THE REAL MUSEVENI ONE MUST KNOW

Who is this man who has mortgaged Uganda 's future around himself, selfishly disregarding every institution, every person, and every thing as long as he remains in power? Does he love power all that much or does he fear crimminal charges that he faces if he leaves power? Who was the hand behind the murder of prominent Ugandans during Idi Amin's rule between 1971 and 1979, doing that in order to tarnish Amin's standing among the world?

He has sowed the seeds of anarchy in the Great Lakes region of central Africa where there was once stablity. Northern Uganda has remained a wasted land wasteland and kept deliberately behind on orders of Museveni. Hundreds of Acholi have had their lips and ears cut off by Museveni's special hit squads and cleverly blamed on the elusive leader of the LRA, Joseph Kony. Since the beginning of Nov. 2005, western tourists and aid workers have been killed in Northern Uganda on orders of Museveni in a move to play on western governments's feelings of  insecurity and have the killings blamed on Kony. According to a recent top secret Central Intelligence Agency report, that it was Museveni who masterminded the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the deliberate killing of thousands of Tutsis and Hutu civilians in order to blame it on the Hutu-dominated government. Who shot down the aircraft carrying Presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi on 6 April 1994?  Who engineered the assassinations of President Laurent Kabila of Congo , President Melchior Ndadaye of Burundi , and Major-General Fred Rwigyema, the first commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Army?

Sincerely why has the CIA only recently realised that it was Museveni who exterminated the Tutsi of Rwanda in that genocide or the hundreds of thousands of Congolese civilians between 1996 and 2002? Why did the world fail for a long time to connect the Rwanda massacres in which bodies were found without skulls and the thousands of skulls discovered in Luwero Triangle a decade earlier?International investigators say that the helicopter carrying John Garang of the SPLA/SPLM came down inside Uganda and not southern Sudan. Why is the Ugandan government refusing to cooperate with the investigators into the crash, if it was a crash? Who removed the altimeter of the helicopter from the cockpit before take-off on 30 July 2005 from Uganda to Sudan ? With popular unrest against him growing every week and demonstrations breaking out among Makerere University students, the respected Bataka elders of Buganda , and supporters of Dr. Kiiza Besigye who was arrested on 14 Nov., 2005, Museveni is now desperate.

What will a desperate Museveni do if he is not stopped by local pressure and if necessary military intervention from the international community?  It is important for decision makers, diplomats, and the wider Ugandan public  to know whom they are dealing with.

If we are not careful, Museveni's psychiatric condition will worsen as the political pressure leading to 2006 mounts, the man will start doing crazy things like burning Uganda's historic sites and buildings like how the Roman Emperor Nero, who was mad, ordered the burning of Rome! The sequence of Museveni's strange decisions and erratic public statements is convincing many Ugandans that Museveni could be clinically mad.

How can a normal man who is educated tell the authorities to cut down Mabira forest to clear land for "investors" when he knows how this will upset the environment and climate? A confidential report from British intelligence cabled to London on 27Oct.,2005 outlined Museveni's deteriorating mental condition and said "He has a viracious appetite for all kinds of pleasures, and the instincts of a killer untroubled by remorse. He can be engagingly charming one moment, and ruthlessly destructive the next. Someone affected by hypomania sleeps little and is ceaselessly physically active."   Many people are still puzzled by what happened at the High Court buildings in Kampala on Wednesday 16 November 2005 when 30 armed men wearing black T-shirts and camouflage trousers entered the compound of the Court and beseiged it in front of a crowd of onlookers, diplomats, journalists, and supporters of Colonel Kizza Besigye. Many equated it with the abduction of the late Chief Justice Benedicto Kiwanuka at the same High Court buildings in 1972 by unknown men. Who abducted Kiwanuka? Was it Idi Amin's soldiers? Read  this document after which the High Court incident in November 2005 will make sense and add up.

We appeal to Museveni's staff and aides, ministers, army commanders and others around him to take maximum caution. Museveni might be unbalanced mentally but he is also very cunning. He knows that his aides and close ministers and commanders are the same people who will be testifying against him once he is overthrown or is no longer in power. We appeal to these people in Museveni's inner circle to take maximum caution because at this rate he is going to start bumping them off one by one to silence them. It is not Kiiza Besigye who is in danger from Museveni. It is Museveni's own inner circle. This is the most dangerous time in Uganda since 1966!  This intelligence briefing issued as a national duty to help Ugandan voters, political parties and the international community make the appropriate decisions. Millions of people even many of the leaders in the DP, FDC, UPC do not yet really understand whom they are dealing with. It is a horrifying story of a cunning mind that ruled Uganda for 20 years

Material for this dossier on Museveni has been sourced from newspaper archives in the Library of Congress, the British Library, websites, a number of informants within the state security agencies in Uganda, academic publications and books, and a number of contacts in Uganda, Sincerely we want to thank in particular the staff of the British Library who have been helpful in locating reference documents.

3.168] "Those who said of their brethren whilst they (themselves) held back: Had they obeyed us, they would not have been killed. Say: Then avert death from yourselves if you speak the truth." --- The Holy Qur'an

MUSEVENI'S ORIGINS

Museveni's origins are mysterious. Many versions of where he was born and his true nationality are claimed. Those who know him view the vague picture surrounding his origins as deliberately created. He one time said that he was born in Mbarara hospital and does not know his exact date of birth. That was in Mbarara in 1992, April. But later he changed and said it was Ntungamo! This ignorance of his exact birth date is not typical of a man who otherwise boasts of having an incredible memory and ability to recall events that many people have forgotten.You see, this unclear picture of Museveni's origin comes from the stigma that Rwandese and Ugandans of Rwandese origin have been subjected to.Yoweri Kayibanda, a.k.a, Rutabasirwa was born around 1943 in Butare, Rwanda. Let him stop lying us that he was born in Uganda ! The most informed sources who have known Museveni since his early child hood insist that he and his mother, the late Esteri Kokundeka, came to Uganda from Butare town where he was born around April 1943. One of these sources Gertrude Byanyima the wife of Boniface Byanyima, the national chairman of the Democratic Party says Museveni came to Uganda as a child from Rwanda . He spent part of his early teenage life in the Byanyima family home in Mbarara town in western Uganda . Byanyima used to pay Museveni's school fees or at least part of it. Let him deny it! One time when she was speaking to party supporters at her home in Mbarara on 2 March, 1996, Mrs. Byanyima said:

"Museveni is just like us here. He came here at 16 and it's us who brought him up. He was never a good academic performer. The cupboard you see there [in a corner of the living room] was Museveni's library. When you check in it you'll find his books, a lot on imperialism, with his former names Yoseri Tubuhaburwa."

When Byanyima claimed that Museveni "came here at 16", it was not so clear whether she meant that Museveni came to Uganda at the age of sixteen or that he first visited the Byanyima home at that age.

After she made that claim, some of Gertrude Byanyima's children Martha, Winnie, Abraham, and Anthony wrote a joint letter where by they apologised to Museveni for any embarassment caused to him by their mother's claim. But mark you, they did not specifically refute or question the substance of what she said!

Gertrude Byanyima referred to Museveni as "Yoseri" rather than "Yoweri" and said those were his original names. It should be noted that during his university days, Museveni used the initial "T" from a name Tibuhaburwa he had given himself.  In full, it comes from the Runyankore expression "Obwengye Tibuhaburwa", meaning intelligence is natural born, not learned. In a thesis which he wrote in 1971 titled Fanon's theory on violence: its verification in liberated Mozambique , the author gave his byline as "By Yoweri T. Museveni." Many people from western Uganda hold this same view of Museveni's Rwandese roots and among them are the Banyarwanda of western Uganda or the Rwandese refugees who lived for forty years in Uganda before returning to Rwanda in 1990.  Most of these people give his origins as in Rwanda . Some of these people who know Museveni point out the fact that his mother never spoke any Ugandan language fluently in all her life, but only Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda .

Many times Museveni has been challenged to prove his Ugandan roots by showing the public any graves and burial sites of any of his grandparents in Uganda but he has always avoided commenting on that. Those challenging him to do so bring up the issue because they know that there is nothing to show and want to put him in an embarassing position. The rumours around Museveni's origins grew intense in 1992, leading him to appear in army combat uniform before a live national television audience where he listed a number of Runyankore names that he claimed were his. In Feb. 1994 while on a visit to Gulu, Museveni addressed a public rally. Some teenagers from St. Katherine Girls' Secondary School began to shout at him complaining that his NRM government was filled with Banyarwanda.  "Look at him," they remarked, "He is a Munyarwanda proper!" Museveni heard the comments and commented: "These girls are saying I am a proper Munyarwanda. Maybe they bore me and they are in a better position to explain to us."   The embarassed headmistress of the school, Beatrice H.A Lagada suspended six of the girls. Museveni, though, did not confirm or refute the girls' claim.

In 1966, Museveni suddenly back slid from many of the fundamentalist Christian views he had once held. This, he says, after British missionaries in Uganda whom he knew advocated non-aggression in their response to the unilateral declaration of independence by Southern Rhodesia ( Zimbabwe ) in 1965. Museveni and some of his friends favoured an armed struggle to overthrow the Rhodesian government of Prime Minister Ian Smith. Something is not right here. Museveni had been a fanatical believer in the message of the Bible. That all changed suddenly in 1966 and he then swung around to embrace a totally opposite out look to life which had armed struggle at its core. In his later years and after assuming the Ugandan presidency, he would give his rejection of the gospel as coming from his disagreement with white missionaries over how to respond to the political crisis in Rhodesia . That would have been a good reason to present, but this change in Museveni ran much deeper.  Where he had once been sober and strict in his lifestyle, he started becoming sexually promiscuous, a development in his character that would have nothing to do with the declaration of a white supremacist regime in Rhodesia .. We want to know the reason be for this drastic change.

Museveni's mother

During her years in Ankole in the mid 1960s, Museveni's mother had become a convert to the born again Christian faith. She sometimes visited Bweranyangye Girls' Secondary School and took part in mission outreach programmes in Ankole. Many people who observed her became convinced that her eldest son had taken his personality from her. She was eccentric and was fond of wearing woollen clothing. In some way Esteri Kokundeka was ahead of her time. The main fashion of the day among the ordinary women in Ankole at the time was the traditional robes. Kokundeka on the other hand took a liking for European fashions and so stood out as odd whenever she went about in public, wearing woollen clothes and western-style dresses, some of them above the knees in length. At first some people wondered who this strange woman was, who was so different from the rest of her contemporaries in a society that was still very traditional. She did not have an education and had not traveled widely out of her home area but looked to be very modern. Moreover she was a modest woman and a devout Christian.

In between periods of depression and silence, she experienced high energy. During her excited phases that was when the common village fellas started to feel that she might be mentally disturbed. What was beyond doubt at the time was that Museveni's mother was suffering from some kind of mental disorder. She certainly showed all the signs of what they call bipolar disorder. (Madness, to call a spade a spade.) Bweranyangye Girls' Secondary School in Ankole, where her daughter Violet was studying, is a place where Kokundeka used to visit a lot to preach. She was dreaded and shunned by many of the girls. They saw her as a tyrant, a complicated and extremely difficult woman to get along with. On some occasions when she visited the school, girls would avoid meeting her and hide in the dormitories. She did not display the normal affection and motherly traits that would be expected in a parent, even toward her own children. She was not affectionate and was too unreasonable and hard to understand. Many became convinced at Bweranyangye that Kokundeka had a mental problem.

In 1967, she did have a mental breakdown. The details of that are not so clear. But she was admitted at the Butabika Mental Hospital on the outskirts of Kampala that year. Her mental disorder combined with the series of traumatic experiences in Rwanda that affected her so drastically as to lead her to reject her son, are the rock on which the crisis in Museveni's life originated. That crisis in Museveni's life lies at the root of the personality that we shall examine in forthcoming pages.  

People who knew him during the mid 1960s say the change was brought about by rejection from his mother, Esteri Kokundeka. It was not Rhodesia , for God's sake!

How she rejected him, why she rejected him, and when she rejected him is something we don't know. I will not lie that I know. But it seems to have been very painful to him to rock the foundation of his whole entire life. Maybe he had tried to probe her to tell him who his real father was and she dismissed his questions.

Maybe he persisted with his questions and in impatience, his mother finally disclosed to him the circumstances of his birth. What brought her from Rwanda to Uganda reportedly either still pregnant with Museveni or when he was still an infant? Those who knew Museveni's mother all through her life in Uganda remarked at how bitterly she hated and resented Rwanda .  In 1982 during Museveni's guerrilla war, one of Museveni's most trusted commanders, Kahinda Otafiire, was charged with smuggling her out of Uganda through Rwanda and then on to Nairobi, Kenya where she would see her son. Museveni's mother protested vehemently saying she hated Rwanda and did not want to go there ever again in her life. After repeated begging, Otafiire managed to get her into Rwanda from where the two went on to Kenya .

This gives us an interesting look into Museveni's origins.

Sincerely why should his mother resent and hate Rwanda so much unless she had once lived there or had heard too much about it or maybe had experienced enough about Rwanda that even to talk about Rwanda made her feel so bad? It is one thing to hate Rwanda . It is quite another for your son's commander and aide Otafiire to want to take you safely out of Uganda to Kenya at a time of high risk and yet you would rather remain in harm's way in Uganda than set foot in Rwanda.

What was it about Rwanda that Museveni's mother hated so much?

We can guess the following things.

She knew Rwanda much better than the average illiterate village woman. She definitely hated the country. She seems to have either lived there for some time or even originated from Rwanda . She seems to have had such a terrible experience in Rwanda that her outlook toward that country was clouded by all sorts of resentment. What terrible memory was this? Was she raped as a girl or young woman or sexually molested by someone in Rwanda ? Or even more traumatic, had she become pregnant while in Rwanda by a relative, so that she had to live with the stigma of having an incest sexual relationship hanging over her and bringing her distress? Did she become pregnant by a brother, a father, and uncle and unable to stand the shame of the affair, decided to flee Rwanda for Uganda , bringing with her the illegitimate son? Maybe this could explain her hatred of anything to do with Rwanda . If this is true, we have the correct understanding why she rejected the young Museveni. An ordinary terrible event in Rwanda like clan or tribal fighting or a dispute between two families would have made her resent the Rwanda society at large but bring her closer to her son.

But she resented both Rwanda and rejected her son. Our conclusion is that she might have concieved her son with a close relative, or a servant in the homstead in Rwanda  and there is a chance that this might even have been a forced sexual encounter. She would then see her son and in him a reminder of the ashaming incident in Rwanda that led her to abandon her home and flee the country for Uganda . So it seems that she must have directly or indirectly told Museveni of the circumstances of his birth and parentage and once he knew this, a deeply traumatising personal crisis shook him. Sincerely it is not easy dealing with such ashaming news, more so from your own mother. Museveni's biological father was an itinerant Rwandan peasant called Kayibanda. Current sources indicate that Kayibanda lives in Tanzania while others say he lives in Butare town in Rwanda . Other reports have it that Kayibanda died in Tanzania in the 1990s. We are not sure and where we are not sure, we shall not pretend to know.

According to some reports, Kayibanda and his wife Esteri Kokundeka came to Uganda when Museveni was a toddler. There is a story common in Ankole but difficult to prove for its accuracy, about how Museveni's parents ended up in Uganda . This version has it that Museveni's mother was of royal Kinyarwanda Tutsi stock. Apparently during one of her many idle moments at the royal court in Rwanda , she was seduced by or seduced one of the court workers, a Mutwa named Kayibanda. Museveni was the result of this laison, making him paternally a Twa and maternally a Tutsi.

