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Part three
51. Over the next few months, Mama Miria and I made friends with a former Tanzanian Minister and his wife through whom we made contact with a lady head of Tanzania Red Cross. We requested donations of blankets and clothes by the Red Cross. The response was positive but as the men were refugees, I was asked to find a Government department or an NGO to deliver the goods to the men. My contact in Tanzania, even with the President was through the Intelligence officer attached to me. I therefore reported the donations to the officer who collected them from the Red Cross. When I next visited the camp, I found that the donations were never delivered at the camp. The good thing I saw on that occasion was that much land was under cultivation. 52. In 1973, the men began to feed themselves and throughout the years until they left the Tabora camp in January, 1979 to go to war, they fed themselves. In the same year 1973, while digging, a group struck underground water. A delegation was sent to Dar es Salaam to report on that God's blessing. Mama Miria went to the lady head of the Red Cross and arranged for the Red Cross to provide water pipes and motorised pump to take the water to different Companies. The men produced much food throughout the years and sold some in Tabora markets. They also attacked the forest and made charcoal which they sold and earned some money. I visited the camp regularly every year. 53. From 1973 to 1978, I requested President Nyerere to allow me to arrange for the infiltration of the men to Uganda but the President who was always very kind to me; who used to come to my residence sometimes twice a week for conversation only and who used to invite me to functions at his house, rejected every request. In 1974, I wrote a memorandum to the International Commission of Jurists in which I drew their attention to crime against humanity committed and being committed by the Amin military dictatorship. The Secretary general of the Commission, a Briton, visited me in Dar es Salaam. He stayed for a week during which we discussed the Uganda situation everyday. At the end of the year the Secretary General returned to Dar es Salaam. He told me that the British were blocking their efforts to get the Government in the Western countries to condemn Amin's crimes. He asked me to write to Amnesty International which I did but received no reply not even an acknowledgement. 54. In 1976 Rugunda came to Dar es Salaam from Lusaka and stayed at my residence. I was given information after he had returned to Lusaka that he had been to Dar es Salaam to invite Ugandans to a Meeting which was to be held in Lusaka. The Meeting was held, I was not invited and John Barigye was elected to head an organisation which was also formed at the Meeting. Many of the UPC members then in Lusaka, facilitated the holding of the Meeting but none was elected to any position. Barigye went to Dar es Salaam to introduce himself to President Nyerere. The President asked a Tanzanian to bring Barigye to me. As we spoke about Barigye's organisation, the Tanzanian said, to quote his words, "this is what we have been waiting." I did not support nor condemn, at anytime, Barigye's organisation. It died an unlamented death. 55. When next President Nyerere came to my residence, he raised the matter of Barigye's organisation. I told the President that the organisation was going to find much difficulty in raising an army. The President responded that Museveni who had been elected Secretary of Defence and Ejalu Secretary for Information would be able to raise the army. Ejalu who at that time was working for the East African Community in Arusha, had apparently learnt of Museveni's tricks and was therefore very close to some officers in the Intelligence Service which was the shortest route to the ears and mind of President Nyerere. From what President Nyerere said about the raising of Barigye's army, I concluded that the army would not be raised and events later proved the conclusion to have been correct. 56. When Amin's army invaded Tanzania in October, 1978, I was not in Tanzania; I was in Lusaka on invitation to attend Zambia's Independence anniversary. President Nyerere rang President Kaunda on confirmation of the invasion and asked for my immediate return to Dar es Salaam. While at breakfast on the day I and 3 members of my Staff were due to fly back to Dar es Salaam, the Rhodesian Air Force attacked Lusaka Airport and all flights or landings were cancelled. President Kaunda was not able to arrange for me to return to Dar es Salaam in the next five days and President Nyerere was ringing every day and asking for my return to Dar es Salaam. Finally President Kaunda arranged for an Air Force Buffalo plane to fly me to Dar es Salaam. I asked the President for arms to take with me on the Buffalo. He agreed and much assorted arms were loaded on the aircraft. We landed at Dar es Salaam just after seven in the evening. I went straight to my residence and President Nyerere came soon thereafter. 