Guardian Angel: Volume Two: the Moshi Conspiracy

By Dr. Arnold Spero Bisase

Each nation has its heroes and its villains.

And whatever Historians may convey about either, it only becomes meaningful to a people when it is told by their own; because, only they truly value and aspire to uphold and to protect their heritage.

A people, any people stand to prescribe their own extinction once they choose to neglect their heritage.

The Author of Guardian Angel, probes and fathoms this subject, challenging the conscience of a people over their heritage...the ups and downs which reflect man's aspirations through...not just one or two or even three generations but ever; because in life nothing stands still; life is an endless cycle of happiness and sadness; success and failure; nobility and improbity.

The perennial constant in all this is integrity in fortitude! Possessing or not possessing it identifies us with our Maker within our heritage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477235393

Dr. Arnold Spero Bisase

"Before University, the Author attended Aggrey Memorial and Chwa II Grammar Schools_Uganda; then Patriarch's School, Shoubrah_Cairo until the 1952 Revolution which usshered in The REPUBLIC OF EGYPT.Then he matriculated at St Peter's High School_Panchgani, India in 1957 After passing his basic sciences at Brighton Technical College, he Graduated as Bachelor in Dental Surgery, University of London, Kings College Hospital and Dental School in 1963. He then Graduated as Licentiate in Dental Surgery at The Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1966. He then capped his Specialist Training with The Fellowship in Oral/Dental Surger at The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1967. He was then appointed by the Uganda Government: 1) Government Dental Officer at Mulago Hospital 1964-1965. 2) Consultant Oral and Maxillo-Facial Surgeon, in charge of The Newly established Department of Maxillo-Facial Surgery 1967-1968. 3) Lecturer/ Tutor in Dental, Oral and Maxillo-Facial Surgery to Makerere Medical School 1964--1968. He established his Private: Bisase Dental Clinic at Johnstone Street, Kampala while concurrently covering (a) Mengo, (b) Rubaga and (c) Nsambya Mission Hospitals in Specialist Dental, Oral and Maxillo-Facial Surgery. At first Exile, he established Private Specialist Dental, Oral and Maxillo-Facial Services at his Practice In the Ambalal House; at H H The Aga Khan Hospitals in Mombasa and Nairobi; The Pandya Memorial Hospital; Katherine Bibby which was later renamed The Mombasa Hospital and The M P Shah Hospital in Nairobi. He was appointed External Examiner tin Dental Studies at The New Dental School, The University of Nairobi, until his second Exile to The United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1989. After serving as Associate Dental Surgeon at Beaconsfield Dental Surgeries, Weston Supermare 1989-1990 he established The Bisase Dental Practice which he later re-named CROWN DENTAL PRACTICE in Ealing Broadway, London, until he retired in 2007 so he could start writing."

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© 2012 DR. ARNOLD SPERO BISASE. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 10/15/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3538-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3539-3 (e)

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter One The Moshi Conspiracy

Chapter Two The Betrayals Begin

Chapter Three Whose Victory The War

Chapter Four The Impenitent Vandals

Chapter Five Legacy Unbecoming

Chapter Six The Day of The Unscrupulous

Chapter Seven The Trap

Chapter Eight The Abominable Agreement

Chapter Nine My Great Escape

Chapter Ten The Drive of My Life

Documents

Glossary

Map Nos 3, 4 and 5

Introduction

The flight to Frankfurt was very comfortable; Lufthansa had good aircraft and excellent service from Check-in through cabin to transfers or Arrivals. And if my mission had been for pleasure I would have slept like a doll. But it was anything but that. Having never been challenged by political events at this level, there was no knowing how the cards would fall. Was I taking too big a gamble, by imagining that I could be presenting to a man I thought I knew, the burden of Leadership of a country; yet now, as this Boeing 747 tore its way across the skies, I had no idea how I could present this proposal; who was I and with whose persuasion or consent. Who mandated me to carry this proposal forward. At least if it had been the evening before, carrying the blessings of The Tanzanian people; three of them, Iddi Simba, Liaison Officer in Nairobi and Their Ambassador in London; at least then I would have had the right cards on hand to know which ones and which way to play. But all that disappeared with the drunk pilot at Mombasa Airport leaving me with the onerous task of taking every step ahead of me by myself and on my own initiative. I could not sleep.

