UGANDA: When Museveni's NRM met UPDF on Kampala streets (PHOTOS)

WHEN MUSEVENI'S NRA MET UPDF ON KAMPALA STREETS

CHNGE OF GUARDS - After the fall of Iddi Amin in 1979, the Uganda Army (UA) was humiliatingly humiliated. Many of the UA ex-soldiers fled to the Sudan and Congo. More were captured and held in prison both in Uganda and Tanzania. While others were lynched by the population, others went into hiding within the country. The UA was unfairly associated with the Iddi Amin regime's alleged atrocities but in actual fact the regular UA was the most professional and disciplined army Uganda has ever had. It is the secret services, State Research Bureau (SRB) and other auxiliary forces like the Naguru based Public Safety Unit (PSU) that to some extent committed atrocities. The anti-Amin dissident groups (including Museveni's briefcase FRONASA) were also responsible for both directly and indirectly for such atrocities. Ugandans never saw the regular UA on the streets torturing and shooting citizens in broad daylight.

After the fall of Iddi Amin, it was the Tanzanian army and a handful of R's returned armed Ugandan exiles under the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) that was responsible for security. As the post Amin era Minister of Defence, Museveni undermined all efforts to raise a new national army. He harboured presidential ambitions that he dreamt of achieving through military means. In this regard, he was preoccupied with rising a Bantu and specifically a regional (western) army to challenge the Northern Uganda domination of security services. When his scheme was foiled, he opted to take to the bush for a guerrilla war in 1981.

He founded the NRM with its armed wing the NRA. He took with him a number of UNLA Bantu soldiers from western Uganda. He also incorporated some Bantu former UA soldiers. There is no doubt, his fiver years Bush War was a sectarian war against northerners. The scramble for dominance within the UNLA of which Museveni was the Minister of Defence and Vice Chairman of the Military Commission, had created a situation of undisciplined conduct by the UNLA specifically in the central region where Museveni's NRA was based. It is the same indiscipline and lack of professionalism that led to the July 1985 coup against Obote and his UPC. The role of Museveni's NRA and more specifically the notorious Black Bomber under Matayo Kyaligonza in urban terrorism that was at the time attributed to the UNLA is no longer a secret.

Having manipulated the Okello Junta using the infamous Nairobi Peace Talks (https://changeofguards.blogspot.com/2016/11/how-did-museveni-manipulate-nairobi.html), in January 1986 Museveni's NRA marched on Kampala and with minimal resistance took over power. Ugandans poured on the streets in jubilation as columns of the gun wielding, dressed in tatters and barefooted NRA carried out mop up operations against the defeated UNLA who for obvious reasons were not fleeing to western Uganda but eastern and northern regions. Ugandans in Kampala and and some parts of Luwero Triangle were celebrating the ousting of 'Obote soldiers' the same way they had done with the 'Amin soldiers' a six years earlier in 1979. 

Ugandans wholeheartedly welcomed the 'Museveni soldiers' (Abajasi ba Museveni) who had strict orders not to steal or forcefully take anything from civilians. The same instructions extended to intimidation of civilians. Soon after, Ugandans witnessed a new form of physical torture called Kandoya. They witnessed the NRA took a centre stage in partisan politics. Unlike during the UNLA era where 'Obote soldiers' grabbed radios, bicycles, watches and demanded small money at roadblocks for cigarettes and local drinks by junior soldiers, this time round organized raiding of banks, Forex Bureaus, highway robberies, smuggling, and theft of public resources in millions and later billions.

The NRA's human rights record more especially the physical torture has for the last 33 years remained unrivalled. The arrest, kidnap, abduction, torture, detention in Safe Houses, brutal suppression of political dissent, commando raids on courts of law and Parliament and the war attricoties in neighboring countries gives the NRA a unique character. It is behind much of the insecurity of person and property in the country. Almost all incidents of gruesome armed robberies, violent land and property grabbing is either directly or indirectly linked to the NRA. The NRA has manifestly demonstrated that it is Museveni's personal army with the sole mandate of ensuring the continuity of Musevenism in return for guaranteed impunity. There is nothing like the UPDF, Police, SFC, CMI, ISO, Crime Preventers or LDUs, its just NRA, NRA, NRA - the armed wing of Nuseveni's ruling NRM.

Scenes of the 2019 so-called UPDF in action on the streets of Kampala brutalizing Ugandans if contrasted with those of January 1986 NRA entry into Kampala, ...........
If the two armies (NRA and UPDF) met on the streets of Kampala, they would hug, exchange pleasantries, and applauld each other for sustaining the NRM 'revolution'. Moreover, the NRA commander of the notorious Black Bomber, Matayo Kyaligonza is still on the street brutalizing female Police Traffic Officers, the late NRA's Mwenemzei's son is not the Police chief, while the notorious armed robbers are no longer the Maj. Smarts Kigundu or Col. Dragon Nyanzi but the Capt. Mushabe's who use Macro Garil machine guns to subdue their victims. It is the Brigadiers Tusiimes and Kulaigyes who steal tons of ivory trophies and gold respectively. It is the Col. Rwamirama's and the Muhoozi's who ensures that the lion's share defence budget is available to the personal use of Museveni and his cronies. They brutally suppress political dissent on the premise that if the NRM loses power, they too will lose their impunity for all such evils.

INFORMATION IS POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF UGANDA IS MUSEVENISM