57. President Nyerere briefed me on Amin's invasion. He ended with the words: "This is the opportunity we have been waiting for". I asked how long he had known that the invasion was coming. His response was very expansive and the core of it was that he had always known from 1971 that my presence in Tanzania was hurting Amin and that the objective of the invasion was, to Amin, a panacea to rid himself of the problems I was causing in Uganda. President Nyerere also told me that although Governments in the Western countries appeared to turn a blind eye to Amin's atrocities, he knew that the Jurists Commission had made those Governments very uncomfortable with Amin and some or all must have made very strong representations to Amin. 58. In my residence, as we exchanged views on the invasion of Tanzania by Amin's army, President Nyerere rationalised why he had rejected all my requests for the infiltrations of men into Uganda. He said that it had been his view that infiltrations would have been pin pricks whose outcome could have most likely pushed Western powers on to the side of Amin. Finally, the President asked me to arrange for more men to come to Tanzania for training to join a war he envisaged the Western powers would want to be protracted as a way to destroy the Tanzanian economy. 59. There was no sleep in my residence on the night I returned from Lusaka to Dar es Salaam. There was the urgent task of ferrying the arms in our small vehicles from the Airport to the residence and storing them at the residence. I had also to phone my contact in Mwanza, a Tanzanian, and ask him to go out of Town and bring to his house the leader of 37 men I had removed from the Tabora camp in 1974 and posted to Mwanza and then ring me back at night. Each of the 37 men, recruited through Oraba was a carpenter trained in Uganda Technical Schools. Their assignment in Mwanza was to make and they made boats which we fitted with motors and which were to be used in case President Nyerere agreed to the requests to infiltrate men into Uganda. I spoke to the leader of the 37 men that night and I asked him prepare storage facility for the arms from Zambia. I also asked him to send five teams of 5 men each to Dar es Salaam to collect the arms. 60. After I finished with Mwanza, I rang a contact in Nairobi and asked him to contact UPC members there and tell them that I wanted them in Dar es Salaam if they could come. The very next day, the contact reported that he had met individually some UPC members who had agreed to travel by road to Dar es Salaam. That was how Chris Rwakasisi, Samwiri Mugwisa, Edward Rurangaranga and many others came to join the war. I also rang Paulo Muwanga in London who had been in frequent contact with me and asked him to come. 61. On the consideration that should Tanzania decide to take the war into Uganda, the entry would be Masaka and Mbarara Districts, I rang UPC members in Kampala whose homes are in the Eastern Region. I asked each to send an urgent message to UPC leaders whose names I gave in their respective Districts. The message was for the leaders to raise men to be trained in Tanzania for war. I gave details of how I was to be contacted once the men were in Nairobi. For Buganda and the Western Region, I told those I rang that although I did not know when, I strongly believed that Tanzania would drive Amin's army back to Uganda and that they should cautiously prepare the people to receive the Tanzanian Army. 62. A visit to the Tabora camp was urgent, so I left for the camp on the evening of my second day in Dar es Salaam. The men knew that Tanzania had been invaded and saw my arrival at the camp as harbinger for their going to war. There was much jubilation. The camp looked different from what it was three months back when I was last there. The prosperity had not changed but what was different was that everyone appeared to have a bicycle. I spoke to the officers first and I enquired about the bicycles. I was told that when Amin's invasion was broadcast by Tanzania Radio, the men who had bicycles began to paint numbers on their bicycles and saying that when they go to war, they would leave their bicycles at the camp which will be sent to Uganda after the war. Thus the frenzy for bicycles grew with many men, within a week going daily to Tabora and even to Dar es Salaam by train to buy bicycles. 63. What the officers told me about the bicycles, made my address to the men rather difficult. I wanted very much to raise their moral but could not also tell them that they were going to war immediately or in the near future. I compromised and told them that when Tanzania decides to drive Amin out, I would appeal to the Tanzanian President to include them in the drive. 64. When I returned to Dar es Salaam from Tabora, I found President Nyerere in a furious mood. The OAU was pressing him to negotiate peace with Amin at a time when Amin's army was in occupation of Tanzanian Territory. 65. The OAU Council of Ministers met to consider the situation. It was Uganda and not Tanzania which spoke the language of negotiations at the Meeting of Ministers. 