What Uganda’s history since independence reveals about 2016

Paul Muwanga reportedly told them to come back later and he straightaway announced that nobody was allowed to announce the results except him and anybody disobeying that order will be fined Shs500, 000 or five years’ imprisonment or both.

Muwanga then straightaway contacted the late President Nyerere in Dar es Salaam (whose troops were still here in Uganda) and asked him what he should do.

Paul Muwanga was reported to have said to President Nyerere: “Your Excellency, the DP has won the election and the DP leader Semwogerere has been here demanding to be sworn in as the new President; what should I do?”

President Nyerere was reported to have told Paul Muwanga: “Paul, you have got my army there, change all the results.” (This conversation was reportedly overheard by DP sympathisers who were working in the Kampala General Post Office Telephone Exchange at that time, who came and gave us the story at the DP headquarters. Embellishments can of course not be ruled out. But the net result was that disputed results were declared and then-Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere played a major role in events).

It took Paul Muwanga three days to announce the results. He later announced that Milton Obote of UPC had won the election and Obote was sworn in as President of Uganda for the second time. Obote’s taking power again sparked off a civil war between the NRM/NRA of Gen. Yoweri Museveni who led to a 5-year war of liberation from February 1981.

But Obote suffered a second military coup by his own army on July 27, 1985, which was staged by two military commanders of UNLA, General Okello Lutwa and General Bazilio Olara Okello.

This was as a result of President Obote appointing a military man from his Lango tribe; Brig. Smith Apon Acak, to the post of army commander replacing General David Oyite Ojok who had died in helicopter crash.

This annoyed both Generals Okello Lutwa and Bazilio Okello. They wanted one of them to be appointed as army commander. Because Obote ignored them, they overthrew him and he ended up running into exile in Zambia again where he died in October 2005.

Museveni moment in 1986

Again, the country witnessed another upheaval in 1986 when on January 26; the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government under President Yoweri Museveni came to power. The new government immediately pledged to return the kindgoms that Obote abolished. In July 1993, after the dawn of freedom and tranquility, the Buganda monarchy was restored.

The Baganda under the leadership of Paul Kavuma, Badru Kakungulu and Bishop Yokana Mukasa and Prof. Y.K Lule had agreed to work together with Yoweri Museveni to fight Obote and remove him from power. The Baganda worked together with Museveni because he had the “military muscle” to win the war because of his experience in guerilla warfare, which he had acquired in Mozambique in the 1970s when he was with the Africans there who were fighting to end white rule in that country.

On July 8, 1981, Museveni and Prof. Y.K Lule and their people, met in Nairobi and they formed NRM/NRA. Professor Y.K. Lule was elected Chairman of NRM deputised by Museveni who was also elected Field Commander of NRA deputised by Ben Mumanya. Unfortunately, Ben Mumanya died mysteriously at the Kenya/Uganda Border when he was coming back to Uganda to fight.

The war of Liberation which started in February 1981 took five years in the Luwero Triangle of Bulemezi County in Buganda. Victory was achieved on January 26, 1986 and Yoweri Museveni was sworn in as the ninth President of Uganda on January 29, 1986.

At the time of swearing in, he declared that: “This is not a mere change of guard but I think it is a Fundamental Change”.

Later on, the jubilant Baganda danced on the streets of Kampala and elsewhere and they said that they fought the war to remove Obote and restore the Buganda Kingdom.