Employing Amin’s son Lumumba

The fall of Amin. In our series on the Idi Amin published in the Saturday Monitor and the Sunday Monitor, Amin’s son Jaffar Remo narrated their dramatic rescue from Kampala preparatory school as the liberations 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.continued from yesterday.

Twenty six years later, I bumped into Remo Amin as we called him then, when he visited the Daily Monitor offices to see a friend, while I was still managing director there several years ago. We exchanged a polite nod but did not speak to each other.
Soon thereafter, however, my objectivity was tested more substantively when Monitor’s human resources manager, Ms Martha Elimu, and the 93.3 KFM radio programmes controller, Mr Peter Kabba, made a nervous entry into my office, carrying a blue employee recruitment approval form and a job application letter plus a C.V.

KFM, which I led as managing director, was recruiting a production executive for advertising commercials and Peter and Martha weren’t sure I would approve the recruitment of the candidate who had by far emerged best in the interviews, with other interviewees far behind him in the scores.

I asked what the problem was and a nervous Martha just handed me the papers without explaining. Her eyes were on the floor. The scores showed that the best candidate was one “Hussein Lumumba.” For a moment, I couldn’t understand why they were questioning whether I would approve his recruitment until I looked at his education history and saw the very familiar name of Kabale Preparatory School.

I realised immediately that the top candidate was my former school-mate, Lumumba Amin (as we knew him then), who was a few classes behind me in primary school. I gently chastised Martha and Peter, who knew that Amin had killed my father, for thinking that I could visit the sins of the father (Amin) on the son (Lumumba), whose good work at Capital Radio I heard about.

I immediately signed off my approval of the recruitment, asking that he start work right away.
Hussein Juruga Lumumba (as he was now known, having dropped the father’s name at the time) did excellent work for KFM and is undoubtedly one of the best radio professionals in Uganda.
He was clearly unaware of the terrible tragedy his father had visited on my family and Martha and Peter managed things in such a discreet way that Lumumba never got to know that there had been any questions about whether he’d get the job.

Months later, however, in January 2005, Daily Monitor and New Vision both ran a lengthy same-day front-page story carrying my family’s announcement that retired grave diggers of the Mailo Mbiri Cemetery in Jinja town had revealed to our family, the secret mass grave where, in January 1973, they were put at gun-point by Amin’s security forces who ordered them to hurriedly and secretly bury the body of my dad, former cabinet minister Shaban Kirunda Nkutu (Obote 1 Minister of Works, Housing, Transport and Communications and UPC MP for Busoga South East).

The seven grave diggers were threatened with death if they revealed the burial place, took an oath of silence and held their secret for 32 years. But now, the newspaper stories revealed details of how my late father was abducted by Capt. Issa Habib Galungbe, Military Intelligence Chief of Jinja’s Gadaffi Garrison, the brave fight for his life put up by dozens of unarmed civilians as an attempt was made by five soldiers to put him inside a car boot, his arrest by the army and his having been last seen alive in the office of the Garrison Commander, Col. Hussein.

The story reported the dumping of my dad’s body in the River Nile, where it was found floating face-down in the water with two bullet wounds to the head, and its retrieval by government security forces ahead of his secret burial on the orders of President Idi Amin.

It was a trying day for me because I had to preside over a previously scheduled all-staff Monitor meeting the morning on which the story came out on the front pages of the two main national dailies but I was able to remain composed and focused on management priorities as I addressed the hundreds of Monitor employees, many of whom were looking on with expressions ranging from shock, curiosity and sympathy as they read the newspaper stories during the meeting.

I could see that many of them were not paying attention to what I was saying as MD and were instead reflecting on the horrific details of my father’s abduction, murder and secret burial.
The story also revealed that the former First Lady, known as Mama Maryamu Kibedi Amin, who is my paternal cousin, had fled Uganda and gone into exile in Britain following my father’s murder.

Our grandfather, Haji Ausi Kirunda and other relatives besieged the First Lady with news that her husband had killed her paternal uncle and secretly buried his body, which they continuously but unsuccessfully asked her to persuade President Amin to release to the family for proper burial.

The story reported that Mama Maryamu’s brother, the young lawyer and Jinja politician Joshua Wanume Kibedi, who had been very close to Amin, had resigned as Foreign Minister and fled the country, denouncing his brother-in-law, the President of Uganda, as a murderer in the international media, following the killing of Shaban Nkutu.

Battling their father’s murderous reputation
Soon after the all-staff Monitor/KFM meeting ended that morning, KFM’s controller, Peter Kabba, came to my office and reported with a shaky voice that Hussein Lumumba Amin had read the newspaper story in shock and collapsed in Kabba’s office.

Kabba sought guidance on what to do as Lumumba had somewhat recovered but was weeping inconsolably and all the KFM staff were discussing the matter after realising that Lumumba was Amin’s son and that I had knowingly employed the son of my father’s killer.

Lumumba had asked Kabba if I was willing to see him in my office to enable him to express regrets for what had happened to my dad. I consented and he walked into my office trembling and weeping uncontrollably, supported to stand upright by Peter Kabba, and, if recall well, Joseph Beyanga, the station’s Head of Production. Lumumba attempted to say something to me and mumbled a vague “I’m so sorry...” but had lost his voice and was inaudible as well as pretty incoherent.