{UAH} Lubiri attack: We did not expect Obote to react that way - Nkangi

Lubiri attack: We did not expect Obote to react that way - Nkangi

Nkangi arrives at Parliament when he was Finance minister. FILE PHOTO 

In Summary

Series. Barely two years after Joash Mayanja Nkangi gave up a legislative and ministerial post in the central government to become a Katikkiro in the Buganda Kingdom, he found himself at the centre of the 1966 Buganda crisis. It would end with him and the Kabaka in exile. In this second part of our series "Road to Exile", Mayanja Nkangi recounts his narrow escape to Sunday Monitor's Henry Lubega. The first article in the series was published in the Sunday Monitor of May 12, 2013.

Joash Mayanja Nkangi was the Katikkiro (Prime Minister) in the Mengo government during the 1966 crisis when the central government troops, commanded by then Maj. Gen. Idi Amin Dada, attacked the Lubiri (palace) forcing Kabaka Edward Muteesa II to flee to exile in UK where he would die three years later.

The attack on the Lubiri did not just send the Kabaka to exile, it also led to the abolition of Buganda Kingdom – which had enjoyed a quasi-federal relationship with the central government – as well as all the other kingdoms in the country.
Two days before the attack on the Lubiri on May 24, 1966, the Lukiko had passed a resolution asking President Milton Obote to take the central government's capital city off Buganda's land and I as the Katikkiro wrote the official letter to that effect.
Neither the Kabaka – and the Lukiiko for that matter – nor I expected President Obote to react the way he did.

This is why on the fateful day, I woke up very early at about 5:30am and prepared to go and see the Kabaka at his Twekobe residence in the palace. Not that there was something important to discuss; it was just a premonition I had; that I should check on him.
My official house called the Butikiro which presently houses the Joint Clinical Research Center was very near the palace so I just walked over, like I had done countless times.
At about 6am, I returned to my house and climbed back into bed. I was still in bed at around 7am when I heard bullets on the roof top of my house. I had a guest, a ssaza chief from Kyadondo called Kigozi. He wanted to put up a fight using his gun but the soldiers were too many outside; I told him not to fire back at them.

Panicking, I escaped through the back door of the Butikiro and ran down the valley between the Butikilo and Lubaga Road. When I reached the main road, I found a prince from Tooro, by sheer coincidence, who offered to drive me up to my office in Bulange Building. I stayed in the office up until 7pm as I watched the Lubiri being fired at.

At one moment while standing in the window looking over the palace, a bullet hit the side of the window where I was standing but by God's grace it never hit me.
It was around 7:30pm when the phone in my office rang. It was Mrs Kamanyi, the wife of one of the ministers in the Kabaka's government, who called and told me that the Kabaka had escaped alive. Shortly after her call, another call from Mr Chivers, a muzungu who was head of the Kabaka's police. He advised that I leave the office very fast; that the army was looking for me.
It was now night and safer to sneak out.

Escape
Even then, I don't recall how I left the Bulange Building to end up at Dr Lwanga's house just below the palace near Bulange. Lwanga was a son of Omutaka Kabazi, one of the Mengo officials then.

I stayed with the Lwanga family for one night and the following night, his wife Mildred Lwanga brought a vehicle to take me to a home somewhere in Kagoma, along Bombo road. It is them who planned were they were taking me; I had no idea where we were going. There were several roadblocks along the way and as disguise, I was dressed in khaki shorts and a khaki short sleeved shirt.

I was taken to the residence of a one Kibuuka, who was known in the area to have a mental problem. He was staying alone with several bee hives within his compound; this is the place people least expected the Katikiro to be hiding. I stayed with the man for slightly more than two weeks.

One evening as I was taking an evening walk to stretch my legs, I by passed two men asking themselves where the Katikiro was hiding. During that time Obote went on air and warned that "wherever we will get Mayanja Nkangi, there will be fire". With that broadcast, friends advised me to flee the country. I could not go through Entebbe Airport as I could easily get caught so the only route for me was through Busia to Nairobi. Friends organised for my transport.

Mohamed Ssensonga, a driver with Ministry of Works, was assigned to transport me up to Busia. I was made to lie down on the back of a government lorry that was taking construction material to Tororo.