Unknown to Ugandans at home and the diaspora, as this entire story unfolds, here was a certain soul with courage enough to chart a course so magnificent yet so fraught with treachery and uncertainty. This soul was leaving behind, at City House a life partner and five little fragile beings, whose future livelihood, whose hopes of happiness and joy depended on this one soul’s existence. The exact way that every one of them (except for little Samson who was born later), previously depended on this soul, that Easter time of the year 1975. To this soul the unknown was like one huge cavern with limited access to chambers of safety but unlimited pitfalls into dungeons of danger, alleys to oblivion and paths to glory. And this lonely soul had neither the hind sight of experience to depend on nor a bosom friend’s hand to hold onto. All that this soul depended on was divine guidance. So eventually, I closed my eyes and let drift into the unknown. That act forged by providence way back in 1975 was like a prelude to the next one, now. Only this time, whatever I did was like an inspired choice that needed my Guardian Angel to be there with me every step of the way.

Perhaps to give you an idea of the perils ahead, nothing will stun you better into monstrous reality than the words of Apollo Milton Obote; words that need to be constantly and consciously kept before you, because they stand for the inescapable nightmare that Ugandans had faced since Independence, yet they never realised nor fathomed until Moshi, if that, who the real architect of their nightmare truly was. Consequently to this very day__2012, no chapter of their lives that followed will ever be the same.

In his landmark paper written in 1986 called: Concealment of Genocide in Uganda Obote described Yoweri Museveni, like a man quite possessed by the devil. Let me quote just this one paragraph from it:

"Museveni has a thirst for power in its most naked form. He believes 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 regards as his enemies but also those closest to him". And then he cited some examples.

I urge you not to lose sight of these words as I take you through the journey of my life so far. Words that Obote uttered too late in the day; otherwise, had we known in advance what Obote knew about Museveni, our motherland would not have suffered to such depth and sheer magnitude the catastrophe that it has done!

Chapter One

The Moshi Conspiracy

(The Conference: 23rd, March—26th, March, 1979)

In my elementary analysis, I could not see a candidate suitable to lead us out of the dark era of Idi Amin. Ninety percent of the delegation due to attend at Moshi were the same machinery that had bred and led to Idi Amin. Whatever their claim to being freedom fighters, or fellow liberators, history stands to judge them as power-hungry opportunists, turncoats who set out to grab power on the pretext that they were liberating Uganda from the ravages of a dictator. In the words of one of these traitors to the cause of liberation, and I heard him say it in our presence, Sam Ssebagereka and I: "We have to grab power while the entire country is still enjoying (sic) relief for overthrowing Amin. By the time they wake up to realise our programme it will be too late." As the later chapters in this book will show, these are the very people we later identified as The Silent Enemy Within. What Uganda needed was not men such as these, so committed to taking power by any means, but a moment to breathe again, free from the suffocation of the same wicked politicians. I knew one such man, in London, Professor Yusuf Lule.

Professor Yusufu Lule

Aboard the Lufthansa flight, I began to formulate my strategy for London. After all, it could all backfire; arriving there unannounced, with a proposal that would involve accepting to physically up-root this ennobled retired man and into a Unity Conference; meeting way out in Africa and absolutely not a single Document to back the project. What if the Professor had already heard Bishop Kivengere’s scornful statements? What if the Professor had already been briefed by others like Iddi Simba or the Tanzanian High Commissioner for that matter; and was either for or against going to the meeting anyway? It would be embarrassing for me to attempt to initiate such a momentous move where others with far greater clout had already trodden and possibly failed! In my heart I knew that what I was attempting to do was clean and honourable; so, I could only be reinforcing a good cause, not undermining it. Perhaps it was destiny that I was on my way to him.

I first looked for Mr Sam Ssebagereka, to get some more background information about the Moshi Conference before meeting Professor Lule. Ssebagereka, although a member of Uganda Human Rights group like Kanyeyihamba, said he did not know about Moshi, although he had attended some London meetings with all kinds of people; all wondering how the War was going to end. But he promised me that he would try to attend. And on the ‘phone, I tracked down Professor Lule, a member and patron of the same Uganda Human Rights Group in London. Even he did not know of the Moshi Meeting; or if he did he had not given it weight enough to consider going to it. Surely, unless Professor Lule was lying to me, which I strongly doubted, there appeared to be a big conspiracy. The Professor was actually preparing to go to an opera which was due to be performed at the Covent Garden Opera Theatre. If my memory serves me right, he and Hanna were going to the Opera Aida by Giuseppe Verdi.

