A brotherhood built in the army

When we arrive for our appointment, Col Fred Bogere, 60, is concluding a meeting with a business associate.
In the compound, another meeting of about a dozen people is in progress. The location is in Kagoma, on the Kampala-Gulu Highway, at the home of Maj Gen Eric Mukasa Lumunye, who died on July 2 aged 64.

The two former soldiers were not blood relatives. They didn’t even know each other as they grew up.
Fate brought them together in 1983 in the jungles of Luweero as they fought against the government of Milton Obote.

With Gen Mukasa now gone, Col Bogere has an assemblage of tasks to accomplish.
The duo, Col Bogere says, built businesses together, ranging from farming in Kyankwanzi to coffee processing, and they jointly acquired 8.6 acres of land in Bwaise at the Northern Bypass in Kampala, on which they planned to build a public transport terminal.
Col Bogere will have to go through this without more help from his counterpart.

When Col Bogere sought to get married after their outfit, the National Resistance Army (NRA), had fired President Museveni to power, Gen Mukasa was not his best man as would be expected of best friends.
The decision, Col Bogere says, was informed by the need for Gen Mukasa to be freed to take care of the logistical aspects of the wedding ceremony. At the time they were both officers of the NRA, which was later renamed the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF).

The two men raised their families jointly – Col Bogere’s eight children and Gen Mukasa’s 21.
When we met with Col Bogere on Thursday, days had passed since Gen Mukasa had been laid to rest in Kasanje, Wakiso District, last Sunday.
Col Bogere had spent all the days and nights since then at the deceased’s residence, standing in the gap as head of family.

We learnt that he had a bedroom designated for him at the home, just like his deceased ‘brother’ had a bedroom designated for him at Col Bogere’s home in Bugolobi, Kampala.
The duo also had joint land titles, Col Bogere says, and were jointly the patrons of Hotel Brovad in Masaka.

The beginning
Gen Mukasa, according to Col Bogere, was born at Kaggulwe, present day Butambala District, in 1956.
Having attended the primary school in his village, he moved to Old Kampala Secondary School to do his O-Level, and later trained to be a mechanic in Kampala.

As the years went by, he got into smuggling (magendo) trade during the Idi Amin regime, shuffling between Kampala and Kenya to ship in basic goods such as sugar, soap and salt, which were in acute short supply in Uganda at the time.

During Gen Mukasa’s time doing magendo business, Col Bogere says, he expended considerable labour evading Bob Astles, the no nonsense Briton Amin had deployed to fight smugglers on Lake Victoria.
Gen Mukasa would continue with the trade even after Amin was overthrown in 1979, but would later get into trouble over the same.

The fallout of the post-Amin era and all through to the rise of Obote for the second time in December 1980, saw a lot of Ugandans escape to Nairobi, Kenya, and many of them had intentions of returning to launch war against Obote’s government.

Andrew Kayiira was among those, and he had openly declared war against Obote.
Mr Museveni was another who had warned that he would fight against Obote, and many of his allies were in Nairobi.

Some of the Ugandan exiles who were in Nairobi then and would engage in the fight against Obote’s government, included Mr Henry Kajura; the late Sam Njuba; Matthew Rukikaire; the late Prof Richard Masembe Kanyerezi, who was the proprietor of Kampala Hospital; and the late Dr Sulaiman Kiggundu.

The youthful Mukasa would be caught up in the suspicion that engulfed the Kampala government at the time as a result of the fears that the Ugandans who were crisscrossing the border to Kenya were involved in subversive activities. He was arrested on one of his trips from Kenya and detained at Rubongi Barracks in Tororo District.

Col Bogere says his friend had taken him through bits of his history, for the umpteenth time, only three weeks before his death.

Gen Mukasa had been ailing for a while and had at the turn of last year been taken to India for treatment.
Col Bogere says Gen Mukasa managed to escape from custody in Tororo with the help of a sympathetic soldier, who also seemed dissatisfied with the government of the day.

Gen Mukasa then decided that attempting the journey from Tororo to Kampala, having escaped from custody, would be too risky, especially in view of the notorious roadblocks in Busitema, Source of the Nile and Namanve.
Many more checkpoints would be set up at short notice along the highway as the government sought to keep insurgents at bay.

Gen Mukasa, therefore, chose to retrace his way back into Kenya, and the seasoned smuggler in him would be trusted to know his way around. But this particular trip was not like any other he had undertaken before. This was almost a journey of no-return.

