Abwooli Rujumba Omurungi W’ Abasambu, sometime mid- last year, whereas me and you soundly slept and snored, as if sleeping and snoring we would know, and while sleeping and snoring, we loathed and craved for what the sleeping and snoring do, the Kabaka of Buganda Ronald Fredrick Muwenda Mutebi II (May all his royal appellations be extolled and proclaimed skyhigh) fathered a son, whom in his exceedingly immense and matchless wisdom, named after his grandfather Ssekabaka Ssemakookiro. Buganda thus has a new (crown) prince! Obuganda Buladde!
Why he named the young prince as he did, for Richard is his name, we may never fathom. But Abwooli, didn’t the old sage of our village Eriabu Irabahake son of Aminon Jack sternly warn us together as we were seated beneath the other old bark tree against questioning and attempting interpretations at the deeds and ways of Kings before he descended, just like his forefathers before him, to the land where men gait not with legs but their backs as the boats on the Mwitanzige?
The mother, Rujumba, the mother is grandchild of Mugalula- clan head of the Nsenene (Grasshopper) Clan sitting at Ggomba and according to the customs, rites and traditions evolved and founded by these people- spanning well over four solid centuries of unbroken practice, a King belongs to the mother’s clan. Thus in case he assumes the throne of Buganda Nnamulondo, which he most possibly shall, Prince Richard Semakokiro will be deemed by the same traditions as belonging to the Nsenene Clan.
Just as the foundations of the Nsenene clan are steeped in deep controversy and contest, too is the birth of the Prince Ssemakookiro. It is told by legend that Buyonga’s daughter Wannyana was exceptionally beautiful and this earned her a privilege to mingle with royals of different kingdoms. She was a descendant of the Batoro of Mugamba hill, Busongora in Toro. Her father Buyonga was son of Kiroboozi who the same legend insists was the grandfather of the Nsenene Clan.
It is said, but some contest this account, that the king of Bunyoro Winyi one time while on state duties saw Wannyana in Kisozi and admired her so much. He married her and took her to Kiburara. This is how she came to meet the Muganda prince, Kalemeera who had been banished in Bunyoro by his own father, Kabaka Chwa Nabakka. Kalemeera and Wannyana had a secret love affair and later a son called Kimera who later assumed his grandfather’s throne in Buganda as Kabaka was begotten.
Meanwhile it is claimed and disputed in equal measure- depending on which side of the narrative one finds himself glued upon, that King Winyi’s wife Muhumuza, whom he left in Kisozi, Ggomba, the ancestral home of Wannyana and then part of the vast Bunyoro- Kitara territory, to manage and govern it, got involved with Buyonga in a love affair and actually had a son with him known as Mugalula. This is the fabled Mugalula alluded to earlier-, Clan head of the Nsenene and Grandfather of Prince Ssemakookiro whose prospects of ascending the Ganda throne are as dizzying as the controversy surrounding his birth.
This birth, which must ordinarily be cause for rapturous festivities, deity- thanking and beer gulping in the whole of greater Buganda, it has come to my urgent attention and concern, has in the alternative, and rather ironically, afforded some folks that cruise and navigate upon most of the social media seas the choice of following a rather perilous and pirate- strewn path of so liberally taking it upon themselves to denigrate and desecrate the Great Lion’s name- Kabaka Muwenda- Mutebi II of Buganda!
So much has this been the case and so much has the debate in fact bordered on the hot and the obscene that even some ultra- Ganda loyalists who, when circumstances so demanded, and in the most animating poetry, used to so heroically proclaim in praise and boast, thus: Alik-kanyugira Omuliro Ndigugaaya. Alik-kabya amaziga, Ndimukaabya Musaayi, have been lured to participate in the summary public execution of their King! Some have in fact gone as far as arrogating themselves the exclusive privilege, privilege we indeed shall call it, of spitefully debasing and making comedy of his Majesty’s character, reason, judgment and person.
