How Dictators Killed the Democracy | History of Uganda 1962-2021

the united states election and the controversy around it has been in the news lately and not only has it spawned many entertaining memes but it also raises a lot of important questions about the stability and functioning of the united states and its democracy in the news as well this week has been a small east african country uganda which also had its election in the middle of january it was marked by heavy violence and a strict police crackdown especially on polling centers and a shutdown of the internet for four days which the opposition claim was to commit voter fraud it led to the re-election of your museveni who has been president of the nation of uganda since taking power in 1986 meaning he's been in power for 35 years his main opponent was a man called bobby wine who is much to his junior and who has only just been released from house arrest by the ugandan army in contrast to her 70 bobby wine was born in 1982 and is only 38 years of age meaning that he was only four years old when museveni came to power and this is something that's seen across most ugandans as uganda is often called the youngest country on earth as 77 of the population are under the age of 25 meaning the majority of people in uganda have never seen another president apart from the current ruling seven in this video i want to explore how he came to power and the long line of dictatorships that preceded him in the often brutal history of uganda many different kingdoms and tribes lived in what is now uganda though by the 19th century buganda was the most important it was subject to the influence of three major religions coming from the north islam was important as well as the missionary religions of catholicism and protestantism in the form of the anglican church after a muslim faction succeeded in overthrowing buganda's king the british became involved and restored the previous ruler thus paving the way for in 1894 the establishment of the protectorate of uganda because it was a protector it wasn't directly a british colony unlike neighboring kenya and so it would go on a different path to many of the other african colonies retaining a degree of autonomy as well as the royal family known as the kabaka the king who also had a say in ceremonial position during the area of the protectorate the british also constructed many new infrastructural improvements like the ugandan railway and for this they brought over indentured servants from places like british india and that'll be important a bit later on in 1962 following significant pressure uganda became independent and soon after would also become a republic but remained within the commonwealth already in the 1950s the political parties had split along lines of how independent should all of these former kingdoms be or should it instead of being a federalized state being a centralized state now two of the main ones inside this region of buganda were advocating for and against the position of the quebec to be most important those advocating for and in fact with the kabaka as the leader of this political party was kabakayeka which means king only or ky for short against them and advocating for a more centralized state and in uganda was the democratic party or dp these parties were vehemently opposed to each other not only in politics because the dp also represented the large catholic minority while kabakayeka was actually aligned to the british because of historical reasons and so were more on the anglican side of the divide outside of buganda a politician called milton obote also founded uganda people's congress or upc for short which really was just an attempt by those regions outside of buganda buganda of course having special privileges within the parliamentary system to stand up and have a voice for themselves they formed an alliance with kabakayeka when they realized they weren't going to win the election and so even though the dp ended up getting a majority it was the upc ky alliance that came to power in the first election now it wouldn't be until 1964 that the upc would really gain the upper hand as the speaker of the house the member of the dp and five other members of the dp went over to the upc shortly followed by 10 members of the ky also defecting to the upc which of course was a great victory for obote's party however by 1964 cracks were starting to appear in the upc in actuality this mass defection may have been a curse in disguise as a blessing the upc already had a very wide and varied platform as i mentioned before but with these new additions they started to include members of really radically different political opinions among their ranks making the direction for aborted to go in increasingly difficult this is especially difficult in a country like uganda which is split between various minorities the largest being that in the north you had an elotic population whilst in the south you had a bantu population and within these there were many tribal distinctions and differences and old enmities and hatreds in 1964 came a real challenge when soldiers mutinied and when the defense minister went to go and communicate with them and try to negotiate a settlement they took him hostage it turned out that they were unable to solve this situation and but they had to call in british soldiers to deal with the mutiny situation he then also had to give in to many of their demands and this led to many new promotions and installments of military figures one of those being the installment of idi amin in a prominent position as a defensive minister by 1966 most of the upc had turned against obote and his government and so he decided to use his new friend and protege idi amin who had risen rapidly through the ranks to essentially carry out a coup d'etat against the government to remain in power he decided to strengthen this by taking away the power from the kabaka who would once again try to enter into negotiations with the upc and sent in soldiers to deal with this situation what ended up happening is that he sent in idi amin to deal with the kabaka but that the bodyguards who had been trained by the british put up much more of a fight than they had realized leading to an hours-long battle that was only resolved when idiyamin brought in heavy weaponry the quebec nonetheless escaped hailed a taxi and went into exile in london where he died several years later never again to play an important role in ugandan politics following this obote pursued an increasingly left-wing line going along with other african socialist leaders like the leader of neighboring tanzania however he would increasingly come into conflict with idi amin as well as with other ministers and this would lead in 1971 to idiamin carrying out a coup d'etat himself and obote fleeing to tanzania leading to idi amin becoming the new leader of uganda amin had been a member of the king's african rifles or kar when the protectorate was still british and was noted by his british commanders for being absolutely fearless and ruthless in battle noting particularly his efficiency at fighting the guerrillas in kenya during the malmo rising he was also a boxer and was of incredibly intimidating stature looking quite like a bull as some described him and so he quickly rose through the ranks in aborted government until he himself took power most likely with some help coming from the british who felt they could use him and manipulate him as he often played the fool although really he realized what was going on being an important leader in the army he basically enlarged the army massively and created many new militias with power to do as they pleased and this he would use to terrible effect to consolidate his power his first victims were the middle classes the descendants of those british indians who had stayed there following the construction of the railroads they were all deported but much worse was to come for those tribal and ethnic minorities which were abounding in ugandan life those who happened to be on the wrong side of the political divide were ruthlessly murdered and tortured and many more fled it's thought that up to half a million people died