After crossing into Kenya, Gen Mukasa found a way to connect with rebel recruiters in Nairobi, and would soon find his way to Libya to train as a guerrilla.
In Nairobi, he had linked up with Kayiira’s group, which Col Bogere says seemed to be more potent at the time and was certainly more attractive to the youth in the central region.

After training in Libya in 1982, Gen Mukasa was deployed as a commander in the forces led by Kayiira, and he pitched camp at Jjeza on Kampala-Mityana Road.

Enter Bogere
Col Bogere was at the time a student. He had done his O-Level at Old Kampala Secondary School, the same school that had been attended by, among others, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, the late Col Sserwanga-Lwanga, and Deputy Land Forces Commander Maj Gen Sam Kavuma, who would all play roles in the rebellion Col Bogere would find himself sucked into.

The times were not normal, and even when Col Bogere joined Kampala High School for his A-Level education in 1982, he was not officially enrolled on the school records.

Col Bogere says he would spend many of the evenings doing military training organised by the Kayiira group on Gayaza road, in preparation for war.
At the time, Kayiira’s forces were active in Kampala, engaging in hit-and-run attacks against the government forces.

With hindsight, Col Bogere thinks Kayiira’s forces acted in an amateurish way. They would train young boys and then let them go back to school or home, and in the process, some of them would engage in loose talk, letting the government’s intelligence services in on their secret.

One day, while in class at Kampala High School, Col Bogere says, government functionaries went to see the school administrators, looking for a student named Fred Bogere. They spoke to the director of studies, who Col Bogere only remembers as Kayondo, in the presence of a teacher he only remembers as Kimuli.

He does not remember which day it was, in the year 1982.
Whereas Col Bogere thought his secret was very well kept, his teachers seem to have known about his activities and were perhaps secretly supportive of the same.

Kimuli, one of the teachers, excused himself from the office, went and asked the teacher who was occupying Bogere’s class to urgently release the student.
“Abasajja bakunonye (the men have come for you),”Col Bogere says Kimuli told him, and without hesitation directed him to run as fast as his lungs could enable him to one of the small gates on one end of the school.
The teacher, Col Bogere says, sent another student with instructions to the guard to open the gate for Bogere to exit. That was the last time Bogere attended Kampala High School.

He stayed at home for three days, with his attention now focused on joining the rebellion. He had developed a number of contacts and one of them led him to Alex Mbajjwe, who operated at Ndeeba in Kampala.
Mbajjwe told him of an opportunity for military training outside the country, and before long, he had delivered him to Nairobi, where he got to meet coordinators such as Dr Kiggundu, Rukikaire, Col Amanya Mushega and the late Edward Mugalu.

Training and war
Col Bogere was housed in an upscale area of Nairobi until all preparations were done and he, together with a number of others, including two sons of the late Edward Mugalu, were ready to fly out of Nairobi. The late Mugalu’s sons would later both die as they fought within the NRA ranks, with one being killed in Kibuye as the NRA mopped up the city as Kampala fell.

Col Bogere recalls his first flight – on Olympic Airways – which took him from Nairobi to Athens in Greece, and then flew back to Libya where they were to have the training.
Camp Ludi it was; the place where Col Bogere and other Ugandans were to receive the sought-after military training.

In his cohort, he would find out, would be eventual fighters such as Emmanuel Rwakashande, Kale Kayihura, Stuart Kazungu, Tom Butime, Livingston Kateregga and Bakulumpagi Wamala.

The instruction was especially carried out by Pakistanis since Libyan trainers could not speak English and the trainees didn’t understand Arabic. Among the instructors, Col Bogere especially remembers Muhammad Akram, and a certain Yusuf, who he says was the most notorious.

When Col Bogere was eventually deployed in the jungles of Luweero to join Museveni’s forces, the ‘notorious’ Yusuf would be one of the key points that Bogere and Mukasa initially talked about.
They had both attended Camp Ludi, too, and were happy to be among the not very many officers that the NRA had at the time.
Col Bogere was an intelligence officer (IO) in one unit and Mukasa a low level commander in another unit, meaning their interaction was not regular in the initial stages.

On his part, Mukasa had grown disillusioned as a commander in the forces led by Kayiira.
He had sought refuge in a forest at Jjeza to grow his forces and organise for what he thought would be purposeful assaults on the government forces, but many in Kayiira’s ranks were sold to the idea that they needed to attack Kampala quickly and take over power.

The Kayiira forces indeed conducted multiple attacks on the government forces within and around the city, until the fateful attack on Lubiri Barracks in February 1982.
In this failed attack, Kayiira’s forces were decimated and morale hit rock bottom. Mukasa told his forces that the only alternative they had was to seek to join Museveni’s forces.
Col Bogere says one group disagreed with the idea, while others bought into it.

