The New Vision

Kenya MP recalls last talk with Obote

Publication date: Monday, 17th October, 2005

PAN-AFRICANIST: Obote

By Standard Writer

WHEN Nyiva Mwendwa visited the former Ugandan President Apollo Milton Obote at Morningside Medi-Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, last week, he was weak.

The last moments were published yesterday in the Kenyan Standard newspaper.

Wishing him a quick recovery, she explained to her long-time friend that she was a member of the Pan-African Parliament and was headed for a committee meeting of the institution.

Obote, a veritable pan-Africanist, was energised by Nyiva’s revelations for, few things excited him like the subject of Pan-Africanism.

“He slowly recalled where he began his struggle; he told me all he knew about the new continental parliament and his belief that Africa was going somewhere,” Nyiva said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Standard this week.

That was to be their last meeting for soon after, she received news of his death.

Unbeknown to Kenyans, on each of the occasions that Obote was overthrown, his family crossed the border without funfair and stayed with the Mwendwas in their Gigiri home in Nairobi.

Naturally, when the former president was admitted to the Johannesburg hospital, one of the first people his wife, Miria, called, was Nyiva, the Kitui West MP and widow of Kenya’s first Chief Justice, Kitili Mwendwa.

Like most leaders of his time, Obote never gave up hope that Africa will one day unite, Nyiva said.

“I did not see any bitterness in Milton and I am happy that Uganda will give him a State burial. That is the right thing to do. But by the time I was leaving South Africa, his wife was not sure Uganda would accept him.”

Also revealed was the fact that between the time Obote became Prime Minister, then President, to the day he died, he retained a quiet presence in Kenya through his wife and their children.

Through these turbulent times, the former Ugandan First Lady has been lying low with three of her children going to school in Kenya.

This article can be found on-line at: http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/13/461183