Kategaya knew Museveni would become president

TRIBUTE

By William Pike

“Are you EK’s friend?”, a man came up to me and asked in the bar of the Lake Victoria Hotel in July 1984. It was then a strange and dangerous place.

The only other guest at the hotel was a Polish telecommunications engineer. The remaining rooms were occupied by about 100 Nasa agents and their families.

The week before, I had landed in Nairobi en route to the bush to report on the NRA for the Observer newspaper. My contact was Eriya Kategaya who I had first met in London in 1983 at the School of Oriental and African Studies where I was studying.

At that time Kategaya was the external head and de facto Number Two of the NRA/M. He had organised my trip to Uganda at a very difficult time when thousands of people were being massacred and insecurity was at its height.

The man who came up to me in the Lake Vic was Aston Kajara and with his colleague, the late Edward Tumusiime. They took me to Kampala where, with a lot of difficulty, they arranged for me to walk into the Luwero Triangle from Kasubi.

After a few weeks in Uganda, both scary and inspirational, I made it back to Nairobi and spent several days with Eriya before flying back to London.

Eriya wanted to know every little detail about my trip but he also wanted to take care of me, to make me feel comfortable. Beneath a reserved exterior, he was a kind person. He was also a man of few words, but every word counted. If he told you something, you knew it was true.

As the bush war intensified, Eriya needed to coordinate with European governments and came to London. The NRM had no money so Ben Matogo, the NRM London representative, asked if Eriya could stay in my house while I was in China on an extended reporting trip. I got back after a month and slept on the living room floor while Eriya continued to use my bedroom as he rallied support from the diaspora and foreign supporters for the struggle.

Museveni, at that stage in Sweden, would call Eriya almost every day to discuss developments. Where he was staying, every phone call to the house would start and end with a series of loud clicks, presumably MI6 tapping the phone.

Then came the Basilio Okello coup on July 27, 1985. I heard it on the World Service and called up to Eriya who came rushing down the stairs. The phone started ringing; Ugandans, international media, everyone wanted to talk to him. Eriya booked himself on the evening flight to Nairobi and I drove him to Heathrow airport.

I interviewed Eriya as I drove. He had to hold the tape recorder and microphone while I asked the questions. Waiting for the traffic lights, I asked him if he thought that Museveni should become president, a taboo question in the past as the NRM had not wanted to alienate any potential supporters.

“Why not?”, replied Eriya. “I think he has done more for this country than anyone else”.

That became the front page story of The Guardian the next day, along with an analysis that the NRA would almost inevitably capture power.

I saw Eriya again when I visited the liberated zone in 1985 and went to Uganda after the capture of power in January 1986, but I would rarely spend as much time one on one with him. As power approached, there were always people to meet, decisions to take, deals to be cut. As the First Deputy Prime Minister in the new government, he was a busy man.

Then in early March, Eriya changed my life forever. I was at my desk in South on the 13th floor of New Zeal and House in Trafalgar Square when Eriya rang up. He asked me if I wanted to come to Uganda to run the government newspaper, provisionally called The New Vision. He was calling me unofficially but if I was interested he would pass my name to the Minister of Information.

And for the next 20 years, I ran The New Vision. Uganda and Africa became my life.

Those were heady days as the NRM project got underway, rescuing Uganda from death and dictatorship and ushering in a people’s government. It is easy now to forget the excitement and idealism of that time.

So many have fallen by the wayside since then.

Despite being politically marginalised, Eriya somehow stayed as a reminder of the hope of that time. Whatever his political trajectory after 1986, he did not sacrifice his principles. He was not a rich man, he did not cheat or backstab. He remained true to the NRM ideals. He did not betray the revolution.

Uganda will be a poorer place without the presence of Eriya to remind us of that original dream.

The writer is the CEO at The Star Publications (Kenya) and managing director at Capital Radio Uganda. He was formerly managing Director/ editor-in-Chief of The New Vision