THE CORRECT LINE?: Chapter 1 & 2

Monitor Publications Ltd has secured the rights to serialise the much-sought-after book, The Correct Line? Uganda under Museveni, written by Dr Olive Kobusingye. The first two chapters of the 213-page book, whose initial consignment for sale was seized by the government at Entebbe Airport for more than a week under controversial circumstances, run today. Other excerpts will run daily until Sunday, October 24.
Daily Monitor’s sister paper, The East African, a regional weekly also belonging to the Nation Media Group, will serialise other select excerpts of the book for readers across East Africa starting with its October 25 issue.

Chapter I:

‘Get down!’ the policeman yelled at me, his voice both urgent and hushed. And in a desperate whisper, he added: ‘Take off the T-shirt and cap!’ I dropped to the ground and tried to pull off the campaign T-shirt without raising my arms to where they might be seen above the low partition that separated the bank veranda from the street. The cap was easy to discard. I now had my face a couple of inches from the policeman’s boots and was doing my best to remain invisible to anybody walking on the street.

Through a slit between the policeman’s legs and the edge of the divider, I could see soldiers of the Presidential Protection Unit (PPU) dragging people, mostly young men, out of alleys and hitting them like robbers. Among the victims were two girls; the soldiers pounced on them with their boots and gun butts. The youths were unarmed, and many had thrown off their Kizza Besigye campaign T-shirts, leaving their bare backs even more vulnerable to the beatings. They protested their innocence, but to no avail.

Some were kicked and told to get out of town, while the less fortunate were marched off to some unknown fate. After a while - probably only fifteen to twenty minutes of mayhem - a sudden and dreadful silence fell over the town.

The date was 3 March 2001, and this was in the south-western town of Rukungiri at the height of the presidential campaigns of that year. Only less than an hour before, Dr. Kizza Besigye had addressed a mammoth rally in the town sports grounds. It was the first rally I had attended. The announcement of Besigye’s candidature and his instant popularity with a large section of the population had taken the country by storm, with his rallies causing waves of excitement all over the country.

The evening before the rally, my sister Margaret and I had set off from Kampala at around 6.00PM. Our plan was to do the six hours or so to Rukungiri in a straight shot. But just as we approached Mbarara, some two hours away from home, with Margaret half asleep at the wheel from accumulated exhaustion, we pulled in for the night at one of the local hotels. At dawn we set off and got into Rukungiri just as the town was coming to life.

Everyone was relieved that we had decided not to stick to the original idea of travelling at night because, unknown to us, there had been shootings targeted at Besigye and his supporters. Had we shown up then, we might have been prime targets.

All the apprehension was pushed to the side on the morning of the big rally as the excitement over the day’s activities reached fever pitch. The whole town was buzzing - throngs of people in Besigye T-shirts and caps, cars decorated with posters, songs, whistles... everywhere the optimism was palpable.

Besigye had planned to address rallies all over the district counties, culminating in a final mega-rally in the town of Rukungiri. We travelled from one frenzied rally to the next all morning and part of the afternoon. Everywhere we stopped, we were met by hundreds, and at times thousands, of people.

They chanted campaign songs and were so excited at the prospect, and what seemed like the very real possibility, of a change in government that it must have been frightening for those still campaigning for Museveni. This went on through all the counties we stopped in, until we started turning full circle towards Rukungiri. It became very difficult to move at a reasonable pace because of the throngs of people pouring onto the road and blocking the motorcade. It was impossible to make only scheduled stops. In any event, we kept pushing on until we arrived back in Rukungiri amidst an overwhelming emotional welcome; there was hardly any standing space in the streets. We were told that some of the people had walked for hours; others had come the previous day to be sure that they would be present at this historic rally.

The atmosphere was electric, and everywhere people kept saying in a matter-of-fact fashion that Museveni had no chance at all. The rally was going to be addressed by all the opposition heavyweights: Sam Njuba, Winnie Babihuga, Atanasio Rutaro, Prince Vincent Kimera, and Nassar Ntege Sebaggala. Many of Sebaggalas ‘boys’3 had come down to Rukungiri the day before and were now going up and down the streets singing campaign victory songs and waving Besigye pictures. Other groups had come to town as well, most notably Makerere University students in the main from Rukungiri and the neighbouring districts of Bushenyi and Ntungamo.

They carried huge banners declaring ‘Makerere for Besigye’ and ‘Besigye for President’. These students would later be targeted and summarily beaten by the military. Some would flee for their lives on foot, walking for up to ten miles to escape their assailants. A driver would manage to get away with a bus on four wheels, but with not a single glass or light left intact. But that was later.

