How the 1966 Mengo Crisis affected Uganda’s politics

Sunday May 24, 2015 marks 49 years of the Buganda Crisis, popularly known as the Mengo Crisis, an event that took place on May 24, 1966 at the Kabaka’s Palace in Mengo, and for ever changed the political destiny of Uganda.

The Crisis derailed Uganda’s democratic evolution, plunging the country into a political crisis it has never fully recovered from.

On that fateful morning, at about 8am, Sir Edward Muteesa, the Kabaka (king) of the Buganda kingdom was in the palace at Mengo; he was then a non-executive president of the country and Milton Obote was the executive prime minister — with a contigent of loyal armed soldiers, waiting for the imminent attack on the palace by Obote.

Muteesa was already aware of Obote’s plans and had planned to repulse the attack. Obote’s army attacked as expected and a fierce battled ensued that reportedly lasted seven hours.

With military training acquired in the Queen’s Grenadier Guards in Britain (attaining the rank of colonel) while studying at Cambridge University in the 1940s, Muteesa led his soldiers in wiping out the entire “Special Force” of 2,000 men sent by Obote before he escaped from the palace and fled into exile in the United Kingdom.

A miracle over Mengo

As Muteesa’s soldiers battled Obote’s army, as providence would have it, a storm moved from Lake Victoria and brought such heavy rain that visibility was reduced to near zero, so you could not see the person next to you.

It was during the heavy rain that Muteesa and a soldier, Abraham Senkoma, ran to the palace perimeter wall on the Ndeeba side. Senkoma lifted the Kabaka onto his shoulders, making it possible for the latter to jump over the wall.

A taxi happened to be driving by and they waved it down. The taxi stopped and the driver took them to Lubaga Catholic Mission where Muteesa found the Fathers having breakfast.

He dropped his gun on the breakfast table and they asked him; “Ssabasajja, what has happened to you?” and he answered, “We have been fighting Obote’s army.” Among the Fathers present were (the current) Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala and the late Cardinal Emmanuel Nsubuga.  

They dressed Muteesa as a Catholic priest and had a young Muganda, Dan Kamaanyi, drive him in a small car to a location in Busiro County where he handed Muteesa over to a local chief who organised his secret travel to western Buganda until he reached the border.

Several days later, Muteesa boarded a ferry across the Kagera River. It is said as the ferry was almost reaching the other side, Obote’s soldiers arrived and tried to call it back but the captain of the ferry refused to turn back.

Two soldiers tried to swim across with their guns but they were swept away by the raging water. Muteesa reached Bujumbura in Burundi where he boarded a Sabena Airlines flight to London via Brussels.

What caused the crisis?

The actual root cause of the falling out between Muteesa and Obote was the issue of the return of the “Lost Counties” of Buyaga and Bugangaizi to Bunyoro in April 1964, as was clearly stipulated in the 1962 Independence Constitution.

Uganda attained Independence on October 9, 1962 and became a republic within the British Commonwealth in March 1963, and parliament elected Muteesa as a non-executive president and Obote became the executive prime minister.

At the Lancaster Conference in London just before Independence, Bunyoro had demanded the return of the two “Lost Counties.” The counties were annexed to Buganda by the British in the 19th century following several wars between Buganda and Bunyoro as the former sought to expand its kingdom.

It was agreed at the conference that Uganda should get Independence first in 1962, then two years later in 1964, a referendum would be held for the people in those two counties to decide whether to join Bunyoro or remain in Buganda.

Following the annexation, Buganda had 20 counties according to the 1900 Agreement between Buganda and Britain that established the British Protection over Uganda and made Buganda an integral part of Uganda.

In that two year period before the referendum, Kabaka Muteesa settled thousands of Baganda in the two counties and set up a palace at a village called Ndeiga. He wanted to have almost a million “pure” Baganda in those two counties before the referendum in an attempt to eventually swing the vote in Buganda’s favour.

Obote, as the executive prime minister, issued a decree that only the people whose names were on the 1962 voting register would be allowed to vote in the referendum. That was a blow to Muteesa’s plan. Lacking executive powers, Muteesa could not enforce his policies and he had no control over parliament.

