How Nkutu’s secret grave was identified
Jan 28, 2005
In December 2003, a nephew of the Late Nkutu, one Abu Kakaire, of Nakibembe village, Bugweri County, where Nkutu was born, made coincidental contact with one Ibrahim Sengendo, 51, a peasant farmer of Kakola Village, Mijinja, in Semuto, Luwero.
They met at the tomato farm of one Stephen Opio, at Nakitende village, Semuto, where Sengendo had gone to borrow a tomato herbicide sprayer from his friend Opio.
Kakaire, who had earlier unsuccessfully attempted tomato trade in Kampala, had ended up as a casual labourer in Luwero and had been hired by Opio to spray his tomatoes when he came into contact with Sengendo.
During their conversation, Sengendo, on learning that Kakaire was from Iganga district, teased him about why a Musoga from Iganga would come all the way to Luwero only to be a tomato sprayer.
An offended Kakaire told Sengendo that while he held a humble station in life, he came from a prominent family in Busoga that had produced Cabinet ministers in every government since independence.
He named Wanume Kibedi (Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Amin regime), John Luwuliza Kirunda (Minister of Internal Affairs in the Obote II regime), Kirunda Kivejinja (then Minister for the Presidency in the Museveni government) and Shaban Nkutu (Minister of Works, Housing, Transport and Communications under the first Obote government.
Kibedi, Luwuliza and Kivejinja are all nephews of Shaban Nkutu.
When he named Shaban Nkutu as a relative, Sengendo, doubting whether Kakaire was truly a member of that family, asked Kakaire “where is your uncle Shaban Nkutu nowadays?” Kakaire replied that Nkutu had been murdered by Amin in the seventies.
Sengendo asked him if he knew where Nkutu had been buried. Kakaire replied that Amin had buried Nkutu at a secret location and that the family had been wounded by not having buried him for over 30 years.
Sengendo challenged Kakaire to prove further that he was truly a member of Nkutu’s family, following which he could reveal details of Shaban Nkutu’s burial location.
Kakaire lacked financial capacity to return to Iganga but eventually left Semuto for Busoga, returning to Semuto in early October 2004 with three of Nkutu’s sons, Mr Eriyasa Nyende, Mr Suleiman Kiyuba and Mr Awali Magoola, to whom Sengendo revealed that he was a retired long-service grave-digger, formerly employed by Jinja Municipal Council at the Masese “Mailo Mbiri” Cemetery (1972-87).
CRUCIAL WITNESSES: Mr Twaha Magala (C), Nkutu’s nephew was the last family member to see him alive at Gadaffi Barracks in Jinja. On his left is Mr Experito Kalema and on the right Mr Ibrahim Sengendo who were ordered to bury Nkutu secretly.
Sengendo, who was fearful of revealing anything for fear of his safety, advised Nkutu’s sons that he could only give more information about Nkutu’s body with the consent of his former Headman at the cemetery, one Experito Kalema, 68, a resident of Nakabango, Kamuli Road, Jinja District, who is also retired. A visit was immediately made by family members to Kalema at his Jinja home.
Kalema, who served at the cemetery from 1966-93, was very scared of testifying because “I was ordered by the government never to talk about the burial of that minister if I was to remain alive.”
It took a lot to convince him that since the Museveni government had not had a hand in Nkutu’s death, it would not kill him for revealing the burial location. Both witnesses were also afraid that the family might unfairly accuse them of involvement in the murder.
Following strong assurances to the contrary, Sengendo and Kalema testified that in January 1973, on a date they cannot remember, they and five colleagues (Wilson Lukenge, Michael Serwadda, Joseph Matovu, James Ntalo and Kiviri Ssesavu - all are now deceased except Lukenge) were picked up from the cemetery about 10am by four armed policemen in a police Landrover vehicle and taken to the Jinja Hospital Mortuary, where they were shown the body of an adult male, which had been separated from a heap of other bodies.
They say the body was bloated with water and decomposing and had clearly been retrieved from water submersion. They were ordered by the police to ignore the heap of other bodies in the mortuary and to rush this singular body to the cemetery for immediate burial under the record of “an unknown person.”
However they were covertly informed by mortuary staff that the body, which they did not recognise, was that of a former minister called Shaban Nkutu, who had “disappeared” a few days earlier in Jinja.
The witnesses recall clearly that the body was severely bloated by water and the skin was peeling off it in many places. They were unable to establish the possible cause of death by looking at the body, given that they were at gunpoint and under pressure to bury him immediately.
But they do recall the colour of the shirt the deceased was wearing as yellow. They testify that he was wearing underwear without trousers.
When they asked why they were being escorted by police at gunpoint and why they were being ordered not to bury the several other dead bodies heaped in the mortuary, they were told by the Mortuary Clerk and his attendant that this was a “special case” because Nkutu had been killed by Amin’s government and that given the well known brutality of the government, any compromise of confidentiality concerning the handling of his body and burial could lead to their own deaths.
