Kabaka Mutesa, spies and the forgotten Athi River murders

Former Uganda president Milton Obote. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • Afraid that Obote would kill him, after the raid at his Mengo Palace Kabaka Mutesa and his Kabaka Yekka activists escaped into exile and some of them ended up in Eastleigh.
  • Aware of this plot, Obote decided to approach the Kenya government to track down the dissidents.
  • The Kabaka supporters found a new base in Eastleigh where they started fundraising, hoping to retaliate.
  • Lillian Millie and Sara Massa had come to Nairobi on March 31, 1967 to trace and befriend the man who had started fundraising in Nairobi to overthrow Obote, kill him and his Cabinet.

Lillian Millie was a beauty queen – and any man would have wanted her company. She was a “honey trap” too, a term used in the Soviet Union to denote spies sent to track down political opponents. In a world where Ian Fleming’s James Bond-type spies were supposed to be hot, the 21-year-old Ugandan spy of mixed parentage was gorgeous; she was naïve too, to an extent, but not apolitical.

That was before her body — and that of her ally, 23-year-old Ugandan policewoman Sara Massa — were found floating inside a gunny bag in Athi River, near the spot where the bodies of three Kenyans were recently found.

The forgotten story of Millie and that of Massa is the stuff of high-level espionage gone awry. So wrong that it became one of the most embarrassing cases handled by the late spymaster James Kanyotu.

It was perhaps the first time that Kanyotu and his Ugandan equivalent, Supt Eric Stephenson, were using these femme fatales hoping to mimic dangerous female spies of the Cold War era — the likes of Mata Hari, Violetta Seina, and Nancy Wake — all endowed with stunning looks.

It all started in 1966 in Kampala after the Prime Minister, the late Milton Obote, deposed Uganda’s first President, Sir Edward Mutesa, better known as King Freedie by his admirers, and installed himself as president. The Cambridge-educated King Freedie was also the Kabaka of Buganda — a position that gave him a cultural score among the populous Baganda tribe.

Afraid that Obote would kill him, after the raid at his Mengo Palace Kabaka Mutesa and his Kabaka Yekka activists escaped into exile and some of them ended up in Eastleigh, Nairobi, where they started hatching a plot to kill Obote. In turn, Obote hatched a plot to catch them!

As Kanyotu would later find, under-cover operations, the cloak-and-dagger skulduggery he envisioned, could go horribly wrong. And it did on Monday, April 3, 1967, or thereabouts.

Both Millie and Massa had come to Nairobi on March 31, 1967 to trace and befriend the man who had started fundraising in Nairobi to overthrow Obote, kill him and his Cabinet.

The refugees and activists had arrived in Nairobi in scores after Mengo Palace had been overrun by Obote soldiers led by Idi Amin (who would later overthrow him). The Kabaka supporters found a new base in Eastleigh where they started fundraising, hoping to retaliate. They had at first targeted Obote as he left a prison’s passing-out parade at Luzira but only managed to shoot at Vice-President John Babiiha. That was January 22, 1967.

TRACK DOWN DISSIDENTS

Aware of this plot, Obote decided to approach the Kenya government to track down the dissidents. That is how both Millie and Massa were incorporated into the scheme — with the hope that they would gather intelligence from within as femme fatales.

The Nairobi mission was high profile and included Uganda’s head of Criminal Investigations Department Mohammed Hassan and two other policemen – Supt Festus Wauyo and Supt Katerega.

Millie was to pose as a “bar hostess” and for her own security, she had been assigned a policewoman, Sara Massa, 23.

At the Princess Hotel, still in downtown Nairobi, Millie, Massa and Supt Wauyo booked themselves into different rooms. Their target was former Kabaka Mutesa bodyguards who had been left in Nairobi after he fled to exile in Britain and who were organising an armed return to Uganda.

It was known by the intelligence in Nairobi that most of the Kabaka Yekka members frequented top clubs in Nairobi including Starlight, at the grounds of the current Integrity Centre, and the now defunct Sans Chique in the CBD among others.

In Nairobi, Millie was to infiltrate the group that had attempted to kill Obote’s Vice-President led by Levis Mugarura, an ex-captain in the army, John Oboo and Andrew Kyeyune. It was a risky assignment, very risky.

At the dining room of Princess Hotel, Millie and Massa first met Zakaria Kizito, a former member of the Buganda Lukiko (Mutesa’s parliament).

Millie befriended Kizito and the two went into a conversation about the Uganda refugees. She picked up Kizito’s red-coloured diary and wrote the names of the people she wanted to meet: Abraham Senkoma, Andrew Kyeyune and John Oboo. All this time, both Millie and Massa were masquerading as Kabaka sympathisers. “Help us to find Senkoma and his two friends,” Millie told Kizito. Both Kyeyune and Oboo lived in a house near Eastleigh aerodrome (now airbase).

It was Mr Kizito who approached Senkoma, an Ethiopian-trained soldier and former Kabaka bodyguard, and told him about the two beautiful Uganda girls staying at Princess Hotel and who were looking for him.

“Don’t talk to me about detectives,” said Senkoma – perhaps aware of the many espionage traps that Obote had laid in Nairobi.

Senkoma was no ordinary exile. He had been an officer in Kabaka’s team of bodyguards and aided the Kabaka to jump over the Mengo Palace fence. In the process, the Kabaka injured his back. His accomplice Obbo, disguised as a woman, accompanied Kabaka to Nairobi.

The Uganda intelligence had hoped that if Millie and Massa managed to infiltrate their group, it would be possible to get to the internal workings of the exiles and what they were plotting.

On the night of April 1, Millie was dropped at the Starlight Club. It was her first night out in Nairobi. She started introducing herself to the Uganda crowd as “Lillian Millie from Buganda.”