Her proud Tutsi royal family had to quikly chase her for ashaming them. So she fled to Uganda for ever. Because of the disgrace she had brought upon herself by this liason with a despised commoner, she, the commoner, and their son Museveni were banished and fled across the border into Uganda . Being desperate to find means of supporting the woman and their child, Kayibanda the journeyman was given employment as a herdsman by a young cattle owner named Amos Kaguta. Kaguta was also of Rwandese stock and his brothers are reported to have remained in Rwanda when he migrated to Uganda . It was not long before Kayibanda eyed on Kaguta's wife. Kaguta angrily banished Kayibanda from his home and Kayibanda fled to Tanzania with Kaguta's adulterous wife. But Kaguta retained Kokundeka and her child Museveni as his wife and child. Kayibanda and Kokundeka had a second born child, a girl who later got married to a Rwandese Ugandan named Nathan Ruyondo. Ruyondo would became a Ugandan civil servant in the town of Masaka . Museveni, therefore, had one direct sibling, this girl who got married to Ruyondo. The day before he started his guerrilla war in 1981, Museveni travelled to Masaka and spent the night in his true sister's home, on 5 Feb., 1981. He used Ruyondo's Peugeot 304 to drive to the Kabamba army barracks for the attack the next day, 6 Feb., 1981. When he narrates his attack on Kabamba in Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni describes Ruyondo as "one of my acquainatnces."

Acquaintance indeed!

How with a sensitive life-and-death attack coming could he borrow the car of an ordinary "acquaintance" without being worried that this acquaintance could betray him to the authorities, if the car's ownership was traced back to Ruyondo? These are all his lies. This Peugeot 304 belonged to Museveni's brother-in-law, something he never admitted because in Masaka town, it was commonly known that Ruyondo's wife was pure Rwandese. And so for Museveni to even hint at a close relationship with Ruyondo or to admit that Ruyondo's wife was his direct paternal and maternal sister, would have confirmed to many that Museveni is really Rwandese.  

Kaguta, having retained Esteri and Museveni later had a child in 1949 with Esteri. She was named Violet Kajubiri because she was born in the "year of the jubilee", the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Protestant church in Uganda . Meanwhile, in the late 1950s there was heavy activity of Arab hides and skins traders, especially in the cattle corridor of western Uganda . These Arab traders had traveled back and forth along the route between the East African coast of Kenya and Tanzania and the western interior of Uganda for several generations. Their ware was hauled over this long distance by among others Yemeni drivers who came from families that had settled in Mombasa along Kenya 's Indian Ocean coast. In his 1997 book Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni confirms this trade link between the East African coast and Ankole when he explains his early years:

"In the days of my early childhood...cattle were literally central to our whole lives....For clothing I wore the skin of a premature calf...although at the time it was no longer the common way of dressing. Even before the Europeans came, people were wearing textiles brought by long-distance travellers from the Swahili coast."  (page 4)

One of these Mombasa Yemeni lorry drivers met Museveni's mother who was known to be a little loose and a child was born to them in 1960 named Salim Saleh. That is why Saleh who is also known as Caleb Akandwanaho has never used the name Kaguta as his middle name even after he became a senior government official.  That by itself is more proof to the idea that Kaguta is not Saleh's father. When Museveni came to power in 1986, rumours that he was Rwandese filed Kampala . You think Salim Saleh would not have used Kaguta's name in order to be respected if Kaguta was really his father?In a Boston Globe article published on 1 May, 2005, a former U.S ambassador to Uganda Johnnie Carson referred to Caleb Akandwanaho (Salim Saleh) as Museveni's "half-brother"This fact whih was widely known in Uganda is one of the signs that Museveni's blood father was different from Saleh's. The name of Salim Saleh's biological father is not known. Maybe he can tell us himself.

During the 1979s exile, the Museveni family lived in the Upanga Estate next to Sebender Bridge in the Shimo la Udongo area of Dar es Salaam , Tanzania .

They teenager Saleh was very close to the Arab and Somali community although the rest of the Museveni family was polite but distant from their Arab and Somali neighbours. These Somali and Arabs regarded Salim Saleh as one of their own. Many people assumed that he was a Somali or coastal Tanzanian.

Saleh in his younger years was slim and light-skinned in complexion and you ould easily see the phycical features of one with Arab and possibly Somali blood. You look at Saleh's flat hips and curly hair properly next time when you see him. You will see! It was only in the 1990s as he grew too bulky and his HIV condition began to darken his skin, that he started to blend in more with the general Ugandan population. Museveni became close to Colonel Gadhaffi of Libya because he used Saleh's Arab blood to convince Gadafi that he was really pro-Arab causes. We shall see later why Gadhafi also became close to the Toro kingdom through another of Museveni's manipulations. Meanwhile when Museveni came to power in 1986, his biological father Kayibanda came to Uganda from Tanzania to visit his son and share in the new-found recognition and fame as President.  Museveni gave his father a blasting that he never forgot! He gave him money and angrily told him never to come back again. Museveni's mother came to Uganda pregnant with the boy Rutabasirwa. That is Museveni's real name. Forget the Museveni nickname. His middle name was adopted from his stepfather Kaguta and he only began to use the middle name Kaguta after he became president. According to Museveni's inner family members, Kaguta's brothers live in Rwanda .

This proves that even Museveni's half-sister Kajubiri is Rwandese and not Ugandan as we assumed all along. It was strange for many years that Amos Kaguta did not seem to have immediate relatives in Uganda and yet there were never any reports of any of them having died and been buried in Uganda . In addition, during the 1930s and 1940s and even right up to the 1950s, there was tremendous prejudice among the Banyankole tribe of the Ankole kingdom Uganda against Rwandese, particularly the Tutsi. Ths prejudice ran much deeper among the peasants. You think with Esteri Kokundeka being a Rwandan Tutsi, it would have been possible at the time for her to get married to a Munyankole man, more so if she already had a child from another man? Not possible! Only when you know that Kaguta is a Rwandese Tutsi then you see why Kokundeka got married to him. One of Museveni's closest childhood friends was Eriya Kategaya whose mother was Rwandan Tutsi and father a Munyankole.  The bias that the Banyankole felt toward the Banyarwanda at the time would have made it difficult for Museveni and Kategaya to be so close, unless at least one of Museveni's parents was Rwandese.

In the 1990s, Museveni made a habit of publicly promoting the Runyankore language, praising the Ankole cultural heritage and saying he was compiling a Runyankore-English dictionary. (By the way, where is the dictionary? We have never seen it.) Those who know him and watched him commented that this was a bid to make himself look a true Ugandan and deflect any remaining rumours that he might be Rwandese. The very first sentence on the very first page of Sowing the Mustard Seed is revealing. Museveni writes: "I was born among the Banyankore Bahima nomads of south-western Uganda in about the year 1944." In this first line, Museveni would once and for all have dispeled the rumours about his origins by stating categorically "I am a Munyankore Muhima."  He was careful not be specific about that. Instead he vaguely says he was born among the Bahima.

Museveni's school days and first job

Museveni attended Kyamate primary school, Mbarara High School , and Ntare School , all of then Anglican Protestant schools. During his time in secondary school, his schoolmates found him strange and many thought he might be mentally unstable. His radical views and eccentric behaviour while at Ntare School made him stand out. He was an ardent member of the school's debating club and Scripture Union, the study group of the Anglican church in Uganda . Members of the Scripture Union found him to be domineering and even in a religious setting, he was always trying to force his views on the association.  Instead of a conciliatory Christian stance when others expressed views contrary to his, Museveni during unguarded moments displayed a militant attitude. Museveni's behaviour at Ntare School in Mbarara was similar to that of his mother's. Even when his friends and classmates made an allowance for his behaviour being part of the normal turbulent teenage years, some of it was not. One time in 1965, Museveni called a strike which became so violent that a prefect in the school was beaten to death. Museveni was arrested and taken to the Mbarara Police Station. He was taken to the Mbarara district commissioner at the time, Edward Athiyo. When Athiyo saw this young boy who was so thin and had no buttocks almost, he could not believe that Museveni could cause such chaos. So Athiyo ordered Museveni to be given 12 strokes of the cane and released. That is how people went on underestimating Museveni for many years. They always think he is weaker than he looks, politically and physically.  It was troubling because Museveni did not do things on the spur of the moment. He thought things out appeared to know what he was doing. But what he did was not the acts of a normal person.

One of the persistent statements that Museveni had started making was that he was determined to be the president of Uganda one day in the future. He was laughed off as a clown by his schoolmates who saw this as one more of his characteristic outbursts. He kept mentioning this time and time again. He was ignored and dismissed by onlookers as out of his mind, as usual. Something that has never been analysed is his obsession with being Uganda 's head of state that began to rule Museveni from his late teens. The young man was too ditermined to be president that one has to ask sincerely why be so consumed with being leader of a ramshackled African country without any other career ambition?  He never explained what he planned to do when he achieved this dream. There is not definite evidence in this regard, but it can be assumed that Museveni went through a terrible experience as a teenager either being mocked for not having no ethnic and family roots or watching with deep envy his friends and other schoolmates with families and a sense of social belonging and he with none. What was also known by people at the time is that Museveni's mother was widely rumoured to be a part-time prostitute. That is part of the reason she came to have four children from three different men.

Museveni was teased and mocked over the fact that his half-brother Saleh was an Arab and these insults cut deeper into Museveni. The rumour that she was or had been a prostitute persisted everywhere she went, to the point that it seemed to have at least a grain of truth to it. A humiliated Museveni must have developed a great need to compensate for his too shameful background. There could only have been one way to do this and that would be to become the powerful head of state, thus rising even above the traditional kings of Ankole, Toro, and Bunyoro of western Uganda whose subjects he lived and studied among. To be president required simple Ugandan citizenship which he could claim to have. One did not beyond that need to be from a particular ethnic group because the presidency was not hereditary. He had to dominate and domineer those who had insulted and mocked him. After sitting his advanced level exams in 1966, he passed to go to Makerere University in Kampala in 1967 to read Law.  In his A'Level exams, he scored three principals: DDD in History, Economics, and Literature. What he got in the compulsory supplementary subject, General Paper we do not know.

One day a journalist should ask him at a press conference to tell us how much he got in General Paper. But even if Museveni got only DDD in his principal subjects, he knew many things because he used to read widely. So there is a big chance that he scored highly in General Paper. Someone can even assume that he got a Credit 3 or maybe Distinction 2. But you can see why he feared to tell us how much he got in A-Level when he wrote the Mustard Seed because if Ugandans knew he got DDD they would wonder about the only man with a vision to rule Uganda! DDD even in the 1960s was not a result to make you celebrate with delicious chicken. Makerere at that time was one of Africa 's most prestigious institutions of higher learning. But Museveni was unable to complete his first year there. Museveni has claimed the reason he did not attend Makerere University , saying that he originally put his first choice as Dar es Salaam and Makerere only as a second choice. According to a source then working in the Office of the President at that time, Museveni got a mental breakdown at Makerere. In a panic, Uganda 's Prime Minister Milton Obote quickly had a letter written and arranged for Museveni to be flown to Sofia , Bulgaria in eastern Europe where he was admitted in a psychiatry hospital. Because of this, he was unable to continue at Makerere. Explain why did Obote get involved in the personal matters of an obscure student from western Uganda ?  The reason is that Museveni had been a youth winger and member of the ruling Uganda People's Congress party. Obote was well known for his loyalty to even the young people affiliated with his party. President Obote rang up his Tanzanian counterpart President Julius Nyerere and said he wanted Nyerere to recommend "this illustrious young man" Museveni to the University of Dar es Salaam . A letter was later written to President Nyerere formally requesting him to help gain admission for Museveni at Dar es Salaam . It is not clear what triggered off Museveni's mental breakdown. Maybe it had something to do with his mother's breakdown that same year and therefore was part of a cycle of mental breakdown by mother and son or was an incident isolated. It is not known. Much later in life as President, Museveni was hostile to Makerere University in a funny way. Some now trace that hostile feeling back to the haunting memories it gives him of his mental illness in 1967.

At Dar es Salaam University between 1967 and 1970 he studied law for his first year but owing to his insignificant performance, he was transferred to the Political Science department for the remaining two years at the university. On the first day of the law class, the lecturer asked each of the students to stand up and introduce themselves. They did so in turns. Museveni was seated right at the back of the class. When it came to his turn, he stood up and said, "I am Yoweri Museveni of Rwanda ." Some Ugandan students in the class were surprised, as most of them had always assumed that he was a Ugandan from Ankole. Knowing his stubborn ways, they dismissed this statement as one of his pranks and attempt at humour. He soon became involved in radical nationalist and leftist politics. During his second year at Dar es Salaam University in Sept. 1968, Museveni visited the military camps of the Mozambican independence group, Frente de Liberatacao de Mocambique (FRELIMO), and acquainted himself with their goals. There are some people who doubt his claim to have seen combat action in Mozambique , but anyway let us give him the benefit of the doubt.  At Dar es Salaam University , Museveni was one of the leaders of a radical student association, the University African Students' Front (UASF), a discussion group that advocated pan-African unity and advanced the struggle for Africa 's independence. The university published a Marxist magazine called Che Che, whose main theme was revolutionary causes and African liberation. In one of its issues, Museveni wrote an article in which he compared President Nyerere to the 19th century German leader Otto von Bismarck.  An aide to Nyerere read and was impressed by the article and sought out this Museveni who had understood Nyerere in such visionary terms. A mentor-protégé friendship between Nyerere and Museveni soon grew.

In 1969, Museveni visited Makerere University from Dar es Salaam University where he was a student. He went to speak at a seminar on African liberation.

 He had recently returned from Mozambique where he watched the FRELIMO guerrillas train and was impressed by their level of organization and in particular, their interpretation of the role of a soldier in Africa 's independence struggles. In a speech to the students at Makerere, Museveni passionately argued that war the highest form of political struggle could only be conducted by political fighters not by politically neutral soldiers. This speech at Makerere spelt out Museveni's beliefs and because he emphasised them so forcefully, we can surmise that he had now come to the conviction that war was to be, henceforth, his principal vehicle for the pursuit of his ambitions and the application of his political ideas. One day late in 1970 while at Dar es Salaam University , Museveni suffered another mental breakdown.  Like the breakdown in 1967, it was not a breakdown caused by fatigue, stress, or any result of a work overload. It was a breakdown that was definitely triggered off by mental illness. This time he was flown to a psychiatric hospital in Oman in the Middle East . After undergoing treatment, Museveni returned to Dar es Salaam . After completing university in Tanzania in March 1970, Museveni applied for and got a job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. President Obote met Museveni again in Aug. 1970 and was impressed enough by the young man that he had him transferred to the Office of the President at the parliamentary buildings in Kampala . There, Museveni joined a branch of the Ugandan intelligence service, the General Service Unit. Prior to its founding in April 1964, the General Service Unit was an off shoot of the Protocol Department in the Office of the President. This branch was called the State Research Bureau and was headed at that time by Picho Ali. His brother, Albert Picho Owiny, was also a youth activist with the ruling UPC party. Museveni also worked with the head of the research department in the President's Office, Wilson Okwenje (who later became the minister of public service and cabinet affairs in Obote II regime in 1980.)

Museveni's official title was Assistant Secretary for Research.

Among the other young men in the research department of the President's Office were  Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, Zubairi Bakari, Kintu Musoke, Yuda Katundu, Michael Micombero-Mpambara, Kasendwa-Ddumba, Erifazi Laki, Edward Rugumayo, Moses Musonge, John Ateker Ejalu, Abbasi Kibazo and many others.  The overall director of the country's intelligence services was Obote's own cousin, Naphtali Akena Adoko. Museveni's colleagues in the General Service Unit found him to be too impatient and quarrelsome in dealing with people. He was always secretive in the office and appeared to find it difficult to trust people.  He never opened up to his colleagues and they felt sure he was holding back much of himself from them. It was Picho Ali who knew best how to deal with Museveni.