Rujumba, I most vehemently disagree with them and their blinding ignorance that guides them to so condescendingly presuppose, as they do, for several reasons: Foremost, these rather impolite friends of mine cite Christianity, but most particularly the Anglican brand of it, as the basis upon which they stand in spiteful, ignorant and biased judgment of the person, character, reason and stature of the King, Hail he!.
These faithfuls claim that since Kabaka is Anglican, he is by of right expected to heed to the all- important Anglican virtue of Monogamy just as he is bound to worship but one Lord and God under the promptings of the doctrine of Monotheism- one upon which the whole Christianity belief rests. Thus, they reason, that since the Kabaka wed, under the grandiose glare of the cameras of journalists and the eyes of subjects, Maama Nnabagereka Lady Sylvia Nagginda Luswata at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Namirembe in 1999, siring a child as he has out of the hypothetical christian wedlock is as illegal as, supposedly, Prince Ssemakookiro himself!
Abwooli, this cannot at any moment be allowed to stand either by history or reason the same way the wheels of time and history, crushing and turning as they did, destroyed the lonely decision of an English judge in the East Afrikan case of Rex v. Amkeyo, and lo!, as Jesus said,’ Forgive them for they do not know what they say!’
Lest they mislead and attempt to be ‘more catholic than the pope’ or ‘more anglican than the Archbishop of Cantebury’, these faithfuls should fast be guided about the very foundations of the Anglican church that they incumbently cite for a major a pedestal upon which they fly hot and unkindly rhetoric of desecration and denigration to the person, reason and judgment of King Mutebi.
The year was 1534 when as a result of the most dire need to provide a male heir to the English throne, as is in these circumstances to the Buganda throne, the Church of England or the Anglican or Protestant faith as we know it today and as is being used to revile Kabaka Mutebi and Prince Ssemakookiro, was born. It was King Henry VIII that caused the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church and thus the papal authority at Rome.
Because he believed a daughter, Mary and of whom he was in fact most fond, would be unable to consolidate the Tudor Dynasty, King Harry, as those who knew him intimately called him, sought to, during the lifetime of Catherine of Aregon, his legally wedded wife or Queen, look elsewhere for an heir.
Thus in 1525, as Henry grew more impatient, he became enamoured of a charismatic young woman in the Queen’s entourage, Anne Boleyn. Anne at first resisted his attempts to seduce her, and refused to become his mistress, as her sister Mary Boleyn had. This refusal made Henry even more attracted, and he pursued her relentlessly. Eventually, Anne consented only on grounds that Harry makes her acknowledged queen. It soon became the King’s absorbing desire to annul his marriage to Catherine.
Thus Harry appealed directly to the Holy See or Pope Clement VII, through his secretary, William Knight suing for annulment. The grounds were that the bull of Pope Julius II- granting him permission to marry his brother’s wife Catherine, was obtained by false pretences, because -Catherine’s brief marriage to the sickly Arthur had been consummated.
Henry further petitioned, in the event that the desperately sought annulment is granted, a dispensation to marry again, any woman even in the first degree of affinity, whether the affinity was contracted by lawful or unlawful connection. However, this the Church at Rome, rigid and conservative as it usually is, did not accede to the grant of this request. Henry became even more dangerously impatient with Catherine’s inability to extend the male bloodline of the House of Tudor, as, which I shall not allow anyone to force me to say publically- not even at any price, could most possibly have been King Mutebi’s impatience with Maama Nabagereka Lady Sylvia Nagginda Luswata.
Though Henry never formally and instantly repudiated the doctrines of the Catholic Church as they stood, and am telling you currently stand, when he was denied his most desired wish viz his marriage to Lady Anne, he declared himself supreme head of the church in England in 1534. This, combined with subsequent actions, eventually provided expert midwifery services and attention to the historic birth of a splinter church, that Of England sometimes identified as Anglican or Protestant. Protestant because it was the lone child of Protest, Rebellion and/or Disobedience and Insubordination!
