She nursed Museveni’s rebels in the bush

Finding a particular Bush War veteran in an area crowded with war veterans is no mean feat, especially when at the appointed time, her phone is switched off.

Luckily, I am directed to an old woman’s home, who, as luck would have it, is a sister of Joyce Serwaniko, the one I am looking for.

I catch Serwaniko and her children – Simon Kabugo, 40, and Esther Sekitooleko, 38, in their dilapidated home just after breakfast.

There is nothing of the fighter in this frail woman – almost deaf – nor in her son, who seems to be battling a smoker’s cough. But first impressions lie; this woman (RA/130816) at a crucial time carried her young children to the midst of the rebel camp in 1981.

Beginning of the war
In 1981, Kabugo was living with his father in Kiryanfuufu, Kiwoko in Luweero District. He was five years old.

“When the war started, we fled to Lukoola. Father used to talk about the rebels and the older children were running away from their homes to join them. I had not yet seen what a rebel looked like.”
The family soon moved to Kalagala to shelter with Kiggundu, a relative.

“Father had three guns. His brother also had three guns, so we were not really scared of the soldiers. Kiggundu was a rebel collaborator. Whenever he saw soldiers, he would sound Gwanga Mujje drums in the trading centre, warning people to hide.”

On the day he died, soldiers found him sounding his drums and shot him. Another relative, Ssekyanzi was cut through the abdomen, causing his intestines to spill out.

When our father came out of hiding at night, he buried both of them. A few days later, I began noticing armed men coming home to converse with my father.”

Bikwanso flees to the bush
Bikwanso had become a rebel informer and he could no longer live with his children. When he fled to Wabusana with the older children, he sent Kabugo to his mother in Bakijulula.
In Bakijulula, Joyce Serwaniko had established a clinic with a large stock of medicine. She lived with her three young daughters and old mother. Serwaniko’s brother, Israel Wamala, had come into contact with rebel leader Yoweri Museveni at some point.

“I think they met in London,” Serwaniko says, adding, “When Mzee told him about the war he planned to fight in Bulemeezi, Wamala told him to look for his sister, who would offer him some help.”
Wamala, a lawyer and a journalist, was the assistant head of the African service of the BBC World Service. Previously, he had been editor of the Focus On Africa programme, where he came to be known as the “voice of Africa.”

“When I heard that Mzee had sent people to look for me, I went into hiding. I thought he wanted to kill me. He later sent (Rtd Maj Gen) Mugisha Muntu, (late Maj Gen) Fred Rwigyema, and (Lt Gen) Joram Mugume to talk to me.”

From then on, Serwaniko began receiving a number of injured rebel fighters. A few months later, she shifted to Kijebejo.
“I remember Muntu and a rebel called Skaje leaving our house with drugs wrapped in banana leaves,” says the daughter, Sekitooleko, adding, “They also brought the injured on bicycles for treatment.”

Going to the bush
Inevitably, soldiers heard about the nurse and Serwaniko had to run to Gayaza, Lukoola where the rebels had rented a house for her.

“There, the injured came in droves In the trading centre, people knew my mother as the rebel’s nurse.”

With the risk of discovery growing, Rwigyema told Serwaniko it was time to join the rebels in the bush. They took the nurse to Kasiso forest, where she met Museveni. Later, Skaje returned to Gayaza to collect her children and mother.
Serwaniko was given a hut a few feet away from where Museveni was staying. “Life was not difficult because Mzee knew my brother. He ensured that my children received milk every day. I found other medical workers there, including Mama Kawempe, Dr Semakula, Dr Kiwanuka, Paddy and Ronald Batta.”

About Itongwa
As the interview goes on, there is an elephant in the room that we are all trying to escape – Itongwa. A tough-talking Sekitooleko forbids conversation about him. The family’s fear is almost tangible. All you get are bits and pieces that slip into the conversation at unguarded moments.

The family met Itongwa in the bush. He had been in Senior Four when the war began. A streetwise teenager who lived in Bwaise, Itongwa joined with a group of armed thugs who specialised in robbing cars. These thugs, coming with their own guns, together with other daredevils, formed the 3rd Battalion that became famous for its savagery.

“Whenever that battalion escorted their commander to the headquarters to meet Mzee, they stopped at least a kilometer away,” Kabugo says, adding, “The few times they entered the headquarters, they left everyone in tears. I think they were mad.”
Itongwa later fell out with the regime in 1995 and started the Uganda National Democratic Alliance rebel group. The group operated in central Uganda but was defeated by the UPDF in 1997 and Itongwa fled into exile in Denmark. He died in Germany in 2013, at 49 years.

In 1982, the six-year-old Kabugo joined the defence unit at the headquarters. There was no training; he learnt how to shoot by looking at how other people were handling the gun. “The motivation was a soldier standing in front of you. Either you killed him or he killed you,” he says.

The girls and their mother lived in relatively peaceful areas.

Later, the family was sent to live in Afande Stephen Butamanya’s camp in Nyamiringa, where the rebel’s cows were kept.

The challenges
Although they had food, the children longed for better life. “Our father was a farmer with many heads of cattle, but now, we were eating things I had never eaten before, such as kayinja (bananas used for making local gin), and endelema (a creeping vine).”

The bad food had to be eaten cold because the rebels only cooked at dusk. Heavy rains were a terror to those who failed to take dead soldiers’ shoes. Their toes rotted away. And the injured died from tetanus.

In 1983, Kabugo killed his first soldier when the rebels went on a failed mission to attack Kabamba Barracks.

