Mayombo's Coup 611h6e

Mayombo's coup, part 1: how a young officer was humiliated by Museveni Last updated : 15 May 2007, Kampala

We Ugandans have been talking a lot about the late Brig Noble Mayombo and how he died, and if he was poisoned or if it was a natural cause from sickness. There has been speculation about why he was killed if at all he was killed and was not sick. Radio Katwe has taken a hard look at the whole situation and we want to throw some light on it. Sometimes when you want to understand something which looks hard at first, you have to go back in history. Things do not just happen like in magic. This is the first part of a special report at what happened to Mayombo. We shall take you back to the man and his life and then you can conclude for yourself what happened to him. Mayombo was born on April 9, 1965 to the Rev. James Rwabwoni a canon of the Anglican Church in Fort Portal. His father during the Kololo Airstrip memorial service said his son was always stubborn and wanted to be different from other people. When he was in Nyakasura School for the first part of his secondary education he was one of those who led a students strike in 1981 and the school istration headed by the heaster Mr. Solomon Kajoro decided that he was too stubborn and dangerous to come back for S.5 even if he ed well. Mayombo was naturally brilliant and he ed through school with flying colors and without repeating any class. But even though he ed in the First Grade he could not return to his favourite school Nyakasura because of his rebellious record there. And that is how he ends up going to Ntare School for high school in S.5 and S.6. He again ed his high school UACE exams with flying colours and was itted to Makerere University School of Law. Mayombo had not lost his stubborn rebellious nature and in his very first year at Makerere in 1984, he again took part in a strike. Many Ugandans will when Makerere students had a general strike during that year. It was about allowances or something like that. Then in 1985 he absconded from Makerere and ed the NRA guerilla force under Yoweri Yoswa Museveni which had camped in western Uganda. If you have a good memory, you will also that when the NRA took power in 1986, Mayombo is the young officer who proposed Museveni's name to be the president of Uganda. He returned to Makerere University and his law studies in 1988 but was still in the army as a Lieutenant officer. He used to try to recruit Makerere students into the army at that time. He contested for the guild elections against Norbert Mao in 1989 and after a hot competition Mao emerged victorious. Mayombo was back in the army after Makerere and his bright career took off. He impressed many people in the Constitutional Assemby (CA) in 1994 with his brilliant arguments and charisma. He was the youngest NRA delegate to the CA and people could see a rising star. When Museveni saw this, he decided to take him on his personal staff. That was the time he became Museveni's ADC. That was when problems started. You see in other more civilized governments it is an honour to be the aide de camp to the president.

Sometimes you will find that the ADC is a Brigadier or a Colonel. It is supposed to be a respectable poistion of very high trust in the government. The problem is that Museveni is a man who does not follow institutions and who rules as if he is a small god. He sometimes has a very backward mentality and thinks his ideas and ways are always the best. So he spoilt everything. When you are Museveni's ADC you do not just stand behind him and hold his bag or his messages around or what have you as other ADCs do. For Museveni an ADC is a personal servant. In fact you are made to do things which it is even hard to imagine. You personally shine his shoes, if his shoe laces open by accident you tie them, you bring him his toothbrush if he cannot find it and wait until you hear this, you even help him to bathe! If you think that Radio Katwe is exaggerating you go and ask anybody who knows Museveni and how State House works. For sure they will tell you that we are right on this one. When Museveni is taking a bath, you the ADC are there to assist him. Those ADCs of Museveni who you see smartly dressed standing behind him are the ones who bathe him. Ask and if anybody tells you otherwise we shall publicly apologise. But we have crossed checked from several different angles and come to the same information. Museveni is not disabled or so weak that he cannot do his bathroom duties by himself. Maybe the man feels that he is too important, or he just wants to subjugate others, we don't know. But to our best knowledge, this is the fact. At Museveni's house in Rwakitura and Kisozi ranch, Museveni keeps staff there to look after him in even the smallest things. He keeps a young girl at Rwakitura to look after his needs. After a long day at Rwakitura, he will remove his shoes and sit in his chair. The young girl comes with a basin and washes his feet. She can sometimes cut his toe nails or maybe his finger nails. This may not be so bad in itself. The problem is the mentaility of the man behind it. We are told that he once said that he feels that as a big man some things should be done by "these chaps" so that he keeps his mind on big things like the East African Federation! Though if this is true, good observers will see that even when he thinks so hard, more negative effects like a lot of stealing public money, the government is so corrupt that it can barely function, daily scandals etc. happen So that Mayombo you saw there used to bathe Museveni. Mayombo was too shocked and dismayed when he was told that this is part of his ADC job description. That time when he tied Museveni's shoe lace and Ugandans were praising him for being loyal and humble, they did not know that Mayombo deep down inside was boiling with anger and humiliation. Those Ugandans who were praising him about his loyalty should start thinking more seriously about things before talking. If it was you, would you like your picture to be shown to the whole world tying another mans shoe laces? Anybody can see that you don't have a man who is so brilliant, proud and ambitious like Mayombo to become like a slave waiting on you hand and foot! People who are so smart make the worst slaves. It was the most shameful day of his whole life. The guy was a proud character because of his brilliance and because he came from the royal clan of the Batooro who are called the Babiito. These are the people you hear of in Toro who have names which sound like Acholi names like Olimi, Oyo, Winyi, Okwiri, etc, etc. The royal line of the Batooro of the kings and queens is the Babiito line. They are the same Babiito of Bunyoro and as royals they are like the Bahiima of

