Threnody for the Rebels

The signal was to be a Tennessee Ernie Ford recording of Onward, Christian Soldiers played first thing Sunday morning over Radio Uganda On hearing the hymn, conspirators outside Kampala would know that Uganda's erratic, xenophobic President general Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin Dada was dead and would move to consolidate the coup d'etat in the countryside. Last week, right on schedule, a "special request" was phoned in to the station and the hymn went out over the air vvaves. But instead of signaling the demise of Amin's brutal dictatorship, it turned into a threnody for the rebels.

The abortive coup was the most serious attempt to overthrow Amin since he seized power from President Milton Obote in 1971 and won instant popularity with Uganda's masses by expelling 50,000 Asians who had chosen British over Ugandan citizenship when the country became independent. The uprising was apparently both tribal and religious in origin. In a nation that is less than 10% Islamic, Big Daddy, a Moslem, gave the choicest spots in his 15,000-man army to semiliterate Moslems from his own Kakwa tribe. To fill other vacancies, he recruited some 2,000 members from the neighboring--and largely Christian--Lugbara tribe.

Fatal Mistake. But Amin's bloody purges of enemies real and imagined claimed at least 20,000 lives--and perhaps as many as 90,000--and finally convinced the Lugbaras that their turn as targets was bound to come. Sure enough, Lugbara soldiers and officers started disappearing from barracks last year and dozens of others were slapped into the infamous Makindye prison outside Kampala on conspiracy charges. Last month the bullet-riddled body of Lieut. Colonel Michael Ondoga, who as Foreign Minister was the highest-ranking Lugbara in the government, was found floating in the Nile.

It seems likely that Amin had Ondoga killed to provoke a rebellion and hence justify a purge. If true, the scheme worked because the Lugbaras decided to move. Brigadier General Charles Arube, a Christian member of Amin's Kakwa tribe, joined the conspiracy because he was worried by Big Daddy's purges of the Christian Lugbara, Acholi and Langi tribesmen. Arube was also irritated when he recently returned from a military course in the Soviet Union to find that a Sudanese mercenary had supplanted him as acting chief of staff.

The plans last week called for an assassination squad to ambush Amin at his house on Kampala's Kokolo Hill. But when the squad arrived shortly after midnight, Amin was not there.*

Meanwhile, some 70 Lugbara soldiers rolled up to the headquarters of the Malire mechanized battalion in Kampala, commandeered a tank, blasted down the door and looted the armory. But instead of moving immediately to secure strong points in the capital, they made instead for Makindye prison to free Lugbara colleagues. It was a fatal mistake. Amin rounded up loyal troops and counterattacked. Arube was surprised by pro-Amin soldiers, who shot and killed him.

With Arube dead, along with 70 other soldiers and civilians, the coup collapsed. By midafternoon, Big Daddy was touring the town in an open Jeep, waving happily to passersby. Then started the grim business of reprisals. At least 500 people are known to have been executed so far, mostly Lugbaras. A few were killed by firing squads; others were shot in the knees, doused with gasoline, and set afire, or trussed up and tossed alive into Lake Victoria or the Nile to drown or be devoured by crocodiles.

Shortly after the attempted coup. Big Daddy told the Malire mechanized battalion: "If you are unhappy with me, then kill me or make me resign and don't disturb the people at night by running about shooting." The odds are that sooner or later someone will pick up that challenge.

--The day before, he had divorced three of his four Moslem wives: Senior Wife Miriam, sister of a former Foreign Minister, who fell out with Amin and fled the country last year; Second Wife Kay, a Lugbara and a cousin of Lieut. Colonel Ondoga, and Third Wife Nora, related to a cousin of ex-President Obote. The remaining wife, Madina, Amin says, was given to him as a gift in 1971; she apparently has no political ties to any Amin enemy --as yet.

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