The Luganda word mawale is used to refer to an unruly or rogue child.
And at different stages in their history-making lives, Yoweri Museveni and Idi Amin Dada were seen as mawales – both having rebelled against the establishment and used arms to capture power. But researcher FRED GUWEDDEKO went to a village called Mawale and found more intriguing similarities between Museveni and Idi Amin.
President Museveni has constructed his old-age home at Mawale village, a very short distance from the childhood home of ex-President Idi Amin. The erstwhile foes, Museveni and Amin stayed at Mawale before becoming president and both returned there after becoming president.
This coming close of Museveni to Amin at Mawale evokes their differences and similarities. More importantly it highlights Mawale village as a microcosm of modern Uganda history.
Mawale village in Makulubita sub-county, Luweero district, carries not only the history of presidents but a rich history. Remarkably, Mawale was one of the richest rural villages in colonial Uganda. This was because the local Baganda Mailo landlords employed cheap migrant labour from among the the Luo, Nubians, Banyankore and Banyarwanda on cotton and coffee farms. Today Mawale is as poor as many other villages in Uganda.
Mawale village is the unique source of two peasant background leaders who have militarily captured power and ruled Uganda in an authoritarian manner. Idi Amin grew up at Mawale tending goats of richer local peasants, but Museveni was no different.
As a child he was elsewhere tending cows also of richer local peasants but lived at Mawale during the 1981-1985 war at the Mondlane NRM/A Military High Command at Kitema, which is a valley, forest and water spring in Mawale village.
One octogenarian, Hajji Isa Kaggwa, born and raised at Mawale, has had the unique experience of interacting with and witnessing two migrants to his locality, first Amin then Museveni, before and after becoming presidents of Uganda. Hajji Kaggwa has also witnessed the various colonial-period migrant labourers in Mawale village take power and leave.
The Luo labourers took power in 1962 and left, many joining the army. The Nubians took power in 1971 and left, many becoming soldiers. The Banyankore and Banyarwanda took power in 1986 and ceased being cheap migrant labourers in Mawale.
The most important Mawale village stars, President Museveni and Amin, are however, known more for enmity towards each other than as village mates of a kind. In addition to fighting, the two have had no kind words for each other.
In a public statement in August 1974, Amin denounced and warned people in western Uganda against Museveni. In a lengthy explanation, Amin said: “Museveni is engaged in subversive activities. He is supported by neocolonialist USA, imperialist Britain, Zionist Israel, apartheid South Africa and colonialist Portugal.”
Amin is quoted concluding that by allying with all the enemies of the third world, “Museveni brought shame not only to Uganda, but to the whole of the peoples of the entire Africa”.
In 1975, Amin deployed a unit, under one Bizigini, in the then dreaded State Research Bureau to eliminate Museveni who narrowly survived these assassins in Jinja and Nairobi.
In response, President Museveni has said that he had to flee Uganda the day after the 1971 military coup as he could not be ruled by a person like Amin. Museveni waged war on Amin’s regime, described leaders like him as swine and virtually reversed all Amin policies and achievements.
This included the Amin economic war to place the Uganda economy in the hands of the indigenous people; by far the most popular policy in the history of Uganda.
At the burial of the then secretary to the Bank of Uganda, late Dr Joshua Mugyenyi, President Museveni said he did not understand why God takes away such good people and leaves persons like Idi Amin.
In spite of the bad blood, the closeness and similarities between the two most outstanding Mawale village ‘alumni’ are striking. The current development where an elderly President Museveni has proceeded to personally fetch water from the same water source used by the young Idi Amin in 1932-1939 is symbolic of foes that are also similar.
As if to positively affirm comparability, President Museveni has also directly engaged in farm labour exactly as Amin did when he was living in Mawale. President Museveni has addressed the press from Mawale village about local village level development, politics and the situation in the country; something that Amin also did on more than two occasions during his presidency.
Whereas the young Amin used to push the bicycles of rich Baganda landlords as they passed the hill from Semuto into Mawale; the elderly Museveni at Mawale is equally fascinated with the bicycle. As presidents, both Museveni and Amin distributed direct cash and development materials to the local people of Mawale village.
President Museveni distributed cash and farm inputs while Amin distributed cash and cement to local households at Mawale. While growing up at Mawale, the twelve-year-old Amin was, in 1940, chased away from starting Non-Grade schooling at the then Semuto Church of Uganda Sub-Grade (now primary) school due to not being an Anglican Christian.
Similarly, the young Museveni could not start Non-Grade schooling in Ntungamo until his parents properly converted to Anglican Christianity and regularized their cohabitation in the Anglican Church in 1947.
The surviving benefits of Mawale village from Amin while he was president of Uganda is a then big, but by present standards small, mosque towards which Amin contributed five hundred shillings, plus cement and iron sheets. The residents say that President Museveni has completed plans to construct an army barracks at the site of Mondlane guerilla camp and NRM/A Military High Command at Kitema in Mawale.
