New Vision has been running daily stories on HIV in a drum up to World AIDS Day. Today, we return to the entry point gateway of HIV, which was identified as the Greater Masaka district. Masaka was ravaged by AIDS at the beginning of the epidemic in Uganda. We bring you the history of Masaka then as told by veteran journalists — Tamale Mirundi, Edward Jjuuko and Ahmed Kateregga — all born in the Greater Masaka area.

In 1982, AIDS cases were identified in Uganda at Kasensero landing site in Rakai district, part of former Greater Masaka. Rakai district is bordered by Tanzania and Lake Victoria. And the Kasensero landing site was crowded with fish markets and sex workers. They would interact with local traders from as far as Tanzania and Burundi. It was fertile ground for the spread of HIV.

Other hot spots in Greater Masaka were Lukaya and Lyantonde towns.

In these two areas, truck drivers to Kigali, Burundi and Goma would have overnight stopovers. They, therefore, attracted sex workers.

Inscrutable disease

Nobody knew what this disease, which was not responding to any medical treatment, was. The obvious conclusion was witchcraft.

“The locals were saying that Tanzanians had a tough witchdoctor who was punishing Ugandans that had stolen their goods,” Mirundi said. He was a reporter working for Munno newspaper.

Kateregga, who hails from Mawogola county, in what is now Ssembabule district, narrated what he still recalls.

In March 1978, at his father’s wedding, guests were discussing a strange disease that had hit the country. Even president Idi Amin warned men of a strange venereal disease that Tanzanian women had brought to Uganda.

Uganda and Tanzania then were enemies.

“The 8:00 pm news said Amin had warned men about the sexually transmitted disease that made people slim, which had been brought by Uganda’s enemies from Tanzania.

But a section of the public regarded it as propaganda war against Tanzania,” Kateregga, who is the current Masaka City Deputy Resident District Commissioner, explained.

Therefore, Kateregga, who was working for Star newspaper, thinks HIV/AIDS might have entered the country as early as 1978.

“But when it started killing people widely in the early 1980s, people thought it was witchcraft.

Witchdoctors turned this into a lucrative venture, dispensing herbal treatment and exorcism. They made a lot of money. Infected people sold their properties to get healed and most of them died poor,” he said.

Nanyonga, along with a helper, collects the miracle soil she claimed cured AIDS in Ntuku village.

Because most AIDS victims had a history with Kasensero landing site, it was easily believable that the victims had smuggled goods from Bukerebwe Island near Mwanza port in Tanzania and refused to pay the Tanzanians, who cast a spell (omuteego) that was killing people — widows, widowers and those who inherited the widows.

People died in big numbers — a long, painful, demeaning and disgusting death. Jjuuko said by the time an AIDS victim died, they were mere skeletons, held together by an almost transparent skin, with wounds spread all over their private parts.

“Wives run away from nursing their AIDS spouses and men abandoned their wives in homes,” he narrated.

Eventually, the dead were so many and burials so frequent that burial schedules changed.

Mirundi said the usual time of 2:00pm changed because burials were conducted from morning up to evening.

“In my area, Kyotera district, the only work those days was to attend burials, several of them, from morning to evening. Even during the burial, news of another death would come. Everybody knew someone else on their deathbed. This affected agriculture; custom forbade digging when someone had died, causing famine,” he said. Mirundi is now a presidential advisor on media.

Later, when the pathogen causing the strange disease was identified as HIV being transmitted through unprotected sex, some positive men nearing death started giving names of the women they had slept with.

Mirundi said this put the entire village in panic and fear.

Strangely, Kateregga said, many people refused to believe it and continued to be promiscuous, even during vigils of people that had died of AIDS.

Nanyonga and the soil cure

In 1989, a 60-year-old peasant woman called Yowanina Nanyonga claimed that she had received a dream in which the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, instructed her to cure AIDS victims with miracle soil. She said the Virgin Mary led her to a place, from where she scooped soil that she used to cure her two teenage children who were afflicted by the disease.

People stormed Ntuku village, where she lived, in Mawokota county, Sembabule district when word of her miracle cure spread like a wildfire.

For the whole of October 1989, Ntuku was easily the most visited place in the country after Kampala.

Day and night, buses, lorries, minibuses, and private cars ferried people to the place which Nanyonga had designated as ‘holy ground’.

Rich and poor, weak and powerful, they all went, including powerful people in government who used personnel of the then National Resistance Army to gain access without waiting in the queue.

Others were Kampala’s rich from the Kikuubo trading area and religious leaders.

Mirundi said the popularity was enhanced by the backing of the late Cardinal Emmanuel Nsubuga.

Businesses at Ntuku boomed and many stalls sprung up. Nanyonga stages were set up at the Old Taxi Park in Kampala.

Long queues, separated into male and female lines, snaked their way to the house where she dispensed a mug of soil, free of charge, scooped from a small hole in the ground per person, instructing them to consume it either directly or mixed in water and to share with family members and relatives.

Rumours of rapid recovery from all ailments spread and Nanyonga’s fame grew wildly. Eventually, a deep hole developed in her compound and foreign journalists who visited estimated about 45 tonnes of soil had been scooped away.

Mirundi was assigned by his editors to go to Nanyonga’s home.

