Kaku: Arua ‘Opec Boys’ supremo, rabble-rouser

Defiant. An enigma. A colossus. A hustler. Such were mourners’ adorations of Kaku Langalanga who died at Rhema Hospital in Arua City early Tuesday, aged 60. He had converted to Islam late in life, adopting initially the name Gaddafi and later Abdullah Muhammad.

 Arua’s rise from the proverbial ashes as a self-built city was propelled by the ingenuity, dare and enterprise of largely two groups; Opec Boys – in reality an indomitable group of roadside fuel hawkers, and Arua Boys, the moneybags many of who made their fortune by smuggling and gold deals.

 Kaku had a leg in both, which were interlinked. But he gained fame and power more as a co-founder, in 1986, of Opec Boys. There was then a crisis of shortage of almost everything, including fuel and other petroleum products, and the Kakus using their entrepreneurial acumen turned the crisis into cash. And it worked to the horror of sceptics and pride of peers. 

 “He and his group were dealing in fuel and would look for where the cheap one was. If it was cheap, they would buy it and bring it to Arua. When the prices in Uganda would fall, they would buy here and take to Congo [and vice versa],” said his brother, Mr Carlos Kwanyi Langalanga.

 Arua City that today teems with construction activity was in yesteryears a desolate wasteland ruined by reprisal of forces that toppled Idi Amin in April 1979.

 Amin hailed from Arua, and victors sought revenge, and the Ombaci massacre epitomised their signature brutality and indiscriminate killing spree.

 The savage commissions drove an estimated half-a-million West Nilers into exile to both present-day South Sudan and Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where they lived on UN refugee agency handouts or the largesse of across-the-border relatives.

 One outcome of the negotiated entry of the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebels into West Nile, as Yoweri Museveni completed capture of state power and the country, was the return of West Nilers from exile.

 They got home to nothing more than scarcity and want. The roads, where they existed, were either overgrown or broken. Household essentials were in short supply. Many of the returnees were suspected by state agents and security either as rebels or collaborators. And suffering was immense.

 With the road to Kampala jagged, voyaging from West Nile to the Ugandan capital took days and was a nightmare. Regular ambushes in Murchison Falls National Park that the government blamed on Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels made the trips even riskier.

 It is from this cracked community that Kaku and colleagues rose like a tendril to give freshness and hope to substitute despair and self-pity of their generation.

 Relatively short and stout, Kaku’s dark complexion and characteristic dark shades gave him a severe but revolutionary look. He spotted kinky beards, and walked with authoritative steps and hands out-spaced.

 The Opec Boys he led were more than a coterie of fuel sellers. They were a family. Its members lived an outsized life, set fashion trends, with denim jeans and pricy sneakers. Kaku loved the trucker jackets and T-shirts complemented with bling and jungle boots.

 Opec Boys morphed to Arua Town’s kingmakers and it was nearly impossible to win any significant urban election without their backing. The boys, well men in reality, had money and connections, and smuggled fuel from Zaire, now DRC, or bought from trailer drivers and occasionally security forces, particularly the military.

 Their supremo Kaku dined and wined with the ‘who-is-who’ of West Nile and beyond. Newly-deployed security officers could not avoid befriending him, and the dalliances provided cover and power to Opec and its members who staged by the roadside at the intersection of Rhino Camp and Transport roads.

 All appeared at the call and beckon of Kaku who, like his charges, lived a flamboyant and profligate life afforded by the handsome commissions on fuel sales. Wherever Opec Boys surfaced, the power of money showed on table tops crowded with brand drinks. They delighted in the company of the opposite sex.

 At the now defunct White Rhino Hotel where there were regular Congolese and gospel music performances by local bands, Kaku and his members patronised with happiness, both on and off stage.

 In the early 1990s, he acquired a dark-blue BMW car. When he arrived in the new ride, Opec Boys turned his aides lined outside and saluted in his honour. One flanked the door ajar. Kaku emerged, and bowed to acknowledge the salute.