Given these indisputably accurate and well- documented historical facts, and with the greatest possible respect and deference to the emotions of those of the Maama Nabagereka loyalists tenanted on this high spiritual edifice, spitting, spreading and spilling most disparaging and unworthy sedition against the Kabaka’s person as they do, for the birth of Prince Richard Ssemakookiro (Blessed be he) of the Nsenene Clan outside the matrimonial wedlock with the astoundingly comely and gentle Queen, it ultimately follows they, like the Neandertathals of antiquity, and recalling Rubashov, have no more moral authority and right to so allege as they do than the latter ‘legislating for the Ape man’.
Kabaka Ronald Fredrick Muwenda- Mutebi II and Prince Richard Semakokiro
Secondly, Rujumba, it is also incumbent upon those that wish to find the golden gates of heaven specially opened for them in reward for the truth they told, upheld and sought while on earth to closely peer at the maternal parentage of King Mutebi himself, Oggundeggunde ayi Beene, Nyanja Temanyiirwa. Records faultlessly show that the skin of King was born on 13th April 1955 at Mulago hospital to Ssekabaka Muteesa II and Sarah Kisosonkole of the Nkima clan (In Bunyoro- Tooro, we call them Abahinda).
It should be noted that Ssekabaka H. E Sir Fredrick Edward Muteesa, who features prominently in the immediate post- independence politics of Uganda, being the First President as he was, was an avowed Anglican whose grandfather is credited by historians and prelates alike for having invited the bright torch of this most civilized faith, of civilized peoples, to shine and demistify the barbarism and darkness of the native peoples, Ugandans they were later to become.
Ssekabaka Sir Edward Muteesa II, father to Mutebi, was officially married to Nabagereka Lady Damalie Kisosonkole who passed on recently (May God grant her Queit Rest). However, it was not Queen Damalie that begot the current King but rather her Sister Sarah Kisosonkole! Thus, Abwooli, if we were to siphon, which we shall not, this wrong thesis so wildly propagated by the chief desecrators of the Great Lion’s mighty image, then the latter would be, in classic 17th century countryside and legal English parlance, ‘illegitimate’, ‘sired out of wedlock’, ‘bastard’ and not deserving to ascend to the great Nnamulondo of the ages as is the handsome Prince Ssemakookiro of the Nsenene.
Now, Abwooli, none of the most virulent and acidic critics of the circumstances preceding the birth of Prince Ssemakookiro and the subsequent name- labeling of Magulunnyondo (May he live long), is on record as ever having disputed Muwenda- Mutebi’s claim to kingship simply because he was mothered by Sarah and not Damalie, her Queen- Auntie! I can see them go silent. Hold them Abwooli, let them not run…. Where are they? Abwooli, have you seen the path the Kabaka’s desecrators have taken? But they have been here just moments back…Baleke, let them be son of my mother, for the proverb Agoba Musajjamunne may be unilaterally invoked with the attendant consequences.
Further, I have again heard pockets of the same folks allege that they ‘no longer reserve any semblance of respect for the Kabaka’ because apparently ‘atuswazzizza’ (he has beshamed us) ‘okwegadanga n‘Akazaana akataasoma’ (by swapping privates with an unschooled or unlettered consort or servant), nti era Mutebi owed everything to Maama Nabagereka because ‘she abandoned a prospectively very bright corporate career in the U.S’ to come to Uganda and marry ‘Mutebi’ (yes! They even have the effrontery to call him by his name!), only for him, ‘as are all men’ to be so ungrateful as to openly and unapologetiaclly cheat on and disgrace her. Moreover, with Akataasoma!
I find this line of thought, first as a humanist, secondly as Afrikan and finally as adherent well initiated in the ceremonies of human equality- ugly, unappealing, repulsive and repelling. Abwooli, with the greatest possible respect the comely Queen, she is no better a woman than the other kazzaana (maid- servant) akataasoma- . the one they (the ungrateful disecrators), had they had the liberty to, would also understand as stinking.
