Uganda Reporters

Uganda Generals to die before Museveni's assassination

Readers who might have followed my writings in the Daily Monitor's Saturday column in 2006 and 2007 and listeners to the KFM radio talk show on Friday, might have heard me mention on air or put in writing my meeting in July 2006 with a clairvoyant, a person with an uncanny gift for predicting future events, the person I called the Seer.

In one of those columns or several of those KFM broadcasts, I did mention, in 2006 and 2007, what the Seer told me would happen to Uganda in the years just ahead.

One of the things I told listeners clearly several times, for the record, was that the Seer had told me that generals from ethnic tribes in western Uganda would die one by one as the clock ticked on to the assassination of President Yoweri Museveni, as foretold by the Seer.

It started with the Secretary for Defence, Brig. Noble Mayombo in May 2007 and has continued with the former army commander Maj. gen. James Kazini now in Nov. 2009.

It has been reported by the mainstream media in Kampala that Kazini was murdered by his mistress, Lydia Draru.

The facts of Kazini's death, in fact, point to what the Uganda Record knew to be the truth yesterday, Nov. 10, 2009: that Kazini was killed for the same reason that Mayombo was killed.

Two days before his death, according to well-informed sources, Kazini received a phone call from the Chief of Military Intelligence, Brig. James Mugira who asked Kazini: "Are you safe?"

Mugira then offered Kazini some escorts, to which Kazini angrily replied that he did not need any security and he switched Mugira off the line. It is not clear whether Mugira genuinely wanted to offer protection to Kazini or he was, in fact, monitoring Kazini's movements on behalf of the hands that run the Ugandan state.

This week, Kazini was scheduled to travel to southern Sudan. The white luxury Toyota Landcruiser he owned was given to him as a personal donation and an act of sympathy by the government of southern Sudan after he was court martialed for the alleged creation of a false army payroll.

Southern Sudan, it should be remembered, still has a smoldering resentment toward Uganda because many, if not most, of them believe that the death of their leader Lt. Gen. John Garang in July 2005 was orchestrated by Museveni.

It is not clear at this point whether the Ugandan state believed or suspected that Kazini was being prepared by southern Sudan or even Libya to lead a possible military coup against the Museveni government.

But as the background given by the Uganda Record yesterday revealed, quoting news reports and analysis from two Kampala papers, the Independent and the Observer, it was publicly known that the state believed Kazini had a plan or role to play in a plot to overthrow Museveni.

A source in Kampala has told the Uganda Record this: "About Kazini's death, I one time overheard my uncle in the army say Kazini may join Col. Samson Mande and Col. Kiiza Besigye against M7 President Museveni. He then said they the state, presumably were going to eliminate the 'rebels' one by one. This is not the last death of this year."

The true facts of Kazini's death, then are as follows: Kazini had a night out on Monday, as has been reported by Kampala newspapers.

What they do not reveal or know is that Kazini had parted company with his mistress Draru. Later, he got a call from her.He had been in his military vehicle but on receiving her call, his instinct was to get into his personal vehicle, the Landcruiser, and head to Namuwongo, the suburb in Kampala near the Industrial Area.

Waiting for Kazini at Draru's home were three burly men, commonly referred to in Uganda as "Kanyamas".

It is these three men, not Draru, who bludgeoned Kazini to death. An eight year-old boy at Draru's home provided that evidence to the police when it arrived at the scene but somehow this version of events was slowly withdrawn from the public.

The first person to arrive at the scene of the crime was a woman called Mabel, sister to Jovia Saleh, the wife of Gen. Salim Saleh. After Kazini's murder, sources say, Draru phoned up Mabel and said "Come and pick your body."

The reference by Draru to "your body" in making that call to Jovia Saleh's sister, starts to shed light on to true facts of Kazini's murder.

At the mortuary at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Gen. Saleh's aide, Capt. Juma Seiko and a Colonel in Military Police took charge of the body. Mourners and family members who arrived to view and treat the body were screened by the Military Police and as one by one the relatives and other mourners arrived, the Military Police officer made a phone call to an unidentified person to get permission to allow each person to come in.

