Ben Matogo and when a revolution ate its children
In William Pike’s book Combatants: A memoir of the Bush War and the Press in Uganda, he wrote about Ben Matogo, my late father, and the then London representative of the National Resistance Movement.
In his words, “The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) coffee bar changed my life for it was there that I met Ben Matogo.
Initially, I just found Ben good company. We talked about Africa. I bounced ideas off him. I used to call him ‘my real teacher.’ Meeting Ben Matogo at SOAS was a watershed. Working with the National Resistance Movement as a journalist gave me a real sense - which I never had in the Labour Party - that I was an active participant in a historic movement that was changing the world for the better.”
While my father spoke, Pike listened with unblinking eyes widening behind nerdy glasses; and he probably felt like an initiate to the arcane truths of the Philosopher’s Stone. As his understanding alchemised from base realisation to golden appreciation, Pike must have regretted not bringing any popcorn to Matogo’s cinematic tales of NRA heroism. Such tales constructed in a world in which Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger said “I’ll be back” in unbroken Luganda, while Rambo answered to the name Saleh.
It was a world far removed from the wretchedness of Matogo’s daily existence in which he, his four children and wife Pauline languished in a council flat where the central heating did not work in the winter. And crime was always in season as racism reminded him that his skin tone could easily trigger the ringtone of a frightened White lady calling 999 whenever he was close by.
To compound matters, most Ugandans living in exile pegged him as a drifter.
“When Ugandans say ‘we fight’, prepare to do battle alone,” he would tell us. Since nobody in their right senses believed then president Milton Obote could be toppled.
So who was this lunatic with a name that sounded like their favourite food (Katogo) to say he had the inside track on Uganda’s changing fortunes?
My father had to bear the additional brunt of being outlawed from several parts of London as “a terrorist.” His fire-breathing activism also alienated his boss, NRM chairperson Yusuf Lule.
This, along with the early NRA reverses in battle, left him filled with righteous indignation.
Indeed, all the NRM people in London seemed to be angry and this anger was projected upon Obote. “What do you do when you drive over a bunch of UPC people,” they’d joke.
You reverse to make sure the job is complete.
Far from being weekend warriors, these revolutionaries took all their love, all their hate and pushed it way down into the pit of their stomachs so it could rise Phoenix-like into sheer passion.
This passion was then tempered by the conviction that they could make the world new again. This turned them into something greater than themselves: representatives of an idea whose time had come.
At home, my father was no longer just a father: he was an orthodoxy, a vision which imbued our need to make ourselves better Ugandans. For once we were better, our country would be freer.
Today, such thinking is as misplaced as a virgin in a maternity ward.
The biggest tragedy of NRM rule is the cratering of the mountains it once moved. And so the courage to dream for a better Uganda has been pinched and replaced by a mindless materialism.
During ‘the struggle,’ the President has said, he would call his comrades and, when their wives would pick up the phone, he would have to squint his eyes and cover his ears when he heard the shouted words: “Leave my husband alone!”
Because these wives knew man couldn’t live on revolution alone, as the NRM/A did then. But today, a call from the President is the anticipated golden handshake every wife hopes her husband could stoop to rise to.
The patriotism of yesterday is the chivalry of today: dead.
Grab their wallets and their hearts and minds shall follow is the new message of the NRM. And it’s a message which reminds me of the song playing during my father’s departure at Heathrow Airport in March 1986, when he was called home to be rewarded for his role in defeating ‘tranny.’
Strains of the song We Don’t Need Another Hero by Tina Turner could be heard as he waved goodbye not only to us, but to a heroism buried along with the dreams of a better Uganda.
Mr Matogo is content editor and writer with KQ Hub Africa
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