The day Rwanda was attacked

PIC: The late Major General Fred Gisa Rwigyema was the of Rwanda Patriotic Front ( RPF)

On October 1, 1990 the Rwanda Patriotic Front attacked Rwanda and started marching to Kigali determined to capture power. As the country marks 26 years since the invasion, New Vision brings you a three part series of  ‘Eyes of a Journalist', an account of Justus Muhanguzi, then a New Vision journalist who covered the war.

The boys have gone home

It was 10.00am on the Monday of October 1st 1990. I was in my office located along Bananuka Drive in Mbarara town, 300km west of Kampala city. This is where I worked as the then New Vision's western region bureau chief.

I was preparing to travel to Kampala for an unofficial duty. I was going to pick up my first car, a third-hand Mazda that I had procured through a friend — a driver to one of the top military officers in Uganda at the time.

A newspaper vendor named Byamugisha suddenly burst into my office panting. Gasping for breath, he told me that there were numerous army trucks along the town streets, all loaded with heavy guns and armed soldiers who were chanting war songs as the convoy drove toward the Mbarara-Kabale direction.

Byamugisha hardly concluded his narrative. He dashed out to catch a glimpse of the scene he had left building up.

I abandoned whatever I was doing and followed him. My mind and thoughts were elsewhere though. That morning I had woken up full of anxiety about what it felt like to own a car. I had even enlisted the services of a tenant of mine who was a driver-cum-mechanic to travel with me to Kampala to pick my vehicle.

However, Byamugisha's story sounded like a very important news story that I needed to follow-up. At the High Street, I found a crowd had gathered to watch the army trucks.

Details of the story in the New Vision