Capt. Seiko, with a long revolver strapped at his waist, kept a tight grip over the proceedings.

All of this raised the question of why suddenly tight security and controls should be imposed both at Namuwongo and at the Mulago mortuary, if Kazini's death was the result of what is being reported, a drunken brawl between two lovers.

At the wake at Kazini's home at Munyonyo, most of the army generals and other high-ranking officers who had worked with Kazini over the years appeared to commiserate with the family --- except Gen. Salim Saleh.

Sources who claim to know what is going on say that it was Salim Saleh who made the phone call to Draru asking her to invite Kazini to her home on Monday night and early into Tuesday morning.

The haste with which Lydia Draru was arrested, taken to the Central Police Station for interrogation, arraigned before a magistrate at the Buganda Road Court, and sent to Luzira Upper Prison where she spent Tuesday night, Nov. 10, raises the level of suspicion even more.

She seemed eager to confess to having killed Kazini. She did not explain what the iron bar that she reportedly used to hit Kazini, was doing in her house.

As the media did what it did with Maymbo's death, publishing and broadcasting the usual redundancies about Kazini the "fearless commander" and "national hero" that Ugandan society and the media typically heap on deceased public officials, the truth behind Kazini's death remains out of public view.

But, as the Seer said, this is the trend that events will be taking prior to that cataclysmic event soon to befall Museveni.

Salim Saleh haunted by Jet Mwebaze's death. Why?

In Sept. 1997, an army officer and brother to Brig. James Kazini, another senior army officer, died in western Uganda under circumstances that remain mysterious.

The then Minister of State for Defence, Steven Kavuma, gave conflicting accounts of what had happened to the private plane carrying Mwebaze. The media also reported various accounts.

Appearing on the Capital Gang talk show on 91.3 Capital FM at the time, the then Lt. Gen. Salim Saleh was grilled by the then Mbarara Member of Parliament, Winnie Byanyima, also a panelist on the Capital Gang, to explain what Saleh's employees were doing on that plane in which Mwebaze was said to have died.

Saleh did not have an answer.

Maj. Gen. James Kazini the former army commander died on Nov. 10, 2009 still convinced that his brother had been killed by the state or at least an actor in the state.

But for several months, Saleh found himself almost unable to sleep. He disclosed to some people that he was being haunted by the spirit of Jet Mwebaze. Apparently it was tormenting him night and day.

On the day of Mwebaze's burial, an unusually heavy downpour of rain swept over the area. It rained heavily and continually all through the burial proceedings and convinced many onlookers that there was something suspicious about Mwebaze's death.

In 1998, Saleh tried to find a way out of the nightmare he was facing. He sought the help of a traditional fortune teller, a soothsayer of some sort, to go to Mwebaze's grave and perform a number of rituals to appease the spirit of Mwebaze.

A young man approached by Saleh refused to look up the fortune teller. Saleh finally found another young man to go to Mwebaze's grave with the medium on his behalf.

What happened, however, shocked Saleh. The young man, usually meek and modest in personality, suddenly burst out into a loud wail when he met Saleh. He shouted at Saleh and insulted him, speaking as one possessed by a strange spirit or invisible force.

What happened next is not clear but this episode is a glimpse into the dark and sinister world that Uganda's leaders since 1986 live in.

Their abnormal lust for power and material things, their casual way with shedding blood speaks not of ordinary human beings, but of people possessed by what some might refer to as the spirit of death and murder.

It is this spirit in Museveni, his brother Salim Saleh, and Museveni's wife Janet Museveni that I went to investigate in July 2006 when I met a Seer outside Kampala. I ended up discovering the most astonishing things imaginable.

But the net result of that experience was that all my fear of the state, what it can do, and of Museveni vanished from me the next day. I had stumbled onto what in the Bible is referred to as the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil", the ultimate in knowledge of the deep mysteries of the universe.

That spirit of death and murder hangs over the other leader in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda.

