THE CORRECT LINE? CHAPTER 3: Rocking the boat

MAN OF THE PEOPLE? Dr Kizza Besigye

In the second installation of the serialization of the book, The Correct Line? Uganda under Museveni, The author, Olive Kobusingye writes about her brother Dr Kizza Besigye’s relationship with people he was with in the “1981-86 Bush War”, how he came to stand against President Museveni and the root cause of his falling out with the NRM regime

“Our mandate was a limited one: to fight to restore freedom, by which we meant that the people should be given the chance to decide on their destiny, without manipulation.”— Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, ‘Fighting Obote’, Sowing the Mustard Seed: London & Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1997).

One evening in late October 2000, my sister Margaret called me to her house in Ntinda, a Kampala suburb. She said it was urgent. Considering I had talked to her earlier in the day and there had been nothing unusual, I was somewhat surprised. She said she was not free to talk about it on the phone, so I drove to her house to find my younger brother Saasi’s car already in the driveway. My other sister, Stella, arrived shortly after.

Margaret said that Besigye had called his siblings to the impromptu meeting and that he was on his way. It was approaching nine o’clock when he eventually showed up. Only my third brother, James, was absent. After brief pleasantries Besigye apologised for getting us to drive to Ntinda in the night and for keeping us waiting, but he said a situation had arisen that made it imperative that he talk to us as a matter of urgency. Now he had all our attention.

“I know some of you are not interested in politics/ he started, “but you are now about to be engaged in it, probably against your will.” He then told us that he had been in extensive consultations with some of his friends and colleagues, many of them in government, and that they had come to a decision that he should run against Museveni for president in the coming elections.

For several moments the announcement sort of hung in the air as we all kept quiet. Only Margaret did not look surprised. I did not know what to think. This was all too sudden, too unexpected. I had been aware for some time that my brother had fallen out with the centre of the Movement government, but I had not expected that this might be the result.

Then Besigye continued. “The formal announcement will come out in the press tonight, so I did not want you to be surprised. I also wanted to warn you that from now on you are probably going to be dragged into discussions you would rather stay out of, and you can expect a lot of inconveniences.

I hate to bring this upon you, but my colleagues and I have come to believe that it is inevitable.” He went on to explain that if the opportunity of the coming elections was not seized, and if Museveni carried on unchallenged, then the country risked sliding back to the same mess that they had gone to the bush to resolve.

A short discussion followed, with questions and explanations going back and forth. Besigye repeated his warning that we might be targeted for harassment, and I recall Margaret saying she was not going into a second exile.

After a while Besigye said he had yet another meeting to get to, so we wished him Godspeed and dispersed. On my way home, I saw the early version of the New Vision newspaper on the street, and sure enough the news of Besigye’s candidacy was right there on the front page.

I think that in some definitive way that was the beginning of my private and reserved brother becoming public property. Whereas in his earlier days in the Movement government he had served in public roles, he was now leaping from the seemingly calm waters of the lagoon to the open and stormy sea. It remained to be seen which of his friends and colleagues would join him and how the political landscape would change as a result of that rift.

Back in late 1986 when the NRA was still new in town, I had left the country to do my internship in Kenya. When I returned I spent some three months at Besigye’s house. It was an unusual household. There was a constant flow of visitors: diplomats and herdsmen, soldiers of all ranks (and some of no ranks at all), old women that called Besigye their son, and young men that called him their brother, but I did not know them.

In the four years that he had spent in the bush war, my brother seemed to have acquired more relatives than all of the ones we had before the war. Some I can remember vividly because they became my relatives too. There was an old man from Ngoma called Bagarukayo. He was probably in his late sixties, with grown sons that became my brothers and a relatively young and beautiful wife. Mzee Bagarukayo was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and he stayed in Mulago Hospital for many months.

Besigye spent hours at his bedside. When he died some announcements said that Besigye’s father had died. Bagarukayo’s son John stayed in Besigye’s home until he was ready to go to college. Then there was Malita, better known as Commander Malita or Mama Chama. Malita was no ordinary old woman - she was an institution. She commandeered vehicles and drivers in order to visit her other children.

It seemed that all the NRA senior officers had adopted her as their mother. Today she might go to Salim Saleh’s house, tomorrow to Mugumes or Tinyefuza’s, and the following week to see Mzee (Museveni). Malita brought many of her extended family (abantu bange) with her. I do not know if all those other homes where she went housed as many of Malita’s people as Besigye’s did. She got a house of her own in Old Kampala but was still mostly to be found at one of her sons’ homes.

Through Malita I also acquired another brother called Kangave. Then there were the soldiers and drivers. They were mostly young men with not too much education. They shared a special bond with Besigye. There never seemed to be any doubt in their minds that Besigye had their best interests at heart and that their future was secure in Mzee’s hands. It was from those soldiers that I first heard the expression, ‘Mzee anapanga - Swahili for ‘The old man [Museveni] has plans for us’.

There was Sekyanzi, who was a bit of a clown and a ladies’ man. There was rather shy Segirinya, the driver, and he always drove like the devil was after him. There was Olena, who I believe came from somewhere in Teso; he spoke good English and decent Luganda. Then there was Rugunju, who lived in the staff quarters with his wife.
The wife seemed to have some special status among the household workers. When Rugunju fell ill and finally died, he was mourned and missed like a close relative.
Mealtimes at Besigye’s house were interesting affairs. One never knew if there were going to be eight people or 18. When more people came, the cook quickly watered down the sauce and made more kawunga (maize meal).

I soon moved out of this lively establishment to my own apartment, and I started life as a busy surgical resident. What I recall from those months is the way all those people who had been in the bush war related to one another. It was clear that Besigye considered his newly acquired relatives just as important as his blood relatives.

If he made a commitment to help someone, he would be willing to die trying to fulfil the promise. I was often roped in to resolve health care—related commitments. But underlying everything was frugality and an almost religious commitment to watching out for everyone’s good.

There were few luxuries, but the soldiers accepted that things were tight everywhere and that when the situation improved, everyone would be better off. It was a couple of years later, while I was away again (this time at the University of London), that I first heard that Besigye seemed to be in trouble with the establishment. He had been ‘reassigned’, but in effect he was being stripped of key leadership responsibilities. Evidently, the trend did not stop.

While for most people Besigye’s troubles appear to have started in 1999 with the writing of the controversial article criticising the Movement, this was the culmination of a long drawn-out disagreement that had been kept out of public view.
In the Constituent Assembly (CA) in 1994 as one of the 10 army representatives, Besigye had argued, together with fellow officers David Tinyefuza and Serwanga Lwanga, that the NRM should be considered a transitional arrangement and that the ban on political parties should be lifted before the 1996 elections. This minority position was rejected by the Constituent Assembly.

Pointing to the efforts made by Besigye and other military officers who made serious attempts to bring about reform in the governance structures, Mugisha Muntu recalled, “They were the same people that brought up these issues over and over. But once Museveni discovered that it was the same people - a small group that could be ignored, that might not influence the situation - he did nothing.
We thought that it was possible to build a critical mass so that they can tip the balance. That is what made some of us to leave - because it had become apparent that that critical mass was only possible outside the power structure... all those years we thought it was possible to do it from within. There was always that hope.”

Author: Olive Kobusingye  (email the author)
Source: Daily Monitor, Posted Tuesday, October 19 2010 at 22:09