Ankole or the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi. If Uganda was a more peaceful developed country, Mayombos family line could have almost the same prestige as the House of Windsors of the UK. So these are proud people. You will last week even when he was praising Mayombo, Museveni's son Major Muhoozi Kainerugaba said that one time Mayombo joked with Muhoozi telling him that doesn't Muhoozi know that Mayombo is a brigadier and a Mubiito? You can see that being a Mubiito was something to be proud about for Mayombo and for a person of the royal clan to be seen in public tying the shoe lace of anybody was a scandal and too humiliating. Can you imagine someone from the royal clan of Buganda bending down to tie another persons shoes in public? Somebody should check and send us the date when Mayombo tied Museveni's shoe lace. If you have a picture the better. You will understand more later but we are empahsizing that day because it was the day that Mayombo completely changed and became so hostile to Museveni. Knowing Mayombos history and his character will help you understand better what happened next. The independent character which was always questioning authority and made him take part in strikes in school and rebel against Obote's government by ing the NRA struggle was humiliated. That was the day Mayombo started to hate and despise Museveni. Because now his humiliation had become public, not only in private. In part 2 coming soon, we shall continue with this story of Mayombo and how he systematically started to plot against Museveni and what he did next.

Mayombo's coup, part 2: How he backed Tinyefuza, Besigye, protected his brother Last updated : 15 May 2007, Kampala

In those days Colonel Noble Rwabwoni Mayombo had been so ambitious and he looked up to Museveni as a great leader for Africa. He left university to the NRA in 1985 out of iring Museveni. Museveni can be a very clever speaker who can convince you if you don't also know how to think deeply about things. He defended Museveni and his NRM all the time and was ready to work for the system. But as we told you in part 1, he had never really seen Museveni up close as a person until he became his ADC. That was when he saw Museveni's mannerisms. He saw a villager and a crude uncultured man who was too primitive for Mayombo to believe. He could not imagine that he Mayombo would be made to bathe Museveni or to tie his shoelaces as part of being an ADC. But he tried to swallow the humiliation and keep quiet. In 1997 when the presidential military adviser Major General David Tinyefuza got disgusted with the way the army was being run, you it caused a High Court case. Tinyefuza won the case where he argued that he had a right to resign from the army which he no longer believed in. Mayombo like any other officer went along with the policy of publicly criticizing Tinyefuza. We are told that privately Mayombo sympathized with Tinyefuza but he could not show it. Mayombo could feel that what Tinyefuza was saying was right but what could he do? He had to keep quiet and pretend to follow his boss' line in public.

