About the foundational heroes of the NRM/NRA

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OPINION

By Amb. Kintu Nyago

The leadership of the National Resistance Movement/ Army (NRM/A) selected five African icons as their foundational heroes in the early 1980s Luwero Triangle liberation struggle.

These were Eduardo Mondlane, Abdul Gamal Nasser, Chwa Kabalega, Mwanga Basamula Ekere and Edidian Lutamaguzi.

The NRA’s original units were named after these five heroes. Its sixth unit was the Black Bombers. These later expanded into the army that liberated Uganda.

Prof. Eduardo Mondlane was a Mozambican scholar and revolutionary. Mozambique was colonised by the Portuguese, whom Samora Machel described as the most primitive colonial masters!

This primitivity involved their deliberate failure to provide education to their colonised. Mondlane had to travel to South Africa to acquire an education through sheer determination. Briefly, he studied at the University of Witwatersrand and later in Portugal and the US, where he obtained his PhD at Harvard. Rather than settling for a comfortable life as a professor in the US, Mondlane returned to Africa, locating himself in Nyerere’s Tanzania.

Here, he united Mozambican political leaders to form the Frente de Libertação de Mozambique (FRELIMO), a vanguard political movement that, approximately a decade later, liberated his country in 1975. Unfortunately, by then, Mondlane had been assassinated by Portuguese intelligence in 1969. FRELIMO also contributed to the training of the Museveni-led FRONASA, notably in Maoist guerrilla warfare, in liberated Mozambique.

Gamal Abdul Nasser was an Egyptian military pan-Arab and African leader. He contributed to the unification of the Arab world. And with Kwame Nkrumah representing Africa at the 1955 Bandung Conference, Indonesia, which formed the Non-Aligned Movement.

Nasser was also key in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, a process hosted by Emperor Rastafari Makonen Haile Salasie of Ethiopia, in 1963. In the mid-1950s, Nasser hosted the Afro-Arab Solidarity Movement and appointed the Uganda National Congress’s John Kalekyezi to head it. Kalekyezi had been delegated to Cairo by his leader, Ignatius Musaazi. This office contributed to Africa’s liberation from colonial rule. Omukama Chwa Kabalega personified Uganda’s resistance to colonial rule.

Hence, when Sir Samuel Baker attempted to annexe Bunyoro-Kitara for the Khedive of Egypt, Kabalega chased him back to Khartoum. Baker, consequently, biased the British establishment’s opinion on Kabalega, who actually never entertained Christian missionary activity. Indeed, must have felt vindicated when religious wars broke out in Buganda!

The youthful Kabaka Mwanga was also pivotal in resisting colonialism. Together with his able and loyal military commander Gabudyeri Kintu, they united a broad coalition that included princes from Busoga, as Menhya and Luba, Bahinda from Nkore, as Manyansi and the Omukama of Kooki to fight colonisation.

Later, Mwanga united with Kabalega, and they extended their armed struggle to Lango, where they linked up with Chief Akaki, who was Milton Obote, Akena Adoko and Adoko Nekyon’s grandfather.

Edidian Lutamaguzi, a former policeman, was one of the leaders who welcomed Museveni and his freedom fighters to Nakaseke. He farmed at Kikandwa, where he hosted the rebels on his farm, offering them resources while mobilising political support for them.

Luttamaguzi’s politics was not about facilitation nor defined by eating! Rather, it focused on building a better Uganda!

Hence, on June 9, 1981, a few months after engaging with Museveni, when Lt Col Bazilio Olara Okello, commander of the Central Brigade of Uganda National Liberation Army, paid an uninvited visit to Lutamaguzi’s Kikandwa farm alongside the chairman of UPC in Luwero, Haji Musa Sebirumbi, their host valiantly played dumb and numb.

Luttamaguzi was prepared to pay the ultimate price! The result was his cold-blooded execution of eight members of his family! Hence, they became both heroes and martyrs for the NRM revolution! This explains why the NRM Government designated the date of these murders to be Heroes’ Day!

The writer is a diplomat