How a Staged Highway Crash Triggered the Fall of Uganda Tyrant Idi Amin
ON 19 April 1978, a staged car crash on the Jinja highway nearly claimed the life of Uganda’s Vice President, General Mustafa Adrisi. A station wagon rammed Adrisi’s Mercedes from the front, while his own military escort vehicle struck him from behind, sparking a fatal shootout between his bodyguards and the escort soldiers.
Adrisi survived with severe fractures and was flown to Cairo for treatment. Recognising that the army's Northern officer corps was fracturing along tribal lines, Idi Amin immediately launched an aggressive political counter-offensive.
Using state media, Amin issued a stern warning to the public and the armed forces, declaring that any discussion of an assassination plot or internal division would be treated as treason. He immediately stripped the hospitalised Adrisi of his defense and internal affairs portfolios, initiating a purge of Adrisi’s sympathisers within the government.
The warning backfired. Soldiers of the elite Simba Regiment in Mbarara, loyal to Adrisi, realised they were next on the purge list and mutinied. To distract from this internal military rebellion, Amin ordered the invasion of Tanzania's Kagera Salient later that year—a miscalculation that provoked the counter-invasion that toppled his regime in April 1979.
-Colourised photo of Mustafa Adrisi.
TBT from the 11th Parliament: Kira Municipality MP Ssemujju Nganda Vs Security Minister Jim Muhwezi (October 26, 2021)
This was one of the sittings presided over by the late Speaker, Jacob Oulanyah.
#MonitorUpdates
Makerere adds Lusoga to language courses.
One must have offered Lusoga language at A-Level to be enrolled to study the same at the institution #MonitorUpdates https://t.co/0yBTxuZE9R