Mukasa moved with the fighters who had agreed with him on a mission to look for the NRA forces in Nakaseke. The men aside, Mukasa had a precious asset with him – 18 assault rifles.
Museveni’s forces were at the time starved of guns because the first consignment that Col Muammar Gaddafi had sent into the country to support the rebels had gone to Kayiira, who Col Bogere says ‘did not have the skills to execute a war’.

After communicating to Museveni’s forces that he sought to join them with his forces, Col Bogere says the NRA laid an ambush to receive Mukasa’s contingent. It was a big boost to them. That was 1982. Mukasa was assessed, separated from his forces and later assigned a command position.

Mukasa would later cultivate a reputation of a daring fighter. One of the incidents Col Bogere recalls is when Mukasa led his contingent into enemy territory and raided cows, which he herded into NRA territory for the starving fighters to eat.

Profiles

Col Fred Bogere

Col Bogere largely worked as an intelligence officer during the war that brought President Museveni to power.
After years collecting intelligence to sustain the offensive against Obote’s forces in the jungles of Luweero, Bogere was assigned to a liaison role between the rebels and the forces of Tito Okello after the coup in 1985, in the process holding a number of meetings with them in Wobulenzi Town, Luweero District.

After the NRA captured power, Bogere continued in his role of intelligence gathering, at some point being in charge of the role in the districts of Kampala, Mpigi, Jinja and neighbouring areas. He later on became an army MP and in 2005, rose to prominence when he abstained in a vote in Parliament on lifting presidential age limits.

The other nine army representatives, including then Chief of Defence Forces Aronda Nyakairima, had voted to lift term limits, which enabled President Museveni to run again in 2006. Mr Museveni would otherwise have been precluded from running again, having served the two elected terms which were the maximum at the time.

Col Bogere, as a result, got a backlash from the army and whereas he continued in his role as chief of logistics and engineering, word going around was that he was viewed with suspicion within the ranks of the army.
He eventually retired in 2016 to resort to private law practice. After the war ended, he had proceeded to pursue a degree in law and a diploma in legal practice.

Maj Gen Eric Mukasa
After the war, Gen Eric Mukasa got a number of assignments, many anchored on his area of expertise.
He became deputy director of transport in the NRA, and later director of transport. He did a company commander’s course in Tanzania and later attended the Senior Command and Staff College in Ghana, to which he would later add a course in strategy in Egypt.

Mukasa would later serve as the inspector general for military equipment in the army, and later become chairman of the Division Court Martial at the army’s 2nd Division, and also played the same role at the army’s 5th Division until 2014.

In 2015, he was made the UPDF reserve commander for Kampala, and then became Chief of Staff, Reserve Forces until his death.
Col Bogere describes Gen Mukasa as outgoing and social, with friends across all walks of life.

Final assault, cementing the bond

After the NRA cut off the western part of Uganda at Katonga on Kampala-Masaka Highway, Mukasa was assigned to look after the logistical headquarters of the mobile brigade based at a school in present day Lwengo District.

The mobile brigade was headed by Gen Salim Saleh, who had his tactical headquarters in Masaka Town.
Col Bogere was the intelligence officer for the mobile brigade and very often got in touch with Gen Mukasa, who was in charge of supplies.

Gen Mukasa was in charge of fuel tankers that the rebels had waylaid and coordinated transport, with his knowledge as having been a mechanic coming in handy.
Many of the fuel tankers that were waylaid were on their way to Rwanda and Burundi, and a number of left-hand-drive pick-ups, which were also perhaps bound for Rwanda and Burundi, were grabbed for use by the rebels.

With western Uganda being a ‘liberated’ zone at the time, Col Bogere’s posting as the intelligence officer enabled him to travel to far areas, reaching as far as Kigali.
He would bring his friend presents such as radios and shirts.

The duo, Col Bogere said, established a bond with the people of Masaka, who loved them for overthrowing Obote.
At the time, the NRA was in its final assault against Tito Okello’s government, who had led the second coup against Obote.
One prominent trader in Masaka, Col Bogere says, offered the duo land and asked them to stay there for good, and Gen Mukasa got into a relationship that bore him two sons.

Col Bogere narrates this as he points at one of the sons of his deceased friend, a lawyer, as one of the fruits of their exploits in Masaka.
The man Col Bogere points at is one of the about a dozen people who were meeting in the compound as we arrived. We get to understand that they are all children of the deceased. They grew up with two fathers. With Gen Mukasa now dead, they have one left in Col Bogere.