After a lot of careful persuasion, he was generous enough to finally relent, cancel going to the Opera and come instead to the Montecalm Hotel at Marble Arch, only to discuss the purpose of my urgent visit.

Once we had got together, he asked to know why I had thought of him given that we had never discussed politics at this level of seriousness. I reminded him of the first time I had broached the subject, years before, when we were in the transit lounge at Nairobi airport. I reminded him that on that occasion, he had said he was too tied up as Assistant Secretary General of The Commonwealth Secretariat in London. Then two years later, that I had asked him to start getting involved, and again he had indicated that he was too busy as the Secretary General of the Association of African Universities in Accra (1973 to 1978) Ghana. Now however, I knew that he had retired; so I hoped that his answer would be ‘yes’. Every question he asked seemed to point to one thing: That he did not see much point travelling such a long journey in order to go and see Obote installed as the leader of a Government in Exile. And no matter how disappointed I was feeling as I scaled what seemed an impossible mountain to convince this man, to come with me to Dar es Salaam, I wondered whether I had assumed too much in the first place. Or was it my inexperience to negotiate which was letting me down? In hindsight, and all the claims that emerged in books later written about This War, claiming that extensive pressures had been applied to promote Lule’s candidature for President, to my belief even now, those claims were being disproved by these moments at Montecalm Hotel. The Professor seemed to be unaware of such parallel efforts by others to advance his candidature. But it could have been just an impression he wanted to give as he knew that before this, I had never participated in any politics at any level.

Then in somewhat exasperated tone he bluntly asked to know: How much did I really know about the war?

‘As little as the next man, but at least we had a foot in the doorway with Bob’. I said.

‘Who was Bob?’ he asked.

‘Robert Sserumaga!’ I replied. Professor Lule then burst out laughing and quickly added :

‘Now I know you are not serious enough. That man is just a playwright, in fact a playboy, fit to entertain, but not to fight.’ Said Professor Lule.

‘Not exactly’, I cautioned. ‘The Worldwide Musical Tours he regularly undertook with his artists were a cover. During such extended tours he had received military and intelligence training, as have his ‘boys’ who have received good training at Tarime Camp in Musoma.’ Professor Lule still looked sceptical as he left at about 08.30 PM. The mission appeared doomed to fail.

Then at 10.00 PM., the telephone in my room rang:

I am coming, let us see what we can do. And he hung up.

And from 10.30 PM. until past midnight we were making plans. Not ‘if’ we can make it to the meeting, but ‘how we would do it’.

For more than thirty years there have been people claiming knowledge of the exact arrangements for actual participation of Lule and his presence in Dar es Salaam. They have written accounts to suggest who laid the foundation for Lule’s name to come up at Moshi as the best candidate. They have even named other Governments putting pressure on President Nyerere not to endorse Obote but to instead accept their choice of Professor Lule. Indeed it is perfectly possible that such pressures, suggestions and calls were made by Governments, Organisations of one kind or another. And to his friends after the effect, I can imagine this great man of Africa, President Nyerere giving them the view that it had been his plan all along to give Professor Lule the Leadership of Uganda, after all he would not only be responding to the generally acceptable choice by world opinion, but that he knew this to be the best compromise candidate to bring the winning forces back to their homeland. But I was close enough to the proceedings, and with my own eyes I could not miss the alternative view that President Nyerere clearly looked like a man that I had accidentally got out of jail with my delivery to his doorstep; a man who had been overlooked or not given the most serious consideration, until he was there, in Dar es Salaam. And with his unexpected presence, a solution to a multitude of frustrating problems suddenly occurred to Nyerere! With my account that follows now, I believe the world will get to know first hand exactly how Lule was finally won over to join us in Moshi. To this day, I can not know with absolute certainty why my friend Professor Lule seemed so hesitant to travel to Moshi, that is, if there had already been such big attempts to persuade him to go. All I can recount are the almost panic-driven steps that I did take for the sake of my country Uganda, and how Professor Lule had responded to them.

