REASON WHY IDI AMIN TOOK POWER IN 1971

The inside story of the 1971 coup (Part 2)
TIMOTHY KALYEGIRA
In the second part of this exclusive report on the inside story of the 1971 Amin coup, the Sunday Monitor brings you how Amin burst into several plots to arrest him and Obote’s order to arrest Amin which triggered off the January 1971 coup
Why Oyite-Ojok hated AminLast week in the first part of this exclusive feature on the inside story of Idi Amin's 1971 coup, Sunday Monitor examined the intrigues within the army, as a group of officers led by Lt. Col. David Oyite-Ojok.
Oyite-Ojok's formal title in the Uganda Army was Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General. There have been conflicting opinions for several decades about whether he attended his cadet training at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst or the Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot, both in England.
BRAVE SOLDIER: Amin
HATED AMIN: Oyite Ojok
FORMER PRESIDENT: Obote ordered Amin’s arrest
It now appears conclusive that Oyite-Ojok attended the Mons Officer Cadet School but he allowed the uncertainly to remain among Ugandans, since Sandhurst was regarded as the more prestigious school.
At the Mons cadet school, Oyite had failed the commander's paper and only passed the engineer's paper. This is the reason he became the Quarter Master-General of the army, a largely administrative position although he much preferred a battlefield post.
The two men in the Uganda Army of the 1960s most highly regarded in battlefield command abilities were Colonel Tito Okello and Major General Idi Amin.
Whether this was the reason for the resentment that Oyite-Ojok felt toward Amin or whether Amin had mocked Oyite-Ojok over his largely administrative role in the army, is not clear.
The most important question in all this, is why Amin, a semi-literate soldier from a small tribe in West Nile, was so popular within the army and Ugandan society at that time? The answer to this question is the key to explaining several mysteries of Ugandan history.Amin was a man of distinction in many areas and had more outstanding all-round qualities than any other Ugandan soldier.
Amin was the first Black African soldier in the Kings African Rifles army of East Africa to be commissioned an officer, a second lieutenant. The second was Lt. Jackson Mulinge, who as a General would later become the Chief of General Staff of the Kenyan Armed Forces.
The third was Lt. Mrisho Sarakikya of Tanzania, who later rose to the rank of Brigadier, then Major-General in the Tanzanian army. He was the first commander of the Tanzanian National Defence Forces in July 1964.
Also, when Uganda attained independence on October 9, 1962, Major Augustine Karugaba, a young officer trained as a Cadet at Sandhurst, was given the honours of leading the flag-raising ceremony at Kololo Airstrip. Idi Amin was a captain at the time and the departing British insisted that he too should do the honours.
One of the men standing next to the flag staff as the British flag, the Union Jack, was being lowered. However, Ugandan history was later revised to erase any mention of Amin as one of the Ugandan army officers who helped raise the Ugandan flag that night.Secondly, as Army Commander Amin introduced the system by which all officers in the Uganda Army were required to carry with them money at all times (a habit Amin personally carried over when he became president).
Amin had realised that often when lower ranking soldiers got domestic problems, it would take a long time for them to get help because of the army bureaucracy. Amin's solution was that officers had to carry money wherever they went and if a soldier approached them, they should give the soldier in crisis the money.
The soldier's number would then be sent to the paymaster in their units and the money deducted from their wages at the end of the month. Any officer who did not carry this emergency money would be charged with "disobedience of lawful command" under section 252 of the Army Statute. Because of that, Amin earned a huge loyal following among ordinary soldiers.
Thirdly, Amin personally was a very brave soldier. During battlefield operations, he had developed a fighting formation that the soldiers called the "One up, Platoon attack, one up, Company attack". It involved a fast mobile attack on enemy positions in which he would confuse the enemy with conflicting gunfire and encircle enemy positions with his men, before quickly withdrawing. Soldiers were amazed at how few casualties their units got every time Amin commanded an operation and these low casualties endeared him to the rank-and-file troops.
Early in 1963, the Uganda Army commanded by Amin launched a raid into northwest Kenya to repel Pokot and Turkana tribesmen who had invaded Uganda and stolen cattle from the Karimojong. Amin made the incursion at Kacheliba about four kilometres from the Uganda-Kenya border.
Kenya protested the cross-border raid but they had no evidence because Amin had carried it out in such away that the Ugandan troops did not suffer any fatal casualties who the Kenyans would have used as proof of aggression. Neither was there trace that Ugandan troops had entered Kenya.
When Ugandan troops were sent to Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) to bolster the forces loyal to the country’s assassinated leader Patrice Lumumba, Amin applied the same military tactics on the battlefield.