This analysis is most regrettable and heart- tearing. Just as this country’s most distinguished musician of all time- Prince Paulo Job Kafeero put it in the epic song Esaawa y’okuzaawa, men are born naked and crying, they are buried naked and crying (…Ensi Bwetujiyingirira mubiwoobe, mwetujinnyukira mu biwoobe).
The song touches upon the theme of death and not so markedly the theme of equality. But we shall currently borrow his thesis to substantiate a vital equality point viz just as all men are born naked and crying with none born robed, we are all thus equal and equally deserving of all life’s opportunities and giftings. So just as Maama Nnabagereka can have the choice of putting herself at the emotional and physical avail of a King, so does Akazaana Akataasoma Rose Nansikombi.
Finally, there are these moralists that claim that the Kabaka being (or expected to be the paragon of good character and virtues), even be it as it was in the search of an heir agreeable to custom, or be whatever as it may, ought not to have condescended so low as to procreate outside his marriage moreover going as far, they authoritatively assert and insist, snatching another man’s woman(muk’omusajja) to achieve the purpose.
I also strongly feel and think that this charge cannot, guided by reason and commonsense, be sustained.
My own opinion, Abwooli, is that procreation is the greatest form and highest expression of morality for it helps preserve a race. There can never be any morality in a vacuum. For it to exist, there must be a people to express it and give it perspective. Thus where such a people are absent, partly because of some warped and corrosive social or religious constraints, a morality is doomed and such word as it is- ‘morality’ and the practice thereof, ceases to exist.
For those reasons, I most warmly congratulate the Kabaka of Buganda Ronald Fredrick Muwenda Mutebi II, upon expanding the house of Kato- Kimera; the Bazzukulu ba Mugalula ab’Nseenene for owning a future King and Omuzaana Rose Nansikombi for making these my most honest congratulatory remarks useful and meaningful. Oggundendeggunde ayi Ssabasajja: Magulunnyondo; Beene; Chuucu; Muzzukulu w’Muteesa, Sebuufu bwango; Nyanja Temanyiirya.
I must add, Abwooli, that Prince Ssemakookiro looks as serene and delightful as a Rose, Rose being Nansikombi’s name and Nansikombi being the name of Rose!
Kanve wano tebankuba eccupa omanyi bakambwe….
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We Either Urgently Attend to the Cause of Justice and Humanity or Perish
Abwooli Rujumba Omurungi w’Abasambu, it seems intended by the blessed providence of the creator Nkya Ruhanga Nyamuhanga that I should always communicate to you whenever I have matters that require some communicating. Which better way to share the dearest thoughts of one’s mind than to cast them into the ear of an attentive kinsman?
As you may recall, so often you do, sometime back in serenity of these very memoirs, I related to you the unbearably painful story of that most defiant of all human rights defenders personally known to me~ Vincent Vessy Nuwagaba. I met Vincent in the most unusual of circumstances which I am extremely hesitant to reproduce here for fear of repeating myself just too much. https://kyomuhendoa.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/for-vincent-nuwagaba-human-rights-defender-brother-friend-and-comrade/
For the same reasons why we lionize him and exalt the truth of his struggles, Vincent is ‘in contact’ with some fanatical elements in the Kampala regime who seem manifestly hell- bent towards killing or destroying him and thus dealing with this problem ‘once and for all’. Here is his latest account.
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AS A UGANDAN CITIZEN, I DEMAND JUSTICE OR DEATH
BY VINCENT NUWAGABA
Vincent Vessy Nuwagaba ©
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/81304
A personal account of human rights abuse in Uganda raises questions about the role of mainstream human rights organizations supported by international donors.
My pen has since the beginning of 2011 been silent. So many people have been wondering as to what could have happened to me but some have insinuated that I joined Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM). And just like the French saying goes, ‘La bouche qui manger ne parler pas’, meaning that a mouth that is eating doesn’t speak, some people think I am now eating with the ruling cabal. On the contrary, I am still wondering as to why the ruling NRM wants to exterminate me using state institutions that are mandated to protect our rights and our lives.
