By Obed K Katureebe
The year was 1981 when President Yoweri Museveni launched Bush War to oust the rogue regime of then President Milton Obote. This was after a fraudulent general election. Panic engulfed the UPC government and in their imprudent response to this challenge they switched on the red baton of complete self-destruction.
Security agencies and some radical UPC minions panicked and responded by unleashing terror on those they suspected to be Museveni supporters. Indeed, this was a shallow and dangerous approach completely devoid of critical thinking on the part of the UPC security actors. They assumed that whoever came from certain parts of Western Uganda were all Museveni supporters/sympathisers. Whereas it is true that most NRA freedom fighters were a byproduct of FRONASA movement which began its recruitment against Id Amin in 1970s and had picked most recruits from Western Uganda, the truth of the matter was that NRM/A Bush War fighters were from all corners of Uganda. The misrule of the Paulo Muwanga and his mentor Milton Obote were felt across the whole country. Therefore, it was completely wrong for the UPC functionaries to randomly victimise and brutalise most people from parts of Western Uganda.
Wanton abductions of people and never to be seen again became the norm on unverifiable suspicions. The saddest bit was that all those abducted were either killed or starved to death in the infamous holding centre in Katikamu in Luwero District. Those that were lucky to survive after torture would be asked to pay huge ransoms to be released. Katikamu became a nightmare to families in Central and Western Uganda. The hatchet man in the mid-western Buganda was one Sergeant Shokolo.
It became worse when regime operatives began arresting young school going children and disappearing them for ransoms. This later became a form of crude extortion. If they arrested your children and you wanted them not killed you would be told to pay huge ransoms to save them.
This left most parents with no other option but to encourage their children especially the youth to find their way to the Bush than being killed for no good reason. Most of them had dropped out of schools for fear of being picked and tortured. The feeling was we would rather join Museveni and fight this phoney government than being killed like grasshoppers. People began to quietly get in touch with those who were recruiting the Bush War fighters and handed them their youthful sons and daughters. Dr Milton Obote and his hatchet men were unwittingly busy recruiting for Yoweri Museveni.
In Isingiro District, the infamous roadblock was manned at the current main roundabout in the middle of Isingiro Town. The famous Wavamuno buses that used to ply the Isingiro route would be stopped and ransacked on a daily. Every young woman who risked travelling on that route would be rapped and those that dared to resist would be shot and killed.
And why was Isingiro a spot of suspicion and therefore “gifted” with that terrible roadblock….?, simply because Isingiro was hosting two Rwandese Refugee camps i.e Oruchinga and Nakivale and therefore these were seen as Museveni supporters. The wrong assumption again was that all Rwandese speaking people were supporting Museveni just because few Rwandese fighters i.e President Paul Kagame and the late Fred Rwigyema were with Museveni in the Bush War.
That naivety of the UPC government made them commit another political and probably intelligence mistake. In 1982, the UPC government led by the radical politicians from Western Uganda i.e Chris Rwakasisi and Edward Rurangaranga took a decision to expel all Rwandan speaking people in Western and Central Uganda from their private lands and forced them into the two refugee camps in Isingiro. This action was intended to economically subjugate them from funding Museveni’s Bush War. Wrong assumption again. This was a crude method of stealing their wealth and sending them into refugee and starve them to death. Indeed, most of them did die of starvation. Their cows were stolen, their property looted, and their chunks of land was redistributed among the UPC gangsters.
What was mind boggling, these disposed and displaced people were the indigenous Ugandan Rwandan speaking who have lived in Uganda for over a century now.
The killing and looting of the wealth from these Rwandan speaking community became another enormous mistake by the UPC government. The young men and woman especially whose life was now at stake took a unanimous decision of joining the Bush and die fighting the UPC government than dying of starvation or suffer arbitrarily arrests.
When UPC radicals were celebrating the looting of cows and redistributing of huge chunks of land that these disposed Rwandan speaking people had lost, they didn’t understand the political mistake they had committed.
Any sensible person should have known that land is an emotive possession. One would rather die fighting than losing his/her land through such criminal schemes.
Whereas many people joined the Bush War because they had been ideologically mobilised especially by their charismatic leader Yoweri Museveni, there is also another group of people who joined the struggle because they had nothing to live for. When President Yoweri Museveni refers to some leaders as being ideologically bankrupt, exactly this is what he means. As we continue to reconcile and heal as a country, we must learn from our past mistakes. History is very rich to teach us very hard lessons. Happy Heroes Day.
The author is the Acting Executive Director Uganda Media Centre