The Mortuary Clerk, whose name they do not recall, told them that no Death Certificate would be issued and that they should record Nkutu’s burial in the Cemetery Book as that of “an unknown person.”
The grave-diggers say they placed the body on a Jinja Municipality tipper truck and were escorted back to the cemetery by the four armed police in their Landrover.
The police witnessed the burial and guarded the grave till 5pm. At 5pm, another contingent of four armed police came to the cemetery, relieved the earlier group and guarded the grave till morning. A group of four armed police guarded the grave in day and night shifts for a fortnight.
Sengendo, who resided at the cemetery as the resident watchman, witnessed this unprecedented guarding of the grave day and night, while his colleagues witnessed it in the daytime. Nobody else was buried in the cemetery during this period.
The grave-diggers testified that they buried Shaban Nkutu in a grave containing five other “masikini” (commoners, or unclaimed dead persons from the mortuary) who had been buried four days earlier and that the body of Shaban Nkutu was the sixth and last, separated from the other five by a layer of soil.
The practice was to bury unclaimed persons in groups of six in six-foot graves, always covering the top person available with a thin layer of soil until they had accumulated a total of six people, after which the grave would be fully sealed off.
Nkutu’s grave was the 7th in a line of several others which they named “Ekifo kyo mutawana” (the troubled place) because of the several persons they buried there who had been murdered by the state. Many of these were Acholi and Langi soldiers.
A month after the burial, the Council Foreman/ Parks Superintendent, whom they recall as one Haruna, (they describe him as hailing from the Kakwa ethnic community) came to the cemetery and ordered them to level the mound of soil on “that grave which police had been guarding day and night” and to plant passpallum grass over the grave.
This was intended to obliterate any trace of the grave. They complied.
Sengendo and Kalema easily identified the line known as “Ekifo kyo mutawana” and grave number seven was easily identifiable. They advised that in case their memories were failing them, the family could also exhume grave number 6 but that they were sure they buried Nkutu at the top of grave number 7.
The third surviving grave-digger, Wilson Lukenge, also retired, was tracked down by the Nkutu family at his Bugerere home. He corroborated the testimony of Kalema and Sengendo.
The witnesses testify further that a few days or weeks after the funeral, President Amin’s convoy arrived unannounced at the cemetery and the presidential helicopter landed soon after. Amin disembarked and asked for the cemetery supervisor.
A frightened Kalema was asked to give the President the cemetery book for January. Amin read through the entries for the month and returned the book to Kalema without comment. He got into his vehicle and drove off.
The grave diggers assumed at the time that given the family pressure mounted on Amin by the Nkutu family, who were his in-laws, courtesy of the First Lady, Mama Mariamu, as well as by the exiled former President, Milton Obote, over Nkutu’s disappearance, Amin had come to Masese to confirm that there was no evidence of Nkutu’s body in the cemetery records. Amin then called a press conference in Jinja to announce that Shaban Nkutu had gone into exile “to join anti-government guerillas” and he promised a huge reward for his arrest or information leading to it.
On hearing of the grave-diggers’ testimony, the family hired the services of Mr Sam Echaku, a former Director of the CID (in the early years of the Museveni administration) who manages a firm of private investigators.
He assisted the deceased’s sons, Mr Moses Menya Nkutu, Mr Farouk Kirunda Nkutu and Mr Conrad Kirunda Nkutu in interrogating the grave-diggers and recording their detailed statements. After an 8-hour interrogation, Mr Echaku concluded that these witnesses were credible and believable and issued a written report to the family to that effect.
Up to this point, the witnesses were still afraid that the Nkutu family would frame them for the murder. They repeatedly insisted that they buried Nkutu but knew nothing of how he had been killed.
The family immediately convened a meeting of about 40 members, at which the three witnesses testified verbally and were thoroughly questioned about their story.
The meeting unanimously concluded that while these witnesses knew nothing about Nkutu’s murder, they were clearly telling the truth about his secret burial.
Nkutu’s nephew Twaha Magala, who was present, testified that Shaban Nkutu was, on the day he was last seen alive, wearing the yellow shirt referred to by the grave diggers.
After confirming that the witnesses had indeed been employed by Jinja Municipality at the Masese cemetery and after confirming that the said Haruna (who ordered the concealing of the grave) had indeed been employed there as Parks Superintendent, the family obtained advice from a lawyer, Mr Charles Odere, on how to obtain permission for exhumations.
He advised that such authority is vested by the Public Health Act in the District Commissioner, whose powers are now located in the office of the Resident District Commissioner and the Chief Administrative Officer of Jinja District.
• The family resolved as follows:
• To confirm the location of the grave, with the assistance of the witnesses.
