I survived the gallows

THE verdict was guilty. The sentence, death. Like the misapprehended Devil’s Disciple, he took it as it came. But in a bizarre twist of events, Elias Wanyama ultimately leapt over it. How it happened remains a fairytale — because the indelible daze in which he lives today still tells him it cannot have happened.

“Following various testimonies presented to the jury against you, and by the fact that you lacked an alibi to clear your name, this court finds you guilty of kidnap with intent to murder as charged. You will therefore face a death penalty by hanging.” Those were the words of the late Justice Ignatius Mukanza, who adjudicated the case: Uganda Government versus Elias Wanyama.

Nineteen years after the sentence, Wanyama, 57, vividly recalls every single day on death row and recounts his ordeal.

It was on June 30, 1988 at about 7:00pm when I was sentenced. That was the time of reviewing all atrocities that had been committed during the past regimes, especially of former presidents Milton Obote and Idi Amin.

Back in 1982, I had been working with Obote’s Presidential Protection Unit (PPU), an army that escorted him wherever he went. I had joined the army just after I had finished high school. Bloodshed was the order of the day in this turmoil-laden regime.

In one incident on May 18, 1982, six people were abducted in Mbarara district and murdered at Kireka Barracks in Kampala the following day.

I was said to have been on a panel of officials that ordered the abduction and subsequent murder, which led to my being remanded.

Six years later, the case was resurrected. My alibi that I was in Bushenyi district supervising the transformation of a former county chief’s house into a presidential lodge, couldn’t be corroborated.

The Tanzanian presidential guards, with whom I had been in Bushenyi on the said days, had long gone back home and could not be traced to attest to my claim.

Much as 23 of the 26 witnesses said they didn’t know me at all, only the testimony that implicated me was upheld.

I said a silent prayer: “Please God, enable the judge to discern the truth from lies. Let me attest to your mercy tonight if you do exist.” But I was wrong to think God would listen.

The court was filled to capacity as the ruling was being passed. “This court finds you guilty of kidnap with intent to murder as charged.”

A chill ran down my spine that when asked to mitigate, I only asked: “Where is the justice that you always talk of? Where is the truth? Where is the love, God? Why have you forsaken me?”

As I desperately queried everything and everybody, the judge changed his robes from black to red. “You will, therefore, face a death penalty by hanging.”

My relatives cried bitterly.

My future came to a halt. I forgot everything, except the deafening sound of the judge’s gavel on the bench and his stone-cold words that echoed in my ears throughout the night.

By the time I realised I had been detained, it was 6:00am, when the door to my cell opened to a sight of mean-looking soldiers who had come to escort me in a convoy of army vehicles from Mbarara to Luzira Prison in Kampala.

We reached Luzira on July 1, 1988 at about 1:00pm. Along with me were my two old colleagues; Chris Rwakasiisi, who had been the Minister of State for Security, Office of the President in the Obote II regime, and Grace Murungi, who was a Special Branch officer in Mbarara in the same regime. Murungi subsequently died of an ailment while waiting for her demise in prison.

The sight of Luzira made death appear real. I knew I was innocent but here I was, headed for darkness at noon.

The old grotesque buildings further rubbed in the ugly thought as cops guided me to cell 20, B Section, Upper Prison.

The way to my cell went past the machine that operates the gallows. My legs suddenly felt like sticks of butter as the hangman’s noose came into view. Dangling back-and-forth, the noose increased or reduced its oscillations depending on the wind.

And as though welcoming me, the oscillations picked pace as I kept my eyes on the noose, even tilting my head after we had passed the stairs that led up to it.

I would envision my neck tightened by the noose for the next 12 years.

In my sleep, I would fight with death. I would think about the trauma my family was going through and fall into a daze that would result into troubled sleep.

Inmates tried to give me some hope after I had made an appeal 14 days into my sentence.

But, after my experience with court, I didn’t have the slightest speck of optimism. I had appealed just for formality, while waiting to die.

When I fell sick, I never went to hospital because I knew I would be repairing a body that would die anytime. Death felt very near when, in 1989, three convicts were hanged.

That evening, mean-looking soldiers in camouflage, hastily opened the gates. Without a word, they hoarded the three out.

