12 November 2008
analysis
Kampala — IN 1973 when I returned from a seven-year tour of studies in the US to take up a teaching job at Makerere University, General Idi Amin was the president and political parties were banned.
There was no political bus to ride on. The economy was starting to fail and fear was spreading among the population because people were constantly disappearing. In 1975 I was lucky to be allowed to return to the US to complete my doctoral thesis in economics. When I completed my thesis in 1976, I did not return. I took up a teaching job in an American University in Florida until 1979 when Idi Amin was overthrown. Then I returned to Makerere only to find worse chaos than I had left behind in 1975. Economic hardship was much worse. There were huge quantities of shillings but nothing to buy. Murders of innocent people were the order of the day. There were roadblocks everywhere and the armies treated us like dogs. In Kampala, gunshots screamed throughout the night and sometimes during the daytime. It was a real reign of terror.
I had resolved to concentrate on my lectures until Professor Musa Mwene Mushanga quoted Plato to a Makerere audience thus: "If intelligent men refuse to join politics , they must accept to be ruled by fools". One evening in 1979, a fellow lecturer asked me if I was not going to listen to the political lecture at the lower lecture theatre. I took his tip and went. The place was packed full and a young man whom I later learned was Joshua Mugenyi mesmerised the academic crowd with his talk of the need for "a third force." He said the political parties of Uganda up to that time were sectarian parties formed around either religion or ethnicity. There was a need for a "third force" that united people rather than dividing them. I was instantly mesmerised by this young political firebrand and, although politics was not my cup of tea, I found myself standing to contribute to the discussion. I recall myself quoting Chairman Mao that: "Power comes out of the barrel of a gun." This earned me instant applause from the young crowd. Little did I know how true the quotation would become in just a few months from October 1979.
We resolved to form the Uganda Nationalist Movement (UNM) and within a few weeks we launched it. Weeks later, I was surprised when Joshua told me that Museveni, who was then a minister in the ruling coalition, the Uganda National Liberation Front, (UNLF) wanted to meet us. I went with Joshua to his house in Kololo where we found, among others, Bidandi Ssali, Rugunda, Rwakakoko, Kategaya and many other eminent personalities whom I did not know. We agreed to merge with them - after reminding them that they were not as well organised as we were - to form the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM). Our motto was "Clean leadership, Unity and Peace".
As we launched the party to contest the general elections that were slated for 10 December, 1980, we struggled to persuade prominent personalities in the Uganda Peoples Congress and the Democratic Party to join us. Despite long and hard negotiations mostly at the Kampala City Council Hall, most of them abandoned us and went to their traditional parties.
This hurt us badly and it would take decades before some of them could realise that the third force of unity was much stronger than their sectarian parties of the past and finally join it. Although our performance in the 1980 elections was dismal, only Dr. Kiyonga won a seat to Parliament, the outcome of the elections was openly and publicly rigged.
I will never forget the evening when then chairman of the ruling Military Council, Mr. Muwanga, made a televised speech to the nation to announce that only him would announce the outcome of the election in every constituency and that his announcement of the election results could not be challenged in any court of law. He assumed the powers of the electoral commission and in effect decided who the winner in each constituency was irrespective of what the Electoral Commission decided. The early indications that the Democratic Party was winning were reversed and the Uganda Peoples Congress emerged winner.
A few days after the elections Joshua took me with him to see Museveni at our party offices on Kampala Road. The place was deserted. We talked very little and then left in Joshua's little green Fiat to return to Makerere. Rumours of detention and murders increased and we stopped sleeping at our houses out of fear of government soldiers. In early February 1981 we heard that war had broken out, that Museveni had attacked Kabamba. UPM had warned throughout the election campaign that we would fight if the elections were rigged. Now Museveni had acted on his word. Joshua and I panicked. On the day the soldiers came for him he had spent the night at my flat in Mitchell Hall where we were both resident tutors. He managed to leave just a few minutes before the soldiers arrived at his flat on the third floor of Mitchell Hall. When they arrived on campus they asked students where Mugenyi was. The students showed them a building called Mugenyi Flats. They went there and started breaking doors there. By the time they realised this was the wrong place, Joshua Mugenyi had the minutes he needed to escape. When they failed to find him, they came to my flat on the ground floor of Mitchell Hall. They banged the door several times. I prepared for death. Then I heard a student in the outside corridor telling them that I was not there that I was at the office. They left for the office where they did not find me either. I waited for the night then went and hid at friend's house until a UPC stalwart on campus assured me that it was safe to resurface. When I resurfaced and went to conduct examinations, one of the UPC students stared at me with such horror that I knew that I was in trouble. I persevered for some days until a friend and fellow lecturer, James, came at midnight and told me he could not encourage me to stay around any longer.
"Don't panic", he said, "but accelerate your plans to get out. You were a member of Museveni's Cabinet, and Museveni has declared war on this Government. So how can you stay?" I shook to the marrow and prayed for rescue.
Claver Matovu, now Bishop of the Orthodox Church, was staying with me while processing a car for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees station in Fort Portal where he was stationed and where my late brother, Dr. Byarugaba was offering him temporary accommodation. He managed to get the Land Rover that night and arrived shortly after James told me I should find a way to go. Very early in the morning he drove me from Kampala to Mbarara and then to Kabale. We went through nine roadblocks and at each roadblock my heart was in my mouth. I will never forget his courage. At Mbarara Simba barracks roadblock where we arrived at dusk, the UNLA soldier wanted us to offload all our properties to the roadside. Claver refused. The soldier threatened to shoot us. A Tanzanian officer intervened. Claver told him he was a UNHCR officer. He said we could go. Another brush with death was averted.
Once in Kabale I walked to my village and then to Rwanda where I reported to the UNHCR. They put me up in a covent until I was able to process a one way ticket to Nairobi. The authorities in Rwanda refused to stamp my passport. "You have not been here," the officer told me. "So you cannot come back here. If the authorities in Kenya refuse you, you cannot come back here." I arrived at Nairobi Airport expecting anything to happen. What would I do if the Kenyan authorities refused to allow me into their country? Would they deport me back to Uganda since I had no exit stamp in my passport? When I handed my passport to the immigration officer, he glanced at me, stamped the passport and I was free to enter. I moved cautiously from him, not sure of my freedom. Only when I arrived in the room at a hotel did I burst into tears as I sang the Negro spiritual:
"Oh freedom, oh freedom over me,
And before I'll be a slave,
I will be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord and be free."
I very soon discovered that most of my UPM colleagues were already in Nairobi and especially Joshua, Dr. Rugunda, Dr. Kiyonga and many others.
By the end of March 1981, I was able to travel to Europe and then on July 4, 1981 to the US. On arrival at Dulles Airport near Washington D.C , I was very visibly tense that the immigration officer said loudly: "Relax!"
In August 1981, I landed a job as an associate professor and head of the Management Science Department at Coppin State College, being one of many colleges of the Maryland State University System. In addition to teaching economics courses, I found myself saddled with a course called Management and the Computer. Although I was knowledgeable in computer programming, this course was about how computers were used in management rather than teaching a programming language. I suffered and nearly lost my job when students complained that I was teaching them programming when it was not required. I managed to hang on despite severe criticism from some colleagues who resented my assumption of headship of the department.
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