Shortly after Besigye’s motorcade got back into town, as if on cue, Sebaggala and the rest of the opposition leaders came in from the other end of the town, to another tumultuous welcome by the huge crowds. When Sebaggala stood up to wave to the crowds, the noise was deafening.
However, unnoticed or simply ignored by the majority of the people in the crowd, a sinister pattern was forming on the fringes of this jubilant scene. As we would later learn, the Museveni camp had allegedly planned to disrupt the rally and, having failed to keep away the people, had eventually decided that they would strike terror when all were gathered in the sports ground.

But for the moment, the rally got started and the speakers did not disappoint. The line-up had been carefully selected, and each speaker spoke with the kind of passion and conviction that could only come from long suffering and the unshakable belief that freedom and victory were clearly in sight. All the speeches were relatively short and to the point: enough was enough; Museveni had squandered the good will of the people and had abused their trust, and it was now time to show him the exit.

Each speaker was welcomed with thunderous applause. When Besigye took to the microphone to address the rally, the crowd went completely wild for several minutes. When Besigye eventually managed to get started, it was as though his listeners held their breath to catch every word. Although the grounds must have held upward of a few thousand people, every word could be clearly heard.

Besigye warned that because of the insecurity caused by the Museveni forces, the rally would be kept short so that people could go back to their homes in safety before nightfall. Unlike many of the speeches that Besigye had given during the campaign, some of which aimed to inform, educate, and convince, this one simply affirmed a position already held by the masses themselves.
Everyone, he counselled, should go out on polling day to participate in the overdue act of sending Museveni into retirement. And almost too soon for an event that had been anticipated for weeks, the rally came to an end. The presidential candidate and his entourage left amidst as much excitement as there had been on their arrival, and the people started milling around—some singing and chanting, others chatting and analyzing the events of the day.

The young people who had marched through the streets before the rally resumed their parade, now even more energized. Most had their hands in the air flashing the two-finger sign for the Reform Agenda (RA).4 Some carried Besigye pictures, and others blew whistles as they marched.

Not being one to join such a march, I found my way towards the periphery of the action and spotted Winnie Babihuga’s pick-up truck parked outside the Commercial Bank building.5 I went over and was beginning to talk to the driver when suddenly, amidst the jubilation, there erupted a spate of rapid gunfire. In the space of a few seconds, the shooting was repeated and was even more sustained. I fell to the ground, half rolling and half running toward the bank building.

There was screaming everywhere. Terrified people were running for their lives, mostly heading away from the town centre. Gunshots seemed to come from everywhere. Shop fronts that had been open only minutes before were now firmly locked. Together with the driver and the youth who had been aboard the pick-up truck, I was caught with no cover.
Had it not been for the quick thinking of a policeman guarding the bank, I might have been one of those at the receiving end of the Presidential Protection Unit’s physical assault. The sounds and the sights of the day stayed with me for a long time.

For several minutes after the guns fell silent, nobody dared to move. Then slowly and tentatively, doors began to crack open. People who had ducked into unfamiliar doorways started to get out. The policeman, seeing that things were calm again, told me to get away from the bank and find a safer place to hide. Unsteadily, I got onto my feet and, after looking around to see if indeed I could leave without attracting attention, joined the small stream of terrified people leaving the town. We had all witnessed such extreme and unwarranted brutality that for a while nobody said anything. What could anyone say?

As we put a safe distance between ourselves and the scene of the horror, people began to talk. We were all relieved to be alive, but everyone knew of other people who had been at the rally, and we all had our fears about where they might now be.

The following day we learned that one man, forty-seven-year-old Johnson Baronda, had been gunned down by the PPU. Unofficial reports said three people had been killed, but these were never confirmed. The shooting injured many, but they were probably so happy to be alive that they said nothing further about the incident. The two girls I had seen being battered showed up the following day, all bumps and bruises and hardly able to walk. This incident of premeditated state terror on unarmed and nonviolent civilians was not the first that had taken place during that campaign. For me, it was nevertheless the first close encounter.

Captain Atwooki Ndahura and the PPU soldiers under his command who perpetrated this violence were never apprehended for these crimes. Indeed, Ndahura was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and in 2001 was decorated with the Luwero Triangle Medal.

Chapter Two: A Troubled Past

‘If a government does not bother to solve the problems of its people, what does it expect? Does it expect peace?’ - Yoweri Museveni (‘Building Uganda for the Future’, What is Africa’s Problem? University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

The story of post-colonial Uganda is one of bloody wars and ugly dictatorships. The irony is that unlike many countries in Africa, which came to independence through armed struggle, Uganda’s transition from British rule to self-government in 1962 was relatively peaceful. That peace was short lived. The 1962 constitution gave Buganda kingdom a federal status within Uganda. It also recognised four other monarchies as having semi-federal status, including Ankole, Toro, Bunyoro, and the territory of Busoga. The Kabaka (king) of Buganda, Sir Edward Mutesa, became the first head of state. The relationship between Mutesa and his premier was difficult, characterised by mutual mistrust and intrigue.