You have our story here at Radio Katwe of what happened in early 2001 when presidential Kizza Besigye was supposed to have taken a flight to Adjumani and how it aborted. Museveni could see that Besigye was pulling big crowds and a lot of so he felt that he had to finish off Besigye. One of the surest ways of getting in Musevenis hit list is to show that you are a serious rival for the presidential seat. He came up with the plan of shooting down the plane which Besigye was supposed to fly on and then they say it is the LRA which did it. As you know, the LRA rebels were active during that time. Mayombo's brother Okwiri Rwabwoni was on the Elect Besigye Task Force (EBTF) team and Mayombo as chief of CMI knew of this plan so he had to do his level best to make sure Okwir was not harmed. If you , Mayombo himself was quoted in the newspapers that he had received information "from one of my intelligence s in EBTF that Hon. Okwiri was going to be killed in Adjumani by the EBTF ". But he knew the real person who was being targeted by Museveni was Besigye. His brother was just collateral damage as they say. So he got Andrew Mwenda's brother Major Kayanja Muhanga, Major Moses Rwakitarate, and others to grab Okwir and make sure he does not fly with Besigye. The whole thing ended in big "kavuyo" at the airport with glasses breaking, tables being thrown, and blows raining like hail stones! Check the newspapers of around 20th or 21st February 2001 if you want to this story. Mayombo never forgot that experience. It made him see how a coward Museveni is. He saw a man who can kill anything and anybody to keep power. Killing Mayombo's own brother meant nothing to him as long as his political rival was eliminated. Each time he thought that his brother would have been dead. Still he went on as if he had seen nothing. But inside he started to feel sorry for Besigye and his suffering but he was quiet and did not show it publicly. After the elections Besigye went to exile in South Africa and Mayombo as head of CMI was the one who created the false story of Besigye ing PRA rebels. Mayombo even had a hot exchange on Andrew Mwenda's radio program with Besigye in 2002 where he said Besigye was working with LRA. Now we jump to 2006. This is where things heat up. Besigye is back in Uganda, the presidential campaigns are on again and Museveni has had Besigye arrested on fake treason and rape charges and sent to prison. Museveni tried to send two poison spray guns to Luzira prison but Winnie Byanyima the wife of Besigye was tipped off (by someone you will know one day, we cannot say now) and Besigye survived that one. Mayombo was feeling sorry for Besigye as a person who is suffering so much but Mayombo was not showing his feelings. The man was just exercising his right as a qualified Ugandan to campaign for president but Museveni who fears competition so much just wanted to kill him. Western Ambassadors, Donors and other forces of good finally forced Museveni and Besigye came out of Luzira and was free to campaign. The man with a rough voice was getting even more many crowds and ers. In late January 2006 the Elect Museveni Task Force of Moses Kigongo and the Amama Mbabazis was not delivering crowds so Museveni sidelined them. He brought in General

Saleh his step-brother and trusted brainy Mayombo to take over. Mayombo was more organized than Saleh of course and he organized the campaign again. First of all he decided to do an opinion poll all over Uganda to sample the base of Museveni and which areas to put more money and campaigning effort. You Radio Katwe gave you that story of how Mayombo's opinion poll showed that Museveni was doing too, too badly with only a paltry 27 percent and Besigye was around 60 percent. (We are still working on putting up our old stories so that you can search them). The other candidates like Miria Obote and Sebaana Kizito shared the rest. Mayombo took the results to Museveni one Thursday at State House. Mayombo told M7 that he needed to switch to another strategy for winning and the only sure way now was was rigging. But it had to be done in a very clever way. You will recall that Radio Katwe gave you a story it its early days of how Saleh went to Entebbe government statistics department to get the population census figures for the country. He was so shocked when he read it on Radio Katwe and up to now he is wondering how Radio Katwe knew that. The population lists were to be used to tally the rigging with the Electoral Commission voter registration list so that it looks genuine. In the previous presidential elections the rigging was so obvious because some votes were more than all the people in that area including children. The rigging went ahead and Museveni "won" with 59 percent of the vote and Besigye 37. But Mayombo had seen something which he never forgot. He had done an opinion poll all over Uganda and it was showing Museveni at 27 percent. All along Mayombo had assumed that Museveni was no longer popular as he was in 1986. But he did not expect Museveni to be so hated that he was down to 27 percent . Mayombo was now seeing Museveni in another way. He was not seeing a great man but a man who had overstayed his welcome and who had no at the grassroots. Mayombo we know felt that he could be president one day maybe when M7 was out of power. This opinion poll was showing Mayombo that Museveni was already no longer popular. The young man began to feel confident in himself and to see that Museveni was just a myth not a popular or powerful man. Late last year, in November or December Janet Museveni and her beloved step-son Major Muhoozi Kainerugaba approached Museveni to talk about how things were not going well in Uganda and how Museveni was losing it. You have heard that story as rumors in Uganda. Janet told Muhoozi to talk to his father but the two of them ended up quarreling. Among other things Muhoozi demanded to know what happened to his real mother but some Radio Katwe sources tell us that Muhoozi also wanted to know why Museveni was giving all his time to his Principle Private Secretary (PPS) Amelia Kyambadde and ing Kisozi Ranch in the names of Amber Kyambadde. Amber Kyambadde is the child of around 19 years who it is rumored Museveni has with Amelia. Museveni saw Muhoozi getting angry and his anger becoming like a volcano. Museveni fired two pistol shots one near Muhoozi's right foot and another on the floor near him.