during idi amin's short reign in uganda being a military leader as he was he soon found himself in conflict with other countries first of all in 1972 fighting a brief war with tanzania where obote had fled in 1979 he decided to take on tanzania once again and invaded although he found that his militias which were used to killing innocent people were no match for the tanzanian army and so the tanzanian army despite the help of qadhafi's libya and palestinian elements for idi amin's regime were able to quickly push back the ugandans and then invade uganda itself they were supported by many ugandan exiles in tanzania one of whom was none other than your musevi with the tanzanian army marching towards kampala idiyamin fled to saudi arabia where he would die many years later never held to account for his crimes against humanity against the ugandan people with his demise a new organization formed called the uganda national liberation front or unleft which tried to maintain order now that idiyamine had been overthrown and before they could organize another presidential election helping in this task as well were tanzanian forces which remained in uganda although they were also there to pursue tanzania's interests the army of uganda itself now numbered only around a thousand men and into this power vacuum stepped several generals such as david oyote ojok and once again johari museveni who started to create militias that soon numbered into the tens of thousands when several of these presidents came and went and one tried to actually disband these militias they were also overthrown in a coup and it seemed that once again a military dictatorship would take hold that is until a year later in 1980 when thanks to the tanzanians who had been allies of milton obote he was able to return and he could stand in the presidential election of 1918. this would be just the second election in uganda's history after the first one in 1962 but it would not be a free and fair one obata was already calling for a return to a one-party upc state and the dp who were their main opponents during this period had several disadvantages such as the fact that in 17 districts the upc ran completely unopposed because the dp simply were not allowed to stand in those constituencies not to mention the fact that ojok who was a fem fellow member of the lango tribe the same as obote was also harassing and attacking different political dissidents from the dp and so to give them an advantage so by the time that election day came tensions were really boiling high and the dp had not been given the same chance as the upc had based on their estimates the dp claims to have won 81 votes giving them the majority for the 126 constituencies within uganda and so this would of course have given the dtp a victory over the upc however the upc on contrast claimed that instead of just winning a few of the votes the upc had actually won 72 of the constituencies and therefore had actually won the election themselves and this was the result that was broadcast to the world even after the dp had already claimed victory leading to a lot of international condemnation and widespread allegations of voter fraud nevertheless ubotte became president for the second time in 1980 shortly after his declaration of victory museveni declared that he would try to overthrow this new government by any means necessary founding the national resistance army or nra from several other protest groups and began in 1981 what would become known as the ugandan bush war in which he and several other rebel movements would fight against them now he actually had experience of fighting a korea war from fighting in mozambique with different deliberations or the free limo and together with this and the other commanders he was able to fight successfully against uganda the the national government which actually had support from believe it or not north korea fellow socialist left-leaning country and in 1985 they were starting to turn the tide against the government especially when general odjob died in a helicopter crash and many of the other generals started to turn against obote milton ivorte fled to neighboring kenya never to return to uganda again the two generals who had taken power in the coup continued to fight against the increasingly successful nra but soon found that they had lost the war as museveni's troops were victorious and approached the capital kampala and now museveni finally had become the last of the powerful militia generals within uganda and became its president in 1986. he said in a speech that the second point on our program is the security of person and property every person in uganda must have absolute security to live wherever he wants any individual any group who threatens the security of our people must be smashed without mercy the people of uganda should die only from natural causes which are beyond our control but not from fellow human beings who continue to walk the length and breadth of our land this began a series of campaigns as he was from the bantu south and so initially faced a lot of resistance from the melodic north this was always a theme in ugandan politics and was no different when miss heveney came to power in fact he has faced rebellions and uprisings from almost all corners of uganda and many of the social political tribal ethnic and religious divisions therein the difference being that he has always come out on top until today one of the longest running of these conflicts is against the lord's resistance army or lra who are currently fighting against several central and east african regimes more recently he's also been involved in fighting against al-shabab a new islamist organization in the north of his country internally these conflicts would see the displacement of over a hundred thousand people and the deaths of many with widespread allegations of torture and murder being used by his forces to maintain his power he also implemented the political movement system which meant that political parties were completely banned until 2005 and any presidential candidates from when they were allowed to run had to do so as uh independent individuals rather than belonging to a political party although that was uh changed in 2005. and so now when we're watching the presidential election and you understand this backstory of ugandan politics where the only free and fair election that occurred was the first one you can kind of make sense that actually many of those in the opposition are saying well this clearly was not a fair election especially if you look at the other elections that museveni has run it seems that he cottoned on to the fact that those very obvious dictators didn't last very long in uganda because they'd be militarily overthrown and i think he's quite a wise and savvy politician but also a brutal dictator at the same time anyway i hope this has been interesting it's been a bit of a blitz tour of uganda's more recent history in terms of its politics and the various dictators they're in if you're interested in a video about 70's reign because i've sort of just covered up until he becomes president and what happens afterwards let me know because i had more prepared for this one too but actually i thought it would probably be a good idea to stop it there in case this video gets incredibly long because there's been a lot of information in this one and you know that might not be a particularly good thing if i then go into his reign and all the political developments there but do let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed it if you'd like to see that follow-up video about how he has maintained his grip on power by a lot of these political and subvertive means do let me know and i will look into making that anyway for now i have been hilbert and this has been the history

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 110,524

Keywords: Uganda, Uganda Election, Uganda History, Africa, Tanzania, Yoweri Museveni, Bobi Wine, Uganda Election History, Uganda Bush War, Idi Amin, Uganda Election 2021, Uganda News, Bobi Wine House Arrest, Idi Amin History

Id: LATz4sLQcEg

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021