Apollo Milton Obote

Background

Milton Obote was born on December 28, 1925 at Akokoro village in Lango territory in the northern part of the British Uganda Protectorate in 1925. He was the son of a poor local chief in the Lango tribe.

Education

He began his education in 1940 at the Lira Protestant Missionary School, continued it at Gulu Junior Secondary School and Busoga College, Mwiri, and finished it at Makerere College (1948-1950).

Career

Because the Buganda tribespeople who lived in southern Uganda dominated the economy, Obote went to Kenya to find work. He worked there first for an engineering firm and then for several industrial concerns. While in Kenya, he became interested in politics and was a founding member of the Kenya African Union.

In 1956 Obote returned to Uganda. He entered politics when he was asked to return to the Lango district to replace a local Uganda National Congress party leader who had been imprisoned. In 1958, a sudden vacancy caused by the resignation of the Lango member of the Legislative Council led to Obote's appointment as a replacement. In Uganda's first direct elections later that year, Obote won the seat by a wide margin, and his rise in Ugandan politics was under way.

Obote soon became president of the Uganda National Congress party, one of many parties trying to forge a unity to bring Uganda independence. In 1960, Obote joined his organization to a rival party, thus founding the Uganda People's Congress; he became its president. When a 1961 conference provided for elections leading to independence, Obote allied his party to the Buganda party under Kabaka (King) Yekka in order to defeat Benedicto Kiwanuka's ruling Democratic party. The coalition gained a majority of the Ugandan votes, and Obote became Uganda's prime minister. He presided over British withdrawal in October 1962.

But independence did not solve Uganda's problems. Buganda had been an ancient African kingdom, and British rule had left Buganda autonomous within the Uganda Protectorate. It was the most prosperous part of the country and home to Uganda's most educated elite. In accord with Uganda's constitution, agreed to by the British prior to independence, Obote appointed the ruler of Buganda to the largely ceremonial office of president of Uganda. But Bugandans were not willing to settle for less than a dominant place in the nation's politics, and Obote's alliance with Kabaka Yekka became increasingly unstable as friction grew between Buganda and the central government. The problem erupted into a crisis in 1966. Obote suspended the constitution, declared a state of emergency, and assumed full power. He introduced a new constitution, abolished Buganda and other kingdom-states within Uganda, and assaulted Kampala, the capital of Buganda under the leadership of General Idi Amin. The Bugandan king fled and died in exile in London.

In the late 1960s Obote tried to undermine the Bugandan economic power by moving the nation closer to socialism. In fact, he instituted authoritarian one-party rule but failed to unify the country. On Jan. 25, 1971, while Obote was out of the country on a diplomatic mission, Uganda's army under Amin ousted him from the presidency. Obote fled to Tanzania, and Amin for eight years instituted a bloody regime of terror and repression.

In 1979, an invasion aided by Tanzania overthrew Amin. After months of unsuccessful sectarian regimes, Obote won an election in 1980 which was widely believed to have been rigged. Obote's second regime continued Amin's terrorist tactics. Obote was opposed by the Bugandas, by the Acholi peoples of the north, and most importantly by a guerilla movement in the west, the National Resistance Army. Under Obote's direction, the Ugandan army tried to crush the guerillas by destroying entire villages and decimating the population. Amnesty International and other groups denounced Obote's police state and torture tactics, and he was charged with directing the killing of more than 100, 000 civilians. In 1985, Obote was toppled in a coup and fled to Kenya. He was then granted political asylum in Zambia. His political career was over. Instead of being remembered as the leader of Uganda's independence movement, he left a legacy of totalitarianism and terror.

For some years, it was rumoured that he would return to Ugandan politics. In August 2005, however, he announced his intention to step down as leader of the UPC. In September 2005, it was reported that Obote would return to Uganda before the end of 2005. On 10 October 2005, Obote died of kidney failure in a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Achievements

• Apollo Milton Obote was a Ugandan political leader who guided his country to independence in 1962. He worked to create a centralized government to replace the divided state left by the British, but his ruthless rule in the 1980s was marked by torture and repression and the killing of more than 100, 000 civilians.

Politics

In 1957 he became a member of the Uganda National Congress Party. In 1958 he was elected to represent his home district in the Legislative Council, where, despite the fact that he was one of a small number of African delegates, he did not hesitate to criticize the British government. When the National Congress Party split, he formed the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), which drew its support mainly from the northern Acholi and Lango peoples. The UPC’s main political focus was opposition to the powerful southern kingdom of Buganda under King Mutesa II. Having become prime minister in 1962, Obote accepted a constitution that granted federal status within Uganda to five traditional kingdoms, including Buganda. He was thus able to form a governing coalition made up of his UPC and Buganda’s Kabaka Yekka (“King Alone”) Party. In 1963 Mutesa was elected to the (largely ceremonial) post of president with Obote’s encouragement.

Early in 1971 Obote was overthrown in a coup led by Amin.

As president, Obote solicited foreign aid in an attempt to raise Uganda’s economy from the ruin of the Amin years, but he did nothing to prevent Acholi and Lango soldiers from conducting a campaign of murder and pillage in the south and in Amin’s home district. In 1985 Obote was forced out of office by Okello. He eventually settled in Zambia but continued to play an active role in the UPC until his death in 2005.

Connections

He was survived by his wife and five children. On 28 November 2005, his wife Miria Obote was elected UPC party president.

Father:

Stanley Opeto

Mother:

Priscilla Aken Opeto

Spouse:

Miria Kalule Obote

(born July 16, 1936)

Daughter:

Lucy Akaki

Son:

Edward Stanly Engena

Son:

Jimmy Aken

Son:

Ben Obote

Son:

Tony Akaki

References

• East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda
• Party and locality in Northern Uganda, 1945-1962
• Violence and thought: essays on social tensions in Africa
• The Political Kingdom in Uganda: A Study in Bureaucratic Nationalism
• From Obote to Obote
• Gold crises in Uganda