{UAH} Killed for concealing Museveni, Lutamaguzi's family now regrets

A picture of the heir of the Lutamaguzi family - Jimmy Ssemanda - and inset is Lutamaguzi 

By Richard Wanambwa

Posted  Sunday, January 26  2014 at  02:00

In Summary

As the NRM marks 28 years since capturing power today, Sunday Monitor's Richard Wanambwa caught-up with Violet Nakitende, the elder daughter of the late Eldard Medard Lutamaguzi who was reportedly murdered by Uganda National Liberation Army in Luweero in 1982.

I was already married and living in Mugogo, in Nakaseke District when at around 4am, I heard people making noise and I thought they were the usual fights because fighting between government forces and rebels was rampant.

However, at around 2pm, I heard the news about the killings in Kikandwa, but little did I know my father was part of the fights until a well-wisher told me that among the dead included my father. I cried and prepared to go there but all people in Kikandwa had fled due to fear.

As I contemplated what to do, two people came and told me that the bodies had been collected in one place and that there was nobody there. But I insisted with another lady whose husband had been killed too to walk to Kikandwa. Unfortunately, we reached there when all the nine bodies had been buried.

We also heard that those responsible for their death had just been killed but we didn't know who killed them. We then ran back into the forest and hid but at night we went back to our homes. What pains me is that despite this suffering, I never saw daddy being buried.

It is said that because the burial was done hurriedly due to fear, the grave was shallow. I had found the body of one of my uncles lying in a pool of blood abandoned when we tried to walk to Kikandwa. It was scary and a double tragedy for me to lose a father and an uncle on the same day.

On our way back, we heard that houses had been burnt in the neighbouring village and the person killed there was a Gombolola chief, so there was heavy deployment of police and army around the village. With such incidents, people deserted the villages and opted for urban centres as villages became a death trap. But it was hard to tell who the rebels were and who the government forces were because all of them wore similar uniforms. It was hard to say anything against either the government or the rebels because you couldn't tell who was in your vicinity.

We kept on moving from place to place and it is because of these movements that my first child died.
I still wonder why there was no deployment in our village yet there used to be security personnel in other areas. Our grandparents later told us that daddy was in the house and he knew of the plan to invade the house the previous day. He was warned of the impending attack because soldiers had been sighted around home during the day doing vigilance he refused to run away.

Daddy had a young child called Muwanga, whom he loved so dearly. So running away meant disuniting him from this child. So that night, he sat in the living room listening and paying attention to what was going on outside, but as he listened, his father (our grandfather) sent a young boy called Sserujongi at about 1am to alert him to runaway since vehicles had parked on the main road with soldiers as indication that they were coming for him.

However, before the boy could reach the compound, the rebels bundled him on to a pick-up truck. When they reached our home, it is said daddy and the little Muwanga hid under the bed, but they were found. I was around 24 years during the insurgency.

Life after his death hasn't been easy, especially for my young siblings. The official wife whom daddy left behind passed on and growing up was really terrible, everyone had to provide for him or herself.

22 children
Daddy fathered 22 children but each child struggled on his or her own. For example, I grew up alone and even settling here is because of my mother who gave me this piece of land. For the Lutamaguzi's as family, nobody knows how one spends a night or how they live since there is no help and guardian to bring us together.

That aside, there is no common factor that can bring us together. However, during the installation of the heir to our father about 15 years ago, President Museveni said he had become a son in the family. As children of the Lutamaguzi, that was relief because we thought that as a family, finally, a helper, a rescuer had been gotten but he (helper) has never set foot here to see the children he leads. We have also failed to reach him because each of us has problems, you can see the kind of house I live in and the suffering I have undergone and I continue to undergo daily.

We have reached out to some people but they have told us that the only thing he (President) gives out and which we should benefit from is State House scholarships. But really, old people like us cannot go back to school. For us, we thought, as he said he was one of us in the family, he would send to us assistance or someone to ascertain what we desire and know what we can do because, as mature people, we can do either business or agriculture because we still have some land.

But what is saddening is that even those uncles who contributed in the war haven't been given any assistance. Whenever we reach out to those leaders in the district, they always remind us that we were supposed to study but squandered the chance.

Apart from the house they built for the heir, there is nothing much and secondly, how will that house help or accommodate 22 children well knowing that each child has a different mother? It is only the heir who got the house and maybe handshakes and a little handout.

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Where there is a will, there is always a way.