Muhoozi was shocked and shouted something at his father. Museveni called to his security men and ordered Muhoozi to be put under house arrest. Things were bad. Janet left State House Nakasero and pitched camp in a house in the Kampala suburbs. At Christmas time the family was not together. M7 also stormed out of town and was alone at Rwakitura. Mayombo the loyal officer was called to take over Museveni's personal security detail in the PGB. Before that it had been Muhoozi. In part 3 of Mayombo's coup, we shall tell you what happened from that day after Mayombo took over M7's personal security.

Mayombo's coup, part 3: Mayombo makes his moves in PGB Last updated : 18 May 2007, Kampala

In part 1, we showed you an important Mayombo part of Mayombos character, that he was very brilliant but also rebellious and questioning authority. In Part 2, we showed how this proud independent minded man was given humiliating and degrading work as Musevenis ADC. Now part 3 brings you some of the essential people who Mayombo needed to achieve his biggest plan which was a coup against Museveni. Last year around Christmas you might the rumour in Kampala that Okwir Rwabwoni the younger brother of Mayombo was back in town? Okay, Okwir left the UK were he had been in exile since 2001. He flew to Rwanda with his wife then after some days he flew to Uganda. Okwir was on a mission. He had been called back by Mayombo to do a special mission. Mayombo wanted Okwir to go to Uganda to get active again in politics. He wanted his brother to connect again with FDC. Mayombo knew that FDC with its Besigye was the winner of the elections of 2006. He was aware that FDC commands a big following and he saw the demonstrations it could call in Kampala. So Okwirs task was to sell Mayombo to FDC as a moderate who is a good boy but working for a bad system and he is only doing his job. Mayombo was not saying he was going to FDC but he wanted FDC to see him as a guy who is not all that bad although he is working for a bad system. Recently we heard FDC president Besigye describing Mayombo in a similar way, that he was a good person who was used by a bad system. Maybe this is Besgyes own opinion, but that is one of the major tasks Okwir was assigned to do when he came back. You will know why he had to make peace with FDC soon in our coming reports. Fast forward. Mayombo was now in charge of Museveni's personal security and he moved and phased out PGB boys who were loyal to Muhoozi who was under house arrest when Mayombo took over. He removed boys loyal to M7 and redeployed them in other units of the PGB. He took over planning M7's routes and movements. When Ugandans were talking about the Kayiira report and demonstrating you could not hear the voice of Mayombo. He was quiet but very busy with his own plans. Muhoozi was deployed to Kasese to command the PGB as it was fighting the ADF forces. That is why people were asking that where is Muhoozi and he was lost from Kampala. Mayombo also checked the PGB command structure and he inspected the armoury, he went to where the PGB train at Kasenyi on Kampala-Entebbe road. He went on a familiarization tour of PGB generally. He was entitled to do this as he was now as the leader. But what we are saying is there was more than just normal

inspection going on. He took interest in the specialized weapons units of the PGB like artillery in particular. Mayombo had a plan which nobody knew. He had decided to take his chances and overthrow Museveni and his regime. If you have read part 1 and part 2 of the Mayombo story and you know that the man was leading strikes in school and at university, you see that his ambition could not stop at being a P.S in the ministry of Defence. And it was made even worse to be the one to tie Museveni's shoelaces and even bathe him! If you heard what Mayombo's father Rev Rwabwoni said at Kololo Airstrip, he said that his children are "crazy". In actual fact the old man himself also speaks his mind freely without caring who is hearing as if he has a small wire which is loose. Mayombo and Okwir are not boys you can say would take anything lying down. One day in his NRA days, Okwir annoyed the director of Military Intelligence Major Paul Kagame so much that Kagame wanted to have him shot by firing squad. But after this incident, when Kagame started the Rwanda war, the stubborn Okwir defected from the NRA and ed Kagame's RPA to fight for freedom for the Banyarwanda to go home. So these boys were "crazy" and could not accept to be ruled as slaves as M7 was doing. Mayombo did some intelligence and in fact was chief of CMI so he knew how to look for people to work with. He saw some two guys who were in PGB but marginalized. As you know among our leaders, Museveni has been the most tribalist and sectarian. He says he fights sectarianism but don't listen and just believe. We all know he can have a sweet tongue but look also deeply at what he does and not just what he says. Ugandas de-facto, real army is the Presidential Guard Brigade (PGB). It can be compared to Saddams(RIP) Revolutionary Guard. But the PGB is made of mostly people from one tribe, the Bahima. That is not by accident because the first family comes from that tribe too. Ugandans from other places are just there as "abalebesi" or beggars. This shows you how backward and primitive the Musevenis regime is. It is so bad that in PGB, during work use their local language Runyankore without any problem. that in Ugandas army starting from the beginning in 60's, they always use Swahili to try and make it an ethnic free place. It doesn't matter where you come from or your social status, they all speak Swahili. But in Musevenis personal army the PGB they are not interested in such nationalistic things. The result is that the non-Bahima who are in the PGB are ignored and marginalized. Because tribe is the important thing, and not your brains or ability, a person from another tribe has a very small chance of advancing very far in their military career. If one is racist or sectarian they create more problems for themselves. Because your race or tribe is the main criteria used to get people, then people do not have to do anything else like work hard or actually be good at security. After all just by being born, they have already fulfilled the main condition which is of tribe. So in the end something which should be very professional like the PGB is intead used as a job agency. people get their cousins, brothers and relatives and just dump them there. Many of then turn out to be lazy incompetent and unsuitable for the job even if they train so hard. In fact during the MiG-21 training in 2002 or 2003, Museveni pushed a lot of Bahima boys into the program so they would be pilots but they could not handle and that is why you don't see them as pilots. The side-effect is that people who are capable and brilliant are usually from the "wrong" tribes. Sendegeya and Egesa are a good example of this. So there was an artillery specialist Captain Nelson Sendegeya who was a Muganda by tribe and there