MYSTERIOUS GIRLS

The arrival of the two girls lit the small close-knit Ugandan community in Nairobi. At a house in Eastleigh, Nairobi, rented by a Baganda prince Krenimal Mawanda, a discussion about the two mysterious girls staying at Princess Hotel started.

That evening, Mawanda (who was employed at Rendezvous as a barman), Daniel Kiwanuka (organising secretary of Kabaka Yekka party) and John Oboo went to Sans Chique bar — frequented by Nairobi’s middle class and journalists — for beer. They all had acquired a Zephyr car from a second-hand car dealer, PR Rajput, for £250, which they used for their Nairobi escapades.

On April 2, 1967 and after taking drinks at Sans Chique bar, Mawanda was tasked to go and meet the girls at the Princess Hotel that night. Accompanied by his relative, Miss Essy Senvuma, Mawanda found the two spies at the dining room; “a half-caste girl and an African girl” as Senvuma would later say.

Mawanda’s task was simple: To identify and befriend the two girls. What the group knew was that a large number of Obote detectives and spies had swarmed Nairobi. In Nairobi, the magistrates had continued to frustrate Obote’s attempt to legally extradite the Kabaka followers to face charges in Kampala.

A newspaper cutting showing missing two Ugandan women Lilian Millie and Sarah Massa. FILE

They had, in turn, while working with the Special Branch, resorted to kidnappings. One of those kidnapped was Emanuel Kiamnye and his wife Safina Nakibirango who were driven secretly from Nairobi and handed over to the Uganda police.

What was not known among the Kabaka followers was that the pretty girl Millie was the person behind their kidnappings. She was also the one who had reported to Uganda’s Criminal Investigations Department that Kyeyune was the one who fired the shots at Vice-President Babiiha’s convoy.

Millie was on a return mission — but what she did not know was that her identity was perhaps known among the Uganda refugees in Nairobi.

On April 2, Millie and Massa went to Starlight Club where beer, dance and social escapades took place under the mirrorball. Starlight was remarkable, unforgettable and distinctive. It was not only the pub where to get intoxicated but a place of casual flirting. Here, unmarried female debutants would snatch husbands easily. It was in this crowd that Millie and Massa hobnobbed with Ugandan exiles until the early hours of Sunday April 2 in a rendezvous that also took her to Sans Chique.

On April 3, the court was told, Millie received a telephone call at about 8.30 pm from Mawanda. She didn’t know that it was a trap. She called Massa and the two girls were seen going towards Government Road (now Moi Avenue) where they were to meet their previous night acquaintance Miss Essy Senvuma.

GETTING THEM ARRESTED

As Senvuma, more of a decoy, went to pick up the two girls, the others entered Karumaindo Bar. “We posted ourselves at various points and waited for the girls,” Oboo would later say in a police statement. Then they left Karumaindo for Athi River.

Outside Kenya Cinema were two cars – a Zephyr with ropes and a gunny bag in the boot and a Peugeot. Senkoma and Mawanda were to drive in the Zephyr while the two girls, sandwiched at the back, seat between John Oboo and Kyeyune. At the front seat was Mawanda’s relative Miss Essy Senvuma — the one who lured them out of Princess Hotel and the driver, Kiwanuka. The two vehicles drove along Mombasa Road and, on reaching the Athi River bridge, they took a turn.

“When we arrived at Athi River, Oboo and Kyeyune began questioning Millie. Millie knew she would be killed and begged them to spare her life. She admitted coming to Nairobi with the intention of getting them arrested,” said Oboo. Senvuma and Mawanda were left in the cars as the girls were dragged down the river for interrogation. She only heard them cry: “John, John, do not kill us. We have come to help you!”

It is now known from post-mortem reports that Millie was still alive, though unconscious, when she was put into a sack and thrown into the Athi River. Her report says she died of asphyxiation while Massa died of strangulation.

Back in Nairobi on the morning of April 4, Mohammed Hassan, the Uganda head of CID, called Princess Hotel. To his shock, his two girls were not there. He reached to James Kanyotu and Peter Okola, the CID head, for help.

The search in Nairobi did not yield any fruit and on April 7, a decision was made to make the disappearance public.

It was the CID that released the statement asking the public: “Have you seen these Kenyan girls?” The CID also released photographs of the two girls and only mentioned that they were last seen on Monday at 8.30 pm near the Kenya Cinema.

That night, like a diva, Millie was wearing a white dress with large brown spots and high heeled shoes while her friend was wearing a black frock with pockets. In the second appeal, police wanted to test whether anyone knew about the girls’ mission and made public appeals for witnesses who may have information and why the girls vanished.

Nobody came forward.
It was not until April 8 that a Mrs Monica Naomi found the bags containing the two bodies near Sofia Village “not far from the old Athi River bridge.” On April 9, police were informed about the discovery. By this time, Uganda police officers, led by Supt Eric Stephenson, were already in Nairobi trying to trace their lost spies.

April 27: Kanyotu ordered the arrest of Daniel Kiwanuka, Andrew Kyeyune, John Mwekesi and Robert Kitali. They supplied their pictures to local media.

By that time Mawanda and Senkoma had been arrested and taken into custody in Kampala where they were tortured before they were brought to Nairobi.

On January 29, 1968, Daniel Kiwanuka, Andrew Kyeyune and Oboo were sentenced to hang by Chief Justice Sir John Ainley. Although Mawanda and Senkoma were released, they were arrested by Kanyotu’s men led by Asst Supt Joginder Singh Sokhi and handed over to Ugandan police at the Malaba border.

During the trial, it turned out that these were not two naïve women as previously thought.

John Kamau is the Acting Editor, Investigations and Special [email protected]. @johnkamau1