THE UNANSWERED QUESTION; Was Gen Elly Tumwine Very Enthusiastic About The Muhoozi Project?

 

THE UNANSWERED QUESTION; Was Gen Elly Tumwine Very Enthusiastic About The Muhoozi Project?

·        In 2020 The Intelligence Agencies Briefed President Museveni That Gen Elly Tumwine’s Health Was Not Suitable For Him To Continue As Minister    

Gen Elly Tumwine who passed on this morning, was a man of very many personalities ranging from being a teacher, artist, musician, a born again Christian, a soldier but most of all a committed cadre of the National Resistance Movement.

I first met Gen Elly Tumwine in 2007 when my journalism journey was beginning to flow. At that time the UPDF was making preparations to celebrate the 26^th Tareh Sita celebrations which normally take place on the 6^th February to commemorate the day the NRA stormed Kabamba barracks.

We were making a special edition of that Historic day, so we needed to approach the principal actors of the Kabamba attack. I went with my colleague, who is now in London, to Elly Tumwine’s art-home at Nomo gallery in Nakasero.

We found him doing what he loves most, teaching some whites who had gathered in one of the rooms at Nomo gallery.

We heard his smooth baritone voice echoing at the entrance which is almost 30 meters away from the road.

We had to wait for almost three to four hours, having arrived at 2pm in the afternoon; we patiently had to wait up to 6pm when he got time to meet us.

His beautiful daughter (who was around 16 years) and performed the duties as his personal assistant had notified him that some journalists were waiting to conduct an interview with him.

When he came out, he smiled and laughed at us. On two or three occasions we had grown impatient and wanted to abandon the interview-and he could read the impatience on our faces.

He looked at us and acknowledged that he had made us wait for far too long-but advised to adopt patience as a virtue in life.

My colleague had been mowed with hunger and looked pale in the face with dry lips. He was insisting that we leave and do other things, but although I was equally dying of hunger, i flatly rejected to quit.

I insisted on waiting because the pullout magazine would not make sense without his interview since he was a key protagonist in the Kabamba episode and had even lost an eye during the struggle.

He told us that the president (Museveni) had been his teacher in secondary school in the 60s and that he never knew he would join the army but crude circumstances pushed him into the war struggle. he also revealed that he actually lost his eye at a place called Bukomero and was given a bicycle ride for almost 30 kilometers before he connected to Mulago hospital and eventually Nairobi where he got treatment. it therefore comes as a coincidence that he died from Nairobi hospital where he had gone for treatment.

He gave us some slight information and lectured us about resilience and things like that. My colleague then made a mistake by asking a very stupid question-which went thus ‘’Gen Tumwine do you have a recollection of how many enemy soldiers you shot dead during the war’’?  

This question annoyed him so much that he expelled us.

‘’young fellows, you shouldn’t waste my time asking silly questions. Have you ever heard any military officer reveal such information’’?

We left and moped up some small stuff which we published.

I interfaced with him again when some sierra Leonean guy approached me and asked if I could help him get in touch with one of the UPDF generals to sign on his manuscript he had written about the war in Sierra Leone.

The fellow had told me that he was with Capt Valentine Strasser (who later shot to power as president of Sierra Leone at the age of 27 years) during the war in which rebels like Corporal Foday Sankoh ravaged Sierra Leone in what can be termed as one of Africa’s worst civil wars.

We went and met Gen Tumwine on the steps of parliament and he engaged us in a conversation by kept asking my colleague if he was indeed knew president Valentine Strasser.

We actually asked him why he had not written a book about what he had experienced in the 1981-86 bush war. To which he told us that he had obviously written but was mopping up some facts and trying to memorize some of the small details that he doesn’t wish to forget.

‘’You see, books of a biographic nature need plenty of time, because they basically tell your life story’’

He revealed that he would have loved to sign on the manuscript but he had no time of reading long things. ‘’And there is no way I can authoritatively recommend a book which I have not read to the end’’ he asserted.

At first as army commander he was notoriously arrogant to the extent that he closed an entire street that housed his residence in Kololo.

Later on he became born again and became very free, casual and very liberal with his life to the extent that he moved without escorts on the streets of Kampala and was ready to engage in any conversation you threw at him.

He maintained a lean frame throughout the time we saw him-which attests to the discipline he had.

From what we saw of him, he seemed to actually enjoy unreserved control of all the UPDF generals.

For instance when brig noble Mayombo died , I saw how he convened a small meeting of the UPDF Generals  that included Gen David Tinyefunza aka Sejjussa ,Gen Angina, and the late Gen Aronda Nyakairima (who was the CDF at the time), on the steps of parliament.

They seemed to be discussing Mayombo’s funeral arrangements that were due in fort portal. I noticed that he (Gen Tumwine) was the only one speaking for much of the time, assigning each one of them roles while they respectfully listened to him.

Nobody contradicted or interrupted him when he was speaking, which entails the discipline that you get in the army.

TOWARDS THE END

But towards the last two years of his reign as security minister, something happened that dented his image when he claimed that the security forces would shoot to kill the people demonstrating on the streets after the arrest of NUP party president Robert Kyagulanyi in which over 53 people were shot and killed by the Ugandan security agencies.

At that time he looked very frail and everyone got concerned about his health condition.

People power leader and NUP party president Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobiwine actually chided him by revealing that rather than issuing threats , Gen Tumwine needed help because he looked like someone who was about to die.

There are unconfirmed reports that when president Museveni received intelligence reports about the failing health of Gen Elly Tumwine, he dropped him as security minister. The president reportedly knew that (Gen Tumwine wouldn’t last longer for him to continue serving and therefore never wanted to endure the embarrassment of having one of his minister’s die in office.

Soon after that, Gen Tumwine was dropped as security minister, he issued a damning statement in which he advised president Museveni to prepare for a smooth peaceful transition of power.

He also shocked Ugandans when he labeled his boss as an autocratic leader (ningamba nyenka) who should listen rather than run the country on his own.

But one of the tricky questions surrounding his life was whether he subscribed to the Muhoozi project or not. It could have been interesting to hear from him in regard to such issues as they are what pre-occupy Ugandans today.

REST WELL GEN ELLY TUMWINE, YOU PLAYED YOUR PART

The Author Fred Daka Kamwada Is A Blogger, Journalist And Critical Thinker

kamwadafred@gmail.com