was another guy in charge of the interceptor missiles of PGB called Egesa a Muteso. These boys were well trained but they were treated like houseboys by the PGB guys who are Banyankole. Mayombo played into that feeling of being alienated by the system they served. It is common knowledge that Sendegeya was a good engineer and well trained even in Israel and other places to shoot missiles accurately. At State House Nakasero there are what are called interceptor missiles. They are there to shoot down any missile which may come the way of Nakasero from the sky. The officer in charge of the interceptor missiles was Egesa. So Mayombo made friends with these two guys Sendegeya and Egesa and he secretly gave them good allowances to look after their families. He did not meet them together but he met them one by one alone. These secret meetings went on for at least a good three months. We have got it from several different sources and we are piecing it together. For you Ugandans to know what happened really to Museveni's blue-eyed boy. What Mayombo told Egesa and Sendegeya we shall get to in part 4 of this story of the Mayombo coup. Mayombo's coup, part 4: His plan to assassinate Museveni and how it was to be done Last updated : 19 May 2007, Kampala Sometime in February or March this year, we shall recall that there were media reports in Kampala that the cooks of State House had all been changed or sacked. The article might have been by Red Pepper or something like that. This was the time that PGB got a tip off that there was a coup boiling somewhere somehow but they could not trace where. Precautions had to be taken to check any threat to M7. PGB had been fearing that M7 could be killed by elements of the PGB who were disgruntled and counter intelligence in PGB headed by Lt. Keith Katungi was put on the alert. Strikes had become the order of the day and Ugandans were hearing from ministers, the inspector general of police and generals. But Mayombo was quiet and people did not sense it. Mayombo had meetings with Egesa and he briefed Egesa on his plan. He wanted sketches drawn of the way State House Nakasero is planned from the aerial view. State House Nakasero was renovated in 1993 and 1994 by a company called Blair Wood or something like that. You can crosscheck it. The plans of the premises were not easy to get that is why Mayombo needed the sketched plans of how it looks from the air. Egesa spent many weeks going round the place and drawing his sketches. So Egesa had a picture of how State House looks like if you are in an aerial position. Egesa was also to locate State House on a professional map and get its particular longitude and latitude bearings. (By the way, we request anybody who knows the other names of Egesa to send them to us and maybe which schools he studied in and his background.) Mayombo gave Sendegeya the job of taking on a sensitive mission which was to get missiles from the PGB armoury and deploy them on some hills in the Entebbe Kampala road. We are yet to find out where they were to be put. The missiles were part of the national air defence network and they were part of the batch which are stationed at the PGB training school at Kasenyi as you go along the Entebbe road. We cannot confirm this but someone said these are the similar in size to missiles which

