{UAH} Family Members Commemorate Public Execution of FRONASA Recruits

Family Members Commemorate Public Execution of FRONASA Recruits:

Forty years ago on Saturday February 10th, 1973, residents of Kabale experienced one of the darkest days in post-colonial time when   three Bakiga men;Joseph Bitwari, James Karambuzi and David Kangire   were publicly executed in Kabale Stadium.

These men, recruits in the guerrilla army of  Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the Front for National Salvation (FRONASA) were gunned down in the packed stadium by soldiers of high handed President Idi Amin Dada.



An old photo of James Karambuzi and President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni

Shortly after the coup, Museveni who until the coup was working as a researcher in President Apollo Milton Obote's office, left for Tanzania and started mobilising clandestine activities against the new government. He started recruiting people into Fronasa, and among the recruits were Karambuzi, Joseph Bitwari and David Kangire who was a student at Kigezi College Butobere.

In his book, Sowing the Mustard Seed, Museveni narrates Fronasa's leading role in the September 1972 attack on Simba Barracks in Mbarara, now the Second Division army headquarters at Makenke, in which the rebels were nearly annihilated by the Idi Amin forces.



Following the attack, the Amin regime launched reprisal attacks hunting for suspected rebels and their collaborators where several young men were arrested in different parts of the country, including Karambuzi, Bitwari and Kangire.



President Museveni with Happy Karambuzi (R) lay a wreath at the tombs of some of the children of James Karambuzi in 2015 when he visited

A military tribunal sentenced the suspects to death by firing squad, to be carried out in the suspects' home areas. In Kabale, these executions were carried out on February 10, 1973 at Kabale Municipal Stadium.

Similar executions took place in Mbale where a former soldier, Captain Tom Masaba from Bugisu and a one Nkoko from Busoga were killed. In Fort Portal, two other Fronasa recruits, Phares Kasoro and Abwooli Malibo were executed at Boma Grounds.

The military government put announcements in the media asking the public to attend these executions in Kabale stadium.

Happy Karambuzi, 52, son of James Karambuzi,  the only surviving child out of 12 children recounts that his father had become friends with Museveni in the early 70s.



Happy Karambuzi

"He used to come here in our sitting room and hold meetings. But in 1973 one morning, our home was surrounded by soldiers of Amin and my father was arrested from the bathroom," he says.

"One month later he was brought back with the other two and kept in a police cell until their execution."

Happy and all his family members were compelled to attend and watch their father's death.

He says it was the most traumatic event of his life. His mother, he says suffered a mental illness afterwards.

"They didn't even give us the body. We just heard that they were buried in the Kabale cemetery that is opposite our home."

In the years that followed, many of his siblings died including Charles Karambuzi who worked in the President (Museveni's) Office, as well as Fred Musinguzi Karambuzi and Moses Buzaare Karambuzi who were soldiers in Museveni's government.

Happy Karambuzi says that in 2015, President Museveni visited their home and promised to help the struggling children and grandchildren by constructing a commercial structure on their land in Kabale Municipality.

The president also promised to donate a lorry to the family and sponsor some of the grandchildren in school.

Indeed, the building construction begun in 2019 and is nearing completion while all the children's school fees is being catered for by State House.



The Karamuzi family building constructed by President Museven,

"The only thing I would wish for is for some capital to start a business once thus building is finished," he said.

At the Kabale Stadium where the execution took place, a slab bearing the names of the three men was erected.

Athanasius Mujasi, the LC I chairperson of Igabiro cell in Mwanjari ward in Kabale municipality where Karambuzi hailed from asks the NRM government to   build a new, modern regional stadium on that very site, in commemoration of the three heroes.

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"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"

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