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Take It or Leave It:
With Austin Ejiet |
How UPC chairman lost head
July 25 - 31, 2004
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Nineteen years ago today, Maj Gen Bazilio Olara Okello entered Kampala at the head of a ragtag army to proclaim that the UPC government led by Apollo Milton Obote had been overthrown. Returning to the capital by public means of from my ancestral home, I was sweetly oblivious of the coup till late afternoon when the bus pulled into Jinja. Ordinarily bustling with activity, Jinja town had shut down. Not a single shop or market was open; there wasn’t a single civilian vehicle on the streets; the population stood on the shop verandas in fearful groups, gaping at the overloaded military jeeps that sped up and down the streets with mounted anti-aircraft guns curiously at the ready. Suddenly, a young man peeled away from the crowd and accosted me. He was courteous and friendly but did not introduce himself: he was evidently a former student who assumed that I remembered him. ‘So what’s going on?’ I asked. He said there had been a military coup in Kampala. No, he didn’t know who the new president was, but the announcement on Radio Uganda had been made by Major Omaria (Lt Walter Ochora made the announcement, Editor) or some such person. The only Omaria I knew was a colonel, not a major. But the young man wandered off before I could get any further details – if indeed he had any to offer. I headed for the Central Police Station when it became clear that I would not find conventional lodgings elsewhere. The desk sergeant listened to my story, asked to see my identification, and asked me to enter my name and other particulars into a visitors’ book. ‘We have a room,’ he said. ‘But don’t expect the Apollo Hotel or anything like that. No bed, mattress or bedding, Mwalimu. Just the cold cement floor’. I thanked him profusely. He said I was welcome to leave my bags with him while I went to look for supper. Outside, I wandered off to join a crowd that was listening to a radio set replaying the Major’s announcement in between snatches of martial music: ‘Fellow countrymen. This is Major Eric Odwar. The civilian government of Milton Obote has been overthrown. Museveni must come to Kampala immediately …’ etc. I moved on, hoping to learn more details but had to beat a hasty retreat as cracks of gunfire started to ring out from the direction of the Infantry Barracks. As night deepened, the sound of machine-gun fire spread. From the room that I shared with five or six other people; I could hear a running commentary from the policemen at the counter as their radio-call fed in stories of anarchy from the outlying districts. ‘Wameanza kuchinjana’, the policemen were saying, meaning ‘they have started butchering one another’. The most dramatic killing, I learnt later, occurred somewhere in Kamuli. A UPC chairman, having persuaded himself of Milton Obote’s political immortality, had apparently staked his head. ‘If Obote is ever overthrown again, you can have my head’, he allegedly boasted before his political adversaries. They didn’t forget. The pantomime over the third term has begun as predicted on these pages. I have to admit I was wrong in thinking then that the call would be spearheaded by grass root Local Councils sending political pilgrims to Rwakitura to beg the president on bended knees to stay on. They are kneeling all right, but not the peasants. The RDC of Kalangala islands was recently reported to have knelt down before the president, imploring him to stay in office after 2006 since only he could have had the vision to invite Bidco to raise palm-oil plantations in Kalangala. Another MP is reported to have offered the Baganda a federal status but only if they supported kisanja (third term). ‘We have the key’, the man is reported to have said. ‘Give us kisanja and we’ll give you Federo’. Yet another MP, delivering his maiden speech in parliament, asked Ugandans to thank God for giving them such a visionary leader. According to him the president should stay on forever because he saw no other Ugandan with the same capabilities. Amen to that. Not to mention the political Saul from the east who recently announced his support for the third term in exchange for a bridge for his constituency. NEXT? With a nation-wide famine reportedly looming round the corner, I shudder to think what might happen. ‘Give us the third term, you bastards, or you won’t receive genetically modified posho from our government!’ Which is all very fine, until an accident hapapens and the proverbial peasants turn up on great men’s doorsteps with hacksaws to demand their kilos of flesh. |
© 2004 The Monitor Publications
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