Divisions that tore Uganda apart

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 16

Divisions that tore Uganda apart

VICTORIA BRITTAIN,

of the “Guardian,” London, exa-

mines the turmoil that ended Milton Obote’s second reign.

The second regime of Milton Apollo Obote was doomed from the start by the politics of tribalism, corruption, and repression. Thanks to those politics, the northern Acholi army officers now in power face an even more daunting task of national reconciliation than Obote himself faced on his return from Dar es Salaam and exile four and a half years ago. Ugandans danced in the streets of Kampala when Obote was overthrown by Idi Amin in 1971. They danced again as Obote fled ignominiously to Kenya, regretted by no one, and hated most bitterly by the majority ethnic group, the Baganda, in an around Kampala. In an eerie replay of the first night of Obote’s second phase in power in December 1980 gunfire rattled through the capital as the new military rulers jostled for power. There is a terrifying vacuum of authority in Uganda. The army is divided along tribal lines; conventional party politics are utterly discredited; intellectual leaders have been killed or driven into exile. There is no unity among the myriad exile groups endlessly

seeking outside support in Europe, the United States, Kenya and Sudan. There is certainly no support for Idi Amin, issuing pronouncements from his refuge in Saudi Arabia. One focus of moral authority is the former Defence Minister, Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Army. Last month his troops seized the western town of Fort Portal and triggered the final stages of Obote’s collapse. Museveni himself, whose family have lived in Sweden since he took up arms against Obote in 1981, is a tough, disciplined nationalist soldier. Although he himself has usually said he is a socialist, he has allied the N.R.A. with conservative nationalist Ugandans. Thousands of young recruits have joined the N.R.A. purely on the basis of fighting dictatorship, tribalism and corruption in government. But Museveni’s guerrilla movement’s future relations with the forces of Brigadier Basilio Okello, now holding the capital, will be extremely tricky, judging by their immediate past history. Museveni’s first reaction to the coup was that his N.R.A. will fight on unless they are brought into the Government.

During the last few weeks an attempt has been made in East Africa to stage a round table conference of exile groups and of factions within the Obote Government and military working for its overthrow. The conference was to be a “second Moshi" — a repeat of the 1979 political meeting hosted by Tanzania as their forces overthrew Idi Amin. But, even more than in 1979, the spirit of reconciliation is absent, particularly among those who wield the military might. Power is essentially with the same two military factions as in 1979: General Tito Okello and Brigadier Basilio Okello’s Acholi soldiers and Museveni’s mixed but largely western group. Both were the heroes of the liberation war against Amin. In 1979, under heavy pressure from Tanzania, Ugandan exiles organised at Moshi a fragile political coalition called the Uganda National Liberation Front. Obote personally stood aloof although he was ably represented in the jockeying for future power by his later vice-president Paulo Muwanga. The U.N.L.F. chose two disastrously ineffective presidents in its 15 months in power. The first was Professor Yusuf Lule who died in London last year and the second Godfrey Binaisa, a lawyer in exile

in London and not a serious political contender. Local democracy and self-reli-ance flowered all over the country and Ugandans flocked back from exile in those days to rebuild a shattered economy and social system. But top level infighting weakened the U.N.L.F. Obote was able to return in the summer of 1980 for an election prepared by Muwanga. Thanks to him it was to be on the basis not of the election of individuals to a Front Government but of the 1960 s parties. Obote then had based his power on a northern party which became progressively authoritarian and anti-democratic in spite of some lip service to socialism. In 1980 as in the 1960 s the Southern Catholic Democratic Party was no match for Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress. The U.P.C.’s organising abilities were reinforced by the use of the military. The leaders of the Left in the Front, who had been Ministers, such as Edward Rugamayo and Dan Babudere, fled the country to work in exile for the Front. The run-up to the 1980 election was marked by killings, arrests, harassment, and" blatant rigging. In the night between the voting and the counting, Mr Muwanga took control of announcing the results. Obote won.

Many election officials and opposition candidates and workers fled to Kenya, as the military were used to enforce the election result In a serious misjudgment of the violence unfolding, Britain had funded and backed a Commonwealth' attempt to monitor the election. The Commonwealth report gave the election a clean bill British Government Ministers, anxious to maintain influence in one of their most strategically placed ex-colonies, set out to woo Obote. The British role in his overthrow — during the Commonwealth conference in Singapore, where he was leading the lobby against British arms sales to South Africa — was overlooked but not forgotten by either side. Britain sent military training teams to Uganda and gave a lead to the World Bank and other donors w’ho set about rehabilitating the economy under Obote. London also’ hushed up the human rights violations and bears a heavy responsibility for the thousands killed during Obote’s second tenure of power. Last year United States officials put the dead at 100,000 and said it was worse than under Amin. Amnesty International’s most recent report has details of widespread torture so grisly as to be unreadable. For the last two years, Museveni’s N.R.A. has kept control of a large area north of Kampala called the Luwero triangle. The Ugandan Army with its British and North Korean advisers have tried and failed repeatedly to take the area. Museveni’s tactics were to move out of his area in ambushes and attacks on the Ugandan military with occasional forays into Kampala. Assassination attempts and bomb attacks on Government targets became common. The N.R.A.’s recent move into the west of the country demonstrated an increasing military confidence. In late June the army chief of staff, Smith Opon Acak, loyal to Obote and his Langi tribe, made the first move which led to this coup. The chief of staff ordered a group of Acholi soldiers to be sent to the front line to counter the growing threat from the N.R.A. round the town of Fort Portal. In the large Magamaga barracks, where the British trainers are stationed at Jinga, east of Kampala, the order started a shoot-out between the Acholi and Langi. These two northern ethnic groups have dominated the army since colonial times and have been the basis of Obote’s power. The cracks in army unity had been papered over many times before, usually with money. But this time support for Obote from the civilians in his own Government had dramatically eroded. International support had long ago vanished, with former allies embarrassed by the corruption and depravity of the face the regime showed abroad and the vicious terror of its face at home. Obote’s second exile will not be like the dignified years of waiting in Dar es Salaam for the second chance he used to rip Uganda’s social fabric apart.