Ugandans blamed for Kenya’s crime wave

Press, 1 October 1979, Page 31

Ugandans blamed for Kenya’s crime wave

Bv

IAN MATHESON

in Nairobi

A spate of killings and armed robberies in Kenya is being linked to the clandestine flow of fugitives and sophisticated firearms from neighbouring Uganda after the collapse of Idi Amin’s military regime. Senior police sources in Nairobi confirm that in many of the murders under investigation, Ugandans are known to have played a prominent role, either as machine-gun-toting gang leaders or as •masterminds” supplying weapons to local criminals. This escalation of violent crime, coming at the same time as an equally serious outbreak of murders in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, is being viewed by security chiefs in Nairobi as a vindication of their repeated warnings over the last two years that many Ugandans posing as exiles and antiAmin guerrillas are often littl emore than “thugs and dangerous criminals.” In late July the Kenya Government clamped down hard on Nairobi’s Ugandan “underground.” Heavily armed squads of police raided slum quarters known to harbour hundreds of illegal Ugandan immigrants. At least 500 people were loaded on to trucks and driven to the KenyaUganda border to be handed over to the Kampala authorities. Ugandan Government officials have told me that many of these Kenya-based fugitives are suspected of involvement with Mi Amin’s ruthless terror squads, such as the Public Safety Unit and State Research Centre.

Interior Ministry sources in Kampala claim they have firm evidence linking the crime waves

in Kenya and Uganda. A high level of co-ordination is believed to exist between “criminal and subversive elements” in both countries.

It has even been suggested that a campaign to “destabilise” the Governments of both countries is being waged, using criminals and gangsters to undermine public confidence in the security forces.

The recent purge of suspect Ugandans in Kenya was ostensibly triggered off by the particularly savage murder of three people and the serious wounding of 10 others in a daylight raid on the Nairobi home of a prominent Asian psychiatrist. When armed police cornered the gang, who were carrying machine-pistols and automatics, a fierce gun battle broke out which left one gangster dead, two of his accomplices injured, and a Kenya Police Reserve officer wounded in the shoulder.

The gangsters were discovered to be part of a six-man team of Ugandans. one of whom was carrying a bus ticket showing he had only recently crossed over into Kenya. Kenya’s Minister of Health’(Mr JAmes Osogo), who comes from an area bordering Uganda, called in the Government to repatriate all Ugandans living in Kenya, “irrespective of the nature of their work.”

He said a flood of weapons and ammunition had been pouring through western Kenya from Uganda in recent months, and he accused “Ugandan soldiers and so-called liberators” of being responsible for “this rise in crime on our midst.”

Mr Osogo’s outburst was only the latest in a

series of admissions by senior Government officials of their growing fear that Uganda’s unstable security situation could spill over into Kenya at a time when the country is bracing itself for a general election.

I believe that when this threat first emerged 18 months ago, attempts to defuse the danger were complicated by the fact that many Ugandan fugitives were associated with one of the guerrilla groups trying to topple Amin’s unstable Government.

Certain prominent Kenyan politicians, policemen and business “families” were known to have been backing this Ugandan guerrilla group’s cloak-and-dagger operations, in alliance with multi-nat-ional business interests and foreign mercenaries.

Immediately after the death last year of Jomo Kenyatta, the new Government of President Daniel Arap Moi swooped on a large number of Ugandans who had been planning to use Kenya as a base for hit-and-run raids against Amin’s disintegrating armv.

Many were recent deserters from the Ugandan armed forces — mostly from southern Bantu ethnic groups such as the Baganda, Basoga and Bagisu. They were eventually “encouraged” by Kenyan authorities to liaise with other mainstream exile groups in the fledgling Uganda National Liberation Front, which eventially overthrew Amin. Now, with the recent split in the leadership of the front, which culminated in the replacement of Yusufu Lule by Godfrey Binaisa as Uganda’s President, many of the formerly Kenya-based “liberators” have found themselves on the sidelines.

Some are believed to be behind the recent launching of an anti-Binaisa opposition group calling itself Chama Cha Mapinduzi (the Party of the Revolution), whose covert military arm is supposedly named after Kenya’s former Mau Mau.

A spokesman for this alliance of southern Ugandan conservatives and secessionists has told the Kenya reporters that the movement intends “wrecking the establishment” if its political demands are not met.

He claimed responsibility on behalf of the “Mau Mau” for the assissination of at least one prominent Binaisa supporter in Kampala earlier in July and warned that anyone who had any dealings with the present Uganda Government would be regarded as a legitimate target for further attacks. Diplomatic sources in East Africa are disturbed by the implications of the somewhat paradoxical names bestowed upon this new Ugandan opposition group and its military wing.

Chama Cha Mapinduzi is also the name of the ruling Tanzanian political party. And “Mau Mau” was the title invented by white settlers in Kenya during the state of emergency in the 1950 s to cover the loosely organised activities of Kikuyu nationalists against British colonial rule. Just how far this new terrorist organisation is prepared to go in its determination to “wreak heaven upon earth” (as its spokesman so curiously boasted) is one of the problems of most concern to East African security forces trying to deal with a baffling tide of seemingly random blood-letting. — O.F.N.S. Copyright.