A conversation with three of the oldest men of Mawale village on Friday November 4, 2016 after the Juma prayers at the village mosque revealed that one Mohamudu Sayi, at whose home the young Amin stayed at Mawale in 1931-1940, returned to southern Sudan in 1974, as the civil head of the Kakwa Nubian soldiers and civilians with then Uganda Military Police commander, Lt Col Hussein Malera.
Many of these Nubians had come to Uganda as refugees fleeing the Anyanya (I) and Anyanya (II) ethnic crises in Sudan. They joined Uganda Army to buttress it against the Buganda uprising after Mutesa was ousted from president in 1966. Others were recruited in the Uganda Army in 1971 to preempt an anticipated Langi and Acholi attempt to regain power and return Obote who had also been ousted.
The Nubians led out of Uganda by Mohamed Sayi of Mawale village and Col Malera were forced to leave by complaints of being favored in the army, being above the law and being violent. These complaints had led to the 1974 army uprising and the solution was that they return to Sudan.
Our conversation revealed that the overall commander of the NRA who was also at the Mondlane camp at Mawale, Major General Fred Rwigyema, led Banyarwanda NRA soldiers and refugees back to Rwanda. President Paul Kagame, who completed the Rwanda refugees return to Rwanda, was among the last NRA fighters to leave Mawale as the war progressed towards NRM/A capturing power in 1985-1986.
Like the Nubians from South Sudan, the Banyarwanda refugees led back by Mawale village ‘alumni’ had also fled 1959 and 1973 ethnic uprisings in Rwanda. They first joined the Uganda army in 1971 to prevent Obote and the Luo return to power against Nubian leadership; in the 1979 war they fought to oust Amin and during the NRM/A 1981-1985 war to oust Obote.
The Banyarwanda who, like the Nubians in 1974, had also risen to the echelons of power in Uganda since 1986, were forced to return by complaints that they were favored and were monopolizing the then Uganda NRA army.
One octogenarian, Mr Gereshom Kaburushu, who is among the Banyankore and Banyarwanda who moved to Mawale in the 1930s, is still alive and now lives a few miles outside Ishaka town. He used to walk for nine days from Sheema to Mawale village. He notes that the colonial Baganda landlords at Mawale were very rich.
Kabushuru recalls digging for his Baganda masters a hole in the house or in the garden for a large clay pot called ‘Toggero’ in which they kept the money from cash crops grown by the migrant labourers.
On his first trip to Kyebeereka, Banyankore labourers camp from where he worked in Mawale, Mr Kaburushu was dressed in cow hides. He wore his first European clothes while working in the gardens of Baganda landlords at Mawale.
The old man, who recalls growing up with Amin at Mawale village, said the colonial migrant labourers were not equal in status. The lowest level and lowest paid were the Banyarwanda, whereby many were permanent garden labourers on the large Baganda landlord acreages. The next from below were the Banyankore migrant labourers who were seasonal and camped at a specified station from where the Baganda landlords employed them.
The Luo ranked third from the bottom of the migrant labour hierarchy in Mawale village. They temporarily stayed at a Luo colony of huts outside the present Semuto town and would return home after the cotton season.
The Luo made single-season borrowing of a Mailo Land field on which they would grow cotton and at the end of the season they shared 50 per cent with the Baganda landlords. The highest-status migrant labourers were the Nubians, who also stayed at their Nubian colony of huts headed by Mohamudu Sayi.
The colonial-period Nubians at Mawale used to borrow pieces of Mailo land from Baganda Landlords to plant cotton but, unlike the Luo who were charged half of harvest, the Nubians paid one third of the harvest.
Finally, the three old residents talked about the Mawale sons, Baganda and Nubians that became rich in Kampala in 1973 from allocation of businesses abandoned by departing Asians expelled by Amin. He would later, after receiving the 1974 budget speech, declare: ‘my policy is to make the peoples of Uganda rich’.
They could not name any Mawale sons who have become rich from President Museveni’s ‘Operation Wealth Creation’ through receiving a cup of seeds and irrigating them with used mineral water bottles.
In spite of how ironic the fate of Mawale village maybe, it is still very special for identifying with two presidents of Uganda, though they are products of migrant labour ethnic groups and war-making ‘liberators’ rather than the indigenous local Baganda.
It should not be forgotten that Mawale village was one of the richest rural areas both in Buganda and the whole of Uganda under colonial rule. But it has become very poor. That a village that in its history imported lots of Nubians, Luo, Banyankore and Banyarwanda migrant labourers has now become an exporter of boda boda labour riders.
Perhaps this is why Mawale village is the only place where President Museveni can build near Idi Amin.
The author is a PhD fellow at MISR Makerere University.
