{UAH} THE MURDER OF BENEDICTO KIWANUKA

The Murder of Democratic Party (DP) Leader Benedicto Kiwanuka

A well-publicised murder was that of Benedicto Kagimu Kiwanuka, the president general of the Democratic Party and at the time of his death, chief justice of the Uganda High Court. He is generally believed to have been murdered on orders of Amin allegedly for collaborating with the exile groups in Tanzania. He was then reportedly dragged out of the High Court building in Kampala in Sept. 1972, forced into a car boot, and taken to the Makindye military police barracks where he was killed. What really happened to Kiwanuka?

 

Two days before Kiwanuka was kidnapped, Obote had allegedly received a letter from him, presumably to affirm Kiwanuka’s support for Obote and the anti-Amin struggle. But, as just stated, these letters allegedly written by Obote or Oyite-Ojok were actually penned by FRONASA. A revealing piece of evidence that points to FRONASA’s hand in Kiwanuka’s murder came in an interview with the African current affairs magazine Drum in 1980 by Kiwanuka’s widow, Maxensia Zalwango Kiwanuka. Asked about the circumstances of her husband’s death, which at that time she blamed on Amin personally, she told the reporter V.P. Kirega-Gava: “To prevent any information from reaching us, some Banyankole who were present as my husband was being butchered by Amin were killed under mysterious circumstances.” Several questions arise out of Mrs. Kiwanuka’s interview. To begin with, few heads of state in the modern world would personally carry out executions when they had squads of agents who could easily carry out the deed while leaving the president looking innocent.

 

There have been claims that Amin personally executed many of his victims. This would not be possible if Amin had vehemently denied any role by his government in their killing. Secondly, even if this one head of state Amin was the kind to personally murder his opponents, almost all accounts of Amin’s alleged brutality mention that he surrounded himself with and relied on trusted and vicious Nubian, Sudanese, Lugbara, and Kakwa killers from his West Nile home district and southern Sudan. A few others have mentioned that Amin’s State Research Bureau intelligence service also employed Rwandese Tutsi refugees who had lived in Uganda since 1959. If these accounts are correct and typical, what then would Amin have been doing with Banyankole men at the time he was personally killing Kiwanuka? Yoweri Museveni had made the Banyankole his adoptive tribe and here a few clues begin to avail themselves. It would be unusual for Amin, especially when personally killing a prominent Ugandan like Kiwanuka, to trust the Banyankole or any other tribes from southern Uganda to be at the scene of his deeds.

 

Amin knew that he was being opposed by the guerrilla leader Museveni. Since Museveni came from Ankole, army and security officers from Ankole were potential supporters of Museveni. Amin would not have taken the risk of murdering Kiwanuka while in the company of these Banyankole who might pass details of these killings by Amin himself to the anti-government groups in exile in Tanzania or Europe. If indeed he committed the deed himself, Amin in all probability would have been accompanied by only the most trusted and loyal of his own tribesmen from the West Nile area. Could these Banyankole whom Maxensia Kiwanuka referred to in her Drum interview have been the FRONASA agents who were later ordered to kill and cover up someone’s role in Kiwanuka’s murder?

 

After all, if Banyankole agents in the company of President Amin could be killed to prevent any information from reaching Kiwanuka’s family, so too could security men from any other tribes. Amin who came to power through a military coup would know enough about conspiracy to be aware that anybody, even people from his own tribe, could pass information on to Kiwanuka’s family either for money or after becoming disgruntled with Amin in later years.

In 1974, a Tanzanian intelligence officer, Deusdedit Kusekwa Masanja, captured in Uganda gave an account of Kiwanuka’s death to Drum which published it in the March 1974 issue of the magazine. Masanja said he witnessed Kiwanuka being killed in the Makindye military police barracks in Kampala on 28 Sept., 1972.

 

The most striking part of Masanja’s account was his failure to reveal that Amin personally killed Kiwanuka or the failure by Drum to mention that, if indeed this is what happened. Any credible news agency or publication would know that an eye witness account of Amin’s personal hand in the murder of his former chief justice would be the news story or news feature of the year, if not the decade. Sincerely why was this not mentioned, if Amin was responsible?

 

Former FRONASA assassins more than 30 years later admitted that Kiwanuka had been abducted and murdered by FRONASA. According to these former FRONASA agents, Kiwanuka was abducted from the High Court buildings and killed by FRONASA. On 16 July, 1987, the Citizen, a weekly newspaper with ties to the Democratic Party explained in some detail what happened to Kiwanuka: “He was abducted on the 21st September 1972 from the High Court Chambers by three armed men in civilian clothes. He was driven in a Pegueot 504 No. UUU 171 towards Kampala International Hotel. Since then not a shred of light has been shed on the manner in which he was killed nor the place where the murder took place.”

A government report on Kiwanuka following his kidnap said: “He was arrested at the High Court by three persons posing as security officers. Their true identity and the fate of the Chief Justice remain a mystery.” The three men who abducted Kiwanuka were FRONASA assassins and according to former FRONASA fighters, at least two these three men sent by Museveni to abduct and murder Kiwanuka were from the Baganda tribe. Museveni, even after he took power in 1986, continued to use the method of assigning Baganda hit-men to deal with prominent Baganda.

The role of John Wycliffe Kazzora in Museveni’s guerrilla activities

 

On 2 Dec., 1972, Amin met three senior Roman Catholic leaders in the country who had come to him to petition him over 58 white western missionaries who had just been expelled from Uganda. Amin issued a warning to the clergymen about letters that they were allegedly distributing in collaboration with the guerrillas to “spread confusion in the country.” These three leaders were Emmanuel Cardinal Nsubuga, the archbishop of Kampala, Bishop Ddungu of Masaka diocese, and Bishop Kyangire of Gulu diocese.

