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.”

I didn’t understand what they were saying because their conversation seemed to be coded and scared but I was puzzled because in the Civics classes taught by Mr Tibenderana, we were taught to respect the state and the government which existed only to serve and to do good for the citizens and we loved the national coat of arms, the country’s anthem and the national flag. Could government do bad things? It didn’t make sense to me.

In late 1979, when I read my uncle Henry Kyemba’s book “State of Blood,” which exposed Amin to the whole world as a killer, I realised that Bishop Festo Kivengere had taken the grave risk of joining Archbishop Luwum and other Protestant Bishops in writing and signing a letter to President Amin which bravely told him that his government had killed very many people and church leaders were having to console too many widows and orphans. The letter asked Amin to stop the killings immediately and the Archbishop was himself murdered by a furious Amin less than two weeks later.

In a second round of undiscovered eavesdropping by this politically curious 10-year old a few days later, I learnt that Bishop Kivengere had fled the country in the middle of the night. It is 36 years ago and my memory might be faulty on some of the facts but I vaguely recall learning through the eavesdropping that my British teachers had played a role in smuggling the much loved Bishop across the Rwanda border in the school’s white Volkswagen Combi van.

I do not recall clearly whether they said the Bishop escaped dressed as a woman or whether they put him in the luggage area and covered him with baggage items but Miss Hayward and Miss Sumner (whom I think drove the van) were engrossed in prayers of excited gratitude to God for the safe escape to exile of Bishop Kivengere.

Amin the wonderful parent
Most of our school life was less dramatic. Luyimbazi Amin was my classmate and dorm-mate. Amin’s kids made up about a quarter of the 52 students in the school. They were all nice, ordinary, sometimes cheeky children, who would get into occasional trouble like the rest of us and did not get special treatment of any kind.
It was a small school with a warm family environment and we were all friends, sharing such house-keeping chores as making our beds and cleaning and tidying our rooms. Neither I, nor any of Amin’s children knew that their father had killed my father in 1973 and had his body buried in a secret place.

As a parent, Idi Amin’s visits to KPS were much anticipated by all the students since he would usually come laden with many gifts and goodies from his foreign travels. As young children, we saw a presidential visit as a great honour that excited us tremendously.

Our childhood excitement peaked when the President, a very tall and imposing man with a big smile, who looked pretty equally good in military uniform and a Kaunda suit, turned up at our school driving himself in his motor rally Citroen Maserati car, followed by a Range Rover, black Mercedes Benzes and Land Rovers, some of which had very long radio antennas.

The vehicles were driven by cool-looking bodyguards wearing sun glasses and carrying walkie-talkies. Amin’s love for his children was very visible. The presidential aura wowed us young boys completely.

Amin’s kids escape Kabale
I have some recollections of the dramatic final day at KPS for Amin’s kids, ahead of their escape from Kabale district, the route to which had been cut off from the Kampala side by Amin’s Tanzanian enemies. Events of that day have been written about recently by Amin’s son Remo.I recall the night of their escape from Kabale as a dark and cold night, I think it was in February 1979, two months ahead of the April 11 capture of Kampala by the invading Tanzanian army. I was in Primary 7 and still sharing a room with the gentle Luyimbazi Amin (whom I have never seen again since, though I have bumped into Remo a couple of times).

If I recall correctly, Luyimbazi’s mother, a Muganda lady, was unknown to the Ugandan public but came from or lived in Mukono district. He was a quiet, gentle, dark-skinned boy with very good manners, much quieter than his younger brothers Machomingi, Aliga and Geriga who were often involved in mischievous pranks.

Remo was the eldest or one of the eldest and had a quiet big brotherly stance towards his siblings. He was not noisy or very assertive and was generally calm and quiet. I would never have guessed that he would emerge 30 years later as a high profile family spokesman and guardian of his late father’s name.

On that February night, with the liberation war nearing its peak, a stressed and pale-looking Miss Hayward and Ms Sumner stormed our dormitory, woke us up in the middle of the night and informed Amin’s children that they had to leave the school and the country immediately and they had just a few minutes to get out of their pyjamas, dress up and board what I vaguely recall as some kind of bus, that had been sent by the President to evacuate them to safety. We could hear the sounds of heavy vehicles forming the convoy, engines revving outside the residential houses that we used as dormitories.

We were all stunned but I understood what was happening because our history teacher, Mr Tibenderana had caved into my obsession with news stories and my endless questions about current affairs and updates on the war and he had allowed me access to radio news almost every evening as long as I upheld my promise not to discuss the news or our arrangements with anybody. I knew the Amin government was under military assault and the Tanzanians were already in Ugandan territory.

The soldiers came right into our dormitory, armed to the teeth and Amin’s children were given about 15 minutes to get onto the bus or van they were to escape in. The soldiers looked very tense and in a hurry to take off. They tossed the clothes and belongings of Amin’s kids into blankets, the ends of which were quickly tied together as make-shift “bags” of sorts. Some of the younger Amin children, including Machomingi, cried as they were hustled out of bed and swept into the van in a frantic hurry.

I helped my room-mate Luyimbazi carry his makeshift blanket “bag” to the van, having helped “pack.” We made hurried farewells and they vanished into the night amidst the heavy sound of the vehicle convoy.
Continues in Sunday Monitor.

The writer, a former KFM, NTV and Daily Monitor Managing Director is the Chief Executive of Greenewus Energy