 The tradition of the army commanders he hobnobbed with appeared to have infected him. Kaku’s voice freed detained Opec Boys, friends, relatives and others whose fate was brought to his attention. He also pacified West Nile.

 On occasions, fuel for Opec Boys was flown in by military helicopters to Giligili from where trucks moved them to the business hub in Arua Town. Kaku was a commander, a civilian one with power and much money.

 He splashed it; to help the needy children, support community causes, churches, and on virtue and even vanity ventures.

 In a tribute, famed lawyer Caleb Alaka said while at Mvara Secondary School, just outside Arua Town centre, Kaku found him and other students in uniform looking for paraffin, which was scarce, to fill their Tilley lamps for reading at night. He simply donated the students 20 litres of paraffin, which he topped with some pocket money, a rarity then for children from poor families.

 “Indeed, he is going to join his ancestors as a proud West Niler who knew what was good for West Nile in 1996,” Mr Alaka wrote in a tribute shared on WhatsApp, referring to Kaku’s immersion to canvass votes for then Inter-Political Forces Cooperation (IPFC) candidate Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere.

 President Museveni, who was subjecting himself to a vote for the first time after a decade in power, lost in West Nile by a staggering margin. Kaku fell in the furnace of security forces that long suspected him after he championed the election of Uganda Peoples Congress party stalwart and academic Zubairi Naseem Atamvaku, against the Movement choice, to represent Arua Municipality in the Constituent Assembly that promulgated the 1995 Constitution.

 The rough and daring edge of Kaku had been on display in both votes. In the case of the 1996 presidential vote, he pinned an upended poster of President Museveni on his back and an upright of Ssemogerere in front and biked through Arua Town and hinterlands, popularising the Opposition candidate. 

 Kaku was a household name, but a marked man. And it didn’t take long for the state scheme to unfold. One morning in 1996, a cocktail of security operatives showed at his home at Mvara-dri, a trading centre next to Emmanuel Cathedral, the headquarters of Ma’di & West Nile (Anglican) Diocese, to proclaim that they had found a gun in his compound.

 The Opec founder and supremo was handcuffed at gunpoint, pronounced a member of the defunct West Nile Bank Front rebel group and a year later, in October 1997, committed for trial by the High Court for treason.

 The state also preferred an alternative charge of misprision of treason against him. He was remanded to Luzira Prisons for six years before being released, without trial, in 2002. One of the conditions for his negotiated freedom was to keep away from Arua, which he dutifully somewhat obeyed.

 During the period, state apparatus worked overdrive to impoverish him. So, Kaku exited prison to relative want. 

 But a hustler would not be held tame for long. Kaku’s entrepreneurial spirit charged. He jumped on a bike, rode to the South Sudan capital, Juba, and established VIP public toilets and started a cesspool emptier service the way he had done in Arua Town during the heydays of Opec Boys.

 His Boston Sanitation Services business was, however, outcompeted in Juba, and Kaku relocated to the DRC where he established similar investment alongside prospecting mineral deals.

 By this time, health and fate began conspiring against him. 

He was diagnosed with diabetes and one of his legs amputated. This enfeebled him and limited his mobility. Money which he in the past held in abundance became scarce. But his generosity of yesteryears returned to galvanise well-wishers to sort his hospital bill.

 The stubborn soul that he was, Kaku dared a return to DRC, against counsel by relatives and friends, but it was not long before his body and health began failing faster. A distress call got him to Arua, and onwards to Rhema Hospital, where he died early on Tuesday.

 “It is not easy to say goodbye to the loved one, Arua has lost an incredible life … our unending love, may God forgive your sins,” eulogised Mr Rashid Oshino, a close friend to the deceased and city councillor representing Bazaar Ward.

 Kaku, he said, was a “real hustler with ever-beaming face”. A man of colourful life would kick in death. His burial became divisive. Relatives intended to bury him according to Christian tradition, which is what he was for most of his life. After protracted negotiations, Muslim faithful carried the body of Arua’s fuel tzar over to their cemetery in the present day city and, in the company of swelling crowds, lowered it into the grave to end Kaku’s earthly journey. Adieu!

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