I had travelled from Mombasa on my own account using my Diners Club Card for this entire journey. Once in London, we were forking out our own money to buy our tickets to Dar es Salaam. Lule paid for his and I paid for mine. As we were both East Africans, we did not need to pay for our visas; so, even that was not a concession to a chosen candidate for presidency. But this is not to say that there were no other meetings in London or elsewhere, some rooting for one prospective candidate or another. Some of such meetings may have involved Professor Lule, Sam Ssebagereka and even my dear friend Iddi Simba at The Playboy Club where the latter is a member. And they may have taken place when Iddi was in London. But many insiders to President Nyerere confirm that he resisted this pressure to drop Obote, and only superficially entertained any alternative candidate to him (Obote). At the time of the Commonwealth Heads of State Meeting of 1971, Obote had tried to stay home and not attend the meeting in Singapore. He was fearing that there might be an attempt to overthrow his Government as he had received enough intelligence information to that effect. But because it was President Nyerere who strongly pressed him not to miss this meeting, he (Nyerere) felt specially obligated to support his friend back into power. He had promised unconditional support to Obote if indeed the suspected coup d’etat did materialise, which it did!

But I am jumping the gun because, ahead of all this, there was the drama at the Tanzanian High Commission in London which was most revealing. It more than confirmed to me at least, that this initiative of Lule’s attendance, was ours and ours alone. Certainly between 08.30 PM and 10.00 PM. Professor Lule left me to go home and then rang back to suggest to see me again that same evening in London,. There could only have been time to reconnoitre amongst his closest friends, if that, whether it was worth his while to consider to go to Dar. There could not have been any fresh would be sponsors, promoters and insider wheeler-dealers about, to get president Nyerere to bend over toward a choice of Lule; not at such late hour! Otherwise, Lule would have mentioned that there might have been

a grain of reality to what I had been saying earlier that very evening. That it would appear that my (his) visit to Dar and Moshi may be worth his while to undertake, after all some people ( who could remain confidential, but real enough) believed we could help in a Unity Conference. But this is not what Professor Lule said or ever hinted to me. As far as our discussion developed, we were going down to basics; and there was nothing more basic and totally revealing than when he was back with me and said:

‘Now let us see how we get our Clearance and Entry into Dar es Salaam.’ Because of any later status, his Passport may have required a Visa but not mine. If there had been any prior arrangements, Visa and Ticket would have been at the ready and waiting his collection at the High Commission in London. Both items were not and indeed what happened after this was further proof that he and I were unexpected guests. In fact I believe that we were gate crashers.

Early the next morning we went to the Tanzanian High Commission to get our clearances and our Guardian Angel was still there with us. His Excellency, Amon Nsekela, the High Commissioner, was a schoolmate of Professor Lule or so I heard them say. So, as he put it to the Prof.:

‘This is an unexpected surprise; are you attending the meeting at home?’

I am a reasonably quick judge of people’s character and temperaments. And it was clear to me that The High Commissioner was visibly and pleasantly surprised. My medical training has never failed me in this regard.

‘Of course, Amon, that’s why we are here.’Professor Lule replied. It was a good strategy.

‘I will inform the President. I am sure he will be delighted to know. Now who is this one?’ the High Commissioner asked.

‘His name is Dr Bisase. He is my friend and personal physician. I am not as fit as I used to be, so he gives me my regular injections whenever I travel’. He lied! Professor Lule had multiple myeloma, but used it as cover for me to be accompanying him. We were gambling high stakes here! But I was quite sure that the High Commissioner had already seen through the ruse.

Professor Lule did not know that just two days before, this very High Commissioner, through their Liaison Office in Nairobi, was supposed to receive me, for an aborted London Meeting. That I would have been an important contributor to the London Meeting. And of the meeting, that it would have been ‘a most positive step towards the conclusion of the war,’ to quote Mr Iddi Ssimba. I had waited to see how the High Commissioner was going to play it since he should have known about me already. However, when I appeared in the flesh, it was: ‘Who is this one?’