He had put in a lot of money, to the tune of Ush9 million, which was a tidy sum of money that time, to get the support of the Banyoro voters. It was reported that part of it was embezzled by Buganda officials who were supposed to distribute it to the voters.

Obote sided with Bunyoro on the referendum. The poll results showed that the Banyoro voted overwhelmingly to re-join the Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom. With the referendum results, Buganda lost the two counties and to date it has 18 only.

The real problem began when the time came to sign the Legal Declaration transferring the two counties to Bunyoro. Obote took the legal papers to president Muteesa to sign because he was the head of state. Muteesa refused and said, “I can never give away Buganda land.”

Obote signed them as the executive prime minister, setting off the bitter conflict — the two men never spoke to each other again.

The Baganda in Kampala were incensed by the loss of the two counties. They attacked Katikiro Michael Kintu’s government at Mengo. They beat up the Katikiro and the ministers who included the Omulamuzi A.D. Lubowa and overthrew the Kintu government.

The following day, Muteesa appointed a new Katikiro, Joash Mayanja Nkangi, who led the government until the Mengo Crisis of May 1966. The loss of the two counties by Buganda was the genesis of the bad relationship between Muteesa and Obote and eventually led to the attack on Mengo.

Before 1966, Obote decided to strengthen himself militarily. He imported arms from China through Kenya marked “Matooke Consignment.”

President Jomo Kenyatta confiscated the arms but due to external diplomatic pressure, released them. At that time, Obote’s confidant, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, was Kenya’s vice president and was working closely with Obote.

Escalated

The bad blood between Muteesa and Obote got worse when the Buganda Lukiiko made a political blunder and got involved in the whole thing.

A member of the Buganda Lukiiko by the name of Kaggwa from the Kooki Royal Family, moved a motion “ordering Obote to remove his government from Buganda soil and take it to Lango,” and the Lukiiko passed it unanimously. It was reported that Katikiro Mayanja Nkangi tried his best to tell Kaggwa not to move the motion but Kaggwa refused.

After that the situation started to get worse and on February 22, 1966, Obote arrested five ministers in his government who he thought were working secretly with Muteesa. On February 23, the 1962 Constitution that had granted Buganda a federal status was also suspended by Obote. In March of the same year, Muteesa was dismissed from the Office of the President.

Things came to a head in April 1966, when Obote’s army beat up people who were drinking in a bar in Nakulabye for unknown reasons. After seeing what Obote was doing against Buganda, Brig Shaban Opolot from Teso, who was the top commander of the Uganda Army, went to Muteesa seeking orders from him as the president to arrest Obote.

Muteesa is reported to have refused to give the order because he thought “many people would die.” Obote later demoted Brig Opolot and appointed Brig Idi Amin to command the Army.

After that Obote moved very fast to pre-empt any military move from Muteesa, and so on May 24, 1966, he ordered Brig Idi Amin to attack the palace in Mengo which Amin did. Apparently he was acting on information from some anti-Buganda elements that Muteesa had amassed a huge arms cache in the palace in readiness to attack Obote’s government.

The revolution and religion

It was the political machinations in the run-up to Uganda’s Independence that eventually built up to the Mengo Crisis.

Twenty years after the Mengo Crisis in January 1986, revolutionary Yoweri Museveni took power with his promise of “Fundamental Change” after waging a five-year guerilla war in the Luwero Triangle. He has now been in power for 30 years.

As Bernard Mallet wrote, “The revolution devours its children;” THUS the 1966 revolution “ate” the main players: Muteesa died in exile in London in November 1969, of suspected poisoning by Obote’s secret agents, and Obote himself died in exile in Zambia in 2005. He had been overthrown twice by his own army.

Uganda is a unique country in East Africa because it has had nine presidents since Independence. Five of them came into power by the gun, and five of them were deposed through the gun.

If the Mengo Crisis of 1966 had not taken place, A general election would have been held in 1967 and in 1972, but by that year, Idi Amin had already brought in military rule by deposing Obote.