About Mwebaze's death, Saleh had planned to mobilise soldiers and army veterans to go to the Democratic Republic of Congo to offer support security to the new government of President Laurent Kabila.

But failing to successfully convince these men to go to Congo, the task fell to Mwebaze, who easily assembled the men and these men waited for the flight at Entebbe International Airport.

For whatever reason, Saleh started to view Mwebaze as threat to his power and influence within the army and plotted against Mwebaze.

Just before Mwebaze was to have taken that flight, Saleh - who knew Mwebaze's love of money - convinced him to give up on the military mission and instead fly to Congo on a diamond business mission.

Mwebaze agreed to. Employees of Saleh's company, including some Israelis, boarded a plane.

When the plane arrived in the skies over Kasese, it came down to the ground. Later, Mwebaze was shot dead by the army in Kasese, then under the command of Brig. Nakibus Lakara.

Who gave the order for Mwebaze's murder? Who else but the man who would later be haunted by what he himself said was the spirit of Mwebaze.

It is no coinsidence that it is he, Saleh, who made the call to Lydia Draru or Lydia Atim, asking her to call Mwebaze's brother to Namowongo, only for three hit men, not Draru, to beat Kazini to death --- and then reports of a domestic quarrel conveniently fed to the media.

According to NRA fighters in Luwero, Saleh was given the nickname "Rufu" which in the languages of western Uganda means "death."

This nickname was not because of any extraordinary military achievements or bravery on the battlefield, but rather, according to the former NRA guerrillas, because it was to him that Yoweri Museveni entrusted the task of eliminating Museveni's real or perceived enemies in Luwero.

These NRA veterans say that such major assassinations as that of the first NRA commander, Lt. Ahmed Seguya and many others - including, now, the killing of Maj. Gen. James Kazini - were the core assignment of Salim Saleh during their guerrilla war.

In Kampala, most army generals, intelligence officers, and others familiar with the workings of the NRM government do not believe that Kazini was killed by Lydia Draru.

Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire's melodramatic questioning of why God allowed Kazini to die without first consulting he, Otafiire, reflects the amount of fear being felt within top military circles than that Otafiire was trying to express black humour.

The "Atmos-Fear" in Uganda after Kazini's murder

A mood of fear and conspiracy has come over Kampala since Monday night's murder of the former army commander, Maj. Gen. James Kazini.

It is reminiscent of the days following the death of Brig. Noble Mayombo, the Secretary for Defence, in May 2007.

Most people do not believe or do not want to believe that Kazini's death was the result of a domestic fight between lover and mistress.

At Kazini's home on Tuesday night, the mood among the mourners, on its own, spoke volumes, of people who believed there is more to this story than we are being told.

Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire, who had told the media several months ago as he was arriving at State House Entebbe for a special NRM parting meeting that "intrigue. Intrigue" was killing the NRM, has asked if Lydia Draru, Kazini's mistress and alleged killer, might have worked with some conspirators.

If this is how much intrigue the atmosphere in Kampala has, we can only imagine what it is like inside State House, the intelligence services where the deputy director general of the External Security Organisation, Emmy Allio, no less, is living in fear of his life, and within the Presidential Guard Brigade.

For the whole of last week, there was a rumour going round the country that DP publicity secretary Betty Nambooze had died.

The fact that rumour, conspiracy theory, and fear are now the norm in Uganda, itself paints an accurate picture of the state of governance in the country today.

From now until the 2011 general election and quite possibly until Museveni's time in office, Uganda is going to grind down into an atmosphere of intrigue, unexplained murders, "car accidents", and on and on.

Museveni is now at his most scared. The intelligence reports that Libya, with support from Rwanda and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga were the hands behind the September riots in Buganda have now become the focus of Museveni's thinking.

Just as Brig. Noble Mayombo's murder in May 2007 increased tensions within the army and intelligence, Kazini's death is going to have many generals asking when their turn will come.

The atmosphere of tension in Kampala will soon equal that felt in the Rwandan capital Kigali where even government officials do not truth their thoughts with their spouses.