Dr Bisase, I thought to myself, welcome to the wonderful world of masquerade and the raw cynical politics of expedience. Clean though my heart was about that aborted flight to Nairobi, I imagined that to a seasoned politician, the suspicion would be that it was due to me and not the drunk pilot that I was unable to get to London. After all, a fiddler always suspects that everyone else is the same; but while my plan was succeeding, this was no moment to be charitable, specially to Nyerere’s team which, as per current evidence, this team was already pretending they had never heard of me.

If that London meeting was going to involve me and the Professor we were now available in London and obviously ready to participate, without the need for Tickets, visas and all that stuff. And if there was the remotest possibility that an eminent, respected and totally impartial ‘delegate’ like Professor Lule was expected to attend it, then Bishop Kivemgere would not have been so ungracious and undiplomatic to speak in the manner he did on an International Radio Network such as Radio Deutsche Welle. George Kanyeihamba would have stayed on in London to try to lobby the way the Dan Nabuderes were doing in Dar es Salaam, and the Roger Mukasas a known pro-Obote supporter, whatever his pretences, would have already arrived in London. The aborted London Meeting was a serious attempt to pre-empt the Moshi Conference but without Lule; and it failed, never to be mentioned again. In my view, to mention it would have left a pretty nasty legacy given that already Liberation Forces on the ground were knocking at the doors of Mpigi Town in Mpigi District on their way to Kampala. These Forces would not have agreed the election of a Government in Exile in London without their participation. As we later discovered, Yoweri Museveni and his Fronasa Group, were the most uncompromising, the most unrelenting unless they got their way on everything. This very factor, the unrelenting drive by Museveni to be at the centre of every move on the road to liberating Uganda will be revisited at length later. It can be safely said today, this belligerence has transformed or characterised every aspect of his leadership. He is a man who never accepts any alternative to his chosen view. He is a man who will grind every opposition into submission. And when he realises that his views may wreck the desired end by the majority, then he will lie by pretending that a compromise has been accepted but only to give himself time to work out a way to sabotage that interim compromise, and whenever possible, to kill it permanently. In short a belligerent dictator in waiting. One man we should never have trusted had Obote done the right thing to let us all know about his true character.

Anyhow, by such time of the aborted London meeting, Museveni was claiming that he had already mobilised a force of 5,000 troops and that he had trained them within the Liberated Territories; a force he claimed to match that of Milton Obote__The Kikosi Maalum. And knowing Museveni as we do now, going ahead with the London Meeting without him would have led to an impasse on the war-front. Never in the history of any political processes had Museveni accepted to stay outside the discussion or the fray. He would always ensure that he was there to register Fronasa’s interest and that of his Tutsi Kith and Kin. Besides, already Muwanga was busy in Masaka and in battle fatigue, purportedly Administering the Area. We also know now that, aside of some elementary fighting, Muwanga was also busy doing some brisk magendo (black market) business (a matter which surfaced within the very first Cabinet Meeting). So, Muwanga would also have been hard pressed, although not impossible, to get to London in the kind of hurry that had necessitated my risky flight to Nairobi and then London. The London Meeting was rather doomed from the very start. But it did not stop President Nyerere trying on behalf of his Mulungushi Club friend.

I had packed clothes for three days for my scouting trip to Nairobi and back. Now, we were on our way to Dar es Salaam, with every chance that the conference might add weeks to my trip before I got home. The good thing was that my shirts and other garments were all of drip-dry material. Professor Lule asked Hanna to pack enough for one week, because he too did not think that events in Moshi would accelerate the war to its early conclusion. We were both wrong. The results at Moshi were the final catalyst that was needed, and progress thereafter was rapid and monumental. Thanks also to the Lule Factor!

V I P Reception

As we got off the plane in Dar es Salaam, a V.I.P. reception was already waiting for Professor Lule. This was five days before the start of the Moshi Conference. They took us straight to the President.

‘My dear Yusufu, where have you been in all this war? We are almost getting to Kampala, you know. Anyway you are here and in time for the meeting. Who is this?’ Still more games by the old master!

‘This is my doctor, Bisase,’ Lule was starting to say, when he was interrupted.

‘OK! OK! But you are mine. You are my delegate to the Conference. You must be quite tired, we have arranged your accommodation at the Kilimanjaro and for him we have arranged at…’ It was Professor Lule’s turn to immediately interrupt:

‘No, Your Excellency. My doctor stays with me at the Kilimanjaro.’