Ali was an extremely intelligent young man with good command of English. He would dismiss Museveni's petty bickering with one single word which would leave Museveni boiling like a volcano and the rest of the office cheering. Like it or not, Museveni was not popular.  Explaning in the Daily Monitor newspaper of Kampala on 16 Oct., 2005, Wilson Okwenje said:

"It was in my capacity as head of research in the President's Office that I met Yoweri Museveni for the first time in 1970. He had come to us after graduating from Dar es Salaam University . We worked together up till the military coup of 25 Jan., 1971.

At that time, as an assistant secretary, he was just another face in the crowd, as a matter of speech, although I came to know that he harboured political ambitions and I suspected that he was using his work at the President's Office as a stepping stone."

The question is, how was Museveni "using his work" as a stepping stone to his real ambitions? It goes without saying that someone in that position would have enjoyed a certain amount of access to secret government files and information.  He had security clearance and made sure that his position benefitted him in a far-reaching way than just gaining an office desk for administrative experience. In 1970 unknown to most people, Museveni had began to collect weapons for reasons known to himself. How he got the arms in the first place without being questioned or arrested, is equally unknown but he used his security clearance to get them in without causing sucpision. Museveni kept the rifles and pistols hidden in a location in Salaama near Kibuye along the road to Entebbe . He also tried to recruit some of his friends into what was a future armed struggle. Many of them did not take him seriously that a junior intelligence officer actually meant what he said when he claimed to privately own guns and was planning an armed struggle.

Murder of Brigadier Pierino Okoya

On 25 Jan., 1970, the commander of the army's Second Infantry brigade, Brigadier Pierino Yere Okoyo and his wife Anna Akello Okoya were shot dead outside their home at Layibi, just outside Gulu town by unknown assailants. Brigadier Okoya was buried together with a sheep. Okoya had been one of the most vocal in criticising the army commander Idi Amin for fleeing the scene of an 19 Oct., 1969 assassination attempt on President Obote at Lugogo in Kampala . As soon as news of the attempt on Obote's life became known, Brigadier Okoya drove from Jinja, 80 km from Kampala and gave orders for the army to remain in the barracks and restrain themselves. Okoya accused Amin of being a coward and wanted disciplinary action taken against the army commander. He went on to suggest that Amin might have had something to do with the assassination plot. At the time Okoya was shot dead, Amin had been flown to his hometown of Arua toward the border with Sudan by an Acholi pilot. Obote ordered an inquiry into Okoya's murder. The first suspects in the Okoya murder were four men Captain Frederick ("Smutts") Guweddeko, an airforce officer; Patrick Mukwaya, a businessman; Siperito Kapalaga, also a businessman; Fred Kyamufumba, a flight technician; and two other men, Kalule L. Lutalo and Sebastiano Lukanga. These men were allegedly paid of murder Okoya. Two young women Milly Nantege and Mary Kajjansi who were girlfriends of two of the accused, were also arrested and tortured to obtain confessions since it was assumed that they would know something about the plot.

President Amin appeared before the panel investigating the murder of Okoya on 15 May, 1971, less than four months since coming to power. Speaking before Justice Richard Dickson, Amin said he did not ask Captain Guweddeko to recruit civilians to assassinate Okoya. On 16 June, 1971, an 86-page report by Dickson was published in which it was stated that the killers of Okoya remained unknown to that day. According to Guweddeko speaking in 1972, he had been arrested at a barber's shop in Wandegeya, a trading centre just outside the city.  He said a police C.I.D officer tortured him continually in order to force Guweddeko to admit that 'it was General Amin who gave them the money to hire people to kill Brigadier Okoya,' The People newspaper said.  Investigations following the crime revealed that the kind of bullets that had been used to kill the Okoya couple were to be found in only two sections of the security forces, the army barracks in Mbarara and the General Service Unit intelligence agency.

This brings two scenarios. The first thinks that the person who ordered Okoya's murder was either connected in some way with both the army in Mbarara and the General Service Unit or one of them. The other scenario thinks that the master planner behind the murders used people in the army based in Mbarara or agents in the General Service Unit. It is the combination of Mbarara and the General Service Unit that makes the picture more interesting.

To add pepper to salt, The People newspaper, owned by the UPC party, quoted a government statement issued on 13 April, 1972 in which the government explained reports of missing people allegedly murdered by the military regime:

"Most of the people reported missing, the statement says, are from [the southwestern Bantu and Hamitic] Ankole and Kigezi districts, which districts were areas of concentration for recruitment to the defunct General Service Unit." (The People, 14 April, 1972).  This is the UPC paper speaking, mind you.  We get from it we get credible and independent proof that the General Service Unit intelligence agency was not dominated by officers and agents from Obote's northern Nilotic Acholi and Langi tribes as most people think but by agents mainly "from Ankole and Kigezi districts." We had some well known characters in GSU from the west in the shape of Michael Micombero-Mpambara from Kigezi and the Yoweri Museveni from Ankole. Let us focus on Museveni the thin man without buttoks who caused the Ntare strike in 1965. Okoya was murdered in Jan. 1970, at a time that Museveni would have still been a student in Tanzania . So how could he feature in the killing of Okoya unless we are telling nice fiary tales?

You see you must always know how a triky man thinks. Museveni was not like you and me. It seems he grew old be fore his time especially in matters to do with state security and the workings of the government system. While most of his classmates were leading ordinary lives and harbouring ordinary career ambitions, Museveni was different. Too different! By 1966 he was already aflame with the passion of African revolution. He followed news events in Uganda keenly and behaved much older than his age. On 30 July, 2005, in Mbarara, Museveni told a bridal giveaway party ("Okuhingira") that he had first planned to wage war against the Obote government in 1967. "I was to start the war against dictatorship when I was still a student at Ntare School in 1967 when Obote abrogated the constitution, but mzee [James] Kahigiriza advised me not to because it would cause more problems," Museveni said. The date he referred to there was actually Feb. 1966 not 1967 if your have seen his explanation in Sowing The Mustard Seed. By this age, Museveni had developed an understanding and appetite for armed struggle and political violence. It is common knowledge that Museveni as a student at Dar es Salaam not regular in the time he spent at campus. We said before that he had visited the guerrilla-held areas of Mozambique in 1969 where his encounter with the FRELIMO guerrillas made a deep mark on him.

Even more important but which Museveni does not refer to it publicly, he had joined the intelligence service earlier than he openly admits. This had happened while he was still a student at Ntare School . In the chaos atmosphere following the attempt on Obote's life in 1969 the young Museveni who is so cunning calculated that killing Okoya would inevitably bring the blame on Amin. In a book published in 1976 to explain the Israeli side to the 1976 hostage crisis at Entebbe , the deputy editor of the Israeli airforce magazine, Y. Ofer, revealed details that appear to spare Amin of Okoya's murder.  The book titled Operation Thunder: The Entebbe Raid: The Israeli's Own Story, mentioned this detail on page 60. Read it yourself and see:

"One day when a Ugandan brigadier-general named Okea [Okoya], a member of the Acholi tribe, had been murdered, President Obote planned to exploit the assassination to oust Amin, and he started the rumour that the [army] Chief of Staff had been involved in it. Idi Amin was then in Cairo...[The Uganda minister of defence, Felix Onama...investigated the matter and learned that Obote was planning to detain Amin on his return to Uganda on the trumped-up charge of having assassinated the brigadier-general."  

We should bear in mind that Museveni had secretly been acquiring arms in 1970 and hiding them at Salaama. We canot rule out the chance that he might have at least hired out guns in Jan. 1970 for the assassination of Okoya. A big evidence linking Museveni's possible role in Okoya's murder came in Aug. 1985 shortly after Obote was overthrown for the second time.The elderly father of the late Okoya told a tribal meeting in Gulu that his son had not been murdered by Amin.

Even more surprising speaking also in Gulu nine years later in 1994, the former Ugandan head of state General Tito Lutwa Okello told a public gathering that Amin did not murder Okoya. Tito Okello had escorted President Museveni on 1 Feb., 1994 for the opening of the Koch Goma health centre in Gulu. Okello was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the 1960s army under Obote and knew enough about the army and Uganda 's politics to know what he was talking about. Speaking in Luo language in Gulu that day to his own tribesmen the Acholi, Okello added something intriguing.

He said:  "There are some people who up to now know who killed Okoya but they are quiet. Okoya was killed in the same way that Colonel Omoya was killed... right now you have started to gang up again under the system and the people who killed your sons."  Who was Okello referring to when he said the people who murdered Okello were in Uganda at the time he spoke, in 1994? This was a political murder. Okello did not mention people by name. He could only have remained silent about their identity if they were influential within the Acholi community and he did not want them to be shunned by their tribesmen, or the killers were in the government at the time and he did not want to invite their wrath.  It was one of the most puzzling statements made by a political leader during the 1990s. Okello criticised the Acholi for ganging up "under the system and the people who killed your sons."  Was he referring to the Acholi rebel leaders like Alice Lakwena and Joseph Kony? If that is the case their rag-tag armies and rebel groups were a joke and you could not say they were a "system."

By early 1994, both of these Acholi rebel leaders had come to be regarded as too weak to seriously threaten the Museveni government and so it was pointless for Tito Okello to bother about cautioning the Acholi over these rebel leaders. Okello said also that the Acholi had "started" to gang up under the system that had brought suffering to them and killed their sons. By stating that he could only have been referring to the National Resistance Movement government under President Yoweri Museveni. An Acholi-led military coup and government headed by Okello himself had ruled Uganda six months before Museveni came to power and the Acholi supported that. For 30 years, the Acholi had given their support to the UPC and DP governments of Milton Obote and Benedicto Kiwanuka. So they could not have "started" giving their support to a system and got Tito Okello's criticism, unless he saw them as supporting a new system that they had historically not supported or known. Tito Okello's intriguing statement in Gulu in Feb. 1994, clearing of Amin's role in Okoya's murder by the Israeli airforce magazine boss in 1976 tells us that it was not Amin. Because the bullets which shot Okoya and his wife came from the GSU or from Mbarara barracks makes one to believe that it was Yoweri Museveni who killed both Brigadier Okoya and Colonel Omoya in 1970. You see when the Acholi hate Museveni for 20 years we can wonder if there can be smoke without fire! Acholi have shunned Museveni with more rebel groups than all other tribes and this can make one to wonder if maybe they possibly know that Museveni killed their Acholi military sons.  On 7 Oct., 1970, President Obote, President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania went to Makerere College in Kampala to attend a ceremony in which it was to be officially made a university; the University of East Africa.  The heads of state were applauded. But when Amin was introduced, he received a standing ovation and cheers from the students assembled for the occasion.

On 11 Jan., 1971, President Obote summoned Amin to his office and told him that the army had overshot its budget by 2,691,343 Pound Sterling . He also told Amin about the report into the killing of Okoya. Five days later on 16 Jan., 1971, Amin called a news conference and said that Obote planned to have him arrested using intelligence agents. Sincerely why should Amin do this, addressing a press conference charging that the commander-in-chief was planning to have him arrested, an action in breach of army discipline? Amin was definitely aware that the climate in Uganda had turned too political than usual.  By addressing a press conference, he tried to appeal for support directly from the public where, he must have known he enjoyed sympathy to make such a direct charge against the President worth the risk.

FRONASA takes on Amin (1971 - 1979)

On 25 Jan., 1971, Major-General Idi Amin came to power in a coup staged by officers and men of the Army. Most of the coup makers were Muslims from the West Nile or of Sudanese Nubian origin.

On the same day as the coup, Museveni and a group of friends opposed to Amin fled to Tanzania . Those ones were Zubairi Bakari, Abbasi Kibazo, Erifazi Laki and Yuda Katundu. These were GSU spies like Museveni. They later decided to launch an armed insurrection against the new military regime. The Amin coup was one of the most popular events since Uganda won independence from Britain in Oct. 1962. You could think as if Uganda had won the World Cup. Mamoth crowds greeted Amin everywhere he went in Kampala , as he drove himself in an open jeep accompanied by troops. The coup was most welcomed and popular in Buganda . Some people have wondered why Museveni and his fellas speeded to exile the next day after the coup. How did Museveni instantly see that Amin was a dictator when the champagne was still flowing and people were drinking like fish and dancing like night dancers on the streets? Unless he tells us that he has a sixth sense like a magician. Museveni has always tried to appear a hero by claiming that he was one of the few who decided that they could not serve under Amin's dictatorship. In Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni says on the afternoon of the coup he sat down with his friends and calmly saw the legacy of Idi Amin (before it was even a day old!) and they concluded that they could not work under the Amin "system", a system that was yet to even get full control of Kampala, let alone the rest of the country.  One cannot judge the character of a regime on its first day unless you are God and Museveni is not God. The answer to the puzzle is that Museveni had been part of a small team of intelligence officers pressing Obote to arrest army commander Idi Amin. Museveni's colleagues Laki, Kibazo, Bakari, and Katundu were intelligence officers like him. The army's former quartermaster boss a Langi army officer by the names Lieutenant-Colonel David Oyite Ojok, had also been one of those urging Obote to arrest or at least put Amin under control. Tensions were building in the army and some in the UPC government felt Amin was becoming a threat to Obote. Obote, as usual, had been indecisive over this issue. But at the urging of Museveni and others, Obote ordered the arrest of Amin while the president was attending a Commonwealth summit in Singapore . Museveni, like Oyite Ojok, fled Uganda shortly after the coup because he knew Amin would have arrested him had he stayed around Uganda and keep him in jail like a rat.

Museveni also knew he had a case to answer over the murder of Okoya because he had been trying to pin the blame on Amin and now Amin was in power.

If Museveni killed Okoya and it was Okoya who had accused Amin of deserting Obote on the day of Obote's escape from an assassination, then with Amin now in power there would have been nothing for Museveni to fear. If anything, Amin might have offered Museveni a prominent position in the new government and Museveni, with his well-known love for power would only too willingly have taken up such a position. Museveni who killed Amin's chief critic Okoya could only have won himself Amin's support.  But you see a guilty man runs before they raise the alarm so Museveni fled immediately into exile.  Let him explain the Okoya murder and you will see how his heart beats with fear and guilt.

Amin's huge popularity

As we saw even before he took state power, Amin was too popular even from the reception he got at Makerere University on 7 Oct., 1970 when he accompanied the three East African presidents to the inaguration of the university. Amin's taking of power on 25 Jan., 1971 had been greatly welcomed in the most heavily populated and most politically and economically populated part of Uganda , Buganda . Many hundreds of thousands of Baganda welcomed Amin's coup to the extent that he could even be made a prince if he had wanted to. Removing the man who the Baganda never forgave for humiliating their late king, Edward Mutesa II and abolishing the kingdom they were so loyal to made the Baganda madly in love with Amin. Speaking during his first press conference to local and international journalists on 26 Jan., 1971, Amin warned the public against removing portraits from government offices and other public buildings previous leaders including that of Obote the leader he had just deposed.  If it was him, Museveni would have called them swine and removed all the photos for sure! If these portraits were removed Amin said, "Then you will not be able to write the history of the country."Amin even said that Obote was a good man "but he was wrongly advised by his selected and trusted people." Everyone wondered when he said this! Amin appointed Ben Kanyanjeyo, from Ankole, as his Press Secretary. A student association founded during the Obote regime and regarded as a recruiting pool for youthful supporters of Obote, the National Union of Students of Uganda (NUSU), continued to exist even after Amin took power. At the time of the coup, the national president of NUSU was Omwony Ojwok. Even the UPC paper The People continued publication even after the coup up to 1973. Amin made Baganda mad with happiness on 31 March, 1971 by returning the body of Mutesa from London to Uganda where he was accorded a state funeral with full military honours. Amin came from the small Kakwa tribe in the West Nile near the border with Sudan . He was also from the minority Muslim faith. But overnight, by the Jan. coup and the return of the Kabaka's body for re-burial, Amin had won the hearts of the tribe and people whose loyalty mattered the most in Uganda . He spoke Luganda, the language of the Baganda fluently. They even said his physique resembled a Muganda. In Aug. 1972, Amin announced that Ugandan Asians holding British passports would be given a month and a half to pack up and leave Uganda .  They had refused to give up their British citizenship when the government ordered them to chose allegiance between Uganda or Britain .