As everyone sat in their cell nervously waiting for their turn, we heard the machine rolling the thick ropes. The gallows were just opposite my cell. Suddenly, it rolled again, punctuated by helpless groans that faded slowly into the night, until there was total silence.

Then came the banging as nails were being hammered into the coffins, before they could be whisked off to an unknown place. When the machine rolled one last time, we knew it had been done. Then naturally, we all sobbed.

In 1991, the Supreme Court replied confirming my hanging. I wrote a petition to President Yoweri Museveni. It was about that time that another seven convicts were executed. I relapsed into the old sorrowful memories.

I knew I wouldn’t survive the coming turn.

February 26, 1993, saw another group of eleven sent to the gallows. As I sat waiting for my turn, I was picked together with seven others. I said my byes to my friends in the cells. “Please God, make it less painful for me. And if I must die, let me die instantly,” I prayed.

We were taken to an office in which sat a dark-skinned mean-looking man. I knew it was the place where our case would be reviewed before proceeding to the gallows. But I was wrong. The man delivered good news, the last thing I expected to come out of a man with his looks.

Our sentence had been commuted from death penalty to life imprisonment. It was as if I had resurrected from death. I was immediately relegated to another cell where life was a little relaxed. It was only then that I started looking forward to seeing the next day. For five years, I had been thinking of only one thing — death, which had actually blurred my memory, because I couldn’t remember some of the things I knew before.

It took me a month to believe that I would live another day. Although I got used to it after some time, the thoughts of the rolling machine, the corpses falling in the coffins and the hammering remained on my mind for the eight years I spent on life imprisonment.

In 1996, there was another hanging in which 26 convicts, most of whom were my old friends, were executed. One could not tell who had been executed next. You only find out from an inmate you bumped into at the prison hospital, that your friend is no more. The eight years on life imprisonment couldn’t wipe away the six on death row.

July 13, 2000, 4:30pm. I was picked from my cell and told I had been pardoned under the presidential prerogative of mercy. I was a free man again.

I only believed it the next day when I saw the gates opening for me to start my journey to Bugiri, my home district.

I had spent the night in another section, thinking of the people I would meet outside and wondering whether I would express myself well in my mother tongue – Lusamya.

I wasn’t used to talking to people as my visitation would last only five minutes. I thought of how my siblings, born in my absence would look like and wondered how old my children were. “Will they ever love me?” I mused.

At home, several things had changed. My kin who had been born after my imprisonment looked at me as a stranger.

Seeing people flock to see me made me feel like an animal in the zoo. I was sentenced at the age of 38 and here I was, coming out at 50.

I missed out on the most vibrant stage in marriage and the chance to strengthen my love with my wife and children.

I found my first daughter had reached university. The second and third born were in Senior Six. They recently graduated.

Seven years out of jail now, I am trying to be a parent again but it’s not easy to parent an adult. I am finding it hard to relate to them as their dad. The authority I am supposed to have as a father is not evident. I have to learn their likes and dislikes, how they feel about me and a lot of things that need patience.

I notice the differences when I visit other people’s homes and see how the children relate with their parents. It’s so different and makes me sad. To help me fit in, we decided to have another baby (a girl), so that I can take part in her up-bringing.

That’s where I am now deriving pleasure as a parent. She is four years old and very fond of me, which also worries me as the rest might think we are neglecting them.

We decided that we wouldn’t talk about prison anymore, because it makes my children cry whenever they hear the story. I think God sent me this episode to help me understand life better.

I am now a volunteer human rights activist, advocating the abolition of the death sentence under the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative’s Coalition for Advocacy of Abolition of the Death Penalty.

I also started an organisation called Friends of Hope for Condemned Prisoners, which helps redeem ex-convicts.

I am also running a retail shop in Nakulabye, as a way of helping me interact with people. After work, I go back home to my wife and children at Kazo, where we are living happily in the house she built in my absence.

I am happy, but the wound in my heart still bleeds. I am accepting that it happened and that nothing can be done to reverse it.

Having become a counsellor for those on death row, I have learnt to to go on with life. It’s a promise I have made to myself.

As told to Nigel Nassar