In 1966, Milton Obote, then Prime Minister, ordered the army to attack the Kabaka’s palace, and in the ensuing violence the Kabaka fled into exile. As the dictatorship matured, all those that had alternative views risked imprisonment or worse. Obote used all means to get rid of opposition, and in 1969 he declared Uganda a one-party state.

In his book, Sowing the Mustard Seed, Museveni noted of this period, ‘Many prominent Ugandans were subjected to detention without trial, that hallmark of Africa’s political underdevelopment.’

On the attack of the Kabaka’s palace specifically, Museveni commented thus: ‘During the 1966 crisis when Obote was quarrelling with Mutesa, Obote’s army massacred many people. If Mutesa is having a political quarrel with Obote, what does the population have to do with it and why kill them? I do not agree with the proverb that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. If people are rioting you can arrest them and put them in prison. The government has a lot of power to deal with rioting people and means to control crowds without killing them.” (Yoweri Museveni, ‘The Price of Bad Leadership,’ What is Africa’s Problem?)

In September 2009, Museveni’s government would be given the opportunity to put this conviction to the test in response to Museveni’s disagreement with the Buganda king, Kabaka Muwenda Mutebi. The armed forces moved in and shot dead at least twenty-seven civilians in Kampala, some of who were reportedly dragged from behind closed doors of their homes.

In 1980 Ugandans had a chance to turn a clean page by electing leaders of their choice - and the rigging of those elections in Obote s favour triggered Museveni and his colleagues to wage yet another war to rid the country of a leadership that they said did not have the mandate of the people.

The 1980 elections were plagued by a host of irregularities. Voter registration started on 6 October 1980 and lasted a little over two weeks - hardly enough time, considering the state of insecurity and limited mobility in some parts of the country. In fact, in West Nile and parts of the northern districts, registration did not happen at all. Where it did take place, there were complaints that names were added or deleted from the registers after the exercise had ended. The registers were displayed briefly - and in some places not at all. The nomination of candidates was a fiasco - in many places, notably in the north and in Kasese, DP candidates were either detained on nomination day until the end of the voting exercise, or their nominations were cancelled afterwards.

Two days before the polls, the Electoral Commission announced that votes would be transported to a central, ‘safer’ place where the counting would be done the following day. This announcement caused consternation among non-UPC circles because it contradicted an earlier agreement with the parties that the votes be counted at the polling stations right after the close of the poll. The polls took place on 10 December 1980, and the Military Commission announced the results two days later.
Any credibility that the elections might have had evaporated after the tallying process and declaration of results were hijacked from the electoral commission and rested solely in the hands of Paulo Muwanga, the Chairman of the Military Commission. Under this atmosphere of uncertainty, suspicion, and a sense of powerlessness among the people, UPC was proclaimed the winner. The elections were witnessed by an observer group from the Commonwealth Secretariat at the invitation of the Ugandan government. A summary of their report read thus:

This has been a turbulent and troubled election, characterized by confusion, delays, intense mistrust, and in the end a sense of wonder that it happened at all. Some, at least, of the difficulties could have [been] mitigated, even in Uganda’s situation, if the Electoral Commission had been a more efficient and imaginative body than proved to be the case; if the Military Commission had not delayed a final decision and announcement on the venue and manner of the count till just three days before polling;... if logistical arrangements for distribution of balloting material had been made with a greater deal of thoroughness. Surmounting all obstacles, the people of Uganda, like some great wave, carried the electoral process to a worthy and valid conclusion.8 Less than two months after that, Museveni launched the bush war that would usher him into State House five years later.

Early on in the war, Museveni explained why he and his group chose to fight and why they expected to win the war: We are fighting a just cause. We are fighting for the democratic rights and human dignity of our people, all of which have been trampled on by Obote and his erstwhile protege Amin for nearly two decades. Our women shall no longer be raped by bandit soldiers; our citizens shall not be robbed or beaten at road blocks; nobody, not even a tramp on the road, shall be killed unless so condemned by the courts. Court orders shall be obeyed by even the highest government officials; elections shall take place and they shall not be ngged the right to be treated with respect and courtesy by heset-called officials, the right to
life, the nght to dignity, are not favours to be bestowed by anybody. They belong to our people by right. Ugandans would have ample opportunity to test out this pledge with Museveni at the helm.

Source: Daily Monitor, Posted Tuesday, October 19 2010 at 00:00