66. In December, 1978 at a very lengthy meeting in my residence, President Nyerere gave me an over-view of the war preparations. His view was that depending on the resistance of Amin's army, TPDF could get to Kampala and to all parts of the Uganda within three months. He told me that in those circumstances, he would set up a Tanzanian Military Government for Uganda. I expressed opposition to that idea. I told the President that it would be most damaging to the Tanzanian image in Africa and in the world for Tanzania to expose herself to accusations that they had become a colonial Power and was ruling Uganda. President Nyerere responded that he could not leave the country in a vacuum, without a Government. I suggested to the President that from what he said of the possible overrunning of the whole of Uganda by the TPDF, within three months, there would appear to be two ways by which Tanzania could avoid to damage her image in Africa and in the world. I gave the first way as one of convening a Conference of Ugandans in exile in Masaka or Mbarara immediately after the fall of either Town to the TPDF. I gave the second way as convening a Conference in either Uganda or Tanzania after the entire country had fallen to the TPDF. I proposed that at either Conference an Interim Government composed of Ugandan could be formed. 67. To my proposal of an interim Government, President Nyerere said that since the TPDF and police would still be in Uganda, such a Government would be seen as a puppet Government and Tanzania would still be accused of behaving as a Colonial power. I told the President that the real problem was how a Conference was composed and that a representative Conference of Uganda's political parties would deflect much of the criticism on Uganda having a puppet Government. President Nyerere shot that argument down when he said that Uganda had only two political parties, the UPC and the DP. My answer was that Amin actually banned nearly ten political Parties. President Nyerere was not aware of even the ban. We exchanged views at length on a Conference or Conferences. President Nyerere expressed the view that a Conference of exiles would be attended by two few people because it was his understanding that many Ugandans in exile were opposed to the Ujamaa policy. I disagreed and said that the opportunity to return home would make many to come to the Conference. At the end, the President asked me to write papers on various aspects of any of the Conferences I had proposed and said that he did not want some Ugandans who had insulted him for not recognising Amin to be in any Interim Government. 68. The Papers I wrote, were sent to President Nyerere through the Director of the Intelligence Service. The Director kept on coming to me to expand this or that theme in my Papers which I did. I worked on the papers almost day and night. 69. In January, 1979 the late Mzee Peter Oola and George William Nyero (now in the USA) rang me from Tabora Town. Their report was that a deputy Director of the Intelligence Service who, we regarded as unfriendly to us, had gone to the camp and went away with 300 men. The deputy Director had said that the men were wanted for special training connected with the war. I asked the Director of Intelligence who was coming to my residence daily with requests for more and more expansions of my papers, about the training which the 300 of my men were going to undertake. He answered most surprisingly that he was no longer dealing with military matters. The answer made me to ask him to tell the President that I wanted a meeting with him. 70. Previously, whenever I sent any such request to the President, he would come to my residence either on the same day, next or within 3 days. This time, the President came after 10 days and as soon as he sat down, he said that he had a very bad news for me and that there had been an accident in which many men died. The President then gave me sheets of Paper on which the names of the dead were typed. 111 (one hundred and eleven) men were listed as dead. I asked to go the camp immediately and the President agreed. I left that evening by train for Tabora. 71. From Tabora Town I was taken not the Ugandan or UPC camp but to another where I found all the commanders of the UPC army, I had a meeting with the commanders who told me how the 300 men were taken from their camp. They confirmed in every detail what veteran Peter Oola who joined the UNC in 1952 had reported to me. My meeting with the four Commanders who had lost one hundred and eleven of their men, was like a funeral. All of them were crying throughout the meeting. The account they gave me on that day and in the following two days were so shocking that even now, I am unable to make it public. In my analysis of the account, I concluded that there was a conspiracy to hand over to some other people the army I and the UPC leaders had so painfully raised and provided for their welfare. I could not eat or sleep that first day and night. Part 3 b comming up The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
