Goodfellas: What the tale of Amanya and Tiberondwa teaches us (Part 2)

I didn’t expect anything extraordinary to happen with last week’s column “Bebe Cool, his dad Bidandi, and an untold Ugandan story”, until it did.
There was a lot of social media commentary, and my inbox and phone text message folder was overflowing with requests for more. And there were a few angry responses too, with some arguing that while Bidandi Ssali was a good man, the fact that he worked with President Museveni was a great political failure.

As a journalist and columnist, it helps to see yourself as only a fly on the wall, not a key maker of history. That way, you can more accurately report the heroism of those who actually shape events, without envy and a petty hankering for glory leading you to deny others their credit because it could overshadow yours.

And so back to Bidandi and Museveni. Bidandi was always a pacifist, which made his collaboration with militarists hard for some to swallow.
First, it is important to note that it was not unique for people like the “Sapoba Trio” and publishers of Weekly Topic Bidandi Ssali, Kirunda Kivejinja, and Kintu Musoke to go to bed with what otherwise would be political foes. It is as Ugandan as bark cloth.

One of the leading UPM figures that fled the country after Museveni took to the bush in 1981 was Amanya Mushega, later to be a prominent NRM man and influential minister.
One of the people whom Amanya would often criticise in colourful language was Adonia Tiberondwa. Tiberondwa was a dyed-in-the-wool UPC man, and Cooperatives minister under Obote II. Tiberondwa used to rail against UPM and Museveni’s bush adventures rather eloquently.

However, it was Tiberondwa who aided Amanya’s escape into exile, according to the latter’s account. When the UPC goons were hot on his heels, Amanya ran to the one place they wouldn’t look for him – Tiberondwa’s office. He was taken to the basement where Tiberondwa’s car was and whisked away. For all we know, as Tiberondwa was denouncing the likes of Amanya on the floor of Parliament, his car was spiriting him off to safety.
Therefore, you really cannot fully understand Uganda’s politics without wrapping your head around this unique feature that becomes very active in crisis times.

Among the reasons this happens, is that we just don’t have the monolithic discipline that countries like Rwanda can achieve if they put their minds to it, because once three or four Ugandans are in a plot, it immediately ceases to be a secret. That in turn has to do with our porous loyalties, and how the complex meshes of religion, ethnicity, school, marriage, and turbulent history have remade us.

In this case, Amanya and Tiberondwa knew each other well, as their wives were sisters. Their political rivalries, which remained to when Tiberondwa died in 2004, could never kill the social bond.
So it was that in late 1981, with the intensifying crackdown and the war in Luweero gaining headlines, Weekly Topic was shuttered, then formally banned in 1982.

Through a long series of events, some “comrades” arranged for me to meet Osindek Wangwor, who was an MP from our area, and was also the UPC Chief Whip in the Obote II-era Parliament.
Wangwor died in 2016, at which point he was Museveni’s senior presidential advisor on political affairs in charge of eastern Uganda.
He was another of the UPC progressives. At that time, the “comrades” were concerned about the safety of people who were associated with Weekly Topic in the ramped-up crackdown on UPM activists.

Wangwor tagged his beard for a while, and asked me to follow him. He took me to Edward Ochwo, who was clerk of the then just revived National Assembly. There are fewer more urbane and soft-spoken men than Ochwo.
To Ochwo, just like Wangwor, I was toxic. He was really worried about the “Sapoba and Weekly Topic link” in the tense environment of the time. He mentioned something about my being young and misguided, and how I had been a rebellious lad, but finally said, “Okay, so I have been told that you can write good English, and can edit, we shall hide you in plain sight. We shall get you to work with the Hansard (the official report of Parliamentary Debates)”.

I was taken to the still largely abandoned and wretched Parliament House, as the staff was sitting at the Conference Centre. The (empty) Hansard editorial room and offices were in the basement. They were flooded, had no lights, no furniture, and had been ransacked in the 1979 war. What remained of the old copies of the Hansard was strewn on the floor, soaked in water.
Still, we created magic. By late 1983, though, the past had caught up with us. But for nearly two years, Wangwor and Ochwo had my back. They didn’t have to risk it.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site. Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3