were used by Museveni and Kagame to shoot down Habyarimana's plane in 1994. Though we are still wondering how a Surface to Air Missile (SAM) could work like this against a house instead of a plane. We are informed they are army green in colour and in size the missile is around two feet long. The launcher is also around the same size. Mayombo was a proud guy and he had wanted his mission to fall on the same day as his birthday which was April 9. If he became president Ugandans would celebrate his birthday on the same day as liberation day from Museveni's tyranny. Mayombo could have promised Egesa and Sendegeya big positions and money in the army if he succeeded and he became the president of Uganda. The plan was that on D-Day Sendegeya would go to the top of the hill on the outskirts of Kampala and assemble the missile launcher. The launcher is usually put on a tripod stand and programmed. Sendegeya was going to programme it as they usually do by computer and then it would zero in on State House at Nakasero and wait. We have already told you that Egesa was the officer in charge of the interceptor missiles on the ground at State House. Any missile you fire can be intercepted before it hits its target. Egesa's job was to disable the ground interceptor systems maybe by disconnecting the fuses, maybe by switching off the power so that when the missiles came in they would not be stopped. We can make some guesses but his task was using any method to sabotage the interceptor system How it worked therefore was that when Museveni was sleeping in State House, Mayombo would give the order and Sendegeya would fire the missiles from one of the hill outside Kampala and they would come in and blast into Museveni's bedroom and kill him. Once Museveni was dead, Mayombo would have declared a coup and form a military government. We also have unconfirmed source claim that Mayombo was also going to fire missiles on the residence of General Salim Saleh on the shores of Lake Victoria on Entebbe road. But we cannot yet cross check this. You see Saleh is the effective head of the army and he was seen as a man who could mobilize loyal troops to counter fight Mayombo's men. Saleh is the commander of the reserve force. That was the plan which Radio Katwe can exclusively give you and we did our best to make sure it is as accurate and the truth and nothing but the truth. It is common knowledge in the security circles. It is only the general public who don't know it so dont fear that we are exposing some people and putting them in danger because many officers in the UPDF know this story otherwise how do you think Radio Katwe got it? We have been piecing it together since Mayombo died. What we want to know is what happened and how the coup plot by Mayombo was uncovered by the PGB and CMI. This is what we shall try to understand when we come to the next part 5.

Mayombo's coup, part 5: the poisoning of the coup plotters Last updated : 25 May 2007, Kampala

It is not very clear what happened to abort the coup which Mayombo was planning. We shall not lie and claim we know. These things will be clear one day. But somehow the plot leaked and intelligence within PGB and CMI began monitoring Captain Nelson Sendegeya. As they tracked Sendegeya, they were very disturbed when they saw him in secret with Mayombo over something which intelligence

could not follow. They also saw some between Mayombo and Egesa and things were still confusing. When PGB intelligence was positive that Mayombo was up to something, they wrote a top-secret report which they handed to Museveni given the senior position which Mayombo had in the state. Museveni could not believe his eyes! He later ordered action. On April 21, 2007, some PGB officers invited Captain Sendegeya out for a drink. One of them, Captain Donald Anabasa, offered him a drink which had poison in it. Sendegeya's instinct was to refuse the drink. Then Anabasa made a phone call to State House, he was given some instructions, then he ordered Lt. Peter Ahimbisibwe to shoot Sendegeya with a pistol. This story of the shooting was in Bukedde and Red Pepper papers but it did not name Donald Anabasa. When Sendegeya died, Mayombo was shocked but he tried not to show it to people. He ordered a report on the circumstances leading to Sendegeya's death. Mayombo knew that his coup had been interrupted. But he was not sure if Sendegeya had died by some bad luck or if the plot to assassinate Museveni had been discovered. Mayombo made it a top priority to find out why Sendegeya had been killed, but it was too late for Mayombo. Four days later on a Wednesday which was April 25, Mayombo got a call from a very high person in State House telling him to go to the Kampala Serena Hotel for a breakfast meeting the next morning which was Thursday. If Ugandans want to know who organized Mayombo's death, go and find out who called Mayombo to go for the Thursday morning gbreakfast meeting. h Mayombo reported to Serena as he had been told. Some drinks were served to Mayombo and his aides. The drinks had poison put in them by a Congolese man by the names of between Likulya Balongo, a man who used to be in the Presidential guard of the late President Mobutu. His job was to assassinate Mobutu's enemies by poison and in recent years he had been in Uganda as a special assassin and his expenses were all being paid by State House. We don't know what happened at that meeting but Mayombo later left Serena Hotel. Some hours later he started complaining about not feeling well. He had already known that there was an attempt to poison Sendegeya before he was shot. When Mayombo started feeling sick in his stomach, he quickly sensed that this was not a coincidence and it seems his coup had aborted. That is when he said, in Kiswahili, "Museveni has killed me!" Radio Katwe can only guess that this follows that the person who told Mayombo to go to Serena Hotel was Museveni himself or maybe somebody acting on orders of M7. That same Thursday night that Mayombo was poisoned, Egesa died. He had been poisoned somewhere in the afternoon hours of Thursday. Museveni then tried to pretend that nothing had happened and he was affected by the death of his security boys. Museveni offered 13 million shillings to the family of Sendegeya as condolences. If you

