Miria Obote’s apology should provide a fresh start for all
May 08, 2006
<b>Peter Mulira</b><br><br>During the recent presidential elections, Mrs Miria Obote apologised for her party’s past misdeeds towards Buganda. This brought to an end one of the most vexing conflicts which have afflicted UPC since its formation in April 1960.
Peter Mulira
During the recent presidential elections, Mrs Miria Obote apologised for her party’s past misdeeds towards Buganda. This brought to an end one of the most vexing conflicts which have afflicted UPC since its formation in April 1960.
It has also demonstrated the soundness of the party’s decision to elect her to its presidency to succeed her departed husband, Dr. Apollo Milton Obote. To understand UPC’s history and its internal infractions one has to trace its pedigree to the conflicts which bedevilled the Uganda National Congress (UNC), the first political party here, which started with the resignation from the executive by 14 young turks who, having failed to dislodge the president general, I. K. Musaazi broke away in 1957 and formed the United Congress Party (UCP) under David Lubogo, a Kampala lawyer.
The split left UNC in the hands of a trio of old guards namely Musaazi, Jolly Joe Kiwanuka and Dr. Barnabas Kunuka who had a big following in Buganda, the north and north-east where Musaazi had earlier built up a personal following in the cotton growing areas through his Uganda Farmers’ Association which was banned just before he founded UNC in 1952 and also through Jolly Joe’s standing nationwide as the father of modern football in Uganda.
Soon after Musaazi fell out with Kiwanuka over the party office which was opened in Cairo with keen patronage of President Gamal Nasser of Egypt and was run by the late John Kale. The office attracted a lot of money from the communist world and Musaazi saw red in all this but before he could sack Kiwanuka, the latter organised a general meeting at Mbale in January, 1958, at which Musaazi was thrown out and in his place Kiwanuka brought in Apollo Milton Obote to neutralise Musaazi’s support in the north and in the false hope that Obote would be his surrogate president general.
A week later Musaazi also organised his own general meeting at Mengo Social Centre at which Kiwanuka was in turn thrown out for flirting with communists, a move which proved to be ironical because later on when Musaazi’s passport was withdrawn at Entebbe airport to prevent him from boarding a plane to Europe to attend a communist meeting, he issued a statement in which he complained against the government’s action pointing out that you can run away from communism but you cannot run away from communists.
The rupture between Musaazi and Kiwanuka meant that by 1958 we had two congresses represented by Musaazi and Kiwanuka’s factions and an offspring in the form of UCP. Later in the year both Musaazi and Kiwanuka joined their factions in the Uganda National Movement (UNM) and abolished their parties but Obote refused to join and chose to hobble along with a truncated UNC without support in Buganda where UNM was very popular and because of the party’s declared stand on Buganda’s constitutional demands. The Uganda People’s Union (UPU) itself had been formed in 1959 by African members of the Legco who had been elected at district level in the first direct elections of 1958. Their intention in forming the party was to fill the vacuum which had been created by the exiled leaders as a result of the trade boycott but unfortunately the party took a strong anti-Buganda stance and opposed the boycott which made it a political outcast in Buganda.