At Independence, parliament elected Muteesa as a non-executive president and Obote the executive prime minister on a religious alliance. While Muteesa was a Muganda from central Uganda and Obote was from the Lango tribe of northern Uganda, they both subscribed to the Anglican faith, now the Church of Uganda.

According to the history of Christianity in Uganda, that was a very important factor uniting them politically, and thUS Britain ruled this country for 70 years while maintaining Protestantism as the dominant religion.

The current Kabaka, Ssabasajja Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, has however replaced religion with merit. If you have the right qualifications, no matter your religion, you gOt the job.

Religion was the main reason why in 1962 the Baganda and the Buganda Lukiiko sidelined Benedicto Kiwanuka, a Catholic and leader of the Democratic Party and made a political alliance with Obote/Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), through their Buganda Party, Kabaka Yekka (KY).

In January 1959, when the British government launched a “political roadmap” leading to Uganda’s Independence, Kiwanuka aggressively mobilised people in Uganda to register as voters “because Independence was coming.”

The Buganda Lukiiko boycotted the registration of voters and instructed the Baganda not to register. Buganda, at that time, demanded to know what would be the position of the Kabaka and Buganda in an Independent Uganda. When general election was held in March 1961, Kiwanuka won and formed the Internal Self-Government, thus becoming Uganda’s first prime minister. He included three leading Protestants in his government: Balam Mukasa, Stanley Bemba and John Ssonko.

Later on, the British government sent a constitutional expert, Lord Munster, who collected views of all Ugandans and prepared the 1962 Constitution. In 1962, a Delegates Conference was held at Lancaster House, London, to approve the Independence Constitution.
The Kabaka of Buganda, Muteesa and the king of Bunyoro-Kitara, Sir Tito Winyi Agutamba, attended the conference together with other cultural leaders, politicians and elders.

The Constitution was approved and it granted Buganda a federal status. It also allowed the Buganda Lukiiko to appoint the 21 Buganda representatives in the parliament of Uganda.

There were no direct elections in Buganda. This was intended to block Kiwanuka from being elected to parliament. When the general elections wAS held on September 4, 1962, there were two parties, Democratic Party and UPC, competing for the leadership of the country.

Both parties won an equal number of seats in parliament outside Buganda. It was thus up to Buganda, at that time, to decide which one of the two parties to support to enble get a majority and form a government. The Buganda Lukiiko unanimously voted to allow KY to form a political alliance with Obote/UPC, rejecting Kiwanuka/DP.

UPC got a majority in parliament and formed a government. That is how Obote became the executive prime minister and received the Constitutional Instruments of Independence from Britain on October 9, 1962 at Kololo from the Duke of Kent.

The latter represented Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain. Muteesa stood on the left hand side of Obote at that ceremony as the executive president.

If the Buganda Lukiiko and the Baganda had not rejected Kiwanuka/DP, Kiwanuka could have been the one receiving the Instruments of Independence at Kololo. In that case, there could have been no need for the September 4, 1962 general election, and Kiwanuka could have continued as prime minister to Independence.

It is hard to understand why the Baganda failed to realise that by rejecting their fellow Muganda, Kiwanuka, on the grounds of faith, were giving away the political power to lead Uganda to others. They have not gained this political power to date.

Currently, under the leadership of Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi and his Katikiro Charles Peter Mayiga, the Baganda stand a chance of gaining political power if they apply high class diplomacy and persuade President Museveni and the ruling National Resistance Movement to sponsor a Muganda in the 2021 general election and also in 2026.

They should apply the same political plan in the Opposition as well, because “nobody knows what will happen tomorrow and there is nothing impossible in politics.”

After the revolution

After the Mengo attack and Muteesa’s flight into exile in the United Kingdom, Obote vowed to follow him there and finish him off. He believed that by annihilating the Kabaka, he would kill the Baganda’s love for their kingdom. It is generally believed in Buganda that Muteesa was poisoned by Obote agents who tracked him down in London.

Obote set up a dreaded intelligence network called the General Service Unit and it was headed by his cousin Akena Adoko (deceased), it embarked on the task of tracking down the Kabaka. There was talk in Uganda that the GSU were spending Ush250,000 (a lot of money at that time) per week in foreign currency to track down the Kabaka.

