Walk-to-Work Kisekka market activist talks of life after 10 years in prison 

From the high walls of the much-feared Kitalya maximum penitentiary, Moses Kamuswaga has been intently following the raging debate over President Museveni’s insistence that bail should be deprived of suspects accused of capital offenses.

Kamuswaga, who on the face of it has very sturdy political views, couldn’t help but have a say on the issue that if President Museveni has his way it could radically alter Uganda’s criminal justice system from the way we know it.

Journalists, lawyers, politicians, Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, inter- alia, have weighed in on the bail debate and even now suits have been filed, but Kamuswaga insists they are missing the bigger picture. 
Mr Museveni has rationalised his desire to amend the bail and bond laws on grounds that judges and magistrates have been generously dishing out bail.  

As a result, the President insists that a huge number of suspects are now on Ugandan streets enjoying unfettered freedoms, leaving the complainants and the community at large with no option but to resort to mob justice. 

But Kamuswaga finds this kind of assessment not grounded in facts.
“It’s very hard to get bail in Uganda. How many people get bail?” he asks in a loud tone. “Bail is for the rich, who are few. If all suspects are getting bail as Museveni says, why are prisons full?” he asks.

“Bail is for MPs [Members of Parliament],” Mr Kamuswaga says. “Just go to those lower courts like that at City Hall, Law Development Centre, Buganda Road and see how many of the common folks without money are given bail. You know how corrupt our judicial system is. Don’t you?” he asks with a smile. 

In favour of the rich
Before meeting Kamuswaga, I had had an interview with Elison Karuhanga, a partner with Kampala Associated Advocates [KAA] who told me the bail debate should be about how it’s skewed in the favour of the rich.
“The bail law is that it’s very hard to get it when you are accused of a capital offense,” Mr Karuhanga said. “Bail is easier to get when you are rich than when you are poor.”

Frankly, when I was setting out to interview Kamuswaga, I didn’t think that we could delve much into bail – the crux of the story was that he had just been released from Kitalya having served 10 years as punishment for being found guilty in 2015 by High Court judge Wilson Masalu Musene on terrorism charges which he insists were preposterous at the best.

However, to show how much bail means to people, when Kamuswaga’s efforts to get bail were rebuffed by Justice Musene in 2013, Badru Lubega Kakungulu, Kamuswaga’s father, who couldn’t take it anymore, collapsed and died.

It was instructive that when Kamuswaga had just been released from prison on October 16, Dr Kizza Besigye, the founding president of the Opposition’s Forum for Democratic Change’s (FDC) party, was among the first to tweet about it, saying how Kamuswaga had been “sentenced on false charges of terrorism!” Adding that: “Many people have paid a high price in the ongoing liberation struggle. He’s strong. Well be back!”

Kamuswaga’s engagement in Uganda’s murky politics dates back to the early 2000s. At the time the now-deceased former Kampala Mayor Nasser Ntege Ssebaggala was trending and he made everybody believe that he could mount a serious challenge on Mr Museveni’s hold on power and he consequently enchanted the youth in towns and Kamuswaga was among them.

Ssebaggala’s presidential bid suffered a stillbirth when he was told by authorities that he had no requisite academic qualifications to stand for the highest office in the country, but also at the time Dr Besigye, a former physician of Mr Museveni, had formed a pressure group he named the Reform Agenda.

Besigye declared a presidential bid and Ssebaggala asked his followers to back him such that they stop Museveni from ruling Uganda forever. 

Kamuswaga arrested
In 2011, Mr Museveni was declared winner of the presidential elections with 68.38 per cent while Dr Besigye, who came second, was given 26.01 per cent.

After the elections came galloping inflation as prices of basic commodities such as fuel, sugar and transport fare went through the roof and the population was generally disenchanted with the overall poor service delivery and the lack of fiscal discipline by the government.  

Such conditions forced politicians and other activists to form what came to be know as Activists for Change (A4C) who declared the walk-to-work protests.   

Kamuswaga at the time was a trader at Kisekka Market, a bastion of the Opposition in Kampala, which has for years gone down in history as a hotbed of protests and he fully participated in the walk-to-work demonstrations. 

“What you should know is that I don’t believe that elections can change this government,” Mr Kamuswaga says with some sense of conviction. “I think the only way to remove this government is storming the streets and that’s why I participated in walk-to-work.”

The protests predictably provoked a crushing response from the security forces and a wide range of Opposition leaders were arrested with Dr Besigye hogging most of the media coverage as he was hounded on police trucks to several courts across the country with no conviction ever got to date.

What the media didn’t cover were the ordinary Ugandans who equally faced similar force with no one to bring their plight to the public and Kamuswaga was among them.
In 2012, while on his way to his home district of Mubende, Kamuswaga was arrested in Waksio District by a combination of police and the military who immediately took him to his house for inspection.

Some limited press reporting on the matter show that in October 2012 police was saying how it had arrested Kamuswaga from his home in Maganjo township in Wakiso District.
Police’s narrative was that Kamuswaga’s arrest was triggered when he detonated a tear gas canister, alerting neighbours who called law enforcers. 
On swinging into action, police claimed they found tear gas canisters, firearms, FDC membership and posters at Kamuswaga’s house. 
“They planted those explosives and the moment they went off I was injured,” Kamuswaga says pointing to his left arm which has been amputated. 

“When I visited the doctors, they recommended that my arm gets amputated and I agreed. Even my right hand was affected. I can’t do anything serious with it,” he says with discernible sorrow.  

After his arrest, he recalls the standard procedure of being tortured in various safe houses which included one in Mulago before being taken to the feared Special Investigations Unit (SIU) in Kireka for further integration, and the charge of terrorism was preferred. 
The prosecution first took him to the High Court’s International Crimes Division, which for some reason refused to hear the case, and then it was taken to the Nakawa High Court where Justice Musene was waiting for him.  

“By that time my hand was rotting,” says Kamuswaga who was represented by a battery of lawyers including Busiro East MP Medard Lubega Sseggona, Asuman Basalirwa, now Bugiri Municipality MP, and human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo.    

But still bail was denied. As if the terrorism charge which attracts a maximum punishment of death wasn’t enough Mr Kamuswaga would have to put up with Uganda’s criminal justice system is painfully slow.   
“The judge kept on adjourning even when the hearing started you wouldn’t be sure that court would happen,” he says. 

“They produced 10 witnesses of which I knew only one. He used to spy on us, the rest were from government. I will never forget Justice Wilson Masalu Musene who sentenced me to 12 years in prison, but having deducted two years I was on remand he said I would serve 10 years.” 

He did lodge an appeal at the Court of Appeal but at the time it was cause-listed for hearing he had almost severed the 10 years and pursuing it was academic. 
“There are many people across the country whose appeals have never been heard. We have few judges yet they have to determine appeals across the country. Like I have told you this country doesn’t function,” he says.     
By the time was convicted he was residing in Luzira upper prison but he was transferred to Jinja and then eventually Kitalya.

Kamuswaga, 40, is a father of two boys and one girl who have in absence been well taken care of by his wife and supported by his relatives and friends. 
“My family has been visiting me [in jail] for all these years. My wife didn’t run away. The youngest of my children couldn’t remember me, but the other remembered me,” he says.  
   
When the gates of Kitalya were opened for him Kamuswaga found an opposition much changed from the one he left, following the emergence of the National Unity Platform. 
“I know they are new actors and they are welcome to the struggle, but why do we have to scramble for positions while we’re still in prison?” he asks, referring to the recent scrabbles in the Opposition that has pitted the Dr Besigye-led pressure group called the People’s Front against NUP’s Robert Kyagulanyi.