Inside Kony’s base – Part I

L-R: LRA chiefs Lt Gen Vincent Otti, Maj Gen Okot Odhiambo, Capt Rei Achama, Brig Kenneth Banya and others lead the rebels for peace talks in Ri-Kwangba on South Sudan border with the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006. PHOTO BY HENRY MUKASA

What you need to know:

A squad of rebel fighters emerged. They took positions, looking suspiciously at everyone. Some moved over to the tent and shuffled the plastic chairs placed where LRA leader Joseph Kony was supposed to sit with his team, writes Henry Mukasa.

It was one of those quiet Tuesday evenings. Most journalists had left office as we called it a day.
With my head literally buried in my computer as I made that last submissions on Facebook before hitting the road home, Mr Charles Odoobo Bichachi – also known as COB - beckoned me as he talked inaudibly on his mobile phone.

When we reached his office, he broke the news: “There are credible reports that Dominic Ongwen has surrendered.”

There was a mixture of excitement (for the big story) and breath of a sigh! My mind raced, travelled thousands of kilometres northwest to Ri-Kwangba, the confluence of a piece of land that forms the border of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)and Central African Republic (CAR).

This is where I first met the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leaders, Joseph Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti in 2006.

We returned to this place a couple of months later to set off with a couple of other Acholi elders to visit the LRA main base, Camp Swahili, in the largely impenetrable Garamba Forest and National Park in the DRC.

The journey
I had been in Juba, for almost a couple of weeks since the peace talks began in July 2006. I was beginning to even pick some Arabic words.

Government delegation leader, Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda (then minister of Internal Affairs) and his deputy leader of delegation, International Relations minister Okello Oryem, would tease that it was as if I wanted to become an LC chairman in Juba.
So, as we lounged at Civicon Camp, the equivalent of a hotel in the immediate post liberation war Juba, word trickled in that the chief mediator was travelling to meet Kony, the leader of tong-tong. The LRA had exported their infamous atrocities to South Sudan.

Wherever they passed, or it found resistance, they would amputate people. This earned them the cognomen, tong-tong (cut-cut or the ones who chop) among the Arabic speaking South Sudanese.

So when I learnt of this possible visit to Kony-land, I kicked myself, ‘gosh, here lies a lifetime opportunity of meeting the most wanted and most feared man.’

Maybe a song will be composed in my memory if I asked him the most pertinent questions, I thought. I quickly inquired about accreditation and security clearance. It was a walkover as I was a revered foreign journalist, moreover from Uganda.

Day of travel:
That Saturday morning, we arrived at Juba International Airport early, to book seats on the flight. It was a cargo plane. An Antonov! And the criterion of who went was purely dependent of first come, first serve basis.

All had to be seated before the chief mediator, Dr Riek Machar – flamboyant then vice president of South Sudan, arrived to take his seat. Shortly, he joined us with a handful of escorts and they all entered unchecked with their guns and ammunition.

The parties at the peace talks had signed for a cessation of hostilities and the rebels were required to assemble in preparation for disarmament. The rebels had not.

Then there was the feeling that Kony and his men needed to ask for forgiveness from the South Sudanese for the atrocities committed in the area before they could assemble freely on their territory. This was the mission, and partly to convince Kony that the peace talks were real and good for everybody.

There was a slight skidding of the cargo plane on board as we took off but all was well when the two Russian pilots attained the flight height.

I could see hills, plains, forests and rivers marked like a thin line of painting on a green cast of background.
However, I could not imagine which direction we were headed to.

This is the problem I get whenever I fly except when the Global Positioning System (GPS), is available. I also have flight fright and I would feel each surge and sudden drop of height by the plane. Since there was no air conditioning fitted in the cargo place, I was sweating. You could see a man in prayer.

Amidst all this, the pilots in the cabin kept on reading novels and would once in a while flick some buttons. So I thought all is well after-all! That put aside, funny thoughts started crossing my mind. “Kony is a mad man, what if he shoots down this plane?”

I quickly settled my mind with the comforting belief that on board was one of his allies or at least confidant, the gaudy Dr Machar, who possessed the authority sagacity on the peace talks trend.
The pilot lowered the Antonov. The images on the ground became clearly.

We were descending to Maridi airfield. It was bushy on the sides and the field itself overgrown with grass save for the two trails left by treads of tyres of planes that land and take off from here. The runway was short and we nearly ran its length before the plane ground to a halt, so the pilot made a sharp U-turn and taxing to where we had come from.

Typical of arrival in a war zone, the rear exit of the Antonov was already being lowered and the sudden manoeuvre nearly threw us out. We had arrived and the deafening silence broke into loud murmurs and congratulations. We had survived a hitch!


There were waiting cars which drove us to the nearby Maridi Catholic Mission. It was nestled in some kind of woodland.

No. It was some over grown compound trees, especially mango trees which were outlandish. I don’t remember whether we were served a meal but what I recall is that we had made an attempt at carrying personal ration which we munched. Moments later, we began the five-hour road journey to Ri-Kwangba.

On the road
Maridi is dotted with the valuable teak trees, the hard wood that is used to make gun-butts. I admired them with their spread leaves waving at me.

The sight of the in-season mango tress was an eyesore as the fallen fruits attracted a buzz of the blue big flies. The roads in this part of the world were bad. They were in no way comparable to the bad roads in Uganda. Even our Toyota Land Cruiser could feel the gullied road.