“I tasted the soil and it was different. It tasted like processed coffee,” he said.

Even Kateregga went there, sent by Maj. Ronald Kakooza Mutale, who owned the defunct Economy Publications.

“I saw officials from the central government and Buganda kingdom,” he said.

Government was forced to do something. The Ministry of Health sent a team, led by Dr Eriab Muzira, to examine the soil. The then health minister, Zak Kaheru, said the tests on the soil and on several people who were alleged to have been cured showed it was worthless. He ordered Nanyonga to stop dispensing her soil forthwith. And the stampede died as fast as it had started.

Obote II govt negligence to blame

AIDS in the country was discovered in 1982. Kateregga said after some samples from Kasensero were sent to Atlanta, Georgia in the US, the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) government decided to keep it a secret.

“President Milton Obote’s cabinet kept it a secret to protect the national image. They didn’t want to scare away tourists and investors. And remember, the Amin war of 1979 had destroyed the country,” he said.

Mirundi agreed with Kateregga.

“The UPC government didn’t give much attention to AIDS because it was facing insurgencies in Buganda region. All the resources were channelled towards political survival,” he said.

Yowanina Nanyonga’s house.

However, Dr Suzie Muwanga, a senior lecturer of political science at Makerere University, refuted this.

“AIDS was never a discussion at that time. The government was so engrossed in trying to uproot armed rebellions,” said the professor, whose father, the late Paulo Muwanga, was the vice-president and defence minister in the Obote II government.

Museveni’s efforts applauded

Shortly after Museveni had taken over, the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed in June 1986 that the disease in Uganda was AIDS.

Many medics like Prof. Anthony Mbonye applauded President Museveni for championing the fight against AIDS. In his book, Uganda’s Health Sector Through Turbulent Politics, Mbonye said Museveni played a leading role in sensitising Ugandans about the dangers of AIDS.

The former director general of health services in the health ministry said Museveni made countrywide tours, during which he called on the public not to engage in risky sexual relationships. Mbonye said Uganda got $16m from WHO in 1987 to help the country fight the spread of AIDS.

Kateregga recalled going with the then Attorney General, the late Abu Mayanja, in areas of Kakuuto and Kyotera.

“Together with area MPs, Maria Lubega Mutagamaba and Emmanuel Pinto, we visited homes that were headed by children orphaned by AIDS and Mayanja shed tears as he was giving condolence handouts. Pinto actually scolded him saying what he was giving was a drop in the ocean. Mayanja shouted back at him, asking him what he (Mayanja) wanted him to do,” he said.

Later in 1992, Uganda AIDS Commission was established by an Act of Parliament to co-ordinate and oversee the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS activities in the country.

The late Pinto, who was born in an area affected by AIDS, became the director-general of the commission, from 1992 up to 1995. 

Masaka natives condemned

People born in Masaka (banabuddu) started hiding their places of origin in the 1980s and 1990s, because the public associated them with AIDS. Many emigrated to Kampala.

“Just mentioning in public that you come from Masaka at that time, you were deemed to be a carrier.

In trying to control the spread of the scourge, the Masaka district council, which was covering Masaka, Ssembabule, Bukomansimbi and Kalungu districts, banned trans-night disco dances.

“It didn’t do much. The problem was later stabilised with the advent of ARV drugs,” Kateregga said.

Churches and mosques started to sensitise people, emphasising abstinence and being faithful. An HIV test was made compulsory for a wedding to be sanctioned.

In 1987, the Medical Missionaries of Mary established Kitovu Mobile AIDS Organisation to care for AIDS patients within the confines of their homes. Later, the organisation became Kitovu Mobile. Jjuuko said they would visit patients at their homes and provide hospice services.

The alarming situation also forced international and other local non-governmental organisations to camp in Greater Masaka, especially in Rakai.

Many NGOs like The AIDS Support Organisation, Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans started and international bodies like DANIDA, USAID and UNICEF established offices there.

For the whole of October 1989, Ntuku was easily the most visited place in the country. Vehicles ferried people to the place Nanyonga had designated as ‘holy ground’.  

Surviving AIDS

The three journalists said they lost their relatives and friends. Mirundi said nine of his siblings had died. His worried father, John Mirundi, believed his children could have stolen goods from Tanzania. His mother had 11 children.

“My father convened a family crisis meeting to discuss the calamity in the home. He demanded that we confess if we had stolen anything from the Tanzanians so that he refunds the person bewitching his family,” he said.

Mirundi said he still recalled how AIDS slimmed down his brothers and sisters to skeletal levels in the 1980s.

“I was traumatised. I am happy Uganda now has enough ARVs and people get them free of charge. Unlike in the 1980s, today’s awareness is high. People living with HIV freely disclose their status,” he said.

Kateregga also lost his best friends — George Mutebi, Robbina Nabakooza, Robert Mibiru and Tebby Babirye Busuulwa.

“Having gone to school helped me to survive. Many of the young boys who died had dropped out of school, were able to do odd jobs and get money, which tempted them to engage in sex.

Another reason is that I married at early age and remained faithful to my wife,” Kateregga said.

He told his wife in 1991 that if he had not married her at that point, he would have lived a celibate life.