As a soldier, he was both a paratrooper and had basic training as a pilot in Israel. He was fairly good on shooting with the rifle and excellent with a pistol. He actually loved to fire off a bullet at a cigarette in a person's mouth without hitting the person.His slogan, "I fear nobody but God" intrigued many soldiers. Some thought he had spiritual powers that gave him that confidence to utter such statements and drive about without bodyguards.
As an officer, Amin was conscientious, always appearing at official occasions exactly on time and going to his office as early as 7:00 a.m. (This tendency to keep time is what brought Amin close to death on numerous occasions, as would-be assassins could predict at exactly what time he would be at a particular place.)
To the wider Ugandan society, Amin came in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. He was as good a soccer as basketball player, motor racing driver, and boxer (he was the undisputed East African heavyweight champion for nine years during the 1950s).
As army commander, this gregarious soldier mingled with ordinary people. He was wont to walk into a bar, declare that he knew everybody in the bar was broke, and then without waiting invitation would offer drinks to all. He generously tipped waiters and waitresses in the bars, hotels, and restaurants he went to.
He also played the electric guitar and accordion (as head of state he gave up the guitar and concentrated on the accordion), and was a good ballroom dancer. So good was he at formal dancing that women always seemed to want to dance with him at State and other formal occasions. He had a fondness for tall women like Madina Najjemba, Mariam Kibedi, and Princess Elizabeth Bagaya of Toro.
Attractive, intellectual and high class women were drawn to Amin as were ordinary women. This background to the personality of Amin helps explain the events that were about to rock Uganda at the dawn of the 1970s.
January 1971, the hour of reckoningWhen January 1971 came along, the tensions between Amin and senior officers under him continued unabated. This time David Oyite-Ojok and Amin's other detractors got Obote's attention.
On October 7, 1970, President Obote accompanied by President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya visited Makerere College in Kampala to attend a ceremony where the college was to officially become a university-- University of East Africa.
The three heads of state were politely applauded. Amin had not been seen in public for several days, igniting speculation that he had been arrested. Suddenly as Obote was delivering his speech, Amin appeared unannounced, in full battle camouflage, hands buried haughtily in his pockets, and a loud cheer broke out from the Makerere students, who gave him a standing ovation.
The loud and sustained applause that Amin received at Makerere --- Makerere, of all places where only well-educated people are respected --- for the first time gave Obote a full understanding of the paranoia that Lt. Col. Oyite-Ojok had been feeling for the previous three years about Amin. Amin was clearly starting to threaten the balance of power in the country.
On January 11, 1971, President Obote summoned Amin to his office at the Parliament Buildings and coldly told him that the army had overshot its budget by 2,691,343 Pound sterling. (Uganda used to use the British currency in the same way the US dollar is the main international currency today).
Obote also informed Amin about the report into the killing of Okoya which, he said, he had heard pointed to Amin. In mentioning the excess spending of money in the army, Obote was hinting to him that he, Amin, had misused these funds.
Meanwhile, that same day January 11, a secret meeting was held at the home of a civil servant and supporter of the ruling Uganda Peoples Congress party called Maitum Engena in Kololo.
It was attended by a number of senior government officials, among them Oyite-Ojok. They discussed how to impress upon Obote the urgency of having Amin arrested as soon as possible.
Realising that the moves to purge him were gaining momentum, Amin called a press conference at the mosque in Bukoto, outside the city centre on Saturday January 16. At the press conference Amin said the Uganda Army under him would never overthrow the Uganda government. He also denied reports that he had embezzled money meant for the army.
He told reporters that President Obote planned to have him arrested using General Service Unit intelligence agents. Finally, Amin declared: "I fear nobody but God."Amin had been tipped off by a sympathiser in the GSU of the plot to arrest him. Clearly at this stage, Uganda was moving into a crisis as serious as the one the central government had with the Buganda kingdom administration in May 1966.
The director general of the GSU intelligence agency, Naphtali Akena Adoko, had decided to contain the situation before it went out of hand. Adoko, a lawyer, had, like many GSU staff, received his intelligence training in Israel.
In 1970, Adoko had created a wing in the General Service Unit called the State Research Bureau. It was a kind of counterintelligence unit whose work was to keep an eye on leading politicians, senior civil servants, and other prominent public figures that might be a threat to the State or be working for international interests of hostile countries in that intensely competitive Cold War period of the 1960s.
One of the pioneer staff of the State Research Bureau was a young man called Yoweri Museveni, a Marxist who had recently completed his studies at the University of East Africa, Dar-es-Salaam.
Since most of the GSU agents were trained in intelligence by Israeli lieutenants in Jinja or Kabamba barracks in Mubende, it can be reasonably assumed that Museveni was trained in Kabamba (which may partly explain why he started his NRA guerrilla war there in 1981, the barracks he was familiar with.)
For some reason Museveni too --- but independently of Oyite-Ojok --- had developed a hostile attitude toward Amin. The first ever summit meeting of the Heads of Government of the British Commonwealth was scheduled to be held in Singapore in East Asia toward the end of the month. But Obote was reluctant to attend it, given the unsettling situation in the country regarding Amin.
However Obote was persuaded by Nyerere and Zambia's President Kenneth David Kaunda to attend. Fluent in formal, erudite English, gifted with a deep and powerful voice and ringing oratory, these African leaders felt that Obote would best represent Africa's stand that Britain should stop selling arms to apartheid South Africa and white supremacist Rhodesia.
As Obote's staff were preparing for Singapore, Museveni appeared at the President's Office and said he had an urgent message for President Obote. In 2004, the late Adonia Tiberondwa, a minister of industry in Obote's second government, told journalist Andrew Mwenda that the president's staff, being busy, did not attend to Museveni and kept him waiting at the reception.
Museveni had something urgent to tell Obote: Amin, said Museveni, was amassing arms at Bamunanika outside Kampala. He, Museveni, had that information in a report he had compiled on Amin. Somehow, nobody in Obote's office was in a frame of mind to attend to Museveni. Tiberondwa said Museveni became frantic and angrily stormed out of the building.
The feeling among the top layers of political power in Uganda was that the country was faced with impending doom. But still nobody seemed able to put a finger to it, except to feel strongly that Amin should be arrested.
Amin heightened the tension in Kampala by going about his business and repeating his intriguing "I fear nobody but God" declaration. While Amin professed to fear nobody but God, everybody in power in Uganda seemed to fear nobody but Amin.
On Friday January 22, Obote was taken to Entebbe to catch a British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) flight to Singapore. He was to be seen off by the vice president John Babiiha, Minister of Internal Affairs Basil Kiiza Bataringaya and several other cabinet ministers.
And as was the tradition, the senior security officers also saw him off. They included Chief of Intelligence Akena Adoko, Col. Albertino Langoya, Lt. Col. David Oyite-Ojok, the Inspector General of Police, Lt. Col. Wilson Erinayo Oryema, the Commissioner of Prisons Fabian Okware, the director of the Police Criminal Investigation Department, the Ugandan of Pakistani descent Mohammed Hassan, and Col. Tito OkelloThe army commander Idi Amin was not invited but he decided to go later anyway. He drove his green BMW to Entebbe to see off Obote to Singapore.
There in the VIP lounge of Entebbe International Airport Amin found Obote and his inner circle in a closed meeting and it was made clear to him that he was not to be part of that meeting and he was the subject of the tense discussion. Amin left the room.
Noticing how out of place Amin felt, Obote's Principal Private Secretary Henry Kyemba later walked over to him and talked. "What shall you bring me from Singapore?" Amin asked Kyemba. "A radio," Kyemba replied.
Obote's last words to his aides, just before he boarded the BOAC's Vickers VC-10 jetliner were, "Arrest Amin." The official reason for the arrest was to be that Amin had embezzled 250 million dollars intended for arms purchases.
After the meeting, Oryema secretly sent a message to Amin, telling him he had something urgent to disclose. He said Obote had just left instructions for the arrest of Amin.
The next day, Saturday January 23, a meeting was held at Oryema's home in Kampala. It was attended by Oryema, Akena Adoko, Bataringaya, Oyite-Ojok, Langoya, Hassan, and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Chris Ntende. At issue was how to go about arresting Amin and how prepared they were.
There was a great sense of alarm in the meeting. Amin was supposed to have been arrested on Friday not long after Obote left for Singapore or at the latest on Saturday. And yet the officials meeting in Oryema's house had been informed that Amin had disappeared.
Something simply did not add up: almost every time Amin was supposed to be arrested or assassinated, it seemed, Amin appeared to get advance knowledge of the plans, and averted them. Who had tipped off Amin this time, the group wondered. Oryema feigned bewilderment too.
Totally alarmed at the prospect that the plan to arrest Amin had leaked to him once again, this time with grave consequences, Ntende was told to get ready and fly to Singapore on a chartered plane to inform Obote that if he did not urgently intervene, there was going to be a mutiny in the army or, worse, a coup led by Amin.
At this juncture, Oyite-Ojok fearing the worst, took matters into his hands. That night, he sat down at home and started planning action that would resolve the problem of Amin once and for all. Uganda was about witness one of the most dramatic days in all its history.
Next week, we shall bring you what Oyite-Ojok did the following day on January 24, 1971 that sparked the coup and marked the dawn of what was later to be called the reign of terror.
Source: Interviews with Rev. Isaac Bakka, former Army Chaplain, 1976-79; interviews with former secretaries of President Obote; background research on the Internet; clarifications from various Sunday Monitor readers; the Uganda Almanac book of records; Voice of Uganda and The People newspaper files, 1971 and 1972