The guerrilla who ended Uganda’s long nightmare

Press, 27 February 1986, Page 13

The guerrilla who ended Uganda’s long nightmare

From

RICHARD HALL

of the ‘Observer’ in Kampala

In the main street of Kampala one day last week, an old man was knocked down by a car. Two young soldiers, their AK-47S slung across their shoulders, sprinted along the pavement. When they found he was not badly hurt, they lifted the old man to his feet and helped him to a low wall, where he could sit and get his breath back. In a country where soldiers have for so long stood only for murder, rape and pillage, such an incident still causes amazement. “Before Museveni,” said a bystander, “no soldier would have lent a hand — or if they had, it would have been to pick the victim’s pocket.”

Since Yoweri Museveni became President only a few weeks ago, Uganda has begun to awake from a nightmare. After Idi Amin’s mad brutalities, and the wholesale terror during the second regime of Milton Obote, every hope is pinned on this balding guerrilla in camouflaged fatigues. He still has a war on, against the remnants of the “regular” army holding large tracts of the Nilotic north; but Museveni is already provoking endless debate in the Kampala bars about the “fundamental change” he has promised the 15 million Ugandans in their beautiful and ruined country. His reputation is deceptive. It is easy to cast him as Africa’s Robin Hood (when his National Resistance Army emptied a bank, he always left an lOU behind).

Even more tempting is the Castro comparison, because he keeps the reputation of being a Marxist. In his high flown writings and fast flowing talk, Museveni often identifies with the way Fidel launched the Cuban revolution with only 12 men: his own band was 27 strong when he started guerrilla warfare against Obote. There is one certainty, however, in a continent strewn with political disaster: Museveni speaks with a different tone of voice and has novel views on how power should be wielded. Not only the Ugandans are watching him closely, so are other African leaders.. Some must feel quite uneasy about his harangues against bribery,, and corruption and about the nationwide vigilante techniques he is

promoting to combat them. Honest government is a corner-stone of his ambitions for the new Uganda, and he warns that he will be ruthless in pursuit of it. Museveni stands apart from the black nationalists whose climb to power came through the fight against colonialism. When Britain handed Uganda independence in 1962 — and fondly regarded it, in Winston Churchill’s phrase, as the “Fairytale Land” — Museveni was still a teenager. His has been a civil war struggle, in a sovereign black State. His success makes him unique in modem African history. This does not stop him from taking a ritual swing against imperialism in his speeches, while admitting that it cannot be used as a scapegoat for all that has gone so desperately wrong in Uganda. Indeed, he has a very personal link with a particularly colonial institution, the King’s African Rifles. He was bom during the Second World War and the surname Museveni ("He of the Seventh”) was bestowed on him in honour of the 7th Battalion of the K.A.R., in which hundreds of Ugandans were serving. Entirely practical factors are responsible, however, for the request he has made to Britain (not yet officially admitted) for training in military administration. His 20,000 guerrillas are the underpinning of his power, and he sees them as the only stabilising force in the land; but he now must convert them into a more conventional force.

During the abortive Nairobi peace talks between the N.R.A. and the ill-starred military government which had replaced Obote, a friendship grew up between Museveni and MajorGeneral Tony Pollard, who had been sent out to advise on how the rival sides might be disarmed. Soon after acquiring the presidency, the bush fighter invited the general to fly over to Kampala for a soldierly tete-a-tete. -

Museveni is now rarely seen out of uniform and he is resolved that the soldiers should never

again disgrace Uganda.lt is a fresh start in every way: traditionally the country’s military leaders have come frbm the north, but his own origins are among the unwarlike pastoralists of the extreme south, r ■

His father, a well-to-do cattle owner of the Bahima, aristocrats of the Ankole tribe, made sure that his first-born son went through primary and secondary schools. Then Yoweri went into the civil service and wofkfed as a research officer in an intelligence unit created by Obote. But when Amin took control in 1971, Museveni fled to Tanzania, in company with scores of other young intellectuals. In? a; crucial step, he enrolled at' Oar es Saleem University, then awash with revolutionary fervour. He joined with other students from Uganda in plans tp overthrow Amin, and an ’abortive effort was made to £ invade Uganda. Some of Museveni’s closest friends were Captured and publicly executed. This did not stop Museveni from going back secretly to try and organise resistance. -

After graduating in political science, Museveni taught at a technical college, before training with the anti-Portuguese guerrillas in Mozambique. This instilled some of the ambushing skills his men were to employ iin the countryside at home years later. He also read a lot in exile: not only Mao and Che Guevara but such liberal Western authors as Galbraith. He has a certain-arro-gance — a trait of the Bahima — and likes to flaunt his knowledge. The return to Uganda came in 1979, where Nyerere could tolerate Amin no longer and i sent in the Tanzanian army. By this time, Museveni had created his own guerrilla force, knpwn as the Front for National Salvation. It played a significant role, and Museveni was for a time Defence Minister in the i chaotic administrations of 1979-80. But he always stood alone and the intriguers backing Obote were able to displace him. When elections were held, he hurriedly helped to form a political party. It was trounced, taking ohly one seat, and he failed badly in his own constituency. , The elections, notoriously rigged, gave Obote his second spell of power. A few weeks later, on February 6,1 1981,

Museveni and 26 companions took to the bush. This month, the fifth anniversary was celebrated by the triumphant N.R.A. with a march past in Kampala. In its early days, few gave much for the guerrillas’ chances. Government troops made murderous sweeps in the Luwero Triangle, and artillery supplied by North Korea pounded areas where the “bandits” were supposed to be hiding. At times, it seemed that Museveni had abandoned the fight. He came out of the bush and spent several months living in London. His wife'Judith and their four children then found asylum in Sweden.

Obote maintained tight security to stop the world knowing much about the existence of the N.R.A., or about the atrocities committed by his own troops. It was an unseen war, but Museveni’s dedicated young lieutenants, now his senior commanders, never stopped fighting. What is more, he had given them an ideology, a clear motivation. These doctors, accountants, civil servants (and

some junior officers who had deserted from the regular army) won the hearts and minds of the villagers. They learned to identify totally with the persecuted Baganda people in the infamous Triangle. The rank and file — even the boy soldiers, many of them orphans — were indoctrinated in the bush by political commissars and taught that they had to be the servants of the people, never the tyrants. Discipline was harsh: “We executed five of our soldiers for killing civilians,” says Museveni. It has worked, so far, land there is not one case of looting by the guerrillas since they took Kampala. Museveni regards the trust between the villagers and his men as vital. “This is now part of the national heritage,” he said. Yet the “people’s army” could, if matters go badly wrong, also prove a threat, because some of the officers are far more radical than the civilians on the political wing of his movement. Towards the end of last week, Museveni displayed a remarkable pragmatism; for a man not

given to compromise, by appointing half a dozen pillars of the old political parties in Uganda to his first Cabinet.

Some are arch-Conservatives, and the final line-up has perplexed many of his more ideological followers — while reassuring Western embassies and such bodies as the World Bank. As he consolidates his power at the grassroots, he intends, above all, to keep on terms with the country’s influential Catholic community, led by the revered Cardinal Emanuel Nsubuga. For the moment, Museveni is riding on a wave of adultation, as the man who has taken fear out of everyday life in Uganda. Even the bankrupt economy does not daunt him, because Uganda is naturally so lush and productive. It is a matter of “raising political consciousness,” he says. Then suddenly he fixes his visitor with his bright eyes, abandons the revolutionary jargon and declares: “All this country really needs is a good general manager.* That, and the extermination of corruption.”