In April 1960 Cuthbert Obwangor, a member of the Legco from Teso moved a motion in the House calling on the government to release political detainees to enable them participate in constitutional debates following publication of the Wild report. When the motion was put to a vote, only four African members voted for it and in a strange turn of events representatives of the people who were supposed to be nationalists voted with the colonial government to continue incarcerating their own brothers! What was not publicly known then, however, was that Obote’s UNC had already joined with UPU to form the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) the formation of which was only announced the following day after the vote and it was only natural that the new party leaders wanted to take a foothold before the old guards returned to the scene. From the start, UPC was dominated by two young politicians, John Kakonge, the Secretary General, and Grace Ibingira who became Obote’s closest advisers and strategists. It was now a case of two bulls being in the same kraal for both Kakonge and Ibingira were highly talented and ambitious. This naturally led to rivalries and factions between the two. During the 1962 elections, Kakonge did not stand but was promised to enter Parliament as one of the specially elected nine members. When nominations came, he was rigged out whereupon he resigned from the party and went to Dar-es-Salaam to seek “peace and solace from political persecution†before Nyerere convinced him to return. The rift between Kakonge and Ibingira came to a head at the UPC annual general conference in 1964. Ibingira managed to replace Kakonge as Secretary General and it was clear that the battle for control of the party was now going to be between Obote and Ibingira and the events that followed did not disappoint onlookers until Ibingira and his supporters in the cabinet were arrested and imprisoned only to be released by Idi Amin after the coup five years later. With the arrest of Ibingira, Obote managed to remove any political challenge and turned his attention to the army with disastrous results. The UPC/KY alliance which was formed at the constitutional conference in London was another pivotal event in the party. Soon after the elections which the two parties won in 1962 UPC, now in government, showed that it did not need KY anymore and at a rally at the clock tower in July, 1962, Jolly Joe Kiwanuka, a KY MP, complained that although KY MPs were ‘eating’ they were being led like sheep without being consulted on anything. Another KY MP and minister, blamed Ben Kiwanuka’s inflexibility for having forced them into an alliance with a group of people they did not understand. Just before independence other things took place pointing to an eventual showdown but Buganda failed to read the signs. For example, although the banners put along streets during the independence celebrations had all the kingdoms and district emblems, Buganda’s was not there and at the same time UPC circulated a map of Uganda with Obote’s head emblazoned on it to send a message to Buganda where the issue of head of state rested and Mengo was denied funds for the celebrations although other areas received them.
Reading the writing on the wall on September 11, 1962, Munno newspaper ran an editorial under the heading “where is Buganda heading to†whose message is valid even today. On his part, Obote knew exactly where he was heading and the only consolation is that Michael Kintu, the Katikkiro who had led the kingdom in its incessant wars since 1956, resigned in 1964 rather than face a vote of no-confidence in the Lukiiko for misleading the people. Miria Obote’s apology should provide a fresh start for all the concerned parties.
During the recent presidential elections, Mrs Miria Obote apologised for her party’s past misdeeds towards Buganda. This brought to an end one of the most vexing conflicts which have afflicted UPC since its formation in April 1960.
It has also demonstrated the soundness of the party’s decision to elect her to its presidency to succeed her departed husband, Dr. Apollo Milton Obote. To understand UPC’s history and its internal infractions one has to trace its pedigree to the conflicts which bedevilled the Uganda National Congress (UNC), the first political party here, which started with the resignation from the executive by 14 young turks who, having failed to dislodge the president general, I. K. Musaazi broke away in 1957 and formed the United Congress Party (UCP) under David Lubogo, a Kampala lawyer.
The split left UNC in the hands of a trio of old guards namely Musaazi, Jolly Joe Kiwanuka and Dr. Barnabas Kunuka who had a big following in Buganda, the north and north-east where Musaazi had earlier built up a personal following in the cotton growing areas through his Uganda Farmers’ Association which was banned just before he founded UNC in 1952 and also through Jolly Joe’s standing nationwide as the father of modern football in Uganda.
Soon after Musaazi fell out with Kiwanuka over the party office which was opened in Cairo with keen patronage of President Gamal Nasser of Egypt and was run by the late John Kale. The office attracted a lot of money from the communist world and Musaazi saw red in all this but before he could sack Kiwanuka, the latter organised a general meeting at Mbale in January, 1958, at which Musaazi was thrown out and in his place Kiwanuka brought in Apollo Milton Obote to neutralise Musaazi’s support in the north and in the false hope that Obote would be his surrogate president general.
