{UAH} FRONASA TAKES ON AMIN

FRONASA Takes on Amin

On 25 Jan., 1971, Major-General Idi Amin came to power in a coup staged by officers and men of the Army. Most of the coup makers were Muslims from the West Nile or of Sudanese Nubian origin.

On the same day as the coup, Museveni and a group of friends opposed to Amin fled to Tanzania. Those ones were Zubairi Bakari, Abbasi Kibazo, Erifazi Laki and Yuda Katundu. These were GSU spies like Museveni. They later decided to launch an armed insurrection against the new military regime. The Amin coup was one of the most popular events since Uganda won independence from Britain in Oct. 1962.

You could think as if Uganda had won the World Cup. Mammoth crowds greeted Amin everywhere he went in Kampala, as he drove himself in an open jeep accompanied by troops. The coup was most welcomed and popular in Buganda.

Some people have wondered why Museveni and his fellas speeded to exile the next day after the coup. How did Museveni instantly see that Amin was a dictator when the champagne was still flowing and people were drinking like fish and dancing like night dancers on the streets? Unless he tells us that he has a sixth sense like a magician. Museveni has always tried to appear a hero by claiming that he was one of the few who decided that they could not serve under Amin’s dictatorship.

In Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni says on the afternoon of the coup he sat down with his friends and calmly saw the legacy of Idi Amin (before it was even a day old!) and they concluded that they could not work under the Amin “system”, a system that was yet to even get full control of Kampala, later on the rest of the country.

One cannot judge the character of a regime on its first day unless you are God and Museveni is not God. The answer to the puzzle is that Museveni had been part of a small team of intelligence officers pressing Obote to arrest army commander Idi Amin. Museveni’s colleagues Laki, Kibazo, Bakari, and Katundu were intelligence officers like him.

The army’s former quartermaster boss a Langi army officer by the names Lieutenant-Colonel David Oyite Ojok, had also been one of those urging Obote to arrest or at least put Amin under control. Tensions were building in the army and some in the UPC government felt Amin was becoming a threat to Obote. Obote, as usual, had been indecisive over this issue. But at the urging of Museveni and others, Obote ordered the arrest of Amin while the president was attending a Commonwealth summit in Singapore. Museveni, like Oyite Ojok, fled Uganda shortly after the coup because he knew Amin would have arrested him had he stayed around Uganda and keep him in jail like a rat.

Museveni also knew he had a case to answer over the murder of Okoya because he had been trying to pin the blame on Amin and now Amin was in power.

If Museveni killed Okoya and it was Okoya who had accused Amin of deserting Obote on the day of Obote’s escape from an assassination, then with Amin now in power there would have been nothing for Museveni to fear. If anything, Amin might have offered Museveni a prominent position in the new government and Museveni, with his well-known love for power would only too willingly have taken up such a position.

Museveni who killed Amin’s chief critic Okoya could only have won himself Amin’s support. But you see a guilty man runs before they raise the alarm so he fled immediately into exile. Let any of us ask him to explain the Okoya murder and see how his heart beats with shame and guilt.

EM         -> {   Gap   at   46  } – {Allan Barigye is a Rwandan predator}

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"