979. And anything that could appear to vindicate Amin, and thereby deligitimize the purported 1979 liberation, is a big inconvenience to those who claim to be writing the history of this country where they declared themselves heroes, claimed to be fighting noble causes, even while dispensing the worst barbarism on the people of Uganda. And that is the reason why the Amin narrative heard from this group is always anecdotal, full of mockery, deliberately made to appear to be devoid of meaningful political substance, and designed to suit themselves.
But how they manage to minimize and hide the historic record of their humongous serious crimes of over two decades is quite baffling. In reality their deeds during the 1980's are the darkest days Uganda has ever seen.
In the Dominic Ongwen case, the ICC might never get the full picture behind the LRA insurgency and it's origins from 1979 with the advent of the UNLA.
For example, it could be a great inconvenience to the Ongwens defense lawyers to discuss Joseph Kony's origins in the UNLA which massacred half a million Ugandans in Luweero in the 1980's. And it could be a big disservice to the prosecution's case if they raise the story of how the Acholi people were the target of revenge persecution by those who themselves had suffered serious persecution by the infamous "AcholI soldiers" during the preceding Luweero bush war 1980-1986. Nobody is comfortable stating how the war in Acholi started out with many incidents of revenge by Baganda officers in Museveni's NRA group. Yet this is well known by Ugandans.
Basically the horrors of Luweero, the true origin of the Northern Uganda/LRA war, will most likely never even be mentioned during any ICC hearings and will have to wait for another day.
But to get to the single leading cause of Uganda's political problems, the element which our own media, politicians and historians have persistently failed to sufficiently comprehend, is that at independence, Uganda was designed to have a ceremonial presidency and an executive Prime Minister. If this system had continued, there wouldn't have been any bloody fights for one to become the president because it was just a ceremonial position.
The person who ended that decency and started the violent string of coups and executive presidents was Milton Obote. He started the trend when he toppled the then ceremonial President Edward Muteesa (a Muganda) who was the independence president,. Obote ordered a military coup as executive Prime Minister in 1966, then declared himself president. He then changed the constitution and gave himself all the executive powers that he had been enjoying as Prime Minister under Muteesa. Otherwise he would have also been a ceremonial president. Since then Ugandans have had the tendency to fight each other for the all powerful presidency, and there has never been any peaceful transfer of power between two civilian presidents to this day.
And calling the originator of the country's problems a hero as is the case for Obote, yet in reality he was a despotic, power hungry, tribalist, drunk mass murderer, is part of the misdiagnosis of our country's history, and a gross misunderstanding of our country's true political cancer.
Plus allowing former president Milton Obote to historically get away with causing all this mayhem including grave crimes against humanity is simply politically irresponsible.
The one reason Obote's culpability hasn't been historically established is simply because he and his local, regional and international backers wanted the title of worst leader to be tagged on Idi Amin instead. Yet there was not a single mass grave in Uganda until after Amin.
So this politicization of our history is why Ugandans might never be presented with the option to seriously consider reverting to the noble and politically sober ceremonial presidency system that was selfishly destroyed by Milton Obote in 1966. Yet this system is clearly the easiest solution. A no brainer. Plain common sense if we want to prevent any future misrule for generations to come. The executive presidency is prone to abuse and has even failed the test of multiparty constitutional democracy in Uganda as we can still see today.
The all powerful presidency which has been the cause of all the fighting in our history (none of the 7 presidents since independence has ever handed over power peacefully) that executive presidency was originally created from thin air by a power hungry Milton Obote to suit himself after toppling President Muteesa in 1966. Even after Obote's death in 2005, the political structure of the presidency as originally created by him, continues to cause violent clinging to power in Uganda to this day.
And LRA's Dominic Ongwen is just a tiny spot in the bigger Obote veil that has been put on the history and presidential politics of Uganda to cover his own original sin that has since caused all the conflicts in this country, starting from the day Obote infamously declared that "A good Muganda is a dead one".
By Hussein Lumumba Amin
Saturday 30th October 2018.
Kampala, Uganda.
Also find here the interesting revelations made recently during Ongwen's trial at the International Criminal Court:
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