The GSU agents had a stroke of luck when in early 1969, Oscar Kambona (deceased) of Tanzania, who had fallen out with president Julius Nyerere over the latter’s socialist policies and fled into exile to Britain, hosted a birthday party one day in November and invited Muteesa.

He also happened to have invited a young woman who is said to have been recruited by the GSU and sent to London to look for Muteesa, befriend him and get close enough to poison him. Kambona was not aware of the plans to poison the Kabaka. At the party, the young woman interacted with the Kabaka.

It was reported that the Kabaka invited the girl to his birthday party on November 19, 1969 to be one of the people to serve his guests. She served the Kabaka too and it was reported that that was how she managed to poison him that particular evening.

How the writer learnt of the Kabaka’s death

These events were narrated to this writer in Nairobi in 1969 by the late Paul Kavuma, former Katikiro of Buganda, who passed through Nairobi enroute to London to attend the first funeral of the Kabaka.

Kavuma went to see the writer at the East African Airways office on Koinange Street, in Nairobi, and the writer quickly organised a ticket to London for him. When he returned from London, he narrated to the writer all that he was told both in Kampala and London.

Kavuma said that when the news spread in Kampala that the Kabaka had passed away, Obote and his government wanted his remains (Enjole) to be flown back to Entebbe. Kavuma said he had received reliable information that Obote was not going to handle the remains of Ssekabaka Muteesa with the dignity they deserved in order to annoy the Baganda and cause fighting that would result in the loss of life.

Kavuma was shocked by this information and quickly contacted Buganda’s friends in London and told them to plead with the British government to bury Ssekabaka Muteesa in London temporarily until the political situation changed in Uganda.

The remains of Muteesa were brought back to Uganda by president Idi Amin in 1972 and he was laid to rest according to Baganda traditions and customs at the Kasubi Tombs.

The life of the Kabaka

Kabaka Sir Edward Muteesa when he was president, offered his salary to the people of Karamoja for development projects. He also built a hospital for the people of Karamoja in Moroto.

Muteesa played a big role in the struggle for Independence of both Uganda and Kenya. He demanded for Independence in 1953 and was exiled for his pains by the British Governor Sir Andrew Cohen. When he came back from exile in 1955, he signed the 1955 Buganda Agreement on October 18, which set out the “roadmap” for Uganda’s Independence.

The 1955 Buganda Agreement had an important clause, which clearly stipulated, “There will be no Major Constitutional Changes in Uganda until the year 1961.” The Major Constitutional Changes came in March, 1961 with Internal Self-Government and full Independence on October 9, 1962.

During his time in London (1953-1955), there was a secret link between Muteesa and I.K Musaazi. When he returned from exile, he secretly gave financial support to the Uganda National Congress during the most critical time of the struggle for Independence in 1956-1959.

Muteesa also offered financial support to the Mau Mau war of Independence in Kenya.

In 1945, Omutaka Ssemakula Mulumba attended the 1945 Manchester Conference in the UK where African freedom fighters resolved to liberate Africa. In 1946, Jomo Kenyatta and Ssemakula Mulumba travelled back to Africa on the same ship. Mulumba was made a Kikuyu elder at Dagoreti village near Nairobi.

Arriving in Mombasa, Kenyatta declared that he was going to launch a war of Independence but told Mulumba that he had no money to fund the war. Mulumba told him that he would approach the Kabaka of Buganda and request him to assist Kenyatta financially.

Even during the Kabaka’s exile from 1953-1955, as the Katikiro of Buganda, Paul Kavuma, continued to send money to Kenyatta’s people because he was in detention in nothern Kenya.

At that time, the region had one common currency, the East African shilling. This financial support greatly solidified the personal friendship between Muteesa and Kenyatta. Kenyatta allowed Ugandans to live in Kenya when he was president following the 1966 crisis in Uganda.

The relationship between Mengo and Museveni’s government is good although the president was irritated by the kingdom’s federal (federo) demand which he refused to grant.

Kavuma is an elder from Kyaggwe, Mukono district