“The camp in Kanyala remained with the women, children, injured, and the old. I was among the 12 kadogos left on guard under Afande Ismaili Ssebi. We were attacked by a platoon of soldiers, which we overpowered, but on that day, I lost my humanity.”

Sekitooleko, five-years-old at the time, remembers that they had to wake up at 4am daily.
“As soon as you woke up, you would tie your things in a bundle, so that if the order came to run, you would be ready.

The death of Maj Gen David Oyite Ojok
During the last days of November 1983, Kabugo says they were surrounded by government soldiers. “We were in Nyamiringa when the helicopters started flying over us on December 2, 1983. Our commander said they had been sent by Ojok.”

The day before, announcements were running on Radio Uganda from Ojok telling the rebels to leave the forests.

“Those in the camp said he was sending a coded message to Mzee,” Sekitooleko says, adding, “The coded message was: You know me, and what I am capable of, so get out of the bush while you can.”

I think Mzee also prepared for him. Throughout the day, the rebels were bombarded but according to Sekitoleko, though many were wounded, none died.

In the late afternoon, Afande Sabata told our mother, ‘My sister, we have been called. I am going. But this man who has been bombing us today…If Oyite Ojok does not kill me today, I will kill him.’”

At about 9pm, a few women saw a ball of fire falling from the sky in the direction of Kasozi. “In the morning, someone run into the camp saying Oyite Ojok was dead. Butamanya switched on his radio and we heard the announcement. We began rejoicing and afande ordered a few cows to be slaughtered.”
As they celebrated, they received an order to begin moving out of Lukoola. “Mzee sent some boys to carry us. Another fighter carried my mother’s luggage.”

Death of their father
Bikwanso Sekitooleko had remained on the outside as a reconnaissance informer.

“People in our village knew him as a gatherer of food and mats for the rebels,” Sekitooleko say, continuing, In June 1984, Bikwanso was sent to reconnoiter Kiwoko town as the rebels looked for a safe passage out of Bulemeezi. When he reached his village, he went to his best friend, Kelementi Bisaso.

“He told Bisaso about his mission. Bisaso told him to hide in his house while he (Bisaso) went to check out the town. Instead, he returned with soldiers.”

Among the soldiers was Bikwanso’s son, Baabumba Sentongo, fighting on the government side.

“The soldiers asked him where Museveni was and our father denied any knowledge of him. Bisaso urged him to confess but Bikwanso kept quiet.”

Sekitooleko says their brother (a child of Bikwanso’s first wife) participated in the torture of their father. Bikwanso and his first wife had an acrimonious relationship.

“Our brother boasted to us about how Bikwanso was beaten and tied to the tailgate of (Lt Col John) Ogole’s Land Rover. They dragged him from Kiwoko to Magoma, where they had an etambiro (execution place).”

In a last effort to get Bikwanso to talk, a huge chunk of flesh was cut off under his right breast with a bayonet. He was a fat man.

“They placed him under jerrycans and lit them; they molten fire on him. When he died, they put his body on the road, together with two others.”

According to Sekitooleko, when the rebels heard that Bikwanso had been captured, they were on standby, ready to run, thinking he had betrayed them. When they realised that he had remained true, the 3rd Battalion was sent to collect the body.

“They tried three times and failed because the soldiers were using the body as bait. They guarded it until it rotted and was washed away by the rain.

Returning to civilisation
Towards the end of 1984, the rebels opened the western front but Serwaniko knew her young children could not walk to Kasese.

“She asked for permission to take us to her niece in Jinja,” Sekitooleko reminisces, adding, “Mzee asked for the directions and sent (Lt Col) Serwanga Lwanga to scout the place.”

When Lwanga found the place to be safe, he returned to Bulemeezi and Muzeveni gave the nurse transport of Shs20,000.
In Jinja, Serwaniko put her children in Nyenga Girls School. Kabugo was nine, and Sekitooleko was seven.

“We behaved like animals. We did not talk to people because we thought everyone was an adui (enemy). At night, instead of going to the bedroom, we squatted on the verandah because we only knew how to sleep under trees. We could not even eat normal food. We had to be counselled by senior women teachers.”

Lwanga returned to Jinja to collect Serwaniko, but she told him she could not walk the distance to Masaka. He promised to collect her when the rebels moved near Kampala.
“The next thing we heard, they had captured power. Mother immediately travelled to Kampala and was given accommodation in Lubiri Barracks.”

Serwaniko returned to Jinja to collect her children in a car offered by (Maj) Chris Bunyenyezi, whom Sekitooleko says was like a father to them.”

While the children were enrolled at Bat Valley Primary School, Serwaniko took on 12 children some NRA commanders had fathered in the bush.

These commanders felt their lovers in the bush, and their children, were unrefined for their newfound fame in Kampala.

Over the years, Serwaniko worked in Mbuya and Bombo barracks as a nurse.

“Mzee has looked after us,” Sekitooleko stresses, adding, “Over the years, other commanders such as afande (late Gen) Aronda Nyakairima also looked after us.

The man who betrayed our father is still alive in Kiwoko because Mzee stopped vengeful killings.”

Serwaniko, on her part, has a few regrets. “My husband had 10,000 cows, which were eaten in the bush. I have never received compensation.”

When I ask if she has regrets concerning her son’s rebellion, Serwaniko tells me she has moved on.
“I do not think about the past. My friend (Museveni) cares about me, although nowadays it is difficult to see him. But I am grateful. I receive medical treatment, and the government bought me a house.”