I was sandwiched between iron bars and cement covered with a tarpaulin. We passed all the road blocks without incident until we reached the one at the Owen Falls Dam bridge at Jinja. Here, a soldier moved to the driver's side asking what he was carrying and before he [driver] could answer, he moved to where I was and lifted off the tarpaulin but luckily he didn't see me, only noticing the iron bars and cement. He waved us on.

Ssensonga first dropped me at Busia border before proceeding with the journey to Tororo. Here, Lameka Ntambi was waiting for me to take me up to Kisumu. Hiding in his car, I was taken to a farm in Kisumu owned by an Indian called Kahral Sadirilm but two days later, his brother who was operating a shop on Kampala Road dealing in TV sets and radios, came saying I should leave as Obote soldiers had been to his shop asking about me.

The next morning Kahral drove to Nairobi, taking me to a hotel owned by Visrum a.k.a. Namubiru. She was the only woman in the Buganda Lukiko; that's how she go the name Namubiru. She was the wife of Aldina Visrum, a prominent businessman in Kampala then. I stayed at the hotel for two weeks as I was planning my next move. But I had no money and I had not moved with a passport so I had no way of going out of Nairobi. It was Grace Lumala who managed to bring me my passport to enable me move to London.

Once the passport puzzle was solved, the next issue was how to raise the air ticket fare to London. Peter Mpagi Bakaluba was by then working with the East Africa Airways. He and other Baganda organised for the ticket and the money for the airport tax and soon I was airborne.

Landing in UK
I landed at the UK's Heathrow Airport like a rascal! I had an overgrown and unkempt beard, with no single luggage. The man at the immigration desk looked at my passport indicating I was a minister in the Uganda government but the way I looked, he could not believe it. He told me to stand aside until he finished all the other passengers then he went and made some calls. Afterwards he came and cleared me.

When I got to London life was not easy for me. The first two weeks I was housed by Leonard Joy, my former lecturer at Makerere University. As he was leaving, another former lecturer of mine at Oxford University Michael Foot paid 200 British pounds for my hotel where I moved next after Joy's departure. Even this money was used up and I resorted to living on the goodwill of people all the time. At one point I went to some Greeks in London and borrowed up to 400 pounds!

During that time, I sent several applications to potential employers but a friend advised me that no one is ready to employee a former minister.
In late 1967, I saw an advertisement by Lancaster University for a lecturer. I applied and this became my first and only job during my exile in London. I was an economics lecturer at Lancaster University from 1967 until early 1971 when Amin overthrew the Obote government.

One morning as I was going to lecture, a friend (a white man) told me the Obote government had been overthrown. That was good news for me. Within three weeks I was back in Uganda. At Entebbe Airport, Amin's men wanted to arrest me but their commander stopped them.
After three days I went back to London to officially resign from my job at Lancaster University to come back home permanently. Since then I have never gone back to exile.
As a lawyer, I set up my own chambers called Mayaja Nkangi and Co Advocates operating from Nkurumah Road. For the entire eight years of Amin's rule, I was never disturbed and I spent my time at my chambers. One time he called me for a meeting with the then Prince Mutebi (Now Kabaka) and other Baganda elders at the conference centre.

In 1980, when multi-party politics opened, I started the Conservative Party (CP) and contested in the general election. I never won but that I knew I would not win. After the elections I went back to my chambers until 1985 after the Tito Okello Lutwa's coup. However, I was so surprised when I heard my name being read on the radio as the new minister of labour because I had never been consulted. I was invited to Parliament the next day to be sworn in. Others did but I refused. The then Chief Justice Peter Allen told me "I admire your courage".

One week after turning down the post, a policeman came to my chambers and told me they were waiting for me at Parliament. My CP friends advised me to go and be sworn in as a minister, fearing that I would be looked at as an enemy.

A few months after taking the labour ministry office, the Lutwa government was overthrown by Museveni's NRA guerilla fighters. I was then appointed a minister of education where I served until 1989. I would move to other ministries until 2002, after which I was appointed the chairman of the Uganda Land Commission to-date.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/PeoplePower/-/689844/1856226/-/10m4ovtz/-/index.html

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