Nation in Ruins

Obote's task: unity from chaos

When Apollo Milton Obote, 56, was sworn in for a second term as President of Uganda last week, he gained an unusual opportunity for an African leader: a second chance to rule his country. It was Dictator Idi Amin Dada who had ousted him in a military coup nine years ago. The challenge facing Obote is immense. Uganda, once known as the "pearl of Africa "for its productive agriculture, fine schools and superbly equipped hospitals, is today a nation in ruins. Nairobi Bureau Chief Jack White reports:

It was an all too typical night of terror in the capital city. As Radio Uganda broadcast the news that Obote's Uganda People's Congress had won a majority in the new 126-seat parliament, the air was filled with the crackle of machine guns and the dull thud of exploding grenades. At the Speke Hotel, headquarters of the 60-member Commonwealth observer team that had monitored the voting, diplomats dove under the dining room tables. Asked why roaming, drunken soldiers were shooting up the city, a young private replied: "Because we are rejoicing." It was chilling to contemplate what the trigger-happy troops would have done if they had been angered by the results of Uganda's first election in 18 years.

There had never been much doubt about the outcome. During the three-month campaign, the ruling military commission headed by Paolo Muwanga gave Obote's well-endowed party every advantage over its impoverished rival, the Catholic-dominated Democratic Party. Droves of government Land-Rovers distributed Obote's red, black and blue campaign posters. Government-controlled newspapers gave Obote a virtual monopoly on coverage. Concluded a spokesman for the Commonwealth observer team: "The whole thing stinks."

Election-related turmoil in the towns paled next to some of the bloodshed that has ravaged the countryside. In September about 1,000 exiled former members of Idi Amin's army re-entered West Nile province and killed several hundred Ugandan soldiers in hit-and-run attacks. Ugandan reinforcements, and several thousand of the Tanzanian troops who have remained in Uganda since overthrowing Amin 20 months ago, counterattacked. In the clashes, more than 2,000 civilians were butchered. As many as 300,000 others fled into neighboring Zaire and Sudan. A desperately needed crop of sorghum is now rotting in the fields simply because there is no one left to harvest it.

Already, thousands of people in the parched northeastern region of Karamoja have starved to death. Says Melissa Wells, head of the U.N. development program in Uganda: "Famine is looming in West Nile as well." There are severe food shortages even in Kampala, where the average wage is only $67 a month. A bunch of bananas, a staple, sells for $27. Beer is $20 a bottle.

The ravages of malnutrition and Kampala's almost nightly bouts of gunfire are made worse by the wreck of Mulago Hospital, once the finest in East Africa. In the wards, naked patients lie quivering on blood-stained mattresses or the filth-covered floors. The hospital frequently has no running water and stocks of drugs--known as "nurse's gold" because they so often wind up on the black market--are exhausted.

Obote has pledged that "the pearl of

Africa will rise and shine again." He says he has abandoned his strictly socialist former doctrines. He has promised "moderate policies for the rehabilitation of the economy," including incentives for foreign investment. But no such moves will help if he cannot rebuild a spirit of cooperation among the demoralized Ugandans.

It seems unlikely, however, that the Democratic Party will accept the new President's offer to form a bipartisan coalition of "national unity." One reason: D.P. Leader Paul Ssemogerere, 48, was once imprisoned by Obote. Disruptive opposition could spell disaster. Says one envoy based in Uganda: "If Obote runs into a lot of trouble, he probably will revert to type." That would mean going back to the days when Obote suspended the constitution, clapped thousands of opponents in jail without trial and ruled in such a high-handed way the people originally danced in the streets when Amin ousted him in 1971.

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