William Galiwango: A promising boxer lost in the diaspora

William Galiwango 1961-2015 RIP

What you need to know:

The boxer, who represented Uganda in the 1984 Olympics, fled the country in 1985 due to political unrest. He was never to return until he lost a battle to tuberclosis recently.

Directly opposite Mengo Social Centre, off Kisenyi Road, I take a narrow bumpy road which snakes into the slums on my right. Down here is a spacious, old-fashioned yet newly plastered house, flanked by many single-room low-income rentals.
It is a bright Sunday afternoon and all the seats in the tents are occupied. As I rest on a veranda, my eyes squeeze through my sunspecs to admire a photo pegged on the front wall of the house. It shows a smiling middle-aged man in a brown leather jacket and a beret. I read the words ‘William Galiwango’ 1961-2015 RIP’. Now I know I am in the right place. This is where Olympic boxer William Galiwango was born and bred.
The mood is sombre as mourners, young and old take turns to eulogise their fallen brother, father, uncle and friend Galiwango, who succumbed to tuberculosis a week ago in Richmond, Virginia. Most had last seen him in 1985, when he fled Uganda, never to return, but still, the pain is so much that they cannot hold the tears.

Early life
Galiwango was born among 18 children on February 26, 1961 to the late Musa Lukadde and Victoria Tebuggwa (RIP) of Kisenyi-Mengo, in suburban Kampala. He attended Aggrey Primary School. Before joining Modern Secondary School, then on Kyaggwe Road, his boxing talent had begun manifesting.
He occasionally trained at the nearby Mengo Social Centre at a club called Kampala Combined. He tried mechanical engineering but boxing was his destiny.
Galiwango soon joined the famous Kampala Boxing Club (KBC), on the fringes of Nakivubo Stadium, where he impressed many; including legendary national team coach Peter Grace Sseruwagi.
At KBC, Galiwango started as a bantam (56kg), whose teammate Muhammad Hassan remembers as a very clever boxer, with a commanding physique and good at jabbing with quick movement.
Winning the Novices in 1978, Galiwango was drafted into the national team. But for stiff competition, he waited until 1982 for his first international tournament. Despite the high hopes, he flopped at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games. After defeating Vanuatu’s Jeffrey Christine, he lost the quarterfinals.

Memorable KO
Whoever watched Galiwango in his heyday recounts his knockout of Army’s Arthur Serwano. It highlighted the fierce rivalry in the National Open Championship history between KBC and Army. Galiwango was the underdog but it was a highly rated light welterweight contest with a national team slot at stake ahead of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
In the third round, Galiwango’s powerful left hook shot Serwano to the canvas and the spectacle of a bulky Serwano gasping for breath is memorable.
Yet that was not his peak. “I think his best year was 1983, when he knocked out a Zambian to win gold at the All-Africa Boxing Championships. He was fantastic.” Charles Lubulwa, Galiwango’s teammate at the Commonwealth and 1984 Olympics recounts. “He was so good at scoring because he could hardly miss his target, yet strong enough to stop some of his opponents.”
He had won gold at the Fescaba tournament in 1982 in Nairobi and repeated the feat in Addis-Ababa in 1983. At the 1983 King’s Cup in Bangkok, Thailand, he won silver.
At the 1984 Olympics, Galiwango was second time unlucky. Having beaten Jamaican Anthony Rose 5-0, in the preliminaries, he lost the same way to Nigerian Charles Nwokolo in the quarterfinals.

Life abroad
Returning from the Los Angeles Games, Galiwango featured once at the East and Central Africa Championships in Nairobi. He flew back to the US in 1985. According to Boxrec, Galiwango’s professional career did not begin until 1987. His record of 14 wins (12 Kos); 2 losses and 1 draw; was by any standards, decent. But it was less profitable.
His manager Ray Brown was not the best and boxing was not a popular sport in Virginia.
“William was unlucky he was handled by wrong managers. He signed a worthless 15 year contract.” Joseph Byakatonda, a friend says, “I remember when he won the Virginia Championship he only got $700. I thought it was a joke; we had to look for better jobs in Virginia.
Galiwango lost his last fight and conceded many punches which gave him much headache. He took a long break before quitting boxing completely.”
Galiwango and Byakatonda, who also had relinquished his boxing career, started working with the McDonald’s restaurant chain in Richmond. Later, the two undertook a driving course and soon started driving trailers.
In 1998 Byakatonda shifted to Boston. Galiwango was to follow him in 2007. “He did not enjoy Boston, though. I had never seen William drinking before. But when he came to live with me in Boston he had started drinking heavily,” Byakatonda shares. “He looked a troubled man. I tried to persuade him otherwise but he could not change.”

Nice guy
He might have loathed Uganda but he loved Ugandans. When I bumped into Justin Juuko at KBC, the 1990 Commonwealth gold medallist heaped praises on the fallen star. “Galiwango was a very nice man. He helped me a lot when I had just gone to America. ”
Lubulwa also says when Team Uganda were in Nevada for the 1986 World Boxing Championships, Galiwango called requesting Coach Sseruwagi to allow Lubulwa join him in professional boxing. But the coach declined because he still wanted Lubulwa for the 1988 Olympics.
Seasoned sports scribe Hassan Badru Zziwa was so shocked by the news Galiwango had died. “We used to watch them during our school days … of all the boxers I watched live, I do not remember any who was as stylish as Galiwango… his speed, excellent footwork, my God…he was meant to be one of the best boxers of the 1980s.”

Latter days
Galiwango lost his driving job in Boston due to drink driving and returned to Richmond where he finally breathed his last.
Last year, Byakatonda, who had returned to settle in Uganda, received a shocking photo of Galiwango via WhatsApp. “I was so shocked when his American wife told me William had TB; he was terrible.” But still he had not stopped drinking. After a while he recovered, somehow. “I had planned to visit him in July, but I failed. Then on Friday (August 21) I received another message that the doctor had predicted William had only 24 hours to live.”
Galiwango could only occasionally call his children: Livingston Galiwango (heir), Wilson Mubiru Galiwango and Anita Nakkazi, who live in Uganda. In 1987, he married Didi Galiwango with whom he had two girls and a boy: Alyshia, Joyce and Moses Galiwango in Richmond. He died August 23 in a Richmond hospital. And as he so wished, will be buried tomorrow, September 5 ,in a cemetery in Richmond.

DON’T EVEN BURY ME IN UGANDA
Polly Ouma, Francis Kulabigwo, Paul Ssali, Muhammad Muruuli, Vicky Byarugaba, are among the notable sportsmen who spent years in detention as the Idi Amin regime crumbled.
The political unrest which percolated into the subsequent years saw many others switch address till sanity returned.
But why would a young man like Galiwango flee his motherland, leaving behind his family and three young children, never to return?
His kin and friends tell me he hated Uganda and always sought his way out since the brutal murder of his mother in 1983.
His mother was kicked to death, allegedly, by government soldiers; his uncle Nsubuga cheated death after being shot at; and many of his childhood friends in Kisenyi died in similar circumstances.
Such gruesome memories made him loathe his homeland.
“When I returned in 1996 I found Uganda relatively peaceful and habitable,” his friend Joseph Byakatonda recalls. “But I couldn’t even convince him to at least visit Uganda. He swore that “not even my body shall be buried there.”

THE NUMBERS
$700

the money he was paid for winning a virginia championship forcing him to quit the ring to work in a mcdonald’s food outlet