New hope for peace in Uganda

Press, 24 December 1985, Page 16

New hope for peace in Uganda

NZPA-Reuter Nairobi “Oh Unganda, come together” is a political rallying call in Uganda which became almost a joke as bloody internal strife ripped the country apart and brought sudden and often brutal death to countless thousands of people. The peace pact signed in Nairobi recently between the military Government, led by Lieutenant-Gen-eral Tito Okello and the powerful rebel National Resistance Army of the former Defence Minister, Yoveri Museveni, brings hope that the slogan will be taken seriously. The problem for the small East African nation is that for most of its modem history and, especially since independence from Britain in 1962, it has been falling apart. The overthrow of President Milton Obote on July 27, which brought General Okello to power and led eventually to the peace pact, was just the latest chapter in a history of tribal splits and grumblings in the army that have hindered the economic development of what the young Winston Churchill called “The pearl of Africa.”

Uganda has enormous economic potential which has never been realised, largely because of the

tribal divisions that have earned it the reputation of an African killing ground, according to Western diplomats based in East Africa. Much of the suffering can be traced to the fact that the tribal splits have overshadowed any sense of nationhood that was bestowed on Uganda at independence, they said. Traditionally, Uganda was not a nation but a collection of kingdoms based on tribes. Each kingdom was named after the tribe that ruled it and was autonomous. Tribal fighting was widespread. The British colonial power built modem Uganda on the Baganda tribe around the capital, Kampala.

They are a proud people and became the dominant tribe in the nineteenth century when British explorers such as Speke arrived in the country. When the colonisers took over from the explorers they decided to perpetuate limited autonomy in every ’ kingdom, but the Baganda got special favours and jobs in the civil service and administration. The Acholi tribe, from Northern Uganda, were recruited into the army, they had a long military history and their boasts of exceptional physical strength and sexual

prowess are legendary. As the tide of history moved towards independence in the 19505, two political parties emerged in Uganda. One was the Democratic Party which drew its support from recently converted Roman Catholics in Buganda, home of the Baganda. The other was the Uganda People’s Congress of Milton Obote, which was backed by northerners and other tribes.

There was a third party, the Kabaka Yeka (King Only) party formed by the King of Buganda — the Kabaka — to perpetuate his control over the kingdom and to influence the course that independent Uganda would follow. Mr Obote contrived a political marriage with the Kabaka’s party to counter the the threat of the Democratic Party. The coalition won pre-independ-ence elections and the Baganda seemed assured of pre-eminence and preference. The Kabaka was appointed president and Mr Obote was his Prime Minister.

But Mr Obote’s vision of Uganda was of a unitary state in which the kingdoms would be abolished. In 1966 he arrested five Ministers whom he accused of plotting a

coup with the connivance of the Kabaka. In May that year a young army colonel of the tiny Northern Kakwa tribe, Colonel Idi Amin, stormed the Kabaka’s palace. The Kabaka, Sir Edward Mutesa, fled to London, where he died. * Mr Obote decreed a new republican and unitary constitution with himself as president The Baganda felt alienated and betrayed, a feeling that has persisted to this d& Mr Obote introduced a “common man’s charter” and vowed to eradicate feudalism. “One people, one country, one Parliament, one destiny” was his oft-stated aim. While Mr Obote toured the country preaching the new philosophy, Idi Amin infiltrated members of his own Kakwa tribe and members of similar Nubian ethoicity into the

army. r When Mr Obote was at a Commonwealth summit in Singapore in 1971, General Amin’s supporters staged a coup and Mr Obote went into exile in Tanzania at the invitation of his friend and mentor, the former Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere. Uganda, under Amin, lived the darkest days of its history. General Amin’s dreaded State

Research Bureau security agents killed thousands of people, usually suspected opponents. In exile, Mr Obote formed about him an army based on the Acholi and Langi tribes and in 1979, with the aid of Tanzanian troops, this force chased General Amin into exile.

General elections followed in December, 1980, and Mr Obote won handsomely. Mr Museveni, the Defence Minister in an interim administration, the Democratic Party, and some Western diplomats believed the elections were rigged. Mr Museveni, from the Western Banyankole tribe, fled to the bush to take up arms against Mr Obote and drew support from the Baganda, who felt they would be the main victims of government by a northerner.

In hit-and-run raids he attacked the army, which is made up of northern tribesmen. '•

On February 23, 1982, the rebels hit the main army barracks in Kampala, before being driven back by Government troops. Mr Obote’s response was to push thousands of troops — the army may have had as many as 40,000 men — into the so-called Luwero triangle north of Kampala, an area inhabited by Baganda. In spite of the bush war against Mr Museveni’s rebels, Uganda began to recover with help from the West, but Elliot Abrams, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, said last year that at least 100,000 civilians had been'-killed as the army swept through the rich agricultural land north of Kampala in search of the rebels.

The army, ill-disciplined, illequipped and poorly paid, vented its spleen on the Baganda and stories of killing, torture, rape, and looting became commonplace. The offensive drove the rebels into Mr Museveni’s home area in the west, but left the Baganda feeling very bitter about the meh from the north, diplomats said. In July, this year, a section of the army, led by the Acholi, who thought Mr Obote’s Langi tribesmen were being given unfair promotion, ousted the president for the second time and, after fleeing to Kenya, he moved to Zambia where he lives in exile.

The Democratic Party and all the smaller rebel groups swiftly joined the new military rulers. Mr Museveni, however, who said his rebels had been largely responsible for the fall of Mr Obote, demanded a greater say in the Government and continued the fight.

His forces won control of most of the south-westand as recently as December 11 forced-the-surrender of the Government army garrison in the key western town of Masaka after a long siege. ’ .