Bamuze: A former rebel chief turned peace envoy
Gen Bamuze. Photo by Felix Warom
WEST NILE/KAMPALA- His giant physique bequeathed him authority.
He walked with shoulders slouched. Height advantaged Maj Gen Ali Bamuze to scan territory above and beyond the sight range of most people, unsurprising that he was a two-time former rebel commander.
After surviving deprivation and perilous manoeuvers in the thickets of present-day South Sudan, first under Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) I and later UNRF II, Bamuze, 69, in the irony that life is collapsed at the plush J&M Airport Road Hotel, Bwebajja, on Kampala-Entebbe highway.
The general, together with his military colleagues, had just listened to President Museveni’s lecture on Operation Wealth Creation, a UPDF-executed government programme contrived to ostensibly banish poverty in rural Uganda.
Bamuze, who died on the way to hospital, was the programme’s overseer in West Nile, and on Sunday at Bwebajja, Museveni singled him out for praise, according to presidential press sectretary Lindah Nabusayi.
That was the last interface between two generals: One a successful guerilla leader and president and the other, a countryside warlord who terrorised West Nile enclave without ability to hold or control territory until surrendering 13 years ago.
Bamuze’s rebel group, with active cells in the then Arua and Moyo districts baptised itself UNRF II, ambushed vehicles, killed and robbed from passengers in transgression that qualified more for violent crimes than substantive armed struggle to wrest state power.
It made travel between Arua, Koboko, Yumbe and Moyo districts perilous. The rebels had operational cells in Yumbe, then a county in Arua, before the government carved it out as a separate district in fulfilment of UNRF II’s demands during negotiations to abandon their revolt.
UNRF II leaders on December 24, 2002, handed a cache of high-grade weapons, most with Arabic inscriptions, to President Museveni on behalf of Uganda government at a ceremony at Yumbe Boma grounds; prompting hushed jitters among some residents unhappy about voluntary turnover of guns they considered instruments of self-protection.
Bamuze and Museveni saluted, officials clapped to a symbolic event capping years of painstaking negotiation.
Residents dreaded Bamuze’s name when he was in the bush because his fighters regularly staged deadly ambushes.
On abdicating rebellion, he and top lieutenants were handsomely rewarded by government, taking hefty sums for themselves out of the Shs4.2 billion resettlement sweetener.
The defunct rebel group received scholarships and slots for government jobs, but the promise to build a vocational/technical school to skill 135 child soldiers never materialised.
It was one of the outstanding things Bamuze had lately been following up with the President who he and Gen Moses Ali met on March 13, to table separate demands for UNRF I ex-combatants that Ali commanded.
Former Arua Municipality MP Akbar Godi, now serving a 25-year sentence at Luzira prison for murdering his wife Caesar Rehema, is a notable beneficiary of the UNRF II scholarship given to him as Bamuze’s nephew.
The government bought for Bamuze a Shs200m house in Kitintale, a Kampala suburb, a lucrative offer that left physically incapacitated, displaced or impoverished victims of UNRF II war grumbling. Some of the ex-combatants were integrated into the regular army and Bamuze himself retained his bush title of a Major General, a two-star general in the UPDF.
Soon mistrust developed among senior former UNRF leaders about unequal sharing of the government sweetener.
Disgruntled colleagues tipped the government that, after all, UNRF never surrendered all weapons prompting UPDF’s sting operations in mainly Koboko and Yumbe districts where SMG rifles and explosives buried under trees, anti-hills or hills were dug up.
Nothing, however, changed for Bamuze; honour for him at public functions remained intact and his official perks undisturbed.
The reformed rebel commander who was a tormentor when in the bush had, upon giving up armed insurrection, transitioned into a darling, praised in life as in death, including by the Ugandan military that fought hard to compel his capitulation.
“Maj Gen Bamuze was a peace-maker who, because of his love for his country Uganda, denounced rebellion and together with his fighters of Uganda National Rescue Front II, laid down their weapons to join the Uganda People’s Defence Forces to contribute to national peace and security,” Gen Katumba Wamala, the Chief of Defence Forces, said in his eulogy.
His collapse and sudden death on Sunday, October 4, 2015, sparked rumours, but in his ancestral Yumbe District in north-western Uganda where he was interred on Wednesday, relatives looked beyond and set their eyes on his legacy.
“It is God who gives and takes, we know that we have lost a gallant son,” Yumbe Resident District Commissioner Manasi Wadia.
The Aringa MP, Mr Manoah Achile, said late Bamuze was a pillar of peace and stability in the region “[because] had he chosen to refuse negotiations with government, we would not be enjoying the current peace prevailing in the region”.
“The passing of this gentleman (Bamuze) is very sad for our region,” said former Arua District Woman MP and Gender minister Zoe Bakoko, a key participant in the peace 2002 negotiations who now lives in exile in the United States.
Whereas West Nile has had no war since 2002, abandoned ordinances continue to explode in residential neighbourhoods, on farms and hunting grounds, killing children and women.
While proliferation of small arms and light weapons, both from the various rebellions and toppled Idi Amin’s government troops, has made violent internal and cross-border crime a permanent peace discount in the region that borders South Sudan and DRC.
Still, most residents are happy to spend undisturbed nights. “We are now able to sleep in the house, do trade and children go to school at will.
I think this is memorable than those days when each time you have to be on your toes for fear of the rebels attacking,” said Ms Asina Ali in Yumbe’s Odravu Sub-county, praising Bamuze for abandoning rebellion.
In keeping with honour of the dead, Bamuze’s alleged bad deeds are now buried with him.
His legacy, of a pacifist and development lobbyist, rise to tower posthumously like the giant he was in life.
‘Blood clot killed Bamuze’
A blood clot in the lung blocked air circulation leading to the sudden death on Sunday of Maj Gen Ali Bamuze, 69, the West Nile coordinator for the army-run Operation Wealth Creation.
The former commander of the defunct Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) II rebel group collapsed at a hotel during a meeting of the wealth creation programme, and died on the way to hospital.
He had been due for surgery, following repeated complaints of chest pain, but lacked Shs5.5 million required for the procedure, his aide-de-camp, Capt Ramadan Akasa Buga, said.
The postmortem report was read to mourners at the burial last evening by Dr Marlon Atama, the medical superintendent of Yumbe District Hospital, who said he was delegated by doctors that carried out the autopsy at Mulago hospital in Kampala.
A 13-gun salute rang out in Geya village of Yumbe Town Council as Bamuze’s body was interred at 5p.m.
President Museveni described the fallen general as a “hero and symbol of peace” in the country, citing the massive turn out of mourners and outpouring grief countrywide.
Bamuze’s rebel group signed a peace deal with the government in December 2002, ending years of insecurity in West Nile.
Yesterday, Mr Museveni said he and Bamuze both believed in the peace and unity of Uganda which is why they agreed to end the UNRF II insurrection through peace talks.
He promised to fulfil pledges under the 2002 peace pact which are still outstanding, to honour the memory of Bamuze. “If you want a soldier to fear in war, you don’t care for the family he has left behind,” Museveni said metaphorically.
Shadow Defence minister Hassan Kaps Fungaro said he was not satisfied with the stated cause of death of Bamuze and lately other high-ranking government officials, and demanded a “full, serious investigation”.
Yumbe District Council honoured Bamuze during a special session, and requested the government to build a nurse training school in the district as a legacy project.