‘OK, have it your way’. There was ice in those words. And I saw President Nyerere’s eyes go red for the first time, a feature we were going to encounter more and more, to the end. Then followed a phase of exchanging news about each other for close to an hour. And if there was any chance that President Nyerere had been already expecting Lule on board and in such important capacity, I would have heard one word a hint about such preparations or such previous arrangements. The two men knew each other since their Edinburgh days, thirty years back, but now they were exchanging trivia.

Looking back to those moments at State House Dar es Salaam, the President betrayed his delight at finding, at this eleventh hour, the very solution to those ‘boys in Dar, in Nairobi and Lusaka’. Rather like all upstarts, they had been milling around the steps to power, very much like hyenas waiting for the overfed lion to finally let go of the kill. President Nyerere showed distinctly how frustrated he was when he remarked to Professor Lule in rather unflattering terms: They (the upstarts) had proved to be a right nuisance for several months; my (his) troops were dying on the war front but ‘these boys’ (as he called them), were bickering and sniping at my (his) heels as if their stake in the battle was significant when it was not.

And now out of the blue, I thought to myself, suddenly appears this man, Lule. A man that he knew well enough from the Edinburgh and Makarere days. A man he could sell to the Chama Cha Mapinduzi. But most importantly, a man without an iota of political experience and therefore amenable to palliative if not manipulative guidance:

OK! OK! But you are mine. I had heard him say. And I can confidently quote because he repeated it more than once. He sounded almost apprehensive that I or anyone else could unexpectedly claim ownership of this man and deny him this incredible stroke of luck. This was further proof that my Guardian turned guiding Angels had been right all along!

‘I want to see Bob, Mr Nsekela promised to arrange for me to see him when we got here.’ Professor Lule said.

‘You go to the hotel. We will trace where Bob is and bring him to you. He is a fighter, you know; so he could even be on the war front,’ the president warned. We now know he lied. Bob was already in Dar es Salaam. And with that, we were dismissed, but the President’s eyes were still bloodshot. The message to read between the ‘Who is this?’ in London, then again now in Dar es Salaam was that, ‘Since we could not use you for the London Meeting, you, Dr Bisase, became an irrelevance.’ This was power politics and I had to learn fast how to be pragmatic and quickly accept what I could not change. They allocated me a room at the far end of the corridor to the Professor’s suite, still more power politics; but we spent most of the time together in his suite.

Then the professor asked me if I could trace Grace Ibingira. Professor Lule needed advice by someone with more experience in Uganda politics than I did, especially now that it appeared that President Nyerere was serious about his participation. I immediately thought of a way to track him down, and it was down to my love for net-working with fellow countrymen, and it could help Professor Lule to fashion a new start for the greater good of our motherland. But there were certain elements we can refer to as a dark silent force in our midst. Their greater experience helped them to exploit our every weakness in our armour and the classical example was that, unknown to us, they had already recruited Grace Ibingira the very person Lule was looking for. They disseminated themselves into our system, only to feed upon us like parasites but eventually their aim was to destroy us from within. We too never saw it coming. Did Grace Ibingira ever saw it coming? Perhaps! But as we shall see in Betrayal, once the sinister system trapped him into submission, then he served it faithfully to his last day.

I asked the operator to get me Mombasa 26152. As the call went through, I heard the operator say:

‘This is Kilimanjaro Hotel, Dar es Salaam, hold on for my caller.’ Connie sounded shocked, relieved, happy all rolled in one.

‘What are you doing in Dar es Salaam?’ she asked.

‘It is a long story, but I am here with Professor Lule for a meeting. Please ring Matthew Rukikaire in Nairobi. Ask him to ring Kilimanjaro Hotel on, Dar es Salaam 68883 during the daytime or DAR 68881 evenings only, and ask for Professor Yusufu Lule. He must trace Mr Grace Ibingira, we need him urgently. He must ring professor Lule as soon as he gets the message. Otherwise, we are all well, and I will see you in a week or so.’ Connie was hearing from me for the first time since that early morning dash to Nairobi, looking for information. I was literally in the middle of it. I was now the information and she had no idea that by the time of that telephone call, I had already been to London and then on to Dar. But somehow, I could sense that she was still anxious for my safety. So, I reassured her, that after all, I was with Professor Lule, and in a manner of speaking, we were both guests of President Nyerere. She sounded relieved to hear this as indeed we too felt comfortable with the apparently fatherly air of protection displayed to us by The President. Obviously relieved, she then mentioned that Kevin and little Samson were OK; although of course, they were too young to understand the situation. Arnold, Brian and Rebecca were in boarding school.

