Uganda’s next battle of Lukaya

Eyeball-to-eyeball, Tanzanian forces (supported by Ugandan rebels) and Ugandan government forces under president Idi Amin (supported by Libyan and Palestinian troops) went at it. 

After briefly occupying Lukaya Town, Tanzanian troops and Ugandan rebels retreated under heavy artillery fire. The Tanzanians subsequently launched a counterattack, retaking Lukaya and killing hundreds of Libyans and Ugandans.

This all started after Amin attempted to invade neighbouring Tanzania to the south in 1978. The attack was repulsed, and Tanzania launched a counterattack into Ugandan territory. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

However, as William Faulkner once said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

This Faulkner quote comes from his 1951 work of fiction, Requiem for a Nun. 

The central theme, for they are several, of Requiem for a Nun concerns spiritual redemption for past misdeeds through suffering and the acceptance guilt thereof. 

You see, Amin was overthrown and thereupon Uganda was convulsed by a civil war. 

“Bandits!” president Milton Apollo Obote would call the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebels. 

But all we could think of was how Obote was trying to destroy Uganda, especially Buganda, with his otherwise dastardly politics. 

Subsequently, our ears were soundproof to Obote’s warnings. 

Even when the NRA pulled off the largest bank heist in Ugandan history, we refused to swap epithet for fiction by calling the NRA “bandits” instead of “liberators”.

Oh yes, the NRA pulled off a $700,000 bank heist at the Central Bank office at Kabale, 145 miles southwest of Kampala, in 1985.

Fast forward to today; Ugandans now believe they are witnessing the worst corruption in our nation’s history. And now, finally, we understand what Obote meant when he called the rebels “bandits”. 

However, there is no need to heap all manner of vilifications on the NRA and National Resistance Movement (NRM). For President Museveni himself had warned us, too.

In his 1986 “Fundamental Change” speech, he said: “Of course, we may have some bad elements amongst us—this is because we are part and parcel to Ugandan society as it is, and we may, therefore, not be able completely to guard against infiltration by wrong elements.”

It didn’t help that Mr Museveni arrived to give this speech in a gleaming black Mercedes Benz. And thereby recall to the public mind the dreaded “Wabenzi Class”.

Optics aside, our current state of affairs relates to the Battle of Lukaya in two ways. 

One, the forces of change, like the Tanzanian troops and Ugandan rebels in 1979, are in retreat. However, like the anti-Amin forces, they can launch a counterattack, retaking the initiative from the NRM government.  

Two, we must look to the past to seek redemption after accepting our guilt, as Ugandans, for being complicit in the NRM’s corrupt rule.

To be sure, the NRM would not be so corrupt, on such a scale, if Ugandans were not willing to barter their souls for the 30 pieces of silver the government has been dishing out since it came to power. 

We are guilty of not only ignoring Obote, but also buying into the lies we were told about his regime. 

This is why the next Battle of Lukaya, metaphorically speaking, should not lead to Armageddon; it should lead to our national renewal. 

Mr Philip Matogo is a professional copywriter  
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