By Jamesa Wafula in Nairobi.
It was Uganda’s founding Prime Minister and later President for a total of 15 years, the late Dr. Apolo Milton Obote who once described Kampala as a city of seven rumours a day.
That was in 1968 two years after Obote government troops led by army commander Colonel Idi Amin stormed Lubiri and ejected King Edward Mutesa 11 following hours of a fierce gun battle between government troops and palace guards. Outgunned and outsmarted, Mutesa fled to exile in UK where he later died in 1969.
Obote allusion to seven rumours in Kampala appears to have persisted over the decades to the current regime of long ruling President Yoweri Museveni, the Ankole born former jungle fighter.
Like Obote in the 1960’s rumours abounded about the lifestyle of the afro haired dark sklnned Lango born orator whose long speeches became the trademark of a man with a rare mastery of political mind spinning.
Telling off his critics during the 1980 election campaigns when they claimed he had created dictator Idi Amin, Obote countered that he had read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation but was yet to come across any verse of one human being creating another!
On the so called attempt to forge a tribe-less Uganda under the UNLF Tanzania army backed rebels in the post Idi Amin era after 1979, Obote scoffed at the Moshi political alliance he claimed had locked out youth, widows, the disabled and most groups from civil society.
Then President Godfrey Lukongwa Binaiasa had sort to do the unthinkable- block the return of Obote May 1980 and declare a party-less state under the UNLF regime that was packed by ‘intellectual giants”- from Professor Edward Rugumayo to Prof. Yash Tandon. It was one of Africa’s most academic cabinets cramming the cream of intellectuals whom Binaisa persuaded could go ahead and block Obote from power.
But then came the “palace coup” of Obote-leaning Paulo Muwanga who kicked out Binaisa as a big joker who rumours in Kampala claimed he had turned state house into a clearing warehouse for exports and imports! The rumours had it that he had made a tidy fortune to the extent that he once bragged that he had money that could kill a man! (Nina cente ezita omuntu).
The joker who claimed he was really enjoying state power (entebbe ewoma) was confined to his house under house arrest as Obote arrived in style from eight and half years of exile in Tanzania.
The 55-year old former President hit the ground running arriving in Bushenyi and chairing his first party delegates conference in nearly a decade. The man Baganda never forgave for overthrowing their kingdom later drove into Kampala in a long motorcade of sleek dark mercedes benz in full campaign mode determined to wrest back power Amin snatched 10 years ago.
But even as Obote returned to his Kololo residence with his family the ugly rumours that had hounded him throughout his first term started doing the rounds in Kampala the city of seven hills!
Some claimed Obote would fail to capture power and on polling day December 1980 elections the propaganda mills went into overdrive claiming the Baganda-backed DP of Paul Semogerere had prevailed over UPC.
So thick were the rumours that rotated in Kampala that a UPC local party official in Nsambya, a populous Baganda surburb of Makindye south sort to disown the party and defect to DP widely said to have strong Catholic church support. The Mudama man who was also a veteran trade unionist from Tororo who has since passed on claimed as a Catholic he was naturally a DP member!
But the joke was on him when UPC roared back having easily clinched 11 seats un-opposed in the North and West Nile regions. All Obote needed was for UPC to bag a minimum of 70 seats in the parliamentary presidential elections system where the leader of the winning party became automatically the president. Obote grossed 81 seats to DP ‘s 65 and CP’s 4 seats while Museveni’s UPM had 1 seat. The UPM MP later followed his leader into the deep jungles of Luwero to wage a vicious bush war with government troops.
The joke later in Kampala were unfounded claims that UPC had rigged polls in the north, east and western drawing the wrath of Obote who slammed the opposition for claiming victory even when voters were still casting their votes!
Obote derogatorily wondered how DP could claim victory when voters were still voting before polling stations had closed. DP would later agree to become the official opposition as Obote recaptured power making history as the first African president overthrown by the military and returned to power via civilian means.
The rumour mills however kept on going into overdrive when the feared chief of staff Brigadier David Oyite Ojok died in a plane crash as he inspected troops in the NRA rebel infested Luwero triangle in 1983. At first NRA commanders claimed to have brought down the helicopter but later recanted when their claims were proved false.
Rumours were rife that a senior politician opposed to Ojok had smuggled a grenade aboard the plane through an accomplice who was supposed to parachute out of the doomed aircraft.
The rumours claimed the fierce Ojok, the only man Idi Amin is said to have feared to the bone drew a pistol and shot dead the conspirator even as he detonated the grenade bringing down the helicopter.
Many say the death of Ojok became the turning point in the jungle war as Museveni battled for power with Obote 2 troops who later overthrew him for the second time clearing the way for the NRA commander to capture power Janaury 1986.
The rumours about a talking goat, a talking tortoise, and in infant who predicted the fall of Amin and then died were rife in the dying days of the dictator’s infamous brutal dictatorship ■