From being a prospective delegate to the London Meeting, I was now a provider of a solution to Nyerere’s dilemma of who could be the ideal candidate to propose for President of the ‘Government in Exile’. He may not have wished to admit it to anyone, but from the failed London Meeting, to comments Kanyeihamba had made in Nairobi, and the more than obvious relief I was reading into his emphatic statement: ‘You are mine, you are my delegate to the conference,’ it was clear to me that the President had had other wicked battles on this issue. My plan was therefore on course; and the candidate I had been chasing for four years to help with our struggle to overthrow Idi Amin was on the threshold of leading us to that victory. And as I sat there quietly listening to two great minds, apparently in harmony, I was considering that for me at least, the current final steps of the plan had only been forty-eight hours in the making, yet those final steps were about to deliver; this would be a ‘coup d’ état’ for the good guys, and for the people of Uganda. As for President Julius Nyerere, Professor Yusufu Lule was an unexpected nugget, and what a nugget, seriously!

Those who later claimed responsibility for Lule’s presence at Moshi were conspicuously missing at every material stage of this momentous journey. No further meetings with our host were immediately scheduled. This made wonder, how was our man getting into the position of candidate for all that important position of Leadership of the Government in Exile? I would have thought that there would have been a flurry of meetings between President Nyerere and his agents working out strategies ahead of the critical stages of the meeting. No Agents of other so called interested Governments showed up even at this eleventh hour, ostensibly to reinforce their contribution towards his election, and Moshi was only five days away! And I was in his room most of the time. So, I would have been able to confirm who these ‘instrumental friends’ could have been.

In my mind’s eye, inexperienced as I was, it still looked particularly strange that there could be an absence of activity, an almost total vacuum surrounding our man. Had the President changed his mind? Or was he needing to sway last minute objections to his candidature? But as the story unfolds it will be realised that these were political games. Designed to milk maximum rewards out of ‘a vulnerable last minute entry’. Our only obvious blessing at this stage of things was that our Hotel bills including Telephones were being covered by our host. Could this be the glimmer of hope for us? But, there was no point being smug to our situation, I was still washing my drip-dry bri-nylon shirts and underwear s myself each night, in readiness for another day.

Later, I called Connie again, this time to let Paul Kibuuka-Musoke and Geoffrey Kizito know that we needed them to come over, and to arrange to get directly to Moshi as soon as possible. I had arranged their clearance at Dar es Salaam Airport; they were to mention that they were delegates of Freedom From Oppression Organisation. Then she sounded even more reassured. So I buckled down to business. Ignorant is bliss, they say, and Professor Lule and I were totally ignorant of the political games in the Dar es Salaam arena. Bob who could have given us some inkling about the intrigues and the possible alliances that could have given Lule somewhere to start, was still missing. No one wanted to talk about him; it was as if this was an indirect message that our man may have misbehaved and ended up on the wrong side of the powers that be. In hindsight, I now know we were being deliberately kept apart from anyone who could have briefed us. But we were also being taken for a mammoth ride, and this, like the attempt to isolate Professor Lule, was just the beginning of a nightmare. Bob’s reputation had to be dented in our eyes and the eyes of anyone who might have considered him a credible force behind Professor Lule. The latter had to be given the initial token air of support from The President himself; but then, it became abundantly clear that such support constituted the only plausible support he was going to enjoy. That he came alone, vulnerable and totally dependent on the goodwill of The Tanzanian President. PERIOD!

