"MUSUYA: THE TANZANIAN GENERAL WHO RULED UGANDA FOR THREE DAYS."
By Henry Lubega.
When Idi Amin attacked Tanzania in mid-November 1978, I was in the army serving in the southern zone of Tanzania. We were all shocked about the attack because Tanzania had not had any bad relationship with Uganda. But we knew Amin did not like Tanzania because we were hosting Ugandan refugees, especially UPC people.
The attack on Kagera found me with President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in the barracks in the southern zone. At first Nyerere didn't believe but at around 8pm, it was confirmed through BBC.
Mwalimu decided to have dinner with the troops in which he talked about the attack. During the dinner, he said: "We don't believe he had any cause to do what he has done, what remains is to go and flush him out of our country." The reply to Amin's action was also sent through BBC radio.
We didn't have troops on the border with Uganda and there was a small police post which Amin overrun, killing the regional police commander there.
As we were preparing to retaliate, Amin men were busy looting and killing. Kagera sugar factory was looted clean and all corrugated iron sheets in the area were looted. They also blew up the bridge on River Kagera connecting the salient to the rest of the country, and declared the salient part of Uganda. Amin's men stationed troops in places such as Kakunyu Kyaka and Minziro to oversee the new territory.
It took us two weeks to plan and mobilise our troops to move to Kagera. Our mission was to get Amin out of Tanzania, we had no intention whatever of getting into Uganda.
Amin, however, announced that taking the salient was just phase one, phase two was to go through Arusha and secure the port of Tanga. With those threats, Nyerere decided that if it was going to be war with Amin it should be within Uganda not on the Tanzanian soil.
When we deployed south of River Kagera, it took us time to be able to cross the river. It was the 19th Battalion under my command that crossed the river first.
We used small boats to cross and secure an area to build a pontoon bridge (floating bridge) for the rest of the troops. Within December, we flashed him out of the salient. But by then, more than 1,000 Tanzanians had been killed in the salient. This was a blessing in disguise as it psychologically prepared our soldiers to hit back, and they had buried the rotting dead bodies Amin had left behind.
Entering Ugandan territory
After pushing him out of Tanzania, Amin continued sending bombs into our country, and this was not going to go unanswered. He consistently bombed the areas of Mutukula, Kikanda, Minziro, and Kakunyu. We first had to knock him out of his positions and occupy them so that if he was to continue bombing us, it would be when we are inside Uganda.
War is an art of fighting not about superiority in weaponry; Idi Amin depended on his superior weaponry. We dislodged him from our territory.
When we captured Mutukula, Amin's soldiers fled, leaving behind a host of superior weaponry. This gave us our first war harvest. We camped in Mutukula for some time to gauge the reaction from Kampala. We pushed ahead and captured Kalisozo.
However, Amin remained defiant, we decided to move on to revenge for our people killed in Kagera and also to teach him a lesson that what he had done was not good. That is when we decided to capture Masaka and Mbarara and do some good damage in the two towns like Amin had done in Kagera.
Just before capturing the two towns, a meeting under the United Nations was organised in Nairobi, Kenya to address the situation. Uganda was represented by Mathias Lubega, the then Foreign Affairs minister. At the meeting, Lubega announced that what had been done was phase one and phase two was to capture the port of Tanga.
