Prof Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile passed away on January 23, 2022 at the age of 72 years. We first met in 1965 when I joined senior one at Kigezi College, Butobere, the oldest senior secondary school in Kigezi region. He was then in senior two.
In 1966, Rt Hon Amama Mbabazi joined senior one in the same school. There are many national and international persons who attended that school, which, thanks to government, is being rehabilitated. I will confine my observations to the life and times of Tumusiime-Mutebile.
I knew him very well. We belonged to the same house Makobore, named after one of the chiefs of Kigezi, who governed over Rujumbura in North Kigezi. Prof Mutebile was a prefect in the house and a member of the Boy Scouts movement.
He grew up in a momentous epoch. Kigezi College Butobere was established in 1957. Senior citizens know and historians will recall that the governor of Uganda, then, was Andrew Cohen, a sympathiser of the Labour Party of the UK which favoured state intervention in running the economy.
As I understand British politics, I can boast of studying the British constitution as a subject while growing up. Opponents of the Conservative Party refer to it as The Tories whose etymology is outlaws. You cannot outdo the British.
The opponents of the obsolete Liberal Party preferred to refer to it as the Whigs, which originally meant horse thieves. Political labels change with time. Uganda is not an exception.
Dr Elly Karuhanga highlighted the strife that was there between him and Prof Mutebile as they fought for Makerere Students Guild presidency; he complained that he was called a monarchist; but he was being charitable. Supporters of Tumusiime-Mutebile labelled Karuhanga a feudalist in 1972, only five years after Nyerere’s Arusha Declaration, 1967, and only two years after Uganda’s Nakivubo Pronouncements of 1970 under which the government of Obote announced a 60 per cent takeover of shares of major banks, industrial concerns, etc.
Consequently, many left-leaning students enjoyed being called socialists. Let us recall that USSR (Soviet Union), a socialist state, had pioneered space exploration by sending the Sputnik into space in 1957, and in 1961 Yuri Gagarin, a soviet national, became the first man to orbit the earth.
In 1961, two years after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, an expedition sponsored by the American government was decisively defeated. This was the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Some writers allege that privately Kennedy remarked, “How could I have been so stupid” to undertake such a mission. Of course John Kennedy was a brilliant leader. Trouble was, at the time socialism was on the ascendancy, triumphant.
Before we evaluate Prof Mutebile’s achievements, a few comments about his character are pertinent. He always wore an infectious smile, more so he was not easily shaken. I testify to incidents I witnessed when we climbed two mountains, Muhabura in 1966 and Rwenzori in 1967. Our troop commander for Muhabura was Justice JB Katutsi who was then in senior four.
Muhabura was conquered in five hours to and from the summit. It is Rwenzori which is the litmus test of strong character and resilience.
As we approached Speke peak, Mutebile slid in the middle of a river and narrowly survived being swept down the current.
We managed to rescue him. In the evening as we camped before the next climb, he surprised us by volunteering to fell trees for firewood for cooking and warming ourselves. He was indomitable indeed.
The Rwenzori climb cost us eight days to and from Speke peak. Some members of the expedition literally shed tears as a result of pain, fatigue and exhaustion. Remember we are talking of Rwenzori of pre-climate change extreme coldness.
As is now wellknown, he did not complete his term of office as Makerere University Guild president. He fled into exile because his life was under threat. Not only did he criticize the racist nature of the 1972 expulsion of Asians, but he went ahead to call for government takeover of the leading heights of the economy. He fled to Tanzania where he taught after completing his first degree.
In the 1970s, Dar-es-Salaam University was in revolutionary fervor. I learnt from graduates from Dar that Tumusiime was active in what came to be known as the Dar-es-Salaam School of Thought.
The Dar School of Thought held that Marxism is universally applicable while Mwalimu Nyerere preferred home-grown socialism, typified by strong extended family values (Ujaama and Ubuntu). Leading intellectuals of the time who come to mind are Issa Shivji, Kanywani, Dani Nabudere, Yash Tandon, Omwony Ojwok, Mahmood Mamdani, Rahman Babu, to mention but a few of the intellectual giants of the time.
The Chinese have a saying to the effect that before you beat a dog, you should first find out who its master is. The architects of privatisation, Reagan of USA, Margaret Thatcher of UK, IMF and the World Bank had and still have a preponderance in world affairs, economically and politically.
A developing country like Uganda might have found itself hard pressed to offer effective resistance, even by those who did not believe in it as a matter of principle.
We now know that privatisation is no panacea for economic ills. After privatisation of much of the world economies, the great financial crisis of 2008 occurred with devastating consequences for every citizen of the world – sure proof that there must be a balance between private ownership and state intervention.
Experience in Cuba, Scandinavia, China, etc shows that private enterprises can go hand in hand with state provision of free education, medical care, affordable housing and welfare in old age without prejudicing profitability in private entrepreneurship.
After all, a healthy well-fed populace positively contributes to labour productivity. The great questions of today – pollution of the environment, climate change, food security (is it true that one in seven Americans are food-insecure?) conflict, racism, evidently call for strong affirmative state intervention.
Whereas private enterprises help through corporate social responsibility, we should not lose sight of the basic principle that private enterprises are formed primarily to post profit for the shareholders.
The practices we take for granted today such as central planning, the welfare state, and economic planning were won over after much strife with the state taking centre stage as representative of all interests, both public and private. Among the immortal legacies left behind by Prof Mutebile is taming inflation, which has enabled government and individuals to plan activities with some amount of certainty.
Among his personal attributes were unflinching loyalty to friends who number several scores; Dr John Bahana, Dr Zaramba, Eng Mwesigwa, Dr Frank Mwesigye, Prof Tumwine, Dr Mbonye, Hon Bamwanga, Mzee John Garuga Musinguzi, Ambassador Olara Otunnu, Rt Hon Ruhakana Rugunda, Rt Hon Amama Mbabazi, Prof Justice Dr Kanyeihamba, Prof Mondo Kagonyera, Prof Dr Suruma and many more others.
Fare thee well, Emmanuel Tumusiime!
The author is a retired judge.
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