A week later Musaazi also organised his own general meeting at Mengo Social Centre at which Kiwanuka was in turn thrown out for flirting with communists, a move which proved to be ironical because later on when Musaazi’s passport was withdrawn at Entebbe airport to prevent him from boarding a plane to Europe to attend a communist meeting, he issued a statement in which he complained against the government’s action pointing out that you can run away from communism but you cannot run away from communists.
The rupture between Musaazi and Kiwanuka meant that by 1958 we had two congresses represented by Musaazi and Kiwanuka’s factions and an offspring in the form of UCP. Later in the year both Musaazi and Kiwanuka joined their factions in the Uganda National Movement (UNM) and abolished their parties but Obote refused to join and chose to hobble along with a truncated UNC without support in Buganda where UNM was very popular and because of the party’s declared stand on Buganda’s constitutional demands. The Uganda People’s Union (UPU) itself had been formed in 1959 by African members of the Legco who had been elected at district level in the first direct elections of 1958. Their intention in forming the party was to fill the vacuum which had been created by the exiled leaders as a result of the trade boycott but unfortunately the party took a strong anti-Buganda stance and opposed the boycott which made it a political outcast in Buganda.
In April 1960 Cuthbert Obwangor, a member of the Legco from Teso moved a motion in the House calling on the government to release political detainees to enable them participate in constitutional debates following publication of the Wild report. When the motion was put to a vote, only four African members voted for it and in a strange turn of events representatives of the people who were supposed to be nationalists voted with the colonial government to continue incarcerating their own brothers! What was not publicly known then, however, was that Obote’s UNC had already joined with UPU to form the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) the formation of which was only announced the following day after the vote and it was only natural that the new party leaders wanted to take a foothold before the old guards returned to the scene. From the start, UPC was dominated by two young politicians, John Kakonge, the Secretary General, and Grace Ibingira who became Obote’s closest advisers and strategists. It was now a case of two bulls being in the same kraal for both Kakonge and Ibingira were highly talented and ambitious. This naturally led to rivalries and factions between the two. During the 1962 elections, Kakonge did not stand but was promised to enter Parliament as one of the specially elected nine members. When nominations came, he was rigged out whereupon he resigned from the party and went to Dar-es-Salaam to seek “peace and solace from political persecution†before Nyerere convinced him to return. The rift between Kakonge and Ibingira came to a head at the UPC annual general conference in 1964. Ibingira managed to replace Kakonge as Secretary General and it was clear that the battle for control of the party was now going to be between Obote and Ibingira and the events that followed did not disappoint onlookers until Ibingira and his supporters in the cabinet were arrested and imprisoned only to be released by Idi Amin after the coup five years later. With the arrest of Ibingira, Obote managed to remove any political challenge and turned his attention to the army with disastrous results. The UPC/KY alliance which was formed at the constitutional conference in London was another pivotal event in the party. Soon after the elections which the two parties won in 1962 UPC, now in government, showed that it did not need KY anymore and at a rally at the clock tower in July, 1962, Jolly Joe Kiwanuka, a KY MP, complained that although KY MPs were ‘eating’ they were being led like sheep without being consulted on anything. Another KY MP and minister, blamed Ben Kiwanuka’s inflexibility for having forced them into an alliance with a group of people they did not understand. Just before independence other things took place pointing to an eventual showdown but Buganda failed to read the signs. For example, although the banners put along streets during the independence celebrations had all the kingdoms and district emblems, Buganda’s was not there and at the same time UPC circulated a map of Uganda with Obote’s head emblazoned on it to send a message to Buganda where the issue of head of state rested and Mengo was denied funds for the celebrations although other areas received them.
Reading the writing on the wall on September 11, 1962, Munno newspaper ran an editorial under the heading “where is Buganda heading to†whose message is valid even today. On his part, Obote knew exactly where he was heading and the only consolation is that Michael Kintu, the Katikkiro who had led the kingdom in its incessant wars since 1956, resigned in 1964 rather than face a vote of no-confidence in the Lukiiko for misleading the people. Miria Obote’s apology should provide a fresh start for all the concerned parties.