At some section the vehicle nearly drowned in muddy potholes and when our driver engaged a stronger gear to haul us out, we nearly tipped.

Matthew Green, a Reuters’ journalist exclaimed, “we nearly lost it.” The Lucky Dube music playing was enough distractor from such risks as we drove on. I stared. Wanted to record everything that crossed my eye or in the distance. This was a historical journey. We drove through vast virgin land. I was surprised that people lived this far, rustic and remote.

The trees were tall, with huge stems and spread out branches while the bushes and thickets were thick and dense.

The population was sparse. No traffic. No townships to write home about and you would wonder from where they would get supplies.

Along the road at the scattered homesteads, were mounds which looked like aunt hills, some grey, some black and others white.

Some well-built with cement while other were of earth. I had no idea what they were until I was told they were graves. Here, people are not buried lying down as we are used to; they are buried seated.

What a shock it was! But when it became repetitive, I got used. The houses of the equivalent of the rich had wooden thatched fences, which even a toddler could literally jump over or breach.

We stopped over in the township of Nabanga, some few kilometres away from Yambio, to wait for a team that had lagged behind. We dashed to the shops hopping to catch some quick snack as you would do in Wandegeya or Ntinda.

It was coming to dusk! The lucky ones got some buns. The rest of us would do with some warm Senator or Eagle beer! After driving for close to two and half hours facing west, we found a junction and turned left and face southwards and drove for another one and half hours.

Amid the wilderness, we encountered a stream with wooden planks for a bridge. The vehicle skidded and we needed to push it through. Some colleagues were not eager, me inclusive. I remember someone mentioned, “This is the rebels’ route.”

My adrenalin boiled and a flood of energy gripped me. I put my left leg knee against the body of the Land Cruiser, slightly below the indicator, setting my right leg a little behind.
I pushed as I urged others to apply some kinetic energy.

The driver accelerated. Ouch! The hind tyre sprayed me with the cold dirty water from the stream and within seconds I was drenched and wet everywhere! But the car fathomed a grip and rolled out. We boarded and in a few minutes we reached the SPLA detach near Ri-Kwangba.

It was between 8-9pm. We were shown a deserted nearby classroom; no shutters, no desk, no nothing! That would be out dormitory!

Here I was with my laptop bag, notebook, jacket and wet jeans. That was the coldest night of my life. As I rummaged for something to act as beddings, a Juba-based journalist showed me a huge stone which I used as my pillow for the night.

After breakfast, we set off for the clearing where we were to meet Kony and his delegation. Dr Machar led the convoy. We drove through bushes. And it was clear the cars were using these routes for the first time as there was not established road. At the clearing, we waited for hours.

Some boys with Rastafarian hair emerged from the bushes. Capt Sunday, the fast paced fighter who ran most of Kony’s errands walked to where Dr Machar was and saluted. He communicated something. He returned to the bush as we waited. Sunday returned later with Kony’s son named Salim Saleh.

These were the emissaries from the rebels’ chief. Dr Machar seemed disenchanted. “Chairman could not come because it rained. He could not cross some rivers,” Sunday said. We returned to the detach.

On the Second day, the peace negotiators decided they would only go to the clearing with Kony’s assurances that he will himself come-over. The peace negotiators had demanded that Kony sends some senior commanders to Juba to make the talks more credible.

The representatives would ask for many breaks to consult Kony. Since most had come from exile apart from Sunday and Ray Achana, they seemed detached. The day passed. Later in the evening Capt Sunday appeared with a horde of other dreadlocked guys at the detach.

We were absorbed in a game of playing cards until we had an exchange between Dr Machar and Sunday. He was not happy being stood up.

There was an attempt to round off the emissaries to communicate anger. They pleaded. Machar issued an ultimatum.

Day three
It appeared to me and indeed the late Walter Ochora told me that Kony relied heavily on intuition, intimidation and superstition. He would not come out to meet negotiators at the initial behest. On the third day, we returned to the clearing and waited.

Machar’s guards took positions and parked the armoured personnel carrier (kazinga) with the muzzle facing the direction of DRC where LRA was known to have its base.

A squad of rebels’ fighters emerged. They took positions, looking suspiciously at everyone. Some moved over to the tent and shuffled the plastic chairs placed where Kony was supposed to sit with his team.

Using stick and gun butts, the rebel guards pounded the ground as if to ascertain if something that could harm their commander in chief had been buried underneath. We endured another couple of hours of waiting. Then all of a sudden I noticed a flurry of activity.

A slender man in a Kaunda suit, holding a face towel for a hankie was heavily guarded and walking towards us.

He was with his second-in-command Vincent Otti, that he was later to kill. After talks with elders from South Sudan, he held an eight minutes press conference. He was flanked by his peace talks team led by Martin Ojullu and his then spokesperson Obonyo Olweny who moderated the briefing.
“I am Jojefu (Joseph) Kony.

As you can see, I am human. I have blood,” he said in response to a question, ‘Who is Kony?’ The mystery about his existence and activities was beginning to dissolve. After answering a few questions, he disappeared into the bush.

But as Matthew Green wondered in his book, ‘The Wizard of the Nile’ we were left wondering how a man with a band of abductees could keep the region Uganda and indeed the region at ransom for two decades. The question could not be answered until I reached his base and put it to him myself.

To continue next Sunday