At school with Idi Amin’s children

The fall of Amin. In our series on the Idi Amin fall published in the Saturday Monitor and the Sunday Monitor, Amin’s son Jaffar Remo narrated their dramatic rescue from Kabale Preparatory School as the liberation forces cut off Kampala access. Conrad Nkutu was one of the pupils in that school and in the following article recounts the events of that day, what it was like studying with the president’s children oblivious of the fact that his father was one of the first victims of Amin’s government.

I was browsing through the “Uganda Journalists” Facebook page last Saturday when I came across a post by a journalist, Moses Odokonyero, who had been reading the interesting Saturday Monitor series by Jaffar Remo Amin, son of former President Idi Amin, a record of many events not previously published, surrounding the collapse of his father’s regime in April 1979.

In one of the articles, Remo Amin recalls how he and his nine brothers were rescued by presidential security from Kabale Preparatory School, where they were primary school pupils, and driven to Kasese via Rwanda and Congo-Zaire, from where they escaped via Entebbe Airport, the main Kampala-Masaka-Mbarara highway having been cut off by the invading Tanzanian army as Amin’s army beat a rapid retreat.

Mr Odokenyero asked in his post: “So Kabale Preparatory School was considered ‘elite’ enough for the President’s children. I have not been to Kabale before. Does this school still exist? What is it like today? I thought I’d respond with a few lines and found myself writing a full article.

An elite school
My sister Sophie and I were students at Kabale Preparatory School in the 1970s. I was there from 1975-79 (Primary 3-7) alongside 10-13 of Amin’s children, two of whom, Luyimbazi Amin and Remo Jaffar Amin were my dorm-mates for most of my four years in the school. It was a wonderful school, ran by the lovable headmistress, Ms Mary Hayward (RIP), and Ms Jean Sumner of the British Church Missionary Society, supported by two wonderful and motherly Bakiga teachers, Ms Elizabeth Kigorogoro and Ms Erina Lushaya.

I have the fondest memory of my History Teacher, Mr Naris Tibenderana, who accommodated my inexhaustible pursuit of books, newspapers, magazines with great patience and encouragement. Kabale Prep or KPS as it was often called, would, in the 1970s, have been described as an “elite” school, running the Uneb curriculum but with international school welfare and living standards.

The school fees were very steep but the food was great and a hotel-style menu variety system was used, with many dining room delights and desserts to choose from.

As scarcity of essential commodities increased, State House Entebbe supported the school kitchen with many of its needs and at some point, it felt like food at school was better than food at home where sugar and other essentials were hard to find in the shops and were sometimes being rationed. The school had students from a number of elite Ankole and Kigezi families with big farms and the parents of these students would sometimes come visiting in pick-up trucks laden with large vats of fresh milk, meat and other farm products.

We enjoyed hotel-standard menus and meals through the years until Amin was overthrown.
The dormitories were residential houses in which we slept mostly two or three to a bedroom with bathrooms rarely shared by more than four students. There were only 52 boarders at Kabale Prep. If any of Amin’s children had a birthday that term, we were all sure to get a gift from State House and it was cool to have so many of his children in the school.

Some of our fellow students had famous fathers in the government – whom we read and learnt about in our Civics classes - such as Hon. Paul Etiang, whom I recall was Minister of Transport and later Assistant Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity. I was always fascinated by his Range Rover vehicle and his very gentlemanly and dignified bearing.

The other Amin children I recall being at KPS were his much reported-about favourite son Moses (widely believed national rumours circulated in 1979 that his father had killed and eaten him were just not true!), Mayimuna (known as “Mayi”), Machomingi, Lumumba, Aliga, Adam, Mwanga (another reported favourite) and Geriga. In the earlier years, I seem to recall a boy called Mao Amin and two older girls whose names now fade from memory, I think they were daughters of Amin’s first wife, Mama Maryamu.

Bishop Kivengere flees to exile
There were no security arrangements of any kind for Amin’s kids at Kabale Prep. The school is located at the top of Kabale’s Rugarama Hill, near the main Protestant Church. Living next door to the school and playing a role in its affairs was the much respected and beloved Bishop Festo Kivengere (RIP), whom I recall as a saintly, handsome, smiling gentleman, with a dignified kind of “Afro” hairstyle.

One always felt you were in the company of an honourable and very trustworthy person when you were in his presence. Actually, my first sense of something terribly being wrong with the government led by the father of my school friends, the Amins, involved Bishop Kivengere. I was eavesdropping on a conversation in headmistress Mary Hayward’s office in early 1977 because I could hear her sobbing and I was perturbed.

I was In P.5 and the headmistress was telling Teacher Jean Sumner that Archbishop Janan Luwum, who had a special relationship with our missionary school and had visited about a week or two before he was murdered by Amin, had been reported in a government radio bulletin as having been killed in a motor accident in Kampala but that the “accident” story was totally unbelievable to her and she said Luwum had certainly been killed.

I never heard her say who had killed the Archbishop but had a worried sense it was government-related.
I had been born into a Muslim family but brought up as a Christian following my father’s death and I wondered how and why would anybody kill the Archbishop, whom we knew well from his visits to Kabale Prep. Ms Hayward and Ms Sumner were virtually whispering but weeping and I recall a vague reference being made to a letter having been written to “him.”