By Zacharia Kanyonyozi
Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
In 2021, the Uganda Media Center boss Ofwono Opondo wrote, “Comrade Kajabago ka Rusoke, the lanky and maverick Marxist intellectual, who died this week aged 86, was son of Samson Rusoke, the Omuhiikirwa (prime minister) of Tooro under the reign of Sir George Kamurasi Rukidi Mpuuga, grandfather to the current Omukama Oyo Nyimbwa Ibamba Iguru. Rusoke also served the first reign of Oyo’s father, Patrick Olimi Kaboyo from 1965 to 1967 when kingdoms were abolished.”
Adding, “Known to friends and rabid critics simply as Kajabago, has been one of the most dependable true ideologues of the NRM revolution from the early days. Since he never believed and confessed publicly that God didn’t exist, it would be an affront to him to say let his soul rest in eternal peace.”
In 2004, when Radio One hosted the talk show cum peoples’ parliament “Ekimeeza” at Club Obigato in Kampala, I met Kajabago (yes, I am a rabid critic).
Symbolically, Ekimeeza, meaning table, connotes ’round-table’ discussions among equals on some issue(s) of mutual interest.
In 2004, the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces current Chief Political Commissar (CPC), Brig Gen Henry Masiko, once showed up at Ekimeeza completely drunk and proceeded to warn everyone that we “shall shoot you all, we shall kill you.”
In November 2020, this came to pass as close to 100 people were killed or wounded in protests that erupted in Kampala after police arrested presidential candidate Bobi Wine in the town of Luuka and took him to a police station in the city of Jinja, eastern Uganda.
Anyway, Kajabago grabbed the microphone as one of the speakers at Ekimeeza.
He then caused a furore when he said, “The war in the north shows how northerners are killers. In fact, we must study them because they are particularly brutal.”
As he, Kajabago, stood sullen faced, the moderator, James Wasula, allowed speaker after speaker to lambast such atavistic and prejudiced thinking.
When the audience had condemned him sufficiently, Kajabago resumed the microphone and took a jab at God. To which someone in the audience said, “But your boss believes in God.”
“That’s what he tells you,” Kajabago replied.
He thereby inadvertently revealed Dictator Museveni’s penchant for being two faced. But should we be shocked?
The Prince must be a dissembler and pretender, said Niccolo Machiavelli in his ground breaking book The Prince.
More seriously, he revealed how the NRM views the north as being populated by subhumans, in the same way the Hitler viewed the Jews.
Kajabago’s views are representative of the NRM and Dictator Museveni since he was “one of the most dependable true ideologues of the NRM revolution from the early days.”
The “study” he said should be carried is in line with the social engineering which involved killing northerners by leaving them exposed to Lord Resistance Army (LRA) attacks as they were dragooned into protected villages (read concentration camps, as Professor Mahmood Mamdani termed them).
After his rather backward and incendiary speech, I approached Kajabago. Then he proceeded to divide the world in Hutu and Tutsi, saying the former represented the ugly and the latter the beautiful.
“Kabaka Mutebi is a Hutu,” he intoned. “His wife is a bit beautiful, she is a Tutsi.”
On April 7th, another Dictator Museveni ideologue tweeted: “I am in Kigali to commemorate 30 years since the genocide against the Tutsi…”
And just like that, the moderate Hutus who died during the genocide were expunged from the narrative weaved by Victor’s Justice.
Recently, Kajabago’s son, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Kituuma Rusoke, started work as the new police spokesperson. So we can expect more of this nonsense that NRM describes as ‘ideology’.
It is madness; seeds of genocide have been sown and continue to be sown.
Still, let us be fair to Mwenda. He did warn us about the madness in the house of Dictator Museveni sometime in August 2005 on Monitor FM, as host of MwendaLive on Monitor FM
“… If he was elected, does that mean that other actors do not have views? … Does it mean that when people elect him, those who disagree with him should keep quiet? … You go and tell him to listen to this show, then he can get some wisdom, because all of you guys sit at State House and say, yes sir, yes sir. Here we say no sir… I can tell you, his little threats are completely ignored… Mwenda should not discuss security in the region, how can you say something like that? I don’t want… we run a newspaper and pay taxes which buy his suits, does he know that?…
You see these African presidents. This man went to University, why can’t he behave like an educated person? Why does he behave like a villager?… But, how can he insult me like that? Museveni has no monopoly of irrationality, do you know that?… If he wants to behave like Saddam Hussein, let