• To exhume the remains and use modern medical science (DNA testing) to ascertain their identity as those of the Late Hon. Shaban Kirunda Nkutu.
A Kampala-based pathologist, Prof Henry Wabinga, Head of Makerere University’s Department of Pathology, was retained for this purpose, assisted by Dr Odida.
• To give Nkutu an honourable burial as soon as possible.
• To involve the government of Uganda in exhuming, identifying and re-burying the remains, via the input of Ministers Ruhakana Rugunda (Internal Affairs) and Kirunda Kivejinja (then Minister of the Presidency, now Deputy National Political Commissar) and President Yoweri Museveni.
The Exhumation and Identification of Nkutu’s Remains
The Nkutu family is grateful to Prime Minister Apollo Nsibambi, Rugunda and Kivejinja for their advice and moral support and to the Resident District Commissioner of Jinja, Mr Mugisha Muhwezi, the Chief Administrative Officer, Mr Eustace Gakwandi, the Town Clerk and the Regional Police Commander as well as the Public Health Officer, Jinja, and the LC1 Chairman, Masese, who convened a quick meeting and immediately granted the family’s request for written permission to exhume the remains of the 12 persons buried in graves six and seven in the line known as “Ekifo kyo mutawana.”
The exhumations were carried out by the family and pathologists Prof Henry Wabinga (Head of Department) and Dr Odida of Mulago Hospital/ Makerere University on November 27, 2004 in the presence of a 4-man police guard and officials of the Jinja local administration.
The highly compacted and clue-less state of the remains found in grave number six indicated a high probability that all six men had been dumped into that grave on the same day and none of them was Shaban Nkutu.
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The grave diggers had always insisted that they buried Nkutu in grave number seven.
While they buried the sixth person from each grave a foot from the surface, we found that both graves had sunk by six to seven feet due to decomposition of the deceased, softness of the already dug-up soil and soil and water erosion.
On opening up grave number seven, we found, about six feet deep, the remains of an adult male now concluded to be the Late Hon. Shaban Nkutu.
As per earlier testimony, he was lying on top of five other deceased persons but not too heavily compacted with them (none of the deceased persons was buried in a coffin or body bag).
In the assessment of the pathologists and all who were present at the exhumations, the skull of this man showed cause of death to have been a gunshot wound to the right hand side of the forehead, with a small entry wound on the right and a large exit wound on the left hand side of the head.
While the other deceased persons had evidence of remains of trousers on their pelvic bones (zippers, hooks and cloth fragments), this particular person had only remains of underwear, which was about 80% intact on his pelvic bone.
This is consistent with the earlier witness testimony to the effect that at the mortuary, they found him wearing underwear and a yellow shirt, with no trousers. There was no trace of the yellow shirt. It is assumed that the shirt may have been of cotton material, which is bio-degradable and can fully disintegrate. However the underwear, a pair of boxer shorts, contained some sort of synthetic material and had largely survived the 32 years of water and soil exposure.
The third clue was a bracelet found on the deceased’s left arm. The bracelet, which can be described as circular black plastic strings with decorative twines at circumferential intervals, is known in Luganda as “entugga.” Several adults who knew the Late Nkutu and were present at the exhumation testify that the Late Nkutu always wore this bracelet on his left arm. This is confirmed by several other close friends and relatives of the deceased.
Great effort was undertaken over an eight-hour period to retrieve the remains of each person in this grave separately from the other. Particular attention was focused on the man at the top of grave number seven - the gunshot victim.
The remains of the various deceased persons were packed separately and labeled and taken into the custody of the medical personnel. Bone samples of the person believed to be Shaban Nkutu were sent to a specialist laboratory in South Africa for DNA testing against blood samples from family members.
Unfortunately, after a two month wait, the family was advised that the bones were so old and degraded by the conditions of water and soil erosion that there was insufficient DNA still existent in them to support a conclusive DNA test.
After wide internal consultations, the family concluded that notwithstanding the absence of scientific evidence, the circumstantial evidence from the grave and the witness testimony of Ibrahim Sengendo, Experito Kalema and Twaha Magala combined is overwhelming proof that the deceased person exhumed from the top of grave number seven is indeed Shaban Nkutu.
The family will proceed to give the Late Hon. Shaban Nkutu a befitting funeral at his Busesa home on Saturday, February 12, 2005. We are grateful to have benefitted from the extraordinary chance encounter between Abu Kakaire and Ibrahim Sengendo and for the cooperation of Sengendo, Kalema and Lukenge. We also thank Prof Wabinga and Dr Odida for their support as pathologists.
We hope that the opportunity we are getting to achieve the closure of this painful matter, and the extensive details provided in this case, will be a contribution to the development of respect by governments for universal human rights.
Issued on behalf of the Nkutu family on January 27, 2005
Conrad K. Nkutu Managing Director The Monitor Newspaper and 93.3 KFM
© 2005 The Monitor Publications.
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