My husband paid the price for Entebbe raid by Israelis

Mary Theresa Kabanda during the interview. PHOTO BY GILLIAN NANTUME

What you need to know:

  • Account. According to a receptionist in the VIP Lounge, airport commandant Joseph Kabanda and accountant Rwamasheshe passed through the lounge as they left the terminal building.
  • In the parking lot, they entered Kabanda’s car.
  • They were carjacked and kidnapped between Veterinary Training Institute and Lido Beach at about 2am, writes Gillian Nantume.

When Joseph Nyanzi Sentamu Kabanda applied for the position of airport commandant as advertised by the Ministry of Aviation and Communication in 1968, little did he know that that job would be his death knell.

He had risen through the Uganda Police Force ranks to become deputy fire brigade chief by the time he got married in 1967.

“We were married in Bugonga Catholic Church in Entebbe on December 2,” his widow, Mary Theresa Kabanda says. “I was 18, and working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A year after our wedding, I was transferred to the ministry of Works and posted to Entebbe International Airport as a telephone exchange supervisor.”

According to Mary Theresa, her husband was a calm man who loved all and was loved by all. “He was a good friend of (president Idi) Amin and we attended many official and private functions at State House.”

This close friendship lulled Kabanda into believing that he was immune to rogue security agents. On the day the Israeli’s raided Entebbe airport, the ground personnel on duty agree that Kabanda left the airport only after the president had been driven to State House, barely an hour before the raid.

“He visited a bar in Entebbe Town but when he heard the bullets, he drove home – Plot 9, Queens Road. I opened the garage for him. After the raid, I urged him to go into exile, but he refused, saying he could not abandon his mother and sisters. Besides, he had not committed a crime.”

“Two weeks after the raid, police picked him from his office and he recorded a statement about his activities at Entebbe Police Station. After that, life went back to normal.”

The kidnap
On Tuesday June 28, 1977, Kabanda informed his wife that he had a day-long meeting at his ministry. According to an affidavit signed by his clerk/typist, Margaret Nabankema in August 1980, Kabanda reported for duty at the airport at 8.30am.

“Mr Kabanda left me in the office and went to Kampala to attend a meeting at the ministry of Aviation … Sometime in the morning, Mr Kabanda rung me from Kampala and instructed me not to leave until he had returned … At about 5.30pm he returned to the office and found me there.”

Kabanda gave Nabankema draft minutes of the meeting to type out, and left the office. Joseph Bukenya, the night shift leader in the VIP lounge, says the airport commandant spent time in the lounge.

“On that day, the cashier was still giving out salaries – in cash – to staff. He probably checked on the cashier. At 7.30pm he walked into the lounge and asked for evening tea. He always took his breakfast in the lounge, as well.”

After his tea, Kabanda drove out of the airport. “At about 8pm, my husband came back home with matooke,” Mary Theresa says. “He hurried out of the house saying he had work to complete at the office.”

According to Bukenya, Kabanda returned to the VIP lounge at about 8.30pm and asked for a light supper. According to Nabankema’s affidavit, Kabanda returned to his office at 9pm and dictated some letters which he instructed her to type before she left.
“I completed the work at 10pm and he gave me transport (provided by the airport police) to take me home. I left him and the accountant, Mr Enoka Rwamasheshe, in the office still on duty.”

According to Aida Katuma, a receptionist in the VIP lounge, Kabanda and Rwamasheshe passed through the lounge as they left the terminal building. In the parking lot, they entered Kabanda’s car. They were carjacked and kidnapped between Veterinary Training Institute and Lido Beach at about 2am.

“I was not worried when my husband did not return home that night, because sometimes he slept at the Airport Hotel.”

Mary Theresa went to Kampala the next morning, but when she returned at 4pm, her housemaid informed her that her husband’s typist had called inquiring about his whereabouts. The typist had also called her permanent secretary trying to trace her boss.

Searching for Kabanda
By the time Kabanda was kidnapped, the couple had four biological children, the eldest in Primary Two, although Kabanda had five other children from previous relationships.

The distraught wife reported her husband’s disappearance to Entebbe Police Station and recorded a statement with the district police commander (DPC). However, when she reported back, the criminal investigations department section was unable to trace the statement and the DPC was nowhere to be found. She also reported the disappearance to her husband’s employer and the administrator general.

“I began searching and asking questions, but in fear. Those men (soldiers) were scary and I did not want to expose myself. Whenever a man disappeared, the women in his house would be gang raped and his property stolen.”

Because of Kabanda’s position, his wife had access to high ranking security officers, one of whom was Brig Taban Lupayi, the South Sudanese commander of the Uganda Marine Corps. “He was a close friend of my husband but every time I went to Bugolobi Barracks he would say he was going to find out what happened. Sometimes, he even hid from me. I eventually gave up.”

In fear, Mary Theresa fled with her husband’s 11 children from their marital home and hid in the Bugonga Parish convent for two months. Her in-laws later took the older children and her husband’s property.

“The fact that I had to fend for my young children forced me to return to work at the airport. We rented two rooms until I could build a house on the small plot my in-laws had left me.”

With rumours swirling around about her husband’s whereabouts, someone told her he might be in the dungeons of the State Research Bureau (SRB). “I visited an SRB officer, Kalyango, in Bweyogerere. He lied to me that he would help me. I think he wanted sexual favours but when I did not comply, he told me to forget my husband. I knew then that my husband was really gone.”

Possible cause of kidnap
Mary Theresa believes her husband’s disappearance had everything to do with jealousy from the military section at the airport.

“He had a good position, travelled the world, and whenever he addressed the soldiers in English they felt insulted. Whenever people asked about my husband’s whereabouts, Capt Raphael (who shot Yonathan Netanyahu), the chief intelligence officer at the airport, always told them he had gone to Singapore. I do not know what that meant.”

The government set up a commission of inquiry into the disappearance of Kabanda and interviewed the widow on numerous occasions, demanding to know who kidnapped her husband.

Finding closure
In 1980, Stephen Kiwanuka, a senior executive officer in the budget section of the Ministry of Finance visited Mary Theresa’s home looking for Kabanda. They had shared the same cell in SRB in 1977.

In an affidavit signed on July 24, 1980, Kiwanuka states that he was arrested from Abaita Ababiri in Entebbe, on May 1977 and taken to SRB, where he spent two months.

“Sometime on June 28, 1977, after midnight … I saw Mr Kabanda brought into the prison … He also told me that he did not know why he had been arrested … I recognised him easily because he was a person well known to me over a long period of time.”

Kiwanuka and Kabanda promised each other that if one of them was released he would look for the other’s family members and inform them of their incarceration. When Kiwanuka visited the widow, he told her that during the three weeks Kabanda was imprisoned with him, he was very prayerful.

Kiwanuka alleges that Brig Lupayi personally led Kabanda out of the cell. Kabanda left his coat behind which the prisoners used as a blanket. They were sure he had been released. Kiwanuka was released 10 days later. “Mr Kabanda should be presumed to have been killed whilst he was in custody at Nakasero State Research Centre,” Kiwanuka stated in his affidavit.

The aftermath
After protracted disagreements with her workmates, Mary Theresa requested a transfer to the ministry headquarters, where she remained as a telephone operator until 1988 when she retired.