 

One of these letters was reportedly written by a Ugandan lawyer and businessman based in Nairobi named John Wycliffe Kazzora. It had been written to Cardinal Nsubuga seeking his help in the struggle to overthrow Amin. Three days later on 5 Dec., 1972, a letter appeared in the Daily Nation newspaper of Nairobi by Kazzora in which he denied having written the letter referred to by Amin. Kazzora said that letter was a forgery. It was important for Kazzora to clear his name. But sincerely why did Kazzora take that move? His British-influenced pretensions and mannerisms notwithstanding, Kazzora was by and large a respectable man whose law practice was established and to be seen to be part of conspiracies against the Uganda government would not have done him any good. After all, following the 1971 military coup, Idi Amin toured the country including in Aug. 1971 the Ankole area where Kazzora originated. The UPC newspaper, The People of 17 Aug. quoted Kazzora addressing Amin on behalf of the people in the area: “Kazzora congratulated President Amin and the members of the Uganda Army and Airforce for their successful take-over of the Obote corrupt regime. He told the President that he could have taken over the government many years back but because of his sincerity…the General did not do so until it was absolutely necessary.”

Amin, aware of Kazzora’s education and influence — he was the first lawyer in Ankole — respected him and sought to involve him further in national affairs.

 

In one instance, Amin ordered that Kazzora represent Uganda in a regional meeting of the East African Airways. In a letter dated 22 Sept., 1971, a few weeks after his praise of Amin, the President’s staff wrote the following letter: “His Excellency the President of Uganda has directed that in tomorrow’s meeting of EAA Corporation board of directors J.W.R. Kazzora will represent Uganda instead of [Adrian] M. Sibo. Make arrangements that will enable Kazzora to participate as a full member representing Uganda.” That was the relationship between Amin and Kazzora. But suddenly by 1972 it had all changed. Kazzora was now firmly anti-Amin and was by that time in exile in Kenya.

 

Kazzora became one of Museveni’s most ardent and important supporters in his campaign against Amin. What happened to turn this from mutual respect between Amin and Kazzora, to one’s fleeing the other into exile, in fear for his life? How did Kazzora, a prosperous lawyer, come to be entangled in Museveni’s dark world of guerrilla subversion? Museveni mentions this in Sowing the Mustard Seed:

“It was at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi that I accidentally met the Kazzora family in December 1972…Soon after this first meeting with Kazzora, and his agreement to work with us, Amin put pressure on the Kenyan government which obliged him to leave for England. Kazzora had thus already left by the time I returned to Nairobi in Jan. 1973, but he nominated Janet to work as a liaison and courier between himself and me” (page 87).

It is interesting the way Museveni says he “accidentally met the Kazzora family.” Kazzora, wealthy, from Ankole, well-educated, with important contacts in Britain, was just the sort of ally Museveni needed for his guerrilla campaign.

 

Museveni orchestrated a false series of events and by so doing manipulated Kazzora into believing that Amin wanted to murder him and so Kazzora fled into exile. Then with him now established in Nairobi, Museveni “accidentally” met him and thus began many years of collaboration between the two men. Museveni once again gives himself away by stating in his memoirs that soon after their first meeting at the Nairobi Hilton, Kazzora would have been so suddenly convinced to join Museveni in fighting Amin. It would have been one thing for Museveni to meet Kazzora in Nairobi and their casual conversation about the state of affairs in Uganda led Kazzora to agree with Museveni that Uganda was in a crisis; it would have been quite another thing for this one accidental meeting to create such resolve in Kazzora that it was sufficient to turn him into one of Museveni’s closest allies.

Museveni had to have worked toward just such an outcome by manipulating Kazzora into detesting the same Amin he had so lavishly praised only the previous year and whom Amin also regarded as an important official in the Uganda government.

 

The letter Amin quoted on 2 Dec. in his meeting with Ugandan church leaders in which Kazzora was mentioned, followed by Kazzora’s denial of any involvement in subversive activity in his 5 Dec. letter to the Daily Nation, and finally this “accidental” meeting with Museveni at the Nairobi Hilton Hotel later that Dec., provide the clearest proof of all that Yoweri Museveni — not David Oyite-Ojok or Milton Obote — was the author of these letters whose purpose was to stir up trouble against Amin. And of course, Museveni did not write the truth of how he really met Janet Kataha. The entry of Janet Kataha into Museveni’s world, according to him, began with her role as a courier. This, as we have just seen, is not true. As has been said, Amin well knew what Museveni was doing and what he was capable of. Following the 17 Sept., 1972 guerrilla invasion of Mbarara, a civil servant named Francis Gureme, who at the time was an undersecretary in the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, was summoned by Amin for questioning. Gureme had driven toward Mbarara that Sunday morning and ran into the invasion underway. Amin wanted to know that Gureme had driven to Mbarara for. As Gureme explained it in an article in the Sunday Monitor on 30 May, 2004, “Amin…questioned me closely about what I had been doing in Mbarara that Sunday and whether I had met Museveni.” During the 1970s, the national intelligence agency, the State Research Bureau dedicated a desk headed by Adam Bizegeni, whose sole duty was to monitor Museveni’s guerrilla activities.

EM         -> {   Gap   at   46  } – {Allan Barigye is a Rwandan predator}

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"