The price Mayanja paid for his political activism

Although Abu Mayanja and several Uganda National Congress and Uganda National Movement activists were arrested or imprisoned by colonial authorities, very few of them had their human rights violated. However, prison conditions deteriorated under African leaders. Obote’s security men were reported to have beaten Mayanja in the process of arresting him, even though he and Obote had worked closely before Independence. Mayanja not only brought Obote to the ranks of UNC but also introduced him to Sir Edward Muteesa II.

Writing to WG Peaston, WE Stober of the British High Commission noted: “Rumours have been strengthening over the past few days that Abu Mayanja has died in detention as a result of the beating up he received at the time of his arrest. I, myself have heard from a contact with a friend resident at Mulago hospital that Mayanja was certainly admitted there last week.”

The People of October 19, 1968 stated that Mayanja and Nelson were given several blows while being arrested. Mayanja himself told us that he was “given many blows on the buttocks and cheeks”, abused and beaten up in the process of being arrested. For those unlucky ones who were detained in periods of military rule in most postcolonial African states such Guinea Bissau, Congo Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and, of course, Uganda, the prison was a place of no return. They were either brutally killed or slowly sent to their death through slow medications, starvation, or torture.

Equal opportunities

The public assumed that Mayanja was arrested for writing an article which implied that Obote’s government was making appointments based on tribal considerations. That was true, but only part of the story. Obote projected himself as a just man whose political desire was to create a society that was fair to all tribes and where each government institution reflected and represented the country’s social groups. He promised to reverse the colonial system he saw as favouring the Baganda at the expense of other tribes. Implying that Obote did not appoint African judges for fear that the tribe with the most qualified people would take most of the posts seemed to contradict his desired public image as a fair distributor of Uganda’s resources.

In an article in the Transition no. 37, page 5, column 2 of October 9, 1968, Mayanja questioned the government’s policy on equal opportunities in accessing government jobs for all tribes of Uganda by wondering why Africans were not being appointed as judges as follows: “I do not believe the rumour circulating in legal circles for the past year or so that the Judicial Service Commission has made several recommendations in that direction. The appointments have, for one reason or another, primarily for tribal reasons, not been made.”

The anger of being defined a tribalist in distributing judicial positions by Mayanja may have added a log on Obote’s simmering anguish against Mayanja. However, the major reason for Mayanja’s arrest was that Obote believed that the latter was involved in treasonable activities.  In a letter to Colin Legum, Obote noted that there were other reasons for Mayanja’s arrest. Mayanja, the editor of the magazine, Rajat Neogy and by mistake, the Editor of the People, Daniel Nelson, were arrested by unruly government operatives who mishandled the prisoners.

Boomerang

Daniel Nelson was later released. But his house was vandalised, and the arresting team destroyed what they could not take. The news of Mayanja’s arrest got more publicity than Obote’s government had anticipated. His arrest was reported in the Times of London (October 18,1968); the Observer, the East African Standard, the Guardian, the Sunday Times, local and regional media, including radios, televisions and newspapers.

The academia, which considered the Transition a respectable paper that was a light in a sea of intellectual darkness, were appalled. Prof Ali Mazrui, the outspoken head of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Head of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Makerere University, issued a personal circular in which he said that the duo (Mayanja and Neogy) were arrested for being intellectually honest.

Stunned by the reaction, Obote spoke to Parliament to justify the arrest. But he reserved his full explanation to a journalist of the Observer of London, Mr Colin Legum. Not only did he send him a personal letter but also a 35-page memorandum explaining the underlying causes of Mayanja’s arrest.

The letter stated as follows: “I want to assure you immediately that neither Mayanja nor Neogy were arrested merely because of their connections with the magazine Transition and that if it had been because of that connection, Neogy at least would have been arrested, perhaps more than a year ago. Danny Nelson was picked up by mistake…”

Reasons for arrest

He went on to list the reasons why he arrested Mayanja. First, he thought Mayanja was a member of the East African Muslim Association, probably referring to the East African Muslim Welfare Society. Secondly, he accused Mayanja of trying to ferment animosity between Arab/Muslim countries, particularly Sudan, with Uganda, by suggesting that Uganda and Israel were training South Sudan’s Anyanya fighters and supplying them with weapons to fight Sudan. He said that Mayanja had been on a trip to the Middle East and projected Uganda in a negative image.

When Amin overthrew him, Obote realised the truth of what he was accusing Mayanja of saying. Unknown to Obote, Idi Amin, with the assistance of Israeli personnel in Uganda, used the opportunity to instruct Ugandan forces to train his Kakwa tribesmen from Uganda, the Sudan and Congo to increase his power in the Uganda Army. The Israelis aimed at increasing the capacity of forces fighting Sudan to keep the Sudanese army occupied in the south instead of reinforcing Arab troops in the Middle East.

Thirdly, he noted in the memorandum to Colin Legum that: “… There are other activities of Mayanja which constitute a further security problem for Uganda. Some of them are connected with the divisions in the Muslim Community, others with a group of people who ran from Uganda during 1966 and now live in Kenya, and there are others connected with Uganda citizens in Britain.”

These groups, he added, were connected to the people who tried to assassinate the vice president in January 1967 in a plot whose aim was to eliminate the president himself. Fourthly, he added that Mayanja was publishing several unproven articles, and the government was watching him. Fifthly, other sources also gave several reasons why Mayanja was imprisoned. Stober of the British High Commission noted that Mayanja had described the shooting of Muslims in Ankole as “a great shock to the civilised world.”

Further, Mayanja was involved in the Labour College Affair (ICFTU) issue, where he was reported to be acting as their legal expert behind closed doors. Obote dismissed Prof Ali Mazrui’s assertion that Neogy and Mayanja were arrested for “intellectual honesty.”

In retrospect, Mayanja’s article in Transition, no: 32 criticising the 1967 Republican Constitution might have been one of the major causes of his arrest. The criticism was bitingly stinging, incisive and exposed the dictatorial regime Obote was putting in place. In the article, Mayanja pointed out that the constitutional proposals concentrated all powers in the presidency and would lead to dictatorship.

Mayanja and Neogy, were brought in court on November 22, 1968 and charged with printing and publishing a seditious publication.16 According to law, the defence counsel pointed out that the alleged misdemeanour carried only a maximum sentence of Shs2,000 and two years of jail. They asked for bail. The judge, David Lubogo, granted the bail for Shs10,000, but Neogy and Mayanja were rearrested as they left court and taken to prison under the emergency detention laws.