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What has happened to Uganda over the last 50 odd years?
What you need to know:
Sometimes we lose sight of incomprehensible effects of the war, owing to our preference for political point-scoring as opposed to actual truth telling. At this point, who to blame for the hell in Luweero Triangle becomes immaterial.
“The fact is that Luweero afforded Museveni a classic ideal situation and ground for putting into effect his design to divide and rule Uganda. In the prosecution of the war in Luwero, he presented the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) founded at the Moshi Conference by the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) as "Obote's northern soldiers". “As will be seen later herein, Museveni terrorised and brutalised the people of Luwero and in order to win the sympathies of the Baganda, he made such terror and violence to appear as having been wholly the misdeeds of the UNLA.
Failure by the international community to grasp Museveni's atrocities in Luwero at the time is at the root of today's concealment of the genocide. Museveni tried very hard to expand his Luwero terror to other parts of Buganda but was contained within the Luweero Triangle. “If he had succeeded to expand, it is doubtful that a significant number of Baganda would be found today who would have any sympathy with the North and East and other parts of Uganda, in their current ordeal,” former Ugandan president Milton Apollo Obote writes in his 1990 pamphlet, Notes on the Concealment of Genocide in Uganda. Although Obote’s language is a little too extravagant to be taken as anything more than a political potshot at the Museveni regime, its central truth cannot be gainsaid.
That is the truth of the Luweero Triangle being ravaged by the five-year bush war that brought President Museveni to power. The Luweero Triangle is the region in Uganda primarily composed of the districts of Luweero, Kyankwanzi, Kiboga, Nakaseke, Nakasongola, Mubende, Mityana, and Wakiso. In the book Luweero In the Limelight, the author Kisamba Mugerwa does not seek to vindicate Obote nor does he apologise for the Museveni regime. Instead, he writes about the horrendous effects of the war.
That is the death, devastation and psychological toll on the people of Luweero. The social upheaval (thanks to massive displacement) and collateral effects of witchcraft and other nefarious coping mechanisms of the people in the aftermath of the Bush War are well documented here.
The language is straightforward, with no rhetorical frills. So it is an easy read. “Without going into the motives of this conflict which are well-known and documented this book delves into the consequences of this war that left a permanent mark on the residents of Luweero,” says the author. “The socio-psychological nature of the events that unfolded in what came to be commonly known as Luweero Triangle brought about enduring impact that traumatised the whole region, created a dependency syndrome, and changed people’s mindsets forever.
The most critical lesson from this book is that conflicts and war ought to be prevented because their consequences are far reaching and uncontrollable.” Over 500,000 persons perished in Luweero Triangle, according to some estimates. Others put the number closer to 300,000 persons dead thanks to the war.
Whatever the case, numbers do not betray the unimaginable costs this war levied upon the people of Luweero in particular and the good folks of Uganda in general. The Luweero Triangle War caused widespread displacement, human rights abuses, and economic damage. 400,000 people were internally displaced. Sometimes we lose sight of these effects, owing to our preference for political point-scoring as opposed to actual truth telling.
Yet who is to blame for the hell Luweero Triangle became is immaterial. “Whether the skulls and all the remains buried in Luweero Triangle belonged to the residents or freedom fighters or government officials, the crux of the matter is that they were Ugandans,” the author says. The apolitical nature of this book makes it invaluable to serious researchers on what has happened to Uganda over the last 50 odd years.
Title: Luweero Triangle in the Limelight
Author: Kisamba Mugerwa
Pages: 135
Price: Shs35,000
Availability: African Studies Bookstore
Published: 2008
