How Archbishop Luwum in death vanquished Amin
Several days before the murder of Archbishop Janani Luwum, a meeting of the Mengo Hospital board met to discuss the affairs of the hospital.
According to reliable sources, the archbishop was presiding at that meeting. He was calm and unruffled. However, according to Dr James Rwanyarare, who attended the meeting together with the hierarchy of the Church of Uganda and board members, were painfully aware of an impending catastrophe.
On that day, it occurred and shocked the believers, Uganda and the whole world. Several days before the meeting, the provincial secretary of the Church of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire, as it was then known, had warned all concerned that the archbishop’s life was in mortal danger.
There had been visits to the archbishop’s residence by faceless security men demanding to enter the premises, claiming that they had information that guns had been delivered there and were intended to overthrow the Idi Amin government.
It was under the shadows of these claims that the archbishop went to chair the medical board at Mengo on the February 16, 1977.
As the archbishop presided, a military messenger entered the boardroom and announced that His Grace was wanted and should accompany him to the Nile Conference Centre where president Amin was waiting with others to meet His Grace.
The news that His Grace had actually been summoned by the chief assassin of innocent Ugandans spread like wild fire through Kampala and beyond. Anglican bishops who were in Kampala immediately advised the archbishop not to go alone and they soon joined him in what was to be his last journey on earth.
The tragedy that occurred with the martyrdom of the archbishop and Amin’s two Christian Cabinet ministers – Erinayo Wilson Oryema and Charles Oboth Ofumbi – has been narrated a thousand times in the media nationally and internationally. It has been repeated again and again every year reaching its crescendo this 40th anniversary.
We heard and read about the murders while I and thousands of other Ugandan compatriots were in exile in many parts of the world.
At the time I was chairperson of the Uganda Group for Human Rights in the UK, which was the de facto leading voice of all Uganda exiles and friends of Uganda in Europe.
Until February 16, 1977, most Ugandans in exile had kept low profiles in fear that any criticism of the Idi Amin’s regime might infuriate it to murder family members and friends who still lived in Uganda.
We received the chilling news of the murder of the archbishop and the ministers with uncontrollable fury and sadness. Then openly and loudly, we shouted and publicised our anguish. We prayed together in different places for God to unleash divine revenge for the heinous crimes the Amin regime was inflicting.
Together with British Christian churches and retired Ugandan Church missionaries, we mounted a campaign of revulsion and abhorrence against the regime.
In 1978, I represented the Ugandan community living in Europe and met leaders of other Ugandan groups living in exile in Lusaka, Zambia. Amongst those who attended were Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Eriya Kategaya, and Martin Aliker.
We founded the Uganda Liberation Movement to campaign vigorously for the unity of all Ugandan political, military and other groups which were fighting or opposing the Amin regime. For a number of logistical and political reasons, the Movement did not survive long but it became the catalyst for what happened later.
The unity idea born in Lusaka was to be used in persuading all Ugandan groups and individuals, in and out of Uganda to unite and recruit others wherever they were nationally and globally to join the crusade for the defeat and removal of the regime.
The methods and successes of mobilising spiritually, militarily, materially against the regime are described in my book Constitutional and Political History of Uganda From 1894 to the Present published by Law Africa.
In between our struggles to topple the Idi Amin regime from power, we believed that the spirit of martyred Archbishop Janani Luwum was the power leading us.
In 1979, Ugandans, British and others living in the UK organised a vigil in memory of Archbishop Luwum, the climax of which, was the heart rendering sermon by former Archbishop of Canterbury, the late Michael Ramsey, who prophetically said: “Oh, Lord, the God of mercy, open the eyes and heart of Idi Amin to see and change his ways and stop inflicting great loss and misery on your people of Uganda and Lord, if he cannot change, we pray, let him go!”
Within a few months, the gallant soldiers of the Tanzanian Peoples’ Defence Forces assisted by Ugandan exile forces, drove the Amin regime from Uganda and many Christians believe even today, the Good spirit of martyred Archbishop Janani Luwum was at the front of these liberation forces and prayers, driving a heavenly chariot and that is how in death, Luwum defeated Amin. Praise be to the Lord, Almighty.
Prof Kanyeihamba is a retired Supreme Court judge. [email protected]