Surprisingly, I was discovering that there was a lot I did not know about Grace Ibingira, the man. While we scampered around Nairobi and London making hurried plans to get to Moshi, Grace Ibingira was already in Dar es Salaam at the residence of the Rwandan ambassador to Tanzania. The reason for my being surprised will become very clear in Betrayal, when we analyse the personal, political games he and others played on us. But just for now a little insight into the apparent character of the man is necessary. He first pretended that he was a Lule man and that was at Moshi in 1979. Then soon after the ouster of his (Lule’s) Government, Grace joined The Democratic Party, again professing to be doing so because of Lule (in preparation for the General Elections of 1980). Then he pretended that he had changed to The Uganda Freedom Movement the moment he realised that we were challenging the Election Poll by January 1981. And finally he joined Yoweri Museveni in his National Resistance Movement once he (Museveni) was in power (in 1986). However, we later discovered that he had been actually supporting Museveni all along; and that it was Museveni’s game ‘to plant’ his agents into every new (and old) organisation purposely to know how to undermine it/them. But I am racing ahead of myself in order to try to make some sense of the many behavioural inconsistencies this clever man kept displaying. From the first meeting he held with Lule at Kilimanjaro Hotel, we never really got to know this man properly. For instance, the day I thought I could give him a pleasant surprise, as a fellow U.F.M., member, by dropping into his home in Tarry Town in New York (in 1984), he looked at me all shocked and unbelievingly rude. I saw horror on his face, but I also detected utter contempt in his demeanour; the same contempt all Ugandans were going to be treated to by a people I have already alluded to as, the silent enemy within our society. At the time, I could not fathom this attitude, considering the many, many apparently amicable meetings we had shared with him in Nairobi. He displayed this total enigma against some of us to the very time he died some twenty years later. He may have known how to cleverly play his games in politics, but I am sad to observe that all the years I later got to be around him the unfortunate conclusion deductible about him was that Grace Ibingira was not a very sincere person.

Now however, in Dar es Salaam, he rang back within an hour. Soon he and the Professor were together, purportedly to work out strategies for Moshi, but still no Bob in sight. We felt thoroughly frustrated because he (Bob) would have known so much more of the goings-on in this all so secretive community. Grace Ibingira’s contribution, if any, was suspect as I have already alluded to above, and in any case it was quickly nullified by Nyerere and the pro-Obote U.P.C., delegates. At this stage, it is important to point out that he was shrewd enough to get into Tanzania on the back of The Rwandan Ambassador as a special guest of the Rwandan Ambassy. So, because of it, Ibingira enjoyed a certain degree of freedom in Dar; but as this story nears the end, the significance of this very connection will be laid bare as we trace the tentacles of our ‘silent enemy within’ Uganda. Had it not been thus, it would appear that at no time was Grace a welcome guest of Tanzania. In fact because of past differences between him and Obote, he was as good as ‘Persona non grata’; so much so that he was not even accorded Delegate status. Moshi was tightly stage-managed, that after the Kilimanjaro Hotel, Ibingira was nowhere to be seen. But he had achieved for their group what they had set out to do, including fooling the Tanzanian Government and inching their way closer to the future seat of power; that of Professor Lule. But as Lule was but a temporary stop gap to keep the seat warm for The Tutsi Dynasty, in the years that followed, the connection to Yoweri Museveni grew well beyond just marrying sisters as we shall see, and if anything it became an item to flaunt brazenly before our eyes. The same arrogance we were to be force-fed to this day!

The Unity Conference Starts

We who were non-U.P.C. delegates, including Professor Lule, ended up near-spectators at Moshi, only fit to react to proceedings, rather than initiating them. However, if the playing fields had been truly level, we would have had no reason to complain, especially we the last-minute entrants to the Conference. Sadly though, the conspiracies that emerged at every turn and every corner were testament to grave ulterior plans to betray the people of Uganda and Tanzania, while hoodwinking the entire world community, that this was a war about liberation and justice. At least for now, we had to content ourselves with the knowledge that we had a foot in the doorway… ‘Count our little blessings,’ we thought.

The Conference was scheduled to start on 23rd March, 1979 at 03.00 P.M. Typical of this gang of men, Obote, using the hardcore U.P.C. delegates in tandem, soon created more organisations from the twenty-two on the original list of the Steering Committee to twenty-eight, giving Obote and company more voting clout. The names they manufactured within this venue of such a Historic Conference will remain the shameful legacy to opportunism of these power hungry men. To their credit President Nyerere and his observers to the Conference gave us all the freedom to conduct this meeting exactly as we wished. The only time I saw them display any impatience, was when we had looked bogged