think Radio Katwe is lying, you can crosscheck with your sources at State House if you know anybody there. We do not yet know how much gcondolence h money Museveni gave Egesa's family but it could have been the same as the 13 million to Sendegeya's family. Next, State House tried to keep everything normal because Museveni knew how popular Mayombo was in the army. Mayombo was by this time in Kololo Hospital and then he was shifted to International Hospital Kampala. State House worked behind the scenes to convince the local newspapers that the Rwabwoni family wanted to keep Mayombo's sickness out of the news. New Vision and Daily Monitor and Red Pepper complied. Kampala was full of too many rumours about Mayombo being sick and being poisoned but when people bought the newspapers the following day they saw nothing. Many people could not understand why this silence. When Museveni was going to last year for treatment of his swollen feet the public knew and State House did not try to hide it too much. Therefore why was the sickness of Mayombo so much a top secret? You will recall that on Friday night, the army was put on a state of alert and troops were deployed around many strategic places in Kampala and Entebbe and troops in Fort Portal Mayombo's home area were also put on alert. Why? On Saturday evening around 7p.m. there was a serious rumour spreading around Kampala that Mayombo was dead. The rumour was confirmed by many people who had their ears to the ground or who had sources in intelligence or State House. That time Mayombo was basically dead and the rumour was true. But to make sure that there was no instability and public anger, the family of Mayombo was pressured to keep quiet about it. If you called them, they would say he was still alive. The government had to put on an act of caring so much for him and doing their best to save his life. That is when the plan to take him to Nairobi was hatched. One of the first people who begged State House to save Mayombo's life by flying him out for top class treatment was Mayombo's defence minister, Dr. Crispus Kiyonga. Kiyonga as a medical doctor knew that things were bad for Mayombo but when he begged State House to fly out the ailing brigadier, State House ordered Kiyonga not to sanction it. Kiyonga was left feeling confused. State House was also spreading reports to the public that Mayombo was to be flown to Nairobi on Museveni's presidential jet. But some people who were at the airport on Saturday night when Mayombo was rushed to Entebbe say they saw Mayombo being taken in a DC-10 plane of Dairo Air, not Museveni's jet. They wonder why people are believing it was the Gulfstream jet. If you were there at Entebbe you can confirm to us if you saw Mayombo go in the Das Air Cargo DC-10 or the presidential jet. Up to now, there has not been a single photo in any Ugandan newspaper showing Mayombo being put on the presidential jet or his coffin being brought back from Nairobi on the presidential jet. If you saw the jet being used, confirm with us. Why did M7 remain campaigning in Kamuli for the LC5 elections and why did he not go

to Kololo Airstrip for the memorial service for Mayombo? When we get to part 6, we shall understand why M7 remained quiet when Mayombo was sick yet Mayombo was Museveni's blue-eyed boy.

Mayombo's coup, part 6: the failure of the coup and the fallout Last updated : 28 May 2007, Kampala

Before we continue with the story of Mayombo's coup we need to make some corrections. Some angry sources who know what happened have criticized us for getting a few facts wrong. We have checked the five parts published so far and there are indeed some errors. The missiles which Captain Nelson Sendegeya was to get for the coup plot against Museveni were surface to surface (SS) missiles, not surface to air (SAM) missiles as we reported. We have also got credible information that they were to be got from the PGB base armoury in the Rwenzori mountains near Kasese, not the PGB training school at Kasenyi along Entebbe-Kampala road. The PGB base in Kasese district has sites for one of the national air defence units. We are also reliably informed that the other conspirator in the coup, Paul Egesa, was not drawing sketches of State House as seen from the air. Paul Egesa was drawing sketches of State House as seen from the ground and he was paying attention to the side of the building which has Museveni's bedroom. He could also have been secretly taking photographs of the bedroom wing using a mobile phone with a camera. Another source is saying that the missiles which were to be brought to Kampala for the mission were not being brought as a complete unit. They were being brought in parts one by one to avoid suspicion. Lastly, a source has told us that Museveni's brother General Salim Saleh was not a target of Mayombo's plot as we reported, but the target was Museveni only. We are also told that the PGB officer who commanded the investigation was Captain Donald Anabasa not Lt. Keith Katungi, as we reported earlier. These mistakes came about as we were trying to piece together the story from several sources. We can now go on with our story. Museveni was quiet the whole time that Mayombo was sick. He did not issue any public statement of concern and if he issued a private statement, it has not been printed in any Ugandan media. Museveni was so mad with anger that Mayombo had betrayed him and he did not even want to pretend to like the boy in public. As stubborn as he is, he went on as if everything was okay. He was campaigning in Kamuli to make sure that Salamu Musumba of the FDC did not win the LC 5 chairman's seat. The media was making a big deal about Mayombo saying he was Museveni's blue-eyed boy but the godfather of the blue-eyed boy did

