Museveni nearly shot in rebel camp

John Baptist Kawanga says everyone in the camp panicked, including the instructors after his gun when off, narrowly missing Museveni. ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX KWIZERA.

What you need to know:

Narrow escape. “I nearly shot Museveni,” are the unemotional words of John Baptist Kawanga, a lawyer, former Member of Parliament for Masaka Municipality and also a former Cabinet minister in the NRM government until the early 1990s. He recounted the incident that could have ended President Museveni’s life to Sunday Monitor’s Faustin Mugabe at his residence in Bunamwaya, a Kampala suburb.

In December 1968, Yoweri Museveni then a student at the University of Dar es Salaam nearly met his death while in the jungles of Cabo Delgado region in northern Mozambique. This was one of the Front for Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) liberated areas. And if fatal injury had occurred to Museveni, John Kawanga would have been responsible – though inadvertently.

Kawanga, an alumni of Museveni from Ntare School in Mbarara District as well as at the University of Dar es Salaam in the 1960’s, was among the six university students who together with Museveni went to Mozambique to learn about the resistance against Portuguese colonial rule. For the first time since the near-tragic incident in December 1968, he publicly narrates how he nearly shot Museveni.

How it Happened
“One morning, we were seated during a lecture listening to the military instructors in the bush when the bullet from my gun went off. I was seated on the left side of Museveni with the gun lying on my thigh facing Museveni. I had forgotten to lock the safety catch and then suddenly there was a deafening boooooom sound. The bullet from my gun had gone off! Everyone in the camp panicked including the instructors. I was also trembling because of the sound the gun made. I had never heard such an experience before. And Museveni angrily said to me in Runyankore, ‘I we noyenda kunyita?’ translated as ‘You, do you want to kill me?’ It was a traumatising experience,” Kawanga said.

Asked if the bullet had hit Museveni, which part of the body it would have hit. Kawanga said he could not tell. Although he remembers: “After that, the commanders removed the gun from me – and I was taken away for questioning – but I was later allowed to rejoin the rest. They asked me several questions which I answered. I think they wanted to establish what exactly had happened. They also warned me to always be careful with the gun and always remember to lock the safe [safety catch]”.
And what was Museveni’s reaction after the incident, I asked Kawanga. “In fact we never talked about that incident afterwards. I think they [colleagues and Museveni] also realised that it was an accident,” he answered.

The journey to Mozambique
“When we joined the University of Dar es salaam, we formed a student’s association and Museveni was our leader (University Students’ African Revolutionary Front – USARF). USARF was a student’s study group formed to discuss political issues, especially in Africa.

In the 1960s, most African liberation movements had offices in Dar es Salaam and often interacted with university students. So when the FRELIMO leader, Edwardo Mondlane, came to the university and convened a meeting, he told us that FRELIMO had liberated some areas from the Portuguese colonialists. He asked us [whoever was ready] to go and see those liberated areas. We had a meeting at the university. The seven of us (Owen Tshabangu and Emmanuel Dube from Zimbabwe; Andrew Shija and Msoma from Tanzania; John Kawanga and Yoweri Museveni from Uganda; and Kapote Mwakasungura from Malawi) decided to go. I think Museveni had already had contacts with the FRELIMO people operating in Tanzania; because he knew some of them, Kawanga recalls.

“I think it was during the December 1968 vacation, when the seven of us joined the FRELIMO fighters and travelled in two lorries from Dar es Salaam and crossed into Mozambique. After two days of waiting, inside Mozambique, the six of us and about a hundred other FRELIMO fighters were given guns – and at night we started moving towards the FRELIMO headquarters. It took us about a week to reach the headquarters.

Once inside the FRELIMO liberated area near Tanzania border, the seven students, just like the FRELIMO fighters, were given guns to head for the front-line. Asked why, Kawanga said, “Those people thought we were also FRELIMO fighters since we had travelled with them; and that’s why everyone was given a gun – although the six of us had never held a gun before,” he responded.

“It was after we had arrived at the FRELIMO headquarters that we received a three-week rudimentary training in military science. I remember, we were each given three bullets for target practice. We were also shown about four Portuguese soldiers who had been taken captive by FRELIMO fighters. What I found so strange was that they [Prisoners of War] were so illiterate. Although they could speak Portuguese, they could not write it. When we asked them why they had come to Africa, they said that their government in Portugal had told them that the aggressors were fighting to grab part of their country. But when they arrived to the battlefield, they found that they were fighting only black people in a country they did not even know,” Kawanga recollects.

Return to Uganda
“I think we returned in mid-1970,” he says but does not recall the actual month they returned from Tanzania. “In 1971 I started work at the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) as a pupil State Attorney [as was known then] and worked for nine months as required and after I became full State Attorney”.

Where did your Ntare and University of Dar es salaam alumni, Museveni go? I asked? “Museveni joined President’s Office – I think together with the late Agard Didi”. Which did department in President’s Office did he join if you may remember, I further asked? He laughed, paused for a while and looked hesitant to answer before he finally said, “I think he joined as a research officer”.

But there is a persistent claim that Museveni was recruited from university into the General Service Unit (GSU) as a special agent and that those who know it are either too close to him or too timid to reveal. Have you ever heard of that claim since you were close to him, I asked? “Since Museveni has always said that he worked as a researcher in the president’s office, let us take that”. Kawanga responded.

In his book Sowing the Mustard Seed on page 28, Museveni wrote: “Instead of going to Europe to attend international students’ conferences, where recruitment into foreign intelligence services sometimes took place, in December 1968 I organised a trip for seven students, including myself, to visit the liberated zones of northern Mozambique”.

Return to Tanzania

“When we returned from Mozambique, Mondlane came to the university and held a meeting and thanked and praised the seven of us who went to the FRELIMO liberated areas. We felt so proud to associate with the FRELIMO struggle.

Many students were shocked that we could go for such a mission. I was the youngest of the seven. I was born in 1946 – and Museveni was about two years older than me,” the veteran politician says. “What was the reaction of the university authorities having known that you went to Mozambique without clearance from the school?” I asked.
“They said nothing; because FRELIMO operated in Tanzania freely and everyone knew it,” he said.