Monday, September 20, 2004
Abduct Everyone in the North If You Like, Just Leave Kampala Alone
By Joachim Buwembo
Ween the world news networks were all focused on Russia, where a messy hostage crisis left over 300 people dead two weeks ago, Uganda decided not be outdone. So we staged our own hostage crisis right in the middle of Kampala city.
The hostage takers were one Abdul Kairu and one Sam Muwanguzi, both from Katanga slum near Makerere University. The two gunmen held the bodyguard and secretary of the State Minister for Water, Ms Miria Mutagamba, at gunpoint. Their demand was that President Museveni be given four more years in State House without the hassle of going through a constitutional amendment. (Maria Mutagamba got the ministerial appointment after she defected from Paul Ssemogerere's Democratic Party when the broke opposition failed to pay her mobile phone bill.)
Anyway, we got our few seconds in the limelight as the world's major networks reported the bizzare Kampala affair. The national press naturally had a field day. Which illustrates another unfortunate attitude: The value of life in Uganda is inversely proportional to its distance from Kampala.
Consider that government business nearly came to a standstill because one secretary and one bodyguard were being held hostage. All life is precious and priceless but rather too many more people have been held in captivity in the north of the country and we have not seen this level of concern. Some cynics, actually many cynics, believe that the Lord's Resistance Army menace can play on for another 100 years and remain unresolved because it is not near Kampala.
Some cynics have even suggested that the LRA would have been wiped out long ago if they had abducted 10 schoolgirls from a Kampala school rather than the thousands of girls they have captured and forcibly infected with HIV in Northern Uganda.
Maybe the magnitude of the abductions in the north has exceeded what we can fathom and we have simply stopped trying to understand it. Otherwise, how else do you explain the fact that the abduction of 10 people in the north can fail to make it to the front pages of the national press and the holding of two people in Kampala forces the government to drop everything, the Defence Minister goes to parliament to hold brief for the Interior Minister to explain the circus, and the president gives an explanation?
The other day, when the LRA made an incursion in eastern Uganda, it was briefly reported that they grabbed 40 schoolgirls and threw them into a river because they couldn't run fast enough in retreat. Because there was no subsequent reporting on the matter, those who bothered wondered whether it was a false report and if so, why no clarification was issued to allay the anxiety of parents.
Kidnap and abduction used not to be a Ugandan thing. The first memorable kidnapping after independence was of a British diplomat, Brian Lee, in 1970, which turned out to be a hoax. The guy had just gone on a bush adventure on a Lake Victoria island but because he was a Kampala man, a diplomat at that, it became a national crisis. The kidnappers were just some Asian buddies of his. After Mr Lee returned from his holiday, there were even popular songs composed commemorating the disappearance and reappearance of the guy.
There was no other memorable hostage-taking for 15 years until a light Uganda Airlines plane was grabbed by the then rebel NRA at the close of 1985 and diverted to Kasese in Western Uganda. The NRA used this to press the then ruling military council to release a captured emissary.
The only other memorable abduction was five years later, when Emmanuel Cardinal Wamala was held by a gunman in Kampala. The man's demands were never publicised but it is believed he wanted to focus attention on the devastation that the war in Rwanda then had brought to the southwestern Uganda district of Kisoro.
The only upcountry abduction that got running national news coverage was of three ministers who were captured by rebels in eastern Uganda. But remember these were Kampala men, so no wonder the state and the press were concerned. So if you are to be abducted in Uganda, it had better be in Kampala or else you will rot in captivity.
Joachim Buwembo is managing editor of the Citizen newspaper of Dar es Salaam
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