Ms Olivia Lutaaya boards a military van at the General Court Martial in Kampala in October. Ms Lutaaya and 18 other NUP supporters were pardoned by President Museveni on November 22, 2024
“In 2019, my son fell sick and I got stranded because I had no money to take care of the medical bills. At my village in Namuwongo, Kampala, we had a local clinic that would offer me treatment and allow mepay later, but on that fateful day, a nurse advised me to look for a better facility because the child needed advanced care. Our village local council chairperson, Mr Robert Kwesiga, advised me to take the child to the nearby Kisugu Health Centre (III), suggesting that medication was free of charge in government facilities. I did not know about it!
My hope for free healthcare services was met with disappointment when a nurse who diagnosed my son asked me to look for money for blood transfusion and other medicine. I was very desperate to get help and pleaded on my knees, but the furious nurse told me there was nothing for free yet I did not have money. I reached out to my village chairperson, who talked to a private health centre called Kairos, which accepted to treat my child as we looked for money.
As a mother, I felt scorned and disappointed that the government could claim to provide a free service that does not exist. It is at this point that I started picking interest in politics and listening to a number of dissenting voices. I became so close to my village chairperson, who would often invite me for community political meetings and I would pay attention to every detail.
Many issues became more visible and that is how I started believing that at one point, I would offer myself to mobilise for whoever would promise to change the status quo. At the time, the People Power political movement, which later morphed into the National Unity Platform (NUP) party, resonated well with the worries of my community in Kanyogoga, a slum in Namuwongo. Our problems ranged from healthcare, education and jobs,which I assumed would only be delivered by a new government.
Embracing activism
When NUP leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu—who most of us know as Bobi Wine—asked the youth to join him in his bid to deliver good governance in Uganda, I picked interest. I started attending public political meetings organised by his team. We were empowered to contribute to change by supporting members of Bobi Wine’s team by adding a voice to the struggle. Mobilisation was the only thing that I could offer. In my home area, I mobilised for the late Ritah Kansiime, who eventually became the councillor for Bukasa Parish in Makindye East.
She sadly died when I was in prison. Besides frequenting Bobi Wine’s political rallies, I voluntarily campaigned for my area MPs, Derrick Nyeko (Makindye East), Mohamad Ssegiriinya of Kawempe North, among others. Personally, I had no ambitions to secure a political office and I was never funded to do whatever I was doing. In the slums of Namuwongo, I was running a retail cosmetics shop, which I started using money I got from a Sudanese family that had previously employed me as a housemaid.
Arrest clouded in mystery
of the highly anticipated 2021 presidential polls, I took part in Bobi Wine’s campaigns in Kalangala and was arrested together with many others on December 30, 2020. Everything was normal until security personnel started arriving at the campaign venue. Shockingly, bullets and teargas erupted and people were randomly picked. I was detained and accused of attempting to frustrate President Museveni’s swearing-in ceremony, yet it was still campaign time. I was later released in February 2021.
During the morning of May 8, 2021, I received a phone call from unknown people, who told me they had been conned by someone and that person had given them my number. I asked them to meet me at a police post in Kanyogoga, Namuwongo, to resolve the matter because I was not even aware of what exactly they were talking about. They insisted that we meet at Kampala Central Police Station but I refused. They later showed up and I presented myself to them. They immediately grabbed my phone and told me they were looking for a thief who was allegedly known to me. They showed me a telephone contact of Muhydin Sanya, a boda boda cyclist and a NUP supporter, who used to transport me to political rallies in Kampala.
I told them I knew him as a boda bo_da cyclist and they told me he had stolen sugar from somewhere in Kampala. I did not know much about him at the time, although we were both from the same village, Kalisizo in Kyotera District, and I often met him at the NUP party headquarters. Sanya was meant to deliver merchandise at my shop that day and they knew all our conversations.
They told me all they wanted was to get Sanya and if I helped them to get him, they would let me go. They then gave my phone to a woman, whom I heard them refer to as Anena. She was instructed to lure Sanya to the police, pretending to be me. I told them my friend was not a thief because I had known him for a long time. They then drove me to Makerere University, blindfolded with a black cloth and held me there for about two hours. I overheard them say they would take me to Lugazi in Buikwe District, but they didn’t. Instead, they took me to Kololo in one of Kampala’s high-end neighbourhoods, where they again detained me.
Tormented in a safe house
I was later driven to Kira Division Police Station where they used to keep me during the day and later keep me in a safe house in Bukoto in Kampala. Together with a number of other strangers inside the safe house, we would be tested for Covid-19 on a daily basis and it was when they were checking me that I saw a paper with my name along with the word ‘terrorism’.
I was shocked and worried. Unlike the other strangers, who were brutalised every night, I was never physically tortured. But the tears and wounds of others were enough to crush me mentally. Gunmen would appear and call us by name. I did not know any of the detainees, including most of those who I was charged with.
The few people who were with me on the file were just NUP party members I used to see at the party headquarters. I knew only suspects A1, A2, and A5 by facial recognition, Sanya and Kalanzi. Three weeks later, I learnt that charges of treachery and unlawful possession of firearms were being preferred against me. This was despite not searching my rented house. I know nothing about firearms!”
