I have keenly followed Kalyegira's profiling of Amin over the past few years and recently by the Daily Monitor in Kampala and was impressed by his research and indepth analysis. I have however taken interest in the downfall of Prof. Lule and the factors attributed for his downfall. It appears that the attempts to re-write the history of Uganda have gained ernomous strengths. While power struggles within the Front could have ernomously resulted into his overthrow, the fear of a muganda president of Uganda was a crucial factor that Kalyegira and many other historians have left out.

Some radical members of the council saw him as too conservative as a teacher (He was an education lecturer at Makerere), too autocratic as an administrator, and too willing as a Muganda to listen to advice from other Baganda. A one, Tom Atube in a letter to the Editor of Uganda Times accused Lule of turning the UNLF into a Baganda property'. In Lule, the Baganda saw the return of Kabakaship (Atube, Tom, What's the superior talk about, Uganda Times, January 2, 1980).

Yoga Adhola on the UPC website strengthens the tribal argument when he notes that in a moment of extreme elation, at his first public appearance and when he was sworn in as President of Uganda, Lule said in Luganda: "Kyetwayagalizanga embazzi, Kibuyaga asudde" (The tree for which we were searching an axe, the storm has unexpectedly brought it down.) While Lule in his naivety thought by speaking in Luganda, he was communicating in a cryptic manner to Baganda and Baganda alone, the message went well beyond its intended audience. The effect of the remark was to dichotomize the politics of Uganda along the old lines: Buganda on the one side, and the rest of the country on the other. According to Prof Mutibwa in his book 'Uganda since Independence', Lule had no experience of running a country, especially one like Uganda after Amin, and in working with men of very diverse background who were custodians of varying and mutually incompatible ideologies and political aspirations. He undermined the powers that mattered mostly-the military. His plans to reform the recruitment of the army which would have threatened the dominance of the so-called traditional areas for army recruits such as Acholi and Lango. The late Professor Lule's proposal to disband the National Liberation Army and to replace it with a newly created National Army, was viewed as a malicious move at the non-Bantu who then formed the bulk of the Uganda fighting force from Tanzania.

The non-Bantu consequently did not shed tears for the overthrow of Professor Lule as he was already suspected of harbouring ethnic bias. Nevertheless he neglected to identify with those who had fought Amin and according to Onen, the author of The diary of an obedient servant during misrule his involvement in the anti-Amin struggle could be measured in a span of a few weeks spent in hotel rooms and caucuses.The fear of a Muganda President has been obscurred as a factor by writers of our history.This explains why the majority of No Lule No work protestors were from Buganda and infact a former Katikkiro of Buganda was shot in the ensuing demonstrations. The replacement Lule with a Muganda (Binaisa) was calculated to sooth Baganda sentiments. Because Binaisa was from Buganda replacing Lule with him could not be constructed as an anti-Baganda move. Both Lule and Binaisa are subject of the same subset. To the current writer they represent a class of men entwined within the gluttonous politics of contemporary Africa. Their alleged failure was nothing more than being victims of circumstances dictated by Dar-el-salaam and forces operating in Kampala. Their only blame, as Kivejinja has noted in his Crisis of Confidence (p.237) was circumscribing to the imagination that they were really powerful just because they were called Your Excellence the President.Their ascendancy to power without personally contributing to the war in any form was, to them, not a point to consider.

Moses Kalanzi The author is a graduate of history.