Ssemogerere: Decent man with a mixed bag in politics

The news of the passing of former DP leader Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere hit my inbox on Friday morning. It was very sad. I had over the last two years promised myself to visit him for tea. Recently, a photograph of his had done the rounds in social media suggesting that he was no longer the sharp, smart and ever-smiling face I had first met in 1980.
That election year he had, like candidates Yoweri Museveni for UPM and Milton Obote of UPC, come to campaign at Busoga College Mwiri in the company of the late Prof Yoweri Kyesimira. Despite being gentle and jovial, like most other students, I was not persuaded. DP lost the elections in December that year and he became Leader of Opposition.

Then came the coup of 1985 which has been severally referred to as the ‘Okello and Okello coup’ when in fact it had been a deal between DP, NRA, some clerics plus a couple of capricious UPC men using the army. 
Ssemogerere emerged as one of the leaders, but most importantly, when a serious dispute emerged which later led to NRA overrunning Kampala in January 1986, he became the minister of Internal Affairs first and later minister of Foreign Affairs. 

It was in his latter capacity that in 1992 I again came close to Ssemogerere at Centre Point in London. He was leader of the NRA government delegation at a conference organised by the Confederation of British Industry and on my part, now a refugee and a robust activist, I was leading a protest against British backing of the NRA regime.
While most of the demonstrators were behind the barriers, Ssemogerere walked, conscious yet smiling almost as if in some form of discomfort and embarrassment. It was clearly not his kind of territory. My face met his at close range and I could see confusion, or was it sympathy? This I asked him years later and he only laughed and said, “Joseph politics is a difficult game.”

That was in 1995 when I was privileged to host him at a London conference – at the insistence of Milton Obote – shortly before he resigned from the regime to contest against Museveni in 1996. I was now general secretary of the UPC External Bureau – UK.
Only after the conference did I see merit and the wisdom of Obote which only reminded me of his directives to the Presidential Policy Commission in Kampala led by Cecilia Ogwal (later by James Rwanyarare) way back in 1991 to never treat DP as our ‘enemies or even opponents’ but rather, partners in democracy.

In a meeting with Obote in Lusaka Zambia in 2002, I wondered whether the issue was DP being a difficult or unwilling partners, or was it the leadership to hold for critical errors of judgement.
For instance, leading a campaign that the 1980 election had been rigged which was false as Commonwealth observer reports refer and unchallenged to-date; refusing an invitation to join a government of national unity, yet later joined the Okellos/Museveni; failure to condemn Luweero atrocities by NRA; refusal to visit the war zone on request by the government yet it was an area that had overwhelmingly voted DP.

Sadly, by the time Ssemogerere walked out, leaving behind nearly all top DP members such as  Kazibwe, Bukenya, Nsibambi, Kiseka, Sekandi and others, NRA had established itself nationwide, entrenched and was able to instead de-campaign him in the 1996 election.
Ssemogerere was a nice man, almost certainly grew up a shy man. He travelled through 60 years of our political history in a journey that only cartoonist Jim Spire Ssentongo could define in the other world; he reports to Ben Kiwanuka that ‘Ben, I had to leave, imagine waking up to a yellow hoe every day’ to which an understandably puzzled Kiwanuka responds, ‘a yellow hoe?’ It’s that long.
RIP, Uncle Paul.

The writer is a pan-Africanist                      
[email protected]   Twitter:@Ochieno