THE UGANDA HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION NAKEDNESS
On 8 February 2012, I went to Speke Resort, Munyonyo for a workshop organised by the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC). The Uganda Prisoners’ Aid Foundation (UPAF) was invited to present a civil society perspective of the state of prisoners’ rights in Uganda. As UPAF’s research coordinator and a person well-conversant with not only prisoners’ rights but also human rights generally, given that I am an ex-prisoner and a human rights defender and scholar, the UPAF chairman Mr. J.K. Zirabamuzale assigned me to write the paper. The agreement was that when he presented it, I would be around. I have in the past attended UHRC workshops whenever our organisation is invited and I have been at the forefront of quite a number of human rights activities together with UHRC and other human rights organisations.
This time when I arrived in the conference room, I found Ms Christine Nading, Assistant Commissioner of Police Legal speaking. The issues she raised demanded that they be responded to by a person who knows the conduct of the police thoroughly – not the one who reads about the police in newspapers and watches them on television sets. I accordingly, wrote a chit for UHRC’s Roselyn Karugonjo-Segawa asking to be given time to respond to Christine Nading. I thought I was doing the most diplomatic thing only to be told a short while later that I was not supposed to be in that function. I explained to them that our organisation (UPAF) was invited and that we were presenting a paper.
I was kicked, humiliated, dehumanised and brutalised by the police at the orders of Roselyn Karugonjo-Segawa, UHRC’s Director of Monitoring and Inspections, and Gordon Mwesigye, the UHRC Secretary. In a human rights function, organised by the Uganda Human Rights Commission to prepare for the Universal Periodic Report (UPR), a human rights defender who has sacrificed too much, suffered at the hands of the police, been put in jail for advocating the rights of the voiceless is subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the very people who are mandated to protect all Ugandans’ rights. Shame on Roselyn Karugonjo-Segawa and shame on Gordon Mwesigye, and if these people were human enough they should have resigned from their offices on that very Wednesday of 8 February 2012.
After roughing me up, I was driven to Kabalagala Police station in the UHRC vehicle. From Kabalagala, I was driven to Butabika Mental Hospital in the Police Patrol vehicle. When I reached the Out Patient Department (OPD) of Butabika, the policemen who had taken me there were embarrassed when the hospital staff told them, ‘the man is sane, why have you brought him here?’ Meanwhile before reaching Butabika I was deprived of my Bata shoes, my shirt, money and many other possessions. They left me there and I walked on my own half-naked as they had deprived me of my shoes and my shirt.
HELL IN BUTABIKA
I was lucky to find a friend who took me to his home and gave me lunch, a shirt and shoes and Sh5,000 for my transport. The following day on 9 February 2012, I went back to Butabika and this time I had gone to talk to the hospital administration to warn them against pandering to the whims of those that are persecuting me on political grounds. What befell me instead was total hell. Dr Julius Muron ordered the hospital guards to arrest me and take me to the police. At the police post, Muron himself said, ‘This man is perfectly sane, he doesn’t have any mental or psychiatric problem but he is causing chaos within the hospital’. He then added, ‘Keep him here and charge him’. I was then locked up at the police post. Later I learnt that when one of the policemen came (he wears civilian attire and therefore he could be the Criminal Investigation Detective), he told Muron that they had no way to charge me because I hadn’t committed any offence.
Thereafter, I was grabbed by the hospital guards at the orders of Dr Julius Muron and taken to Kirinya ward from where Dr Muron subjected me to 18 injections, nine on each side of the buttocks and later dumped me into a side room which is an equivalent of the solitary cells from which they torture some prisoners in Luzira. Later I became unconscious and I regained my consciousness after 12 days on 21 February.
I have been told that if one of the support staff members who happens to be my relative (whose name I will not reveal now for fear of reprisals) wasn’t there to feed me by forcefully opening my lips, get mushrooms for me, wash me and nurse me like his own son, I would definitely have died.
Without any sense of shame, even when I regained my consciousness, I was kept on drugs; the same drugs which almost claimed my life in 2008. On the 23rd I left Butabika without any formal discharge.
