{UAH} MUSEVENI'S DOCTRINE OF/ON POLITICAL VIOLENCE

Mr. Museveni’s Doctrine of/on Political Violence

In that 1971 paper Fanon’s theory on violence: its verification in liberated Mozambique, Museveni outlined many of the political beliefs and military doctrines that would shape his career. The very title of the thesis, focusing on violence as a political instrument, begins to define him. On page 5 and 6 of the thesis, Museveni states: “This is the interpretation Fanon put on the role of the revolutionary struggle, whose highest form is armed violence, in the lives of former colonial subjects. This is what I wanted to test in one Sub-Saharan area.

 

I used Nangade District of Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique, as my experimental area. Nangade district is in North-Eastern Mozambique. It is inhabited by a Bantu-speaking people, the Makonde. The Makonde, according to many reliable accounts, are fearless and brave people… But it is worth pointing out that the imperialists, and other bourgeois confusionists, have been spreading the lie that the Makonde are ‘the brave people of Mozambique’; that the other tribes like the Nyanjas are soft people.

This is a bankrupt way of looking at things. ” Museveni was saying in this paper that he went among the Makonde people and subjected them to brutal violence in order to test or prove his point that the idea of bravery or cowardice is not inherent, but rather borne of conditions to which people are subjected.

 

What was this violence that Museveni put the people of Mozambique‘s Nangade district through? He does spell it out in grisly detail on page 8 when he notes: “Hence in Mozambique, it has been found necessary to show peasants fragments of a Portuguese soldier blown up by a mine or, better still, his head. Once the peasant sees guerrillas holding the head of the former master, the white man’s head cold in death, the white skin, flowing hair, pointed nose and blue eyes notwithstanding, he will know, or at least begin to suspect, that the picture traditionally presented to him of the white man’s invincibility is nothing but a scarecrow.” If that is the way Museveni looked at the world in 1971, then it was going to be visible in his actions in Uganda in the following years.

 

Deaths of Martin Mwesiga, Valeriano Rwaheru, Raiti Omon’gin, and William (“Black”) Mwesigwa. It is generally well-known that some of Museveni’s best boyhood school friends were Mwesiga, Mwesigwa, and Rwaheru. Museveni himself has said that many times. They all died in the 1970s during their guerrilla struggle against Amin. Milton Obote claims that their deaths were mysterious, speculating that they knew Museveni well, were probably as ambitious as he was and therefore he had to get rid of them, seeing them as threats to his ambitions. We shall examine the circumstances of their deaths to ascertain whether or not Obote’s claims are founded.

 

During the invasion, one of Museveni’s closest friends, William (“Black”) Mwesigwa was killed. Museveni’s former colleague in the intelligence services, Picho Ali, was also arrested by Amin’s army and later killed for attempting to overthrow the government. Picho Ali, Museveni felt humiliated and overshadowed by this very intelligent young man. There are several reasons for believing that Ali was betrayed by someone who knew him to Amin’s forces as a way of settling the scores between Museveni and Ali.

 

Sources in the 1970s anti-Amin struggle have said that because Museveni had an insider relationship with Tanzanian intelligence, he was able to anticipate the moves being made by the other exile factions opposed by Amin and engaged in an armed struggle. Several times during the 1970s, several leading exiles like Ateker Ejalu, Major Patrick Kinumwe, and Robert Serumaga who headed armed groups attempted to invade Uganda from Kenya and Tanzania through Lake Victoria. But no matter what security precautions and what secrecy they tried to maintain, their plots were always uncovered and the boats and other landing crafts were more often than not bombed by the Ugandan army.

 

They could not understand or explain their unending misfortunes until after the end of the war against Amin in 1979. That was when agents in Museveni’s FRONASA force told them that all along, it was Museveni who would was learning of these plots through his contacts with Tanzanian intelligence and leaking them to his contacts in Amin’s intelligence. That is how Obote’s former information minister, Alex Ojera, another former minister Joshua Wakholi, and Picho Ali were captured by Amin’s forces in 1972, based on information secretly supplied to the Amin army by Mr. Museveni’s men or himself.

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"