not see it that way. In reality, he was full hate and anger. The announcement of the death of Mayombo was delayed from April 30 which was a Monday to allow the state to finish its arrangements. It was made on Tuesday May 1 after lunch. Engineer Paul Egesa was poisoned and he died two days before Mayombo, our sources now tell us. He was buried in Mayombe village in Busia district. A relative of Egesa told Radio Katwe on May 22 that, "I couldn't believe it. The man was so fit the last time I met him. What had killed? So first I was told he got a bad stomach ache and he was vomiting heavily and was rushed to the hospital and died just like that." When news came that Mayombo was dead still M7 said nothing, no sorry, no condolences, there was nothing from M7. When it became official that Mayombo was dead, the news spread like wildfire in Uganda and hundreds went to his home in Bukoto to say their sorry. The FDC as a party had wanted to issue a statement over his death and give their condolences to the Rwabwoni family but also to condemn his legacy of safe houses and murders. But the party decided that the condemnation would be misunderstood and it could be used against them. So that is why they issued only statements of goodwill and FDC leaders Colonel Kiiza Besigye and Major General Mugisha Muntu went to Mayombo's home for the night vigil. They did not have any part in the coup plot. Mayombo knew that the FDC is the most popular party in Uganda and if his coup succeeded he would need their as how governments have needed Buganda's even when they take power. That is why Mayombo brought in his younger brother Okwir to make with the FDC. At Mayombo's house the night of his official death there was his aide de camp who was nicknamed George Besigye but his real names were George Tuhirirwa. He was recruited by Mayombo into CMI in 2001 and he was not really an ADC but Mayombo's informer. This is why the army spokesman could deny that Mayombo had no ADC called Besigye. This is true because it was not his real name, but Afande Kulayigye did not also say everything, because Tuhirirwa was poisoned and he had been very close to Mayombo like an ADC. He used to rent and room in the "boys quarters" of a senior UPDF officer Colonel Rwabantu in Kampala. Tuhirirwa was devastated by Mayombo's death because he had been close to Mayombo in his last hours. When Mayombo was summoned to Serena Hotel for the "breakfast meeting" where he was poisoned, Tuhirirwa was with him. Mayombo said he had been poisoned by Museveni when Tuhirirwa was listening. At Mayombo's house Tuhirirwa vowed that Mayombo's death would be avenged. State House knew that this boy was a risk because he would talk and it gave the order to finish him off. On Thursday night Tuhirirwa was poisoned. The next morning he was supposed to go and the mourners at Kololo Airstrip for Mayombo's memorial service but he started vomiting and complaining of a stomach pain like fire. He collapsed and died. He was buried on Sunday at his family home in Mbarara district.. Still Museveni said nothing. At Kololo everyone was expecting Museveni to come with his wife Janet as they usually do for major state functions. Janet came alone and

people started wondering where M7 was. People waited and waited but there was nobody coming and nobody to ask if M7 would come. Nobody talked about his absence. There was no official reason given as to why M7 was not at Kololo and the Ugandan media did not ask. Something was wrong but nobody could ask. Nobody has ever explained where Museveni was that morning instead of being at Kololo. When it came to going to Fort Portal for the burial this time Janet did not go and it was Museveni who went. Museveni gave Mayombo's family 30 million shillings and the person who is now in charge of the fund is none else but Museveni's last son in law Geoffrey Kamuntu. Mayombo's family is not going to get that money. His widow Juliet should forget about it. It was put up for a show. Waiters and waitresses at Serena Hotel were arrested just to show the army and intelligence guys that something was being done to investigate the death of Moayombo. So dear Ugandans that is the true story of how Mayombo died. He did some bad things but we should that he could have seen his faults and repented. We should not condemn him so much for his weaknesses and we forget that he almost changed Ugandan history. If his coup had succeeded, Uganda would be free today of the corrupt and greedy Museveni family. So we should Mayombo as a guy who almost liberated us from dictatorship but the plot ended in a tragic failure.