The Asians from the Indian sub-continent controlled the economy of Uganda in the areas of retail and wholesale trade and their dominance was resented by indigenous Black Ugandans all over the country. With the announcement that these Asians were to be expelled, Amin's popularity, already at its greatest in Buganda , now spread to the rest of the country, until Uganda was like a nightclub with dancing everywhere. Booze flowed like the River Nile and Lake Victoria .  The expulsion of the Asians could even have been greater for Ugandans than the 1971 coup itself. This is because a Ugandan leader had shown the balls to deal with the resentment that Ugandans felt at having won independence but still dominated by the Indians whom they regarded as foreigners. A lecturer at Makerere University , Phares Mutibwa, in his 1992 book Uganda Since Independence, commented:  "Praise of Amin was not confined to the Baganda or indeed to the African population; even some important members of the Asian community added their voices to the general euphoria at Amin's emergence." (Uganda Since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes, Phares Mutibwa, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1992, p. 84).  Everything Amin did as president between 1971 and late 1972 was like a midas touch for the majority of Ugandans. He had been brought to power with British and Israeli support and was too popular in the West throughout 1971 and the first half of 1972. To make matters worse for the anti-Amin exile groups, in Sept. 1972 at the Munich Olympic Games, John Akii-Bua shocked everbody except himself by winning Uganda 's first Olympi gold medal in history. Akii-Bua's victory was like the end of the world for sports lovers! It sparked off national celebrations like those at the time of the 1971 coup and independence celebrations in 1962.

Amin, a former East African heavyweight champion and keen sports lover embraced the Akii-Bua victory. Akii-Bua was given a new car a Peugeot 604 brand new and a house by the government, while a road in Nakasero was named in his honour. Many sports fans in the country gave credit to the president for this sports glory of Akii Bua because he loved sports.Amin was too popular in 1972 that he could even move without bodyguards like any other civilian.With such genuine support for Amin in Buganda and Uganda like wildfire, the anti-Amin groups based in Tanzania faced a serious challenge. Removing Amin was now going to be much more difficult than Uganda sending a man to the moon. Or Uganda manufaturing a car.

In March 1971, Museveni formed the Front for National Salvation (FRONASA), a Marxist guerrilla group along with the four friends who had fled Uganda shortly after the coup. But before FRONASA, Museveni and six of his collagues operated a rebel group called "Commitee Seven" because it was made of seven people not because of Museveni's name. Museveni was asked to be the liaison offier for Committee Seven in Tanzania because he knew Tanzania like the palm of his hand. But after some time Committee broke up and a new group called FRONASA was founded. FRONASA in its original form became redundant and then dead between March 1973 and Sept. 1976. Museveni got a part-time job in Aug. 1974 in Moshi in Tanzania . When FRELIMO came to power in Mozambique in 1975, Museveni says he sent 28 young men to the newly independent country for military training in the hope of inflitrating them back into Uganda . He taught development studies and economics at the Moshi Co-operative College and later moved to the capital Dar es Salaam in Sept. 1976. In Dar es Salaam , Museveni lived in a flat located a row or two overlooking another flat where Uganda 's future head of state Colonel Tito Okello lived. Museveni was given 50,000 U.S dollars by President Nyerere, who had developed interest in Museveni after Museveni claimed Nyerere was Bismark. Nyerere detested Amin and was determined to support any group or person who launched a campaign to oust Amin.

By 1972, FRONASA had 200 young recruits. The Africa Contemporary Record edited by scholar Colin Legum wrote about FRONASA:  "It was formed in March 1971 by a group of Obote's student supporters who felt that his policies of preparing for an orthodox army invasion of Uganda would not work...Obote did not disown them or their methods; nor did they disown Obote." (Africa Contemporary Record, Annual Survey and Documents, 1972-73).  The FRONASA manifesto was mailed from Kenya late in 1972 to sympathisers inside Uganda .

The manifesto had four main objectives:

1) To stop the senseless murder, rape and looting of the people of Uganda and all other forms of brutality; 2) to ensure an enlightened government for the people of Uganda that will guarantee peace, security and dignity and all other human rights as set down in the United Nations Charter of Human Rights; 3) to salvage what remains of the economy of Uganda and nurse it back to health; 4) to work relentlessly to improve the image of Uganda in the eyes of the world.

Museveni while in Tanzania had quickly moved to integrate himself in the Tanzanian intelligence community. He did so believing that Tanzanian intelligence was respected by Nyerere and had the president's ear. Museveni also did this in order to gain the upper hand among the Ugandan exile community. He informed the Tanzanians of the activities of his fellow exiles and was also kept informed of the Ugandans' plans and lifestyles. Already you can see how this Museveni of yours was as far back as that time. The man knew that in this militarised atmosphere of Tanzania and Uganda the ultimate decisions were always going to come from the military and he had to be within range of that power structure if his prospects in a future post-Amin Uganda were to be bright. That is how he has always been able to outsmart both his colleagues and his rivals. All along, Museveni had insisted that the best way to remove Amin was not by a direct military attack on Uganda .   He instead favoured a gradual process which he described in Communist way as a "protracted people's struggle" involving grassroots participation of the peasants and masses.

The ousted president Obote and most other exile groups favoured the approach of engaging Amin's army in battle or launching a sudden invasion and hoping that the disgruntled Ugandan population would rise against Amin. Most people have asked as to why Museveni and Obote preferred different approaches to ousting Amin. It was Obote's belief that the UPC as a party was still the most popular political group in Uganda inspite of Amin's widespread popularity. The UPC might have lost much popularity in the central Buganda area and a few other places following the 1966 crisis and the abolition in 1967 of the kingdoms.

But by and large, the UPC was still organised and therefore to Obote it still enjoyed nationwide support. Therefore, the best way to oust Amin would be from Obote's view to launch a surprise military strike and following it the population would rise up and Amin's government would fall. How do we explain as to why was Museveni so serious on a protracted struggle against Amin, unlike the UPC and Obote who preferred a direct military invasion of Uganda in the hope that Ugandans would rise against the Amin government? Once you know Museveni's obsession with power there is nothing surprising anymore. It was not like him to prefer to gradually build support in Uganda . There was another reason. Museveni who harboured political ambitions of his own recognised that he was an unknown factor in Ugandan politics. Nothing he could do at that stage could win him enough support across Uganda to make him president.This bitter truth disturbed him right up to the end of the 1970s. As we said earlier, he had expressed ambitions to one day be president of Uganda since his high school days. He never hid that ambition and in Tanzania it was burning as hot as ever. It was impossible that such an ambitious person could prefer a gradual process to oust Amin if an immediate and daring raid on Uganda could achieve that goal within a few days or weeks.

Explain how come he advocated the gradual approach?

Museveni was realistic enough about his chances to know that a strike at Amin's regime followed by the downfall of the military government could only favour Obote.  Instead of Amin, Obote would be the natural replacement since it was Obote's government that Amin had overthrown. Uganda 's neighbours in the East African community, Kenya and Tanzania , would have supported Obote's return, since that would restore the landscape in Uganda to what they were familiar with.  Museveni was an unknown figure in Ugandan politics and it was unrealistic to imagine that Amin's downfall would see Museveni chosen to succeed Amin. Museveni hoped to use a gradual struggle to undermine Obote's support in Uganda , which he knew, as a former GSU intelligence officer, was widespread and was the real barrier standing in the way of Museveni's ambitions. The removal of Amin, by itself, would be no consolation to Museveni if this returned Obote to power.  An attack on Uganda by FRONASA guerrillas in conjunction with Kikosi Maluum a guerrilla force loyal to Obote was launched on 17 Sept., 1972. President Amin got to know beforehand of the invasion. He even knew the codeword they planned to use: "The Cow is about to Calve." Museveni secretly passed the codeword on to Amin's security so that the invasion would fail and he gets credit for opposing a military invasion. That is why most of Obote's Kikosi Maluum suffered casualties when the attack was repulsed by government troops loyal to President Amin, but Museveni survived without even fighting.

What fighting did he do?

One of his friends Black Mwesigwa was so bitter with Museveni for betraying FRONASA and not doing actual fighting when the others in FRONASA were fighting. Little did Mwesigwa know that he was dealing with a snake. The Africa Contemporary Record reviewed this abortive invasion:  "There were a number of miscalculations and mistakes on Obote's side to account for the failure of the invasion. It came at a time when a strong current of popular support was running in Amin's favour over the impending Asian exodus...Expectations that the invasion would lead to popular uprisings were not fulfilled." (Africa Contemporary Record, Annual Survey and Documents, 1972-73, page. B277).  Obote and his supporters in Tanzania had not understood how quickly the political climate had changed since Obote was last in power. They had not understood that Amin's simple education and his public image as a jokster and simple-minded crowd pleaser resonated with the majority of Ugandans who could not relate with the academic socialist and pan-Africanist ideology of the former Obote government. Moreover the squence of events in Uganda and the moves taken by Amin to consolidate his first wave of support had revealed this army general to be much more alert and politically savvy than people expected. Museveni understood better than Obote what was going on in Uganda , hence his view that a gradual effort was what was needed to remove Amin from power. But we need to remember that Museveni also betrayed his own fighters to Amin's army so that he could be seen to be special at predicting disaster.

How was FRONASA going to overcome the huge obstacle, namely Amin's popularity?

How were they to convince enough Ugandans to start doubting Amin so they as FRONASA could achieve their goal of gaining power? In the history of Uganda this question is not explained. It is agreed that Amin was initially welcomed by huge crowds and was very popular, but within a few months, he turned against his people and began what is termed his "reign of terror".For sure it seems people don't care to ask as to why a leader who was enjoying such genuine support across much of the country, who traveled with only a handful of bodyguards should turn around and begin to terrorize the very people who had so welcomed him to power and continued to support him. The only reason to explain the terror that was going on in Uganda after late 1971 was that these were acts of sabotage by anti-Amin guerrilla groups. FRONASA, operating from Tanzania as well as inside Uganda , adopted a covert method to achieve its objectives. Most of the intellectual leaders of FRONASA like Eriya Kategaya and Augustine Ruzindana, Jack Maumbe Mukhwana did not know that Museveni was carrying out violent sabotage behind their back. This is a crucial part of Ugandan history known by very few people. Museveni was a plotting, far-sighted fellow. He was a non-drinker a non-smoker, and had no time for leisure. He sensed that regular political organisation and a conventional approach to politics would not work to his ends. He had to try something radically and horribly different.

What he did kept a top secret even from some of his senior commanders and political associates was to engage in covert activities that would undermine Amin's international credibility while at the same time eliminating the challenges that Museveni would face in his quest for power. Thus the Museveni doctrine called for a process of elimination of rising to the top by bringing down those at the top. Becoming the only towering national figure by eliminating instead of competing against those who were also heavyweights. That's what Museveni tried to do to Colonel Kizza Besigye in February 2001 when he hatched a plot to shoot down the plane carrying Besigye to a campaign stop in Ajumani, but it was aborted when Besigye's campaign aide Okwir Rwabwoni insisted on being with Besigye. Okwir's brother Noble Mayombo who was part of the plot pleaded with Museveni that he could not face his family if his brother was killed by the government and he was part of the plan.That is why there was a scuffle at Entebbe Airport as military police and military intelligence tried to seize Rwabwoni so he could escape the assassination. You can see how Museveni works when he spread the false story that Besigye intended to kill Rwabwoni and blame it on the NRM government.

Read more of this doument then you will be left wondering at what kind of man is Museveni. Museveni's doctrine in 1971 was to be effected through political assassination. It was not mere assassination; the assassinations had to be carried out in such a way so as to achieve the maximum revulsion among the population and international opinion against Amin. A prominent Ugandan would be kidnapped, killed, mutilated in the most grisly way and then have this act leaked to the exile community as proof that Amin was a brutal dictator.

With its manifesto published, FRONASA settled down into full-time guerrilla work. Some of the original members of FRONASA were Raiti Omon'gin, Yoweri Museveni, James Karambuzi, Joseph Bitwari, Severino Kahinda Otafiire, Haruna Kibuye, Zubairi Bakari, Abbas Kibazo, Victor Amanya, Samuel Kagulire Kasadha, Jack Maumbe Mukhwana, Eriya Kategaya, David Kagoro, Yoga Adhola, Fred Rubereza Nkuranga, Ahmed Sseguya, Chefe Ali, John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, Augustine Ruzindana, James Kanagwa, Abwoli Malibo, Rev. Fr. Christopher Okoth, Valeriano Rwaheru, Martin Mwesiga, William Mwesigwa a.k.a Mwesigwa Black, David Livingstone Ruhakana Rugunda. The field commander of the FRONASA military forces between 1976 and 1979 was Chefe Ali.

Museveni undermined the Amin government using agents he would place within the system. Recounting to the Sunday Monitor of 8 May, 2005 his experience of working for Amin, Professor Edward Rugumayo who was appointed Amin's second minister of education in June 1971 recalled his first meeting with Museveni in Sept. 1972:

"Shortly before the invasion [of guerillas from Tanzania in Sept. 1972] [Ruhakana] Rugunda came to me with a person I had not known before. He introduced him to me as Museveni. I had never seen him before. We discussed a number of things. Then the next day Museveni came alone. We discussed a number of things like Who was Who in the army, who opposed the regime. He was interested in the army in particular."

This was Museveni in his true form. He wanted to find out the centre of power in the army and who in the Amin government was disgruntled. And he did not want his colleague Ruhakana Rugunda to know what he was thinking and planning. This is why he came alone the second time to meet Rugumayo. Most of Museveni's more intellectual colleagues in FRONASA were kept in the dark about what FRONASA really did. They remained convinced that it was an intellectual group resisting Amin's rule. Had they taken the time to read Museveni's written material, they would have realised that he was very differrent in outlook from them. Violence lay at the heart of his every mission.

Museveni's doctrine of political violence

In that 1971 paper Fanon's theory on violence: its verification in liberated Mozambique , Museveni outlined many of the political beliefs and military doctrines that would shape his career. The very title of the thesis, focusing on violence as a political instrument, begins to define him. On page 5 and 6 of the thesis, Museveni states:  "This is the interpretation Fanon put on the role of the revolutionary struggle, whose highest form is armed violence, in the lives of former colonial subjects. This is what I wanted to test in one Sub-Saharan area. I used Nangade district of Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique , as my experimental area. Nangade district is in North-Eastern Mozambique. It is inhabited by a Bantu-speaking people, the Makonde. The Makonde, according to many reliable accounts, are fearless and brave people...But it is worth pointing out that the imperialists, and other bourgeois confusionists, have been spreading the lie that the Makonde are 'the brave people of Mozambique'; that the other tribes like the Nyanjas ae soft people. This is a bankrupt way of looking at things. "  Museveni was saying in this paper that he went among the Makonde people and subjected them to brutal violence in order to test or prove his point that the idea of bravery or cowardice is not inherent, but rather borne of conditions to which people are subjected. What was this violence that Museveni put the people of Mozambique 's Nangade district through? He does spell it out in grisly detail on page 8 when he notes:   "Hence in Mozambique, it has been found necessary to show peasants fragments of a Portuguese soldier blown up by a mine or, better still, his head. Once the peasant sees guerrillas holding the head of the former master, the white man's head cold in death, the white skin, flowing hair, pointed nose and blue eyes notwithstanding, he will know, or at least begin to suspect, that the picture traditionally presented to him of the white man's invincibility is nothing but a scarecrow."   If that is the way Museveni looked at the world in 1971, then it was going to be visible in his actions in Uganda in the following years.

