Street children are top on the agenda for female MPs this term

We had known we would be leaving but not in groups. We had been told to pick whatever we had that would be needed in the war.

I, like many of the other children in the Kadogo school, had hidden my gun down in the sewerage system of the training wing. On the night of September 30, 1990, I went for it. It was a small gun nicknamed sina makosa with four magazines.
Around midnight, the child soldiers and other people started moving out of the school heading to the meeting point in Kakoba, a Mbarara Town suburb.

There, pick-up trucks and lorries were waiting to transport us. Our spirits were high as we headed out to attack Kagitumba Boarder Post and Mirama Hills.

We got there around 5am and we immediately went into formation. I was in Company B commanded by then Lt Karakire, who made me a section commander. My group was to attack from the side of River Muvumba and it was the first group to attack. It was a very early morning attack and we overran the post.

As the enemy retreated, they left behind a number of hardware including vehicles. They only managed to flee with one vehicle. Having neutralised them, our commanders told us not to spoil anything as we would need them later.

During day, we took up positions in Mirama Hills on the Rwanda side Kagitumba and secured them. At dawn on day two we advanced towards Nyagatare.

Unfortunately, our commanders had not anticipated the reaction from the Rwandan forces who had long range artillery and air power. We had planned for close range engagement. As we advanced, we came under heavy fire. Many of our soldiers lost their lives around the Nyabweshongoize hill but this didn’t dampen our spirit.

We moved in a three infantry pronged approach. Little did we know that they had sent an ambush, but we fought our way through it and dislodged them in the first hills. Around 9am, they started using a helicopter which killed many soldiers and really dampened our spirit. This was the first time we were fighting against an enemy with such weapons. By now, we were registering causalities.

Rwigyema shot
On this very day at around 9am Maj Gen Fred Rwigyema was shot. I was less than 40 metres away him. I knew him very well having been his bodyguard in Uganda.

The person who shot him used a 12mm gun. When we dislodged the enemies one of their cars mounted with a 12mm gun was hidden in the bush close by but we had not seen it. Rwigyema was wearing a red beret and had a walking stick. He was with Capt Sam his bodyguard.

When he was hit, our group commander called out to the soldiers with the RPG to neutralise the source of fire. The bullet hit him behind the neck, he leaned forward and said: “mjinga amenipiga” (the fool has hit me. Afande Sam held him and Afande Rwigyema repeated mjinga amenipiga lakini RPG piga yeye (the fool has hit me let the RPG hit him). Four RPGs were fired in the same direction and the car was demobilised.

A scarf was wrapped around his neck before he was taken away in a car and that was the last I saw of him. We were ordered to advance that day and we went up to Nyagatare.

There, we got involved in a street battle with the enemy and it was here that Musho Kamanzi (now a major general in Rwandan army) was wounded. I was too small to carry him and we were under enemy fire.

I had to cover him by returning fire as I waited for backup. I managed to drag him to a corner for safety until a car coming from the Gabiro direction in eastern Rwanda with causalities and dead bodies came and took him.

Withdrawing back to Uganda
Logistically, we were not prepared. We got stuck at a place called Kabarole. We were incurring a lot of causalities. My immediate commanders were Ndungutse and a one Maj Kaka who was in the NRA military police, but I didn’t know who the overall commander was. We were ordered to withdraw into Akagera National Park in Rwanda.

Life in the park was hard, we were eating leaves and the Rwandan forces continued to attack almost annihilating us. It was there that we heard of Rwigyema’s death from BBC one evening. Some child solders such as Ponjo, Okello, Pio, Kisegerwa and others drowned in River Akegera.

We stayed in the park until order came for us to find our way out of the park. By then I was under the command of Kasumba and we fought our way to Kizinga on the Ugandan side.

The Ugandans were friendly and there was food. But, we were cautioned about fighting from the Ugandan side because of the monitoring team. We had concealment areas in Rwanda only coming to Uganda for food supplies.

One day, 21 of us went deep in Byumba on a spy mission. We got lost and came under attack. I was shot in the arm. Through a hard struggle, we left some of our friends behind dead but we managed to make it to Maziba and later Kahondo which was our treatment base.

But my hand kept worsening. I was brought to Mulago hospital although other sick people would be taken to Mbarara hospital. There was a team which used to take those treated back to the war front. During treatment, I reflected on what I had gone through while in Rwanda and decided not to go back though there were people waiting to take whoever recovered back to the war front.

Maj Gen Rwigyema fact file

Fred Gisa Rwigyema (in picture) was born Emmanuel Gisa on April 10,1957, and was a founding member of and leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a political and military force formed by Rwandan Tutsi exiles descendants of those forced to leave the country after the 1959 “Hutu” revolution.

After completing high school in 1976, he went to Tanzania and joined the Front for National Salvation (Fronasa), a rebel group headed by Yoweri Museveni. It was at this point that he began calling himself Fred Rwigyema.

In 1979, he joined the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), which together with Tanzanian armed forces, captured Kampala in April 1979 and sent Idi Amin to exile.

He later joined National Resistance Army (NRA), which fought a guerrilla war against the government of Milton Obote.

After the NRA captured state power in 1986, Rwigyema became the deputy Minister of Defence. On October 1,1990, Rwigyema led the RPF troops in the first battle against the regime of President Habyarimama Juvenal. On the second day of the struggle, Rwigyema was shot in the head and later died, which discouraged the RPF fighters.

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