The Pan Africanists at Makerere who saw me were shocked and suggested that I must go for a medical examination. At first I hesitated but every passing day, I am losing weight at a rate that has gotten me worried. All the very small sized trousers that I had already shelved cannot even fit me.
Meanwhile as Dr Muron did whatever he did, I was deprived of my property – my laptop computer, my shirt and jacket, my pair of trousers, my wallet containing huge sums of money, my belt, my phone, shoes and a bible. When I went to Butabika, I was initially only given a phone and Sh100 but later, they gave me a pair of shoes and a bible.
I have in the past sued Dr Tom Onen together with the Attorney General under civil suit 92/2009. Sadly, although neither the Attorney General nor Dr Onen filed a defence and therefore I was waiting for ex parte judgement, I was shocked to learn that my case was dismissed on 28 August 2009 at a time when I was on remand in Murchison Bay Prison Luzira on trumped up charges of assault and threatening violence. The ‘crime’ I had committed though, to which I pleaded guilty, was opposing the increment of fees in public universities by up to 126 percent.
After suing Dr Onen, I was declared persona non-grata in Butabika and I was tortured, traumatized and tormented several times by the police and Butabika Hospital guards at the orders of a one Grace Lubale, a former Butabika Hospital Administrator. Grace would tell me, ‘Nuwagaba, you sued us; you are therefore not allowed to step here’. Even when I would go to visit the victims of political persecution and the thieving political establishment such as Gaudence Tushabomwe, who was conned of her money by an organisation that had links with the ruling party, I would be tormented.
The UHRC whose mandate is to ensure the protection and defence of our rights has also fallen victim and it is at the forefront of the perpetration, perpetuation, orchestration and promotion of injustice.
When I reported to the president about my ordeal, some of the young men and women initially seemed interested in giving me a fair hearing. With time, however, Justus Karuhanga, President Museveni’s former legal officer told me, ‘Nuwagaba, you can go to court and sue the government’. I am interested in knowing whether or not the office of the president ever had a hand in the dismissal of my case without even giving me a ruling.
The courts, which are supposed to be temples of justice, cannot dispense justice to the unsung victims such as Nuwagaba. The Ugandan media can only write about a personality whom they feel can sell their papers; the so-called human rights organisations of which I am a member to some cannot inspire hope. They employ people whose interest is not promoting human rights but making money. Many of our human rights organisations, if not all, get money from donors purportedly to help the voiceless citizens. What they do instead is write accountability papers for the donors and they give no accountability to the voiceless citizens on whose behalf they get the funding. In analysis, they con, cheat and dupe the donors who give them money to help the voiceless.
I know I am broaching a hot subject but I must not keep silent. I have taught in the university and have worked with civil society organisations. I have seen only one genuine human rights organisation in Uganda called Uganda Prisoners’ Aid Foundation under the stewardship of J.K. Zirabamuzale. It is the only organisation that does human rights work even when it has no funding from anybody and none of the staff is a salaried employee.
I have seen discrimination, sectarianism, and inequality perpetrated by the so-called human rights defenders. No wonder many of them do not have the wherewithal to challenge the government where it goes wrong.
CONCLUSION
I am a Ugandan citizen, not anybody’s subject. Like I have stated before when I wrote to IGP (Inspector General of Police) Kale Kayihura, I am an ethnic Mukiga and the Bakiga have never had a king. Accordingly, we have never been subjects. I am a firm believer in non-violence and my icons are Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and our very own Norbert Mao. Whoever feels threatened by my words must him/herself be suffering from schizophrenia. I have several times been thrown in jail for no offence committed. In 2008 I escaped death by a whisker as Dr Onen was used to kill me; just recently Dr Muron wanted to kill me and I don’t know whether I am safe yet. As a citizen, I demand justice or death.
~END~
Posted by Kyomuhendo- A. Ateenyi on April 7, 2012 in Politics
Tags: https://kyomuhendoa.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/for-vincent-nuwagaba-human-rights-defender-brother-friend-and-comrade/, http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/81304