Deaths of Martin Mwesiga, Valeriano Rwaheru, Raiti Omon'gin, and William ("Black") Mwesigwa.  It is generally well-known that some of Museveni's best boyhood school friends were Mwesiga, Mwesigwa, and Rwaheru. Museveni himself has said that many times. They all died in the 1970s during their guerrilla struggle against Amin. Milton Obote claims that their deaths were mysterious, speculating that they knew Museveni well, were probably as ambitious as he was and therefore he had to get rid of them, seeing them as threats to his ambitions. We shall examine the circumstances of their deaths to acertain whether or not Obote's claims are founded. During the invasion, one of Museveni's closest friends, William ("Black") Mwesigwa was killed. Museveni's former colleague in the intelligence services, Picho Ali, wasalso arrested by Amin's army and later killed for attempting to overthrow the government. Picho Ali, as was seen earlier in this narrative, was a constant thorn in Museveni's side during their intelligence service days just before the Amin coup. Museveni felt humiliated and overshadowed by this very intelligent young man. There are several reasons for believing that Ali was betrayed by Museveni to Amin's forces as a way of settling the scores between Museveni and Ali. Sources in the 1970s anti-Amin struggle have said that because Museveni had an insider relationship with Tanzanian intelligence, he was able to anticipate the moves being made by the other exile factions opposed by Amin and engaged in an armed struggle. Several times during the 1970s, several leading exiles like Ateker Ejalu, Major Patrick Kinumwe, and Robert Serumaga who headed armed groups attempted to invade Uganda from Kenya and Tanzania through Lake Victoria . But no matter what security precautions and what secrecy they tried to maintain, their plots were always uncovered and the boats and other landing crafts were more often than not bombed by the Ugandan army.

They could not understand or explain their unending misfortunes until after the end of the war against Amin in 1979. That was when agents in Museveni's FRONASA force told them that all along, it was Museveni who would was learning of these plots through his contacts with Tanzanian intelligence and leaking them to his contacts in Amin's intelligence. That is how Obote's former information minister, Alex Ojera, another former minister Joshua Wakholi, and Picho Ali were captured by Amin's forces in 1972, based on information secretly supplied to the Amin army by Museveni himself. More will be explained about this in the coming sections of this document.

This is how Mwesigwa met his death.

In Sowing the Mustard Seed, Museveni mentions the death of Mwesigwa on page 71. It occurred during the abortive September 1972 invasion of Uganda from Tanzania :

"The whole invasion experience had been very traumatic for our movement and there were many recriminations...I was accused of militarism, dictatorial tendencies, and so on.

Of course I felt a sense of personal responsibility since about half of the people in my platoon were killed, including my good friend Mwesigwa Black. At first I thought that perhaps I should not have associated myself with the plan; but as soon as I reflected on that, I realised that such a course of action would have been totally unhelpful to us." In this passage, Museveni casually mentions the death of one of his closest friends going back to secondary school, a friend who was with him right to the end.  It is hard to believe that the death of someone who presumably meant so much to Museveni could be stated in a single line, before Museveni returned to trying to justify the course of action he had taken. In later years, people from families close to both Museveni and that of Mwesigwa remarked at how indifferently and, to some degree, even cruelly Museveni treated Mwesigwa's son when this young man approached him for assistance once he had assumed the presidency. Mwesigwa would have been a senior member of Museveni's fighting section because of his education and courage. And yet we are told by Museveni that Mwesigwa was killed in action in Mbarara. Doubts about the circumstances of Mwesigwa's death gain credulence when the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Museveni's other friends are examined.  In Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni explains the deaths of Mwesiga and Rwaheru starting on page 78 under the sub heading "Tragedy in Mbale" which happened shortly after Museveni says he re-entered Uganda in Dec. 1972. According to Museveni, Mwesiga was killed in the eastern Ugandan town of Mbale . Judging by the flow of events he outlines in his book, Mwesiga died either very late in Dec. 1972 or Jan. 1973. Museveni narrates: "Martin Mwesiga, [Wukwu Mpima] Kazimoto and I travelled to Mbale to join the group, without knowing that its presence had been detected...As we were driving away, we saw a suspicious-looking Peugeot 404 coming out of a nearby road, but we continued on our way to Mbale. When we got to Mbale town the same Peugeot pulled up alongside our car for a few seconds and then drove off...At around 5:00 p.m., we saw a contingent of about 15 military policemen coming through the estate....They surrounded the house in an unprofessional manner, without cocking their guns.I had the car keys and one of the soldiers, poking a rifle into my side, told me to open and enter the car. Taking them by surprise I jumped over the hedge."

Museveni then narrates how he escaped from the soldiers pursuing him while his unfortunate colleagues were killed.

The story so far is believable, even though it remains to be explained how in that tense and fear-filled atmosphere of the siege, Museveni could have been able to tell that all 15 military policemen had "in a very unprofessional manner" not bothered to cock their guns. These are the same soldiers of Amin whom Museveni in another context would have been sure to describe as trigger-happy, willing to shoot innocent civilians at a moment's notice, presumably suggesting that they went about with their guns cocked. Museveni also tells of how "taking them by surprise", he jumped over the hedge. If these were violent soldiers who, as Museveni would have it, shot innocent civilians on sight without provocation, how much more would they have shot on sight anybody in or around that house they suspected of being a guerrilla.As such, Museveni could not have taken them by surprise. They had come to arrest or kill the suspected guerrillas and there could have been no surprise whether in the overall sense of knowing what they had come to achieve or in the sense of somehow relaxing once they got to the house and forgetting to keep their guns trained on Museveni. Museveni next tells of how that evening after the incident he was walking near the Mbale army barracks when he met a young man walking in the opposite direction "who asked where I was going."

He continues:   "I told him that I was going to town to catch a bus to Kampala . Who was I, he wanted to know? I told him that I was a student, and he advised me very strongly not to proceed any further in that direction. I should instead go back where I had come from. When I asked him why, he told me that some guerrillas had fought a battle with some soldiers in the town. Two of the soldiers and two of the guerrillas had been killed but one of the guerrillas had escaped. It was then that I realised that my two colleagues , Martin Mwesiga and Wukwu 'Kazimoto' Mpima had been killed."

A sister of Mwesiga's, Margaret Kyogire, told a Ugandan newspaper 30 years later that during all that fateful day her brother had been cheerful and relaxed while Museveni was quiet, pensive, and tense. Secondly, Museveni gives a most unconvincing explanation of the brief chat he had with the young stranger later that evening. Considering the danger he had just escaped and not knowing what had happened to his friends after his narrow escape, Museveni would not have been heading back towards the barracks to find out what had happened to them. Or if he did so, he would hardly have entered a casual conversation with a strange man in that area at 7:00 p.m., with the sun having gone down and darkness setting in. And when the stranger asked who he was, Museveni claims on page 80 of his book that he replied that he was a student.  On page 79, Museveni had mentioned that in a discussion just prior to his escape he had wanted to open fire on the military policemen but "Martin Mwesiga, however, dissuaded me, arguing that, firstly, we had student identity cards..."

If they had student identity cards, it is definite that after Mwesiga and Mpima were shot dead, their bodies were searched by the military police for clues about who they were, what they were doing in that house in Mbale and whom the friend who had escaped might be. All through the first pages of Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni is at pains to elaborate on his exceptional instincts, his quick sense of judgement in all sorts of situations and how these qualities have helped him survive endless danger. Bearing in mind all that, how would he the ultimate survivor have risked his life by talking to this stranger, especially when the stranger began asking the sorts of questions that would have put Museveni on guard? This man tells Museveni what had happened and just so happens to be speaking unknowingly to the one guerrilla who managed to get away. In his narration, Museveni does not say what effect it had on him that this young man who was inadvertently saving his life was also unaware that he was speaking to the guerrilla who had just made a dramatic escape. The usually suspicious and resolute Museveni is unconvincing when he tells us that he acted on a total stranger's advice to turn around and simply walk back toward the place he was coming from without for a moment wondering who this stranger might be. He could have been a spy, a soldier in plain clothes, or a friendly and well-meaning citizen and Museveni would have wondered whether he might be lured into an ambush.That is what makes Museveni's version of the story hard to believe.

As for Rwaheru's death, which took place shortly after Mwesiga's, there is also in that story an element of distortion as well from the way it is given to us by Museveni.Museveni narrates it on page 84 of his book:

"A few days after [Daniel] Kangire's arrest, at around 11:00 a.m., while Rwaheru was at Kyambogo with [James] Karuhanga, a platoon of Amin's soldiers surrounded the house. Karuhanga, who was in the sitting-room, was arrested and told to show the security men around.  Meanwhile, Rwaheru had locked himself in the bedroom and when the soldiers failed to open the door, they demanded that Karuhanga tell them who was inside.  Karuhanga told them that it was his wife who had been frightened by their coming to the house. Meanwhile, Rwaheru climbed on to a bed, cut the ventilator netting over the door and lobbed a stick-grenade into the midst of the soldiers who were crowded into the corridor of the house....Karuhanga fled into the toilet and locked the door.  The grenade exploded, killing all the men in the corridor. Rwaheru then opened the bedroom door and lobbed another grenade into the sitting-room, killing more of the enemy. In all he killed eleven of them. Unfortunately, when he was preparing to throw a third grenade, it exploded in his hands and killed him.

James Birihanze a graduate of literature from Dar es Salaam University , had also been in the house that day, but we have never been able to find out what happened to him as his body was not recovered from there. He may have run out of the house wounded and died in another place.  After bringing reinforcements, and realising Rwaheru was dead, Amin's thugs entered the house and got Karuhanga out of the toilet where he had hidden himself. In March 1973 Karuhanga was publicly executed in front of his parents in Mbarara."  A vivid account, no doubt.

What Museveni does not tell us is how he, who was nowhere near the scene, got to know all these details about what happened that day. All the guerrillas in the house that day --- Karuhanga, Rwaheru, Birihanze --- died without speaking to Museveni or their relatives. Had Karuhanga the sole survivor told anyone the story of what happened that day, it could only have been to the army or the intelligence services under interrogation.

Even then, Karuhanga would not have known what was going on in the locked bedroom where Rwaheru was hiding. Nor would Karuhanga, who was locked up in the toilet, have seen how the grenade killed Rwaheru. There is no way Museveni could have learned of what happened in enough detail to describe what happened to Rwaheru, who had locked himself inside a bedroom, climbing "on to a bed." Certainly under the circumstances of complete destruction by grenades, Museveni would have had no way of knowing how it was that a third grenade exploded in Rwaheru's hands and not, say, in his pocket, the floor, or on a nearby table. None at the scene escaped alive to tell the story. And yet Museveni gives the sort of detail that only an eye witness could have. How did Museveni come to know all these details, if he was not there that day or not distorting what happened? How, given this clear distortion, are we to believe in the first place that these men died on the day, in the place, and in the manner described by Museveni? Eleven soldiers were killed by Rwaheru and yet Museveni says the army brought in reinforcements. This can only mean that there were some soldiers who took part in the action who went back to their barracks and returned with other soldiers.  There is, regardless, a small detail that is most questionable. Museveni says "After bringing reinforcements, and realising Rwaheru was dead, Amin's thugs entered the house and got Karuhanga out of the toilet where he had hidden himself." If Rwaheru was accidentally blown up by the grenade he was holding in his hands while inside the house, then his shattered body would have been where he was blown apart, inside the house. Therefore the correct sequence of events would have been that the soldiers first entered the house and then realised that Rwaheru was dead, not first realised that Rwaheru was dead and then entered the house.

Clearly, Museveni is not telling the truth in his narration of the death of his friends. This makes it difficult to believe much of what else he has to say in his book about some of the other colleagues who were close to him, were outspoken, and who somehow died during the 1970s. If on the other hand Museveni's description of what happened to Rwaheru is accurate, then it seems to follow that Museveni was working at this stage with government intelligence agents and might even have directed them to the house where his friends and fellow guerillas were staying. These intelligence agents would then have briefed him on what had happened. It lends credence to Obote's claim that Museveni had a direct hand in the death of his equally ambitious comrades. In April 1990, Obote published a paper titled Notes on Concealment on Genocide in Uganda .

Under section 32 of the Notes titled "The Real Museveni" Obote gives this assessment of his former protégée:

"Museveni has a thirst for power in its most naked form. He believes intensely in violence as a means of governance and for holding power...Both on personal and public Affairs, there is no ethic, moral values or law which he would not either discard, flout or bend in order for him to achieve his designs...Ugandans, who, for whatever reason, have not seen Museveni as a killer or think that they would be safe because they are close to him are in for a rude shock. Museveni kills not only those he sees or regards as his enemies but also those closest to him. I cite some examples:

In Tanzania in the early 1970s, a number of Ugandans who were very close to Museveni disappeared and have not been seen again. They included Mwesigwa Black, Raiti Omongin, Miss V. Rwaheru (Museveni's housekeeper) and Martin Mwesiga. 

In the case of Martin Mwesiga, his sister Margaret, who was living and working in Arusha, personally told me in 1974 in Dar es Salaam the murky story about the disappearance of her brother. 

The gist of Margaret's story is that on several occasions in 1973, she asked Museveni about the whereabouts of her brother, who until he disappeared, was always with Museveni.  Margaret told me and others that on each such occasion, Museveni gave her a different version of where Mwesiga was, ranging from Mwesiga being alive and well but on a mission abroad to Mwesiga undergoing a secret course.  Late in 1973, Margaret said, Museveni told her that her brother had died in a battle in Mbale in Feb. 1973.  One of those present when Margaret gave this account was Enoka Muntuyera, the father of the present Commander of the NRA, Major General [Gregory Mugisha] Muntu.  Enoka and another Ugandan told Margaret that they had stayed in the same hotel as Museveni and Mwesiga in Tabora , Tanzania , in April 1973."

We pause here to assess what Obote claimed.

Obote quoted Mwesiga's sister named Margaret Kyogire as saying on each occasion that she asked about her brother "Museveni gave her a different version of where Mwesiga was." The last version he gave her confirming Mwesiga's death appears to be the one about a battle in Mbale in Feb. 1973. In the account Museveni gives in his autobiography that has already been discussed, Mwesiga's death would have occurred late in Dec. 1972 or at the latest, sometime in Jan. 1973, not Feb. 1973 as he told Kyogyire. As has been stated and made clear already, Museveni is regarded, even by his enemies, as possessing an extraordinary memory and can recall events and places in minute detail. Museveni, according to Obote, told Mwesiga's sister Kyogire that Mwesiga died in Feb. 1973 but Enoka Muntuyera and "another Ugandan" had told Mwesiga's sister that they had stayed in the same hotel in Tabora as Museveni and Mwesiga in April 1973, confirming that Mwesiga was alive after the Mbale incident. Museveni and Mwesiga even came together to Makerere University in mid 1973 to visit Museveni's half-sister Violet who was staying at a flat of a British lecturer. As for Raiti Omon'gin, the truth about his death sheds further light on the death of Mwesiga. Omon'gin, from Karamoja, had been a UPC Youth League leader in the early 1960s. He got involved in the anti-Amin struggle shortly after the 1971 coup. According to Museveni, Omon'gin died or disappeared in Sept. 1972 during the guerrilla invasion of Mbarara. This is the way he explains it:

"Although nobody had fired at us during this encounter, I lost not only my driver but also a few others of our comrades, including Raiti Omongin, who simply fled into the valley and across the opposite hill. We shouted after them but they did not return. I kept hoping they would find their way back to us, but we did not see them again." (Sowing The Mustard Seed, p. 66)

Having just explained the disappearance of Omon'gin on page 66 and giving the impression that he lost contact with Omon'gin, Museveni goes on in the very next page to contradict himself. Here on page 67, he gives another version of the death of Omon'gin:

"We stayed in the forest until 2:00 p.m., resting and reflecting on our losses, while Amin's soldiers randomly lobbed shells at us with light mortars. Many of my comrades, not to mention Obote's supporters, had either been killed or lost in the stampede created by the 106mm gun in the morning.

These included close comrades such as Mwesigwa Black, Raiti Omongin, Kahunga Bagira, and others who were all subsequently captured and killed by Amin's troops in the days that followed." (Sowing The Mustard Seed, p. 67)

Having first stated that Omon'gin simply disappeared, Museveni now positively affirms that Omon'gin and others were captured and killed by Amin's troops.

How he came to confirm that Omon'gin was captured and killed, Museveni does not explain. Margaret Kyogyire traveled to Dar es Salaam from Arusha in 1974 to seek Obote's help in getting her other brother, Sam Magara, into Dar es Salaam University .

In Obote's house that day was another Ugandan, Enoka Muntuoyera.

During their conversation, Margaret Kyogyire told Milton Obote that Museveni killed Omon'gin. She said that her brother Martin Mwesiga had told her that he witnessed Museveni shooting Omin'gin.  According to Kyogyire, Valeriano Rwaheru's sister Hope was also present when the shooting took place. At that time, Hope was Museveni's live-in girlfriend. Museveni later departed with both Mwesiga and Hope and nothing has ever been heard about the two again.

Writing in The Monitor newspaper on 8 Feb., 2004, Yoga Adhola, a UPC member but who for a time had joined FRONASA, recalled a meeting of a few radical Ugandan exiles in Nairobi in 1975: "Something else to note happened at this meeting. At the end of the meeting, the chairman called for the customary any other business (AOB).  Museveni who was seated just next to me, on my left, raised his hand to speak. 'There is this question of the death of Raiti Omon'gin.' Museveni said. 'People say I killed Raiti Omon'gin. Yoga here can defend me on this issue...'

'No. I cannot,' I interrupted him."

Museveni's statement here confirms that rumours regarding his hand in Omon'gin's death had already become well known.

Secondly, the fact of these rumours and Museveni's failure during this Nairobi meeting to state that Omon'gin had been killed by Amin's army --- as he would later claim in his book Sowing The Mustard Seed --- confirm that Omon'gin was murdered by somebody other than Amin's army.

Thirdly, Adhola's blunt refusal to speak for Museveni and defend him during that meeting regarding Omon'gin's death, indicates that Adhola and some other people believed or at least suspected that Museveni murdered Omon'gin.

The inconsistencies in Museveni's account of what happened to his close friends in the guerrilla struggle are glaring enough to do more than simply question his history- and story-telling skills.

Writing in a Ugandan newspaper, the Daily Monitor on 4 July, 2005, Francis A.W. Bwengye, a lawyer, former head of the Uganda Freedom Movement guerrilla group and a former presidential candidate in the 2001 presidential election, observed:

"For a long time...Museveni and his colleagues...have been feeding Ugandans on quite a number of stories as to how the armed resistance...started, how it was fought, who fought where and who killed who.

In some instances cold-blooded murders and political assassinations have been blamed on those who never committed them, or circumstances regarding them have been intentionally distorted or covered up to escape the long arm of the law or future vengeance of the followers and relatives of the victims.

Even Sowing The Mustard Seed by...Museveni, a book that would have been a source...of information...generally left out certain scenarios, situations, and unexplained events." (emphasis added)

Given what Bwengye said about Museveni's tendency to distort the history in which he is an actor, Museveni's explanation of the mysterious disappearanes of practically all his close friends presents a disturbing insight into the motives and mind of the real Museveni.

[4.129] "And you have it not in your power to do justice between wives, even though you may wish (it), but be not disinclined (from one) with total disinclination, so that you leave her as it were in suspense; and if you effect a reconciliation and guard (against evil), then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful." --- The Holy Qur'an

How Museveni met Janet Kataha

By 1972, as Obote mentioned, Museveni was living with Hope, sister of Valeriano Rwaheru. For all intents and purposes, Hope was his wife. Living in the same house --- presumably to share the cost of rent, since they were refugees --- was another couple, Black Mwesigwa and his wife Janet Kataha. After Museveni murdered Mwesigwa, he started to befriend Mwesigwa's wife, Janet Kataha. Here, it is unclear whether he murdered Mwesigwa because the equally ambitious Mwesigwa was a potential rival within their guerrilla group or because Museveni sought to get Janet for himself. Nevertheless, he and Janet became close. Janet started to view herself as Museveni's rightful mate and began to pressure him to explain as to how come if he was devoted to her he stuck his guns with Hope.As already explained, according to sources close to these four people in 1972 Museveni killed Hope because she, along with Martin Mwesiga, was an eye witness to Museveni's murder of Raiti Omon'gin. Following Hope's murder, Museveni and Janet Kataha gradually grew closer and became more or less wife. But Museveni had got a child with Hope, a boy named Muhoozi Kainerugaba. Museveni and Janet would later have three daughters: Natasha Kainembabazi, Patience Kokundeka, and Diana Karemire. If this is how he dealt with the colleagues, friends, and even wife closest to him and with whom he endured the greatest uncertainty, took the greatest risks, and shared the deepest hopes, how would he deal with his enemies? It is clear from what we have discussed that Museveni is not what he has passed himself off to be for all these years.

But who is he?

The answer to this question, once understood, casts a dark and frightening shadow over Uganda and the Central African region.

Idi Amin's reign of terror

The massacre of Acholi and Langi solders, 1971

Following the 1971 coup, telexes were sent and phone calls made to Acholi and Langi pilots and technicians who had been sent for training abroad and were out of the country at the time of the coup. The messages urged to return home immediately. Soon after returning, they were massacred or disappeared one by one.

Allegations were made by the Ugandan exile community in Tanzania that between 4,000 and 5,000 Acholi and Langi officers and men had been massacred through much of 1971 following the Jan. coup. Amin in responding to questions about the killing of Langi and Acholi officers, always denied involvement and blamed atrocities on guerrillas backed by Obote who were based in Tanzania . On 12 Oct., 1971, the Uganda Argus newspaper published a front-page interview of Amin in which he refuted an interview given to the British Broadcasting Corporation by Naphtali Akena Adoko, the former director of intelligence, in which Adoko said three-quarters of the pre-coup army had been killed. Said Amin: "I will say that a few soldiers were killed during the military takeover in exchanges of fire while they were defending themselves from each other." On 18 Feb., 1972, the Uganda government issued a statement further denying the allegations.  The statement said that there were only 6,000 soldiers in the Uganda Armed Forces at the time of the military coup. "This is common knowledge and needs no elaboration or proof," the statement read. It added:

"It would not have been possible for 4,000 to 5,000 Langi and Acholi to have been overpowered and annihilated as claimed by a mere 1,000 troops comprising the balance of the armed forces....

It has been claimed that the only survivors of the original 4,000 to 5,000 Langi and Acholi soldiers are the 23 men alleged to have escaped massacre at Mutukula and fled to Tanzania . This allegation is yet another example of how the facts have been falsified. Within the Mubende battalion alone with a total strength of 1,400 troops, there are today 973 Langi and Acholi soldiers. Some of these troops have been in the army for upwards of twenty years...Furthermore, many of them have recently been promoted to senior ranks and appointed to responsible posts throughout the Uganda Armed Forces.  To mention but a few: Lt. Colonel Mwaka, Major Tarensio Okello, Major [Pangalasio] Onek who incidentally was the parade adjutant during the recent celebrations of the first anniversary of the Second Republic; Captain Odur, Alele, etc."

The government is not aware of the thousands of persons that are alleged to have disappeared since the establishment of the Second Republic . A number of persons that were presumed dead or missing at the time of the military take-over have turned out to be the very persons who have either been writing back to their colleagues or friends in Uganda or who have since joined the ranks of guerrillas and are actively campaigning against the government of Uganda. There is ample evidence that some of these persons paraded at Pangale as escapees from Mutukula prison. Oyite-Ojok who claims to be their rebel leader has in the past year been writing numerous letters to members of the Uganda Armed Forces with the sole intention of destroying their morale and pitting them against the government of Uganda...There is obvious similarity between the contents of Oyite-Ojok's letters and the reports of the stage-managed interviews which have appeared recently in the Tanzania Standard." 

Yet even as hundreds of thousands of people continued to support the new military government and Amin remained popular, rumours were beginning to spread countrywide that this 6ft. 4in. giant of a leader was, in fact, a murderer of a cold-blooded and bone-chilling kind.  In mid 1971, there were reports that Amin had carried out a purge of Acholi and Langi officers and men in the Uganda army, having thousands of them massacred and secretly buried in western Uganda . As these reports of the gruesome massacre of Acholi and Langi officers in Mbarara's Simba battalion barracks continued to circulate in Kampala, two Americans, a journalist and an heir to a United States brewery fortune Nicholas Stroh, 33, and a Sociology professor at Makerere University, Robert L. Siedle, 48, decided to investigate the reports and traveled to Mbarara town. On 5 July, Stroh cabled the Washington Star newspaper and informed the paper that he intended to investigate allegations of massacres of Acholi and Langi army officers and men in the Simba Battalion barracks in Mbarara in late June. Stroh and Sidle drove to Mbarara and checked into the Ankole Government Rest House on 7 July, 1971. Captain C.E. Mukasa, a former adjutant at the Simba Battalion barracks who was later transferred to the Office of the President, said Stroh had visited the barracks on 7 July, two days before Siedle and he disappeared. Captain Mukasa advised Stroh to make an appointment and meet the commanding officer of the battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel Waris Ali the next day at 10:00 a.m. Mukasa said Stroh told him that he had contacted senior government officials regarding his proposed investigation, including the acting chief of staff of the army, Lieutenant-Colonel Valentine Ochima. According to Mukasa, Stroh said Ocima had told Stroh to "go ahead" with the investigations. On 8 July, the two Americans told the caretaker of the Rest House, Isaac Kamya, that they were going to Kikagati near the Tanzania border to see what was happening there.

They then returned from Kikagati and back to the Rest House and then, according to Kamya's testimony given in 1972, they went to an undisclosed destination. A cook at the Rest House, Muhamud Kawooya, said that on 9 July, Siedle was picked up by four men wearing shirts that looked like army uniform.   The account best known to the public and in the history books is that the two Americans were last seen alive on the night of 7 July, 1971 as they entered Mbarara's Simba battalion barracks where they were murdered.

Amin and his soldiers were blamed for the murder of these Americans which they committed allegedly to cover up the massacres of the Acholi and Langi. From the eye witness accounts quoted above, we see that the two Americans were actually alive even on 8 July. David Martin, a correspondent for London 's Observer newspaper and author of the 1973 book General Amin, interviewed a former officer in Amin's army who had since fled into exile in Tanzania . He was named as Lieutenant Silver Tibahika. He was from the Bakiga tribe in southwestern Uganda , although he lived in Mbarara. The interview, published in London's Observer newspaper on 9 April, 1972, had Tibahika claiming that Stroh and Siedle were murdered in the Mbarara barracks by two Muslim officers, one Colonel Ali and one Major Juma. The Africa Contemporary Record reported Tibahika's testimony this way:

"He gave a detailed account of how they [Stroh and Siedle] had been murdered. [Tibahika] put the blame on [Lieutenant-Colonel] Waris Ali and [Major] Said Juma, and precisely located where the car [a Volkswagen Beetle owned and driven by Stroh] could be found." (Africa Contemporary Record, ibid., page B280)   this way: " Record reported Tibhika' .  Tibahika, speaking from Tanzania , described this further detail to the Observer of what happened to the Americans:  "They had been slashed to death with pangas [machettes], then burned, and the remains buried in a nearby bush to be later exhumed and thrown into a river. Their car was burnt and then later taken to Mountains of the Moon, 250 miles northwest of Kampala . There a party of school children found it and Judge Jones and his assistants identified it from the number plates and parts of the chassis. Nicholas Stroh was killed because he was so proud."

On the surface of it, it would appear that Lt. Tibahika's narration matches the facts as they happened.There is, but, a problem with the reliability of the facts. Firstly, Tibahika told the Observer that  "Nicholas Stroh was killed because he was so proud."  This goes directly against the generally held view that the Americans were murdered by the Amin regime in order to suppress the findings of their investigations into the massacre of thousands of Acholi and Langi soldiers. Secondly, a separate report on what happened to Stroh and Siedle was given, contradicting Tibahika's claims. A former Ugandan army officer, who spoke anonymously, gave the International Herald Tribune newspaper of 3 Sept. and 4, 1977 "detailed evidence" of how the two Americans had been "slaughtered" in Mbarara barracks.  This officer said the two men who murdered Stroh and Siedle were Captain Stephen Taban, who was the chief technical officer in the Uganda Airforce, and Colonel Dusman Sabuni, who later became Amin's minister of Industry and Power. If we bear in mind that Lt. Tibahika gave a "detailed account" of how the two men died and who killed them, and yet here was another former Ugandan army officer giving directly contradictory but supposedly "detailed evidence" about the same incident, it creates the problem of how credible the two claims were. A further element in this story must be borne in mind: Tibahika was, like Museveni, from western Uganda and most of the core of FRONASA were from the western part of the country. Furthermore, it introduces the question of either misinformation about the facts or perhaps even brings into question the whole basis for pinning the blame on the two men's deaths on the Amin regime. To complicate matters even further, President Amin commissioned an inquiry into the circumstances of the two Americans' deaths.  A British-born judge, David Jeffreys Jones, headed the inquiry. He left the country for Kenya but posted his report to Uganda from the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa .

Solid proof of Tibahika's background that enforces this point, came on 25 May, 1972 during the hearings into the two murders. On that day, Lieutenant-Colonel Ali defended himself against Tibahika's accusations that it was Ali who had ordered the murders: Ali said Tibahika had worked under him before he was sent to Makindye military police prison in Kampala . Ali also revealed that Tibahika was once a member of the now disbanded General Service Unit of the 1960s. (The People, 26 May, 1972)  Titled "Commission of Inquiry into the Missing Americans Messrs Stroch and Siedle held at the Conference Room, Parliament House", part of which read:  "From paragraphs 9 and 10 of the [Tibahika] affidavit, it is obvious that the two Americans died an unnatural death. They were in fact murdered by personnel of the Simba Batalion of the Uganda Armed Forces. The culprits included the [Commanding Officer Mbarara] Waris Ali, his second in command Major Said Juma, Lt. Silver Tibahika, and Stephen Taban."

By the way, Tibahika was mentioned in the report as one of the killers of the two Americans and yet in his interview with David Martin of the Observer, Tibahika had pointed the blame at Ali and Juma. Jones also named as one other culprit Ali Fadhul who as a brigadier Amin would later name his Minister of Provincial Administrations. Three different sets of people were separately accused of murdering the Americans. In all three instances, the evidence given was "detailed" and seemed to have been from credible eye witnesses to the murders. Tibahika claimed that Major Juma owned a Volkswagen Beetle car while Ali said Juma actually owned a Datsun. How could all three versions of the story appear to be authoritative and yet they were completely in conflict with each other? The only constants in the story are that two Americans were murdered and that the murders took place in Mbarara's Simba battalion barracks. This conflict in the versions can only be explained when subversion and sabotage by an exile group or guerrilla force is factored in as spreading these accounts as part of their disinformation campaign.

On 25 May, 1972, Lieutenant-Colonel Ali gave perhaps the most damning fact of all about Tibahika: "Later, he [Ali] said, he [Ali] learned that Lt. Silver [Tibahika] had run away, but he did not know any reason why Lt. Silver decided to ran to Tanzania...He did not know why Lt. Silver is trying to involve him into this matter of the two missing men." (The People, 26 May, 1972)   We should ask the most important question: if Waris Ali, Said Juma, Stephen Taban, Silver Tibahika, and Ali Fadhul were all implicated in the murder of the two Americans by Judge Jones' report, explain as to why is it only Tibahika who fled into exile shortly after the report was published and not any of the other men? Convince us as to why did Tibahika go into exile in Tanzania when his name was mentioned in Judge Jones' report as one of the accomplices to murder, unless he knew that he was in friendly territory in Tanzania? Tibahika later returned to Uganda in 1979 as part of Museveni's Tanzanian-backed FRONASA fighting force during the war to remove Idi Amin's government. This, more than anything else, suggests that FRONASA killed the two Americans on orders of FRONASA's leader, Yoweri Museveni.  From Colonel Ali's statement about Tibahika's past as a GSU agent --- an intelligence agency Museveni once worked for and from the inference drawn so far --- it is clear that Tibahika was probably a FRONASA saboteur assigned to the Amin army but working secretly with Museveni to undermine Amin from within the army.

A piece of evidence that proves that Museveni knew and was in touch with Tibahika is found in Museveni's own book Sowing The Mustard Seed, on page 51:

"During my stay in Bukoba [in northwest Tanzania ] I made trips with Ojok to the Ugandan border trying to make contact with the people inside the country. We went to Murongo to wait for a Lt. Silver, for whom I had earlier left a message in Mbarara, but he failed to turn up. After waiting fruitlessly for some time, Ojok said that he knew a policeman at Kikagati who might be of some help."  This clear link between Museveni and Tibahika naturally suggests that FRONASA was the hand behind the murder of the majority of Acholi and Langi army officers in 1971, and not Amin as has been widely assumed.  Tibahika might well have been the killer of the two Americans and was trying in his testimonies made in exile to put the blame on Amin's army. Notes found in Stroh's car had details of interviews conducted by the two Americans with eye witnesses to the killing of 160 Acholi army officers in late June. If Tibahika and therefore FRONASA were involved in the murder of the two Americans, it follows that they were killed to hide the evidence of the murder of the 160 Acholi officers, the testimony of eye witnesses to which was contained in the notes discovered in Stroh's car. It would have been the natural tactical move by a ruthless guerrilla like Museveni. But having done a mediocre work of it, they ended up with conflicting versions of the story. Museveni knew perfectly well that the death or even disappearance of just two Americans would be enough to swing the U.S. state machinery into action and if an accusing finger could be successfully pointed at Amin, this would achieve FRONASA's goal much better than a month of fighting on the battlefield. The full facts and significance of this method of planting FRONASA agents in institutions for them to sabotage the government from within will be explored when we come to what happened in the 1980s in Uganda under the second Obote administration.

On 11 July, 1971, in another denial of involvement in the murder of Acholi and Langi soldiers, there was a departure from simple denials by the president. During a state visit by Amin and the First Lady Sarah Mariam Kibedi Amin to London at the invitation of the then British Prime Minister Edward Health, two days of riots broke out in the Simba battalion barracks in Mbarara protesting at the harassment of Acholi and Langi soldiers.The riots spread to the Moroto barracks in northeast Uganda and to Magamaga barracks in Uganda's second largest town Jinja where the unrest was at its most intense. Two days later on 13 July, 1971, the acting army commander, Lt. Colonel Charles Arube, said in a statement that guerrillas had attacked several army units and killed 17 soldiers. On 14 July, 1971, President Amin issued a statement in London in which he said Mozambican-trained guerrillas and Tanzanian troops had attacked Jinja and Moroto on 11 July and 12. Amin added that three Chinese advisors had participated in the attacks.

Some analysis is required here.

If it is true that there was an uprising across the country in protest at the killing of Acholi and Langi officers and men, at the very least it shows two things: either the Ugandan army was still made up of troops from many different tribes. As such, these tribesmen were angry and shocked at the killing of their comrades and this led them to rise up in protest. That in itself suggests then that Amin's army was truly a national army, representing the broad section of the country's ethnic makeup. This would make it a professional army and not a band of "thugs" as Museveni and other opponents of Amin tried to make it appear. Or alternatively, if Amin's opponents were correct in arguing that from the beginning Amin was eliminating the Christian Acholi and Langi tribesmen from the army in gruesome massacres and replacing them with Muslim Nubian, Sudanese, and West Nile tribesmen who were loyal to him, then by mid 1971 the army had taken on this new ethnic composition. If the army was now dominated by Amin's illiterate Muslim West Nile and Nubian tribesmen, it leaves open the question of who then it was that was rioting and protesting the purging of the Acholi and Langi from the army.  If it was these Sudanese, Nubians and Amin's own tribesmen from the Lugbara and Kakwa who were rioting, it reveals something very important. It shows that these soldiers from Amin's tribe and the others from Sudan , far from being vicious killers and indisciplined thugs as we were made to believe, were in fact patriotic, well-behaved, sensitive, humane people who were hurt that Amin was killing their fellow soldiers just because they happened to be from Obote's tribe.

To see it either which way presents a problem for Museveni's version of history. In the preamble to their manifesto, FRONASA laid all the blame for what was taking place in Uganda on Idi Amin and his army:  "While the people go short of items from salt to medicine the army has all it requires. General Amin has let the army loose among the people where they have gone on a spree of rape, murder and looting. The most barbarous soldiers have been the ones most highly rewarded with promotions. The death toll currently stands at 83,000, a figure representing a cross-section of the population of Uganda ."  The FRONASA manifesto states in its preamble that "While the people go short of items from salt to medicine the army has all it requires."  In the very next sentence, FRONASA charges that "General Amin has let the army loose among the people where they have gone on a spree of rape, murder and looting." Obviously the authors of the FRONASA manifesto were not alert to the contradiction and dishonesty in their claim Sincerely if FRONASA stated, the Uganda army had "all it requires", convince us as to why would Amin let the same well-paid well-facilitated army loose on a population which up to that time still supported Amin? Sincerely why should someone risk losing all that support when the army that had all that it required and was happy with the way things were and therefore there was no need for the president to divert its attention by unleashing it loose on the population?

Sincerely things do not add up!

And now in July 1971 we see this army rioting, not against the civilian population, not rioting over a lack of food or over delayed wages, but rioting in support of the very Acholi and Langi soldiers that such a brutal army would have been eager to eliminate. The events started with the murder of Americans Siedle and Stroh, then turned into riots protesting the massacre of the Acholi and Langi, and finally with Amin and the army commander saying that the army had been attacked this time not by guerrillas loyal to Obote, but by Mozambican-trained guerrillas.Who would these guerrillas be who were trained in Mozambique, possibly backed by Tanzania and backed up by Chinese advisors? Who else but the FRONASA guerrillas led by Yoweri Museveni! Furthermore, if Amin's army was protesting the killing of soldiers from Northern Uganda related to Obote and as the FRONASA manifesto stated, Amin's army was loyal to him, then the killing of the Acholi and Langi soldiers would not have been Amin's directive either or else these rioting soldiers who were loyal to Amin would be supporting rather than opposing him. It could not have been the same army to kill the Americans as a way of hiding the evidence of their murder. The reason is that in the first place, the army would have not been murdering the Acholi and Langi and as such would have nothing to hide from the American investigators. All logic and the military intelligence which for once did not blame the attacks on the army units on Obote-based guerrillas, leads rather to Mozambican-trained guerrillas backed by Chinese advisors who were obviously a Marxist-driven group. This attack on the barracks and the murder of the two Americans, it follows, was the work of FRONASA.

The manifesto also cited the murder of a number of prominent Ugandans. The acting director of Uganda Television, James Bwogi, disappeared on 24 Aug., 1971.

They included one Mulekezi, a former district commissioner of Bukedi district in eastern Uganda ; and one Nshekanabo, the manager of the government-owned Rock Hotel in Tororo in Bukedi district. Mulekezi and Nshekanabo both disappeared on 23 Feb., 1972. According to FRONASA, Nshekanabo had been trying to persuade a group of unruly soldiers to pay for the drinks they had drunk and the Rock Hotel's bar. Among the others purportedly murdered by Amin's regime and providing justification for the launch of their struggle were John Kakonge, the former secretary general of the Uganda People's Congress party; Ali Kisekka, former cabinet minister in the Obote government James Ochola; one Sebalu, the UPC administrative secretary in Ankole, Nekemia Bananuka, and the lawyer Patrick Ruhinda. The president of the Uganda Industrial Court , Michael Kabali Kaggwa was murdered in Sept. 1971. His charred body was discovered in his burnt out on 10 Sept.. A prominent politician and early pre-independence era agitator Joseph ("Jolly Joe") Kiwanuka, and many other public figures were cynically murdered by FRONASA assasins on orders of Museveni. FRONASA reported that a Roman Catholic priest, Father Clement Kiggundu, the former editor of Uganda 's oldest newspaper, the Catholic Munno, had disappeared and his burnt body was found in his car on 15 Jan., 1973.  The postmortem on his body revealed that Kiggundu had died before being burnt. The doctors who performed the postmortem disappeared a few days later. It is worth bearing in mind that Michael Kaggwa and Fr. Clement Kiggundu were murdered in exactly the same way --- they were shot dead first then their bodies placed in their cars and burnt.  FRONASA said the two men were dragged off by the soldiers commanded by one Colonel Toloko and never seen again.

How did FRONASA come to know of all these incidents and in such detail?

After the aborted attempt to overthrow Amin on 17 Sept., 1972, there followed a wave of murders of prominent people in Ankole in western Uganda . Businessmen, chiefs, lawyers, army officers, and other government officials from Mbarara, Bushenyi, and other towns in Ankole were murdered, many of them mutilated. These shocking killings were blamed on Amin and his army. What was not explained was something odd --- practically all the people killed in Ankole that Sept. and till the end of the year were from the majority Bairu sub-ethnic group. The royal sub-ethnic group, the Bahima, whom Museveni had grown up among and whom he identified with, were untouched. Amin would not have known or cared about the differences between Bairu and Bahima.  After all, if support for the guerrillas had come from Ankole, it mattered not who was a Mwiru or a Muhima. On 13 April, 2005, former President Milton Obote narrated this episode to The Monitor newspaper of Kampala :

"Masaka was a failure, Mbarara was a failure. Our troops fought gallantly but against heavy odds and were beaten. Many including Alex Ojera, Picho Ali and Capt. Oyile were captured and later executed by Amin.  Amin's army then went from House to house and picked up our leaders and killed them. Among those killed was [the UPC's administrative secretary in Ankole Nekemia] Bananuka together with his three sons.

Later, I was told that the man whom our troops picked before Mbarara town who was supposed to be part of Museveni's imaginary army, was the one who went house to house and made Idi Amin's people pick up people like Bananuka.".  Here is a suggestion from an independent source that points to Museveni as the hand that directed the soldiers on whose house to visit and whom to kill.

President Museveni read this article in which Obote stated this allegation, but to date has not responded to it, even after first threatening to sue Obote and The Monitor over this series of autobiographical recollections by Obote. These selective killings that targetted Bairu and left unscathed the Bahima, were the first indications of what extreme measures Museveni's FRONASA was willing to take in order to undermine Amin's regime. Others victims of this FRONASA terror were Obote's former Internal Affairs minister Basil Kiiza Bataringaya. Bataringaya had been part of a delegation of officials from Ankole who met President Amin and affirmed their support for him following the coup.Bataringaya's wife Edith was murdered in 1975, her body burnt.

Death of Makerere University vice chancellor Frank Kalimuzo.  The vice chancellor of Makerere University , Frank Kalimuzo, who was a close friend of Amin, was kidnapped and disappeared. There is a direct connection between what happened to Kalimuzo and what happened to Nekemia Bananuka. Explaining what happened to her husband, Esther Kalimuzo told the Daily Monitor newspaper on 6 Oct., 2005 of this sequence of events:

"He had had a friendly relationship with Amin but the coup really worried him. He sought an appointment with Amin but was never granted one, which led friends to warn him to be very careful. Later the same year, Amin came to the university to be installed as Chancellor and even had a meal in our house. There was no obvious sign of danger."  The problems began close to the invasion of September 1972. Frank told me he was receiving anonymous letters threatening him with death. State Research Bureau people came and told him that 'You are number two to Ben Kiwanuka, on the list' [of those to be killed].  Friends advised him to flee into exile, but he kept saying 'I have done nothing to Amin.'  During that September, just before the invasion, unknown people surrounded our Makerere house at night then rang the bell. We refused to open. They went away. The following day, Frank contacted people in security and reported the incident. He was told: 'we are the ones who sent them. It was a mistake not to have opened for them.'"

"My husband was immediately arrested and taken to Makindye, where he spent a day being questioned about bad relations he was alleged to have with some university students. He met "the students." They could name neither their academic courses nor their halls of residence. He was told there was no case and he was released the same day.  The next day, we went to [the southwestern town of] Kisoro...While we were there, the invasion happened and Mbarara and Masaka were attacked....After the invasion was defeated, we decided to return directly via Mbarara and Masaka in a civillian convoy with an army officer friend at the front....The following day, Radio Uganda, UTV and then BBC announced that 'Vice Chancellor Frank Kalimuzo has disappeared to Rwanda with [Basil] Bataringaya and [Nekemia] Bananuka.' We had already learnt that those two had been murdered by Amin. Frank was shocked to listen to the media saying he had 'disappeared' with them!"

Since, as we have already seen, Bananuka was murdered along with others in Ankole on orders of Museveni, the fact that Kalimuzo's name was given as having disappeared together with Bataringaya and Bananuka to Rwanda , when they were in fact already dead, suggests that Museveni's FRONASA had a hand in Kalimuzo's murder too. Explaining Kalimuzo's disappearance, the government said he had dissapeared "after being arrested by men masquerading as security officers." That is indeed what happened. The State Research Bureau, had it felt that Kalimuzo was cooperating with the guerrillas, would not needed to send him anonymous letters threatening him with death. They would have come and arrested him in their official capacity as a state security agency. A pattern that ran through Museveni's guerrilla activities and method of work was the idea of anynymous letters, as we shall see much later in this document. Another prominent death was Amin's former aide de camp and later army chief of staff, Lt. Colonel Valentine Ochima, who was killed in Oct. 1972. He had been released from prison by Amin on 2 Jan., 1972 along with 12 other soldiers. They were involved in a coup plot against Amin and imprisoned in Makindye military police barracks. FRONASA falsely claimed that Ochima was taken to the Makindye barracks and murdered there. Also killed that month in the same barracks was Joseph N. Mubiru, the former governor of Bank of Uganda, the country's central bank.On 16 Nov., 1972, the former UPC secretary general John Kakonge was abducted and disappeared, with later reports saying his testicles had been cut off and stuffed into his mouth.

The murder of Kakonge is one that should be examined.

The charismatic Kakonge, who came from western Uganda , presented more a real threat to Museveni's ambitions to one day be president of Uganda than he did to Obote. When Museveni took power in 1986, some military officers in Museveni's army told the Kakonge family that Kakonge's death had been orchastrated by Obote. How so? They claimed that Obote had written letters purportedly to Kakonge but in such a manner and placed in such a location as to make sure that Amin's security agents would get to see them and end up arresting and killing Kakonge. Because the regimes of Amin and Obote were consistently discredited, it is easy to believe these kinds of reports at face value. But the truth is so different. To begin with, it had been claimed by FRONASA in its 1970s propaganda campaign that Kakonge was murdered on orders of Amin. But, soon after Museveni assumed state power in 1986, his officers began to claim that Kakonge was murdered through a trick by Obote.  That contradictory set of explanations alone should have raised the suspicion of the Kakonge family.

With virtually no exception, all the prominent Ugandans who "disappeared", presumed dead during the 1970s, were the victims of FRONASA's deadly guerrilla work.  As part of their subversive activities against the Amin administration, FRONASA also used to compose letters purportedly written from Tanzania by the Obote aide, Lieutenant-Colonel Oyite Ojok, and listing Oyite Ojok's postal address. Agents working for FRONASA used to distribute leaflets and pamphlets designed to spread a message of subversion against Amin using secret guerrilla cells. One of the FRONASA cells that Museveni used to achieve this was made up of Lieutenant Ahmed Seguya and Musa Hussein Njuki. These men operated a cyclestyle machine which they used to reproduce these documents.Oyite-Ojok's address was given in these letters as "c/o Bhoka Munanka, State House, Dar es Salaam." It is fairly well-known that there was one Ugandan exile who frequented the official residence of Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and that was Yoweri Museveni. Obote also was in touch with and maintained a close relationship with Nyerere. But it did not reach the extent of somehow using State House Dar es Salaam as a personal postal contact. Certainly Oyite-Ojok would have had less access at State House than Obote. This rules out or brings into question the claim that either Obote or Oyite-Ojok were  the authors of those letters.

In Sowing The Mustard Seed, Museveni inadvertently exonerates Oyite-Ojok and incriminates himself in the matter of those mysterious letters, when he writes:

"Ojok himself was quite a courageous individual. The problem with African leaders, including soldiers, is not a matter of personality but arises from their view of the world and of politics. Although Ojok had some good personal attributes, his way of thinking was very different from ours." (page 50) .  For Museveni, who rarely concedes positive attributes in people other than himself --- and especially in someone like Oyite-Ojok who was very close to Obote and a long-standing rival of Museveni --- this admission of courage and "good personal attributes" on the part of Oyite-Ojok positively comments on what must have been a very good and decent man in Oyite-Ojok, hardly the kind of person to mail letters to prominent Ugandans in order to get them arrested or killed by Amin.

These letters were addressed to selected prominent Ugandans and "leaked" to the state security agency, the State Research Bureau, in order to lead to the arrest and, if possible, murder of the person in question. Museveni had several calculations by this deadly covert action. Obote's Kikoosi Maluum armed faction was, as noted already, the main rival of FRONASA. If these subversive letters were written purportedly in the names of Obote and Oyite Ojok, not only would they endanger the lives of the targetted prominent Ugandans; if that truth were ever found out, it would create a deep hatred and resentment for Obote and Oyite Ojok in Uganda.

On 2 Jan., 1972, The People quoted President Amin as commenting on these subversive letters being distrubuted in Uganda from Tanzania:  "The President, however, disclosed that a number of army officers have been receiving what he described as 'dirty correspondence' from Ojok who was a former Lt. Colonel in the Uganda Army and who is now in Tanzania. The President regretted the fact that among those officers who have been in contact with Ojok, is Lt. Colonel S. Kakuhikire who works in the President's Research Office. He received a letter dated 4th December, but never bothered to inform the President about it." (page 1)

Amin had now found out that one of his senior officers, Lieutenant-Colonel Sarapio Kakuhikire had been receiving these letters allegedly from Oyite-Ojok. Kakuhikire did not deny it and Amin expressed his disappointment at this silence on the part of Kakuhikire. Did Amin, the world-famous tyrant drag Kakuhikire off to his death? No. Kakuhikire probably did not think much of the letter he received and knowing that he was not involved in any conspiracy against Amin, let matters be. In 1977, Museveni ordered his FRONASA men to murder Kakuhikire. He was kidnapped right in front of the main Post Office buildings in downtown Kampala by Museveni's agents inside the State Research Bureau and murdered.  As usual, the blame was put on Amin.

Sincerely why Amin should murder this officer trained at the Royal Academy in Sandhurt, that is assuming Amin was intimidated or envious of his better training?

He should have chosen to do that toward the end of his rule rather than purge him immediately after Kakuhikire's possession of the alleged Oyite-Ojok letter came to Amin's attention in late 1971. FRONASA had a problem because no matter how much they tried to implicate prominent Ugandans in "plots" to overthrow the government so that Amin killed them, he would not do that. When their scheme failed, they decided to murder these people themselves. Amin would ordinarily have had these people arrested and then brought to court, whether a civilian court or military tribunal, whether a genuine or a mock trial, but it would have been in his interest to make the public (which still supported him) believe that he was pursuing the course of justice. That did not happen.  FRONASA turned to abducting prominent Ugandans and making them "disappear", since they had failed to get them arrested by Amin.

"[17.33] And do not kill any one whom Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause, and whoever is slain unjustly, We have indeed given to his heir authority, so let him not exceed the just limits in slaying; surely he is aided." --- The Holy Qur'an

Murder of DP leader Benedicto Kiwanuka

A well-publicised murder was that of Benedicto Kagimu Kiwanuka, the president general of the Democratic Party and at the time of his death, chief justice of the Uganda High Court. He is generally believed to have been murdered on orders of Amin allegedly for collaborating with the exile groups in Tanzania . He was then reportedly dragged out of the High Court building in Kampala in Sept. 1972, forced into a car boot, and taken to the Makindye military police barracks where he was killed. What really happened to Kiwanuka? Two days before Kiwanuka was kidnapped, Obote had allegedly received a letter from him, presumably to affirm Kiwanuka's support for Obote and the anti-Amin struggle. But, as just stated, these letters allegedly written by Obote or Oyite-Ojok were actually penned by FRONASA. A revealing piece of evidence that points to FRONASA's hand in Kiwanuka's murder came in an interview with the African current affairs magazine Drum in 1980 by Kiwanuka's widow, Maxensia Zalwango Kiwanuka. Asked about the circumstances of her husband's death, which at that time she blamed on Amin personally, she told the reporter V.P. Kirega-Gava: "To prevent any information from reaching us, some Banyankole who were present as my husband was being butchered by Amin were killed under mysterious circumstances."  Several questions arise out of Mrs Kiwanuka's interview. To begin with, few heads of state in the modern world would personally carry out executions when they had squads of agents who could easily carry out the deed while leaving the president looking innocent. There have been claims that Amin personally executed many of his victims. This would not be possible if Amin had vehemently denied any role by his government in their killing. Secondly, even if this one head of state Amin was the kind to personally murder his opponents, almost all accounts of Amin's alleged brutality mention that he surrounded himself with and relied on trusted and vicious Nubian, Sudanese, Lugbara, and Kakwa killers from his West Nile home district and southern Sudan. A few others have mentioned that Amin's State Research Bureau intelligence service also employed Rwandese Tutsi refugees who had lived in Uganda since 1959. If these accounts are correct and typical, what then would Amin have been doing with Banyankole men at the time he was personally killing Kiwanuka?  Yoweri Museveni had made the Banyankole his adoptive tribe and here a few clues begin to avail themselves. It would be unusual for Amin, especially when personally killing a prominent Ugandan like Kiwanuka, to trust the Banyankole or any other tribes from southern Uganda to be at the scene of his deeds.

Amin knew that he was being opposed by the guerrilla leader Museveni. Since Museveni came from Ankole, army and security officers from Ankole were potential supporters of Museveni. Amin would not have taken the risk of murdering Kiwanuka while in the company of these Banyankole who might pass details of these killings by Amin himself to the anti-government groups in exile in Tanzania or Europe . If indeed he committed the deed himself, Amin in all probability would have been accompanied by only the most trusted and loyal of his own tribesmen from the West Nile area. Could these Banyankole whom Maxensia Kiwanuka referred to in her Drum interview have been the FRONASA agents working for Museveni and whom he later ordered killed to cover up his role in Kiwanuka's murder?

After all, if Banyankole security agents in the company of President Amin could be killed to prevent any information from reaching Kiwanuka's family, so too could security men from any other tribes. Amin who came to power through a military coup would know enough about conspiracy to be aware that anybody, even people from his own tribe, could pass information on to Kiwanuka's family either for money or after becoming disgruntled with Amin in later years. In 1974, a Tanzanian intelligence officer, Deusdedit Kusekwa Masanja, captured in Uganda gave an account of Kiwanuka's death to Drum which published it in the March 1974 issue of the magazine. Masanja said he witnessed Kiwanuka being killed in the Makindye military police barracks in Kampala on 28 Sept., 1972.  The most striking part of Masanja's account was his failure to reveal that Amin personally killed Kiwanuka or the failure by Drum to mention that, if indeed this is what happened. Any credible news agency or publication would know that an eye witness account of Amin's personal hand in the murder of his former chief justice would be the news story or news feature of the year, if not the decade. Sincerely why was this not mentioned, if Amin was responsible?

Former FRONASA assassins more than 30 years later admitted that Kiwanuka had been abducted and murdered by FRONASA. According to these former FRONASA agents, Kiwanuka was abducted from the High Court buildings and killed by FRONASA. On 16 July, 1987, the Citizen, a weekly newspaper with ties to the Democratic Party explained in some detail what happened to Kiwanuka: "He was abducted on the 21st September 1972 from the High Court Chambers by three armed men in civilian clothes. He was driven in a Pegueot 504 No. UUU 171 towards Kampala International Hotel. Since then not a shred of light has been shed on the manner in which he was killed nor the place where the murder took place."

A government report on Kiwanuka following his kidnap said: "He was arrested at the High Court by three persons posing as security officers. Their true identity and the fate of the Chief Justice remain a mystery." The three men who abducted Kiwanuka were FRONASA assassins and according to former FRONASA fighters, at least two these three men sent by Museveni to abduct and murder Kiwanuka were from the Baganda tribe. Museveni, even after he took power in 1986, continued to use the method of assigning Baganda hit-men to assassinate prominent Baganda.

The role of John Wycliffe Kazzora in Museveni's guerrilla activities.  On 2 Dec., 1972, Amin met three senior Roman Catholic leaders in the country who had come to him to petition him over 58 white western missionaires who had just been expelled from Uganda . Amin issued a warning to the clergymen about letters that they were allegedly distributing in collaboration with the guerrillas to "spread confusion in the country." These three leaders were Emmanuel Cardinal Nsubuga, the archbishop of Kampala , Bishop Ddungu of Masaka diocese, and Bishop Kyangire of Gulu diocese. One of these letters was reportedly written by a Ugandan lawyer and businessman based in Nairobi named John Wycliffe Kazzora. It had been written to Cardinal Nsubuga seeking his help in the struggle to overthrow Amin. Three days later on 5 Dec., 1972, a letter appeared in the Daily Nation newspaper of Nairobi by Kazzora in which he denied having written the letter referred to by Amin. Kazzora said that letter was a forgery. It was important for Kazzora to clear his name. But sincerely why did Kazzora take that move?  His British-influenced pretensions and mannerisms notwithstanding, Kazzora was by and large a respectable man whose law practice was established and to be seen to be part of conspiracies against the Uganda government would not have done him any good. After all, following the 1971 military coup, Idi Amin toured the country including in Aug. 1971 the Ankole area where Kazzora originated. The UPC newspaper, The People of 17 Aug. quoted Kazzora addressing Amin on behalf of the people in the area:  "Kazzora, congratulated President Amin and the members of the Uganda Army and Airforce for their successful take-over of the Obote corrupt regime. He told the President that he could have taken over the government many years back but because of his sincerity...the General did not do so until it was absolutely necessary."

Amin, aware of Kazzora's education and influence --- he was the first lawyer in Ankole --- respected him and sought to involve him further in national affairs.

In one instance, Amin ordered that Kazzora represent Uganda in a regional meeting of the East African Airways. In a letter dated 22 Sept., 1971, a few weeks after his praise of Amin, the President's staff wrote the following letter:  "His Excellency the President of Uganda has directed that at tomorrow's meeting of EAA Corporation board of directors J.W.R. Kazzora will represent Uganda instead of [Adrian] M. Sibo. Make arrangements that will enable Kazzora to participate as a full member representing Uganda ." That was the relationship between Amin and Kazzora. But suddenly by 1972 it had all changed. Kazzora was now firmly anti-Amin and was by that time in exile in Kenya .

Kazzora became one of Museveni's most ardent and important supporters in his campaign against Amin. What happened to turn this from mutual respect between Amin and Kazzora, to one's fleeing the other into exile, in fear for his life? How did Kazzora, a prosperous lawyer, come to be entangled in Museveni's dark world of guerrilla subversion? Museveni mentions this in Sowing the Mustard Seed:

"It was at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi that I accidentally met the Kazzora family in December 1972...Soon after this first meeting with Kazzora, and his agreement to work with us, Amin put pressure on the Kenyan government which obliged him to leave for England . Kazzora had thus already left by the time I returned to Nairobi in Jan. 1973, but he nominated Janet to work as a liaison and courier between himself and me." (page 87)

It is interesting the way Museveni says he "accidentally met the Kazzora family." Kazzora, wealthy, from Ankole, well-educated, with important contacts in Britain , was just the sort of ally Museveni needed for his guerrilla campaign. Museveni orchestrated a false series of events and by that manipulated Kazzora into believing that Amin wanted to murder him and so Kazzora fled into exile. Then with him now established in Nairobi , Museveni "accidentally" met him and thus began many years of collaboration between the two men. Museveni once again gives himself away by stating in his memoirs that soon after their first meeting at the Nairobi Hilton, Kazzora would have been so suddenly convinced to join Museveni in fighting Amin. It would have been one thing for Museveni to meet Kazzora in Nairobi and their casual conversation about the state of affairs in Uganda led Kazzora to agree with Museveni that Uganda was in a crisis; it would have been quite another thing for this one accidental meeting to create such resolve in Kazzora that it was sufficient to turn him into one of Museveni's closest allies.

Museveni had to have worked toward just such an outcome by manipulating Kazzora into detesting the same Amin he had so lavishly praised only the previous year and whom Amin also regarded as an important official in the Uganda government.. The letter Amin quoted on 2 Dec. in his meeting with Ugandan church leaders in which Kazzora was mentioned, followed by Kazzora's denial of any involvement in subversive activity in his 5 Dec. letter to the Daily Nation, and finally this "accidental" meeting with Museveni at the Nairobi Hilton Hotel later that Dec., provide the clearest proof of all that Yoweri Museveni --- not David Oyite-Ojok or Milton Obote --- was the author of these letters whose purpose was to stir up trouble against Amin. And of course, Museveni did not write the truth of how he really met Janet Kataha. The entry of Janet Kataha into Museveni's world, according to him, began with her role as a courier. This, as we have just seen, is not true. As has been said, Amin well knew what Museveni was doing and what he was capable of.  Following the 17 Sept., 1972 guerrilla invasion of Mbarara, a civil servant named Francis Gureme, who at the time was an undersecretary in the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, was summoned by Amin for questioning. Gureme had driven toward Mbarara that Sunday morning and ran into the invasion underway. Amin wanted to know that Gureme had driven to Mbarara for. As Gureme explained it in an article in the Sunday Monitor on 30 May, 2004, "Amin...questioned me closely about what I had been doing in Mbarara that Sunday and whether I had met Museveni."  During the 1970s, the national intelligence agency, the State Research Bureau dedicated a desk headed by Adam Bizegeni, whose sole duty was to monitor Museveni's guerrilla activities.

Murder of foreign minister Michael Ondoga

Another prominent death in point was that of the former foreign minister and former Ugandan ambassador to the Soviet Union , Lt. Colonel Michael Ondoga. He was a brother-in-law of President Amin by virtue of Amin's marriage to Ondoga's sister, Kay Adroa Amin. On 12 Feb., 1974, Amin summoned a cabinet meeting at which he invited a French film crew to record the proceedings. Apparently, there had been growing slackness among cabinet ministers and Amin who postured as a strict disciplinarian would not have this. He criticised the cabinet and singled out for the harshest words Ondoga, who sat uncomfortably during the meeting. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in upheaval and Amin told Ondoga that this situation could not go on. On 19 Feb., 1974, Amin announced the appointment of Princess Elizabeth of Toro as the new minister of foreign affairs. The government-owned Voice of Uganda newspaper reported the new appointment the next day, 20 Feb.: "Ambassador Elizabeth Bagaya has been named Uganda 's new minister of Foreign Affairs. She becomes the country's first woman ever to be appointed a minister. She takes over from Lt. Col. Michael Ondoga who is to be assigned other duties...The President, General Idi Amin announced the appointment while addressing Makerere University students yesterday. He said he had acted on recommendation of the Defence Council.

He also announced that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry is to have a planning section which will assist in the planning of the whole business industry throughout the country.  Also to be formed are the National Chamber of Commerce and Industry and a Corporation responsible for Import and Export activities. "The tone of the news report on Ondoga's replacement as a minister was measured, positive, and came as part of a general upgrading of the government's policy-making apparatus. There was none of the angry yelling at the former minister that the Ugandan exile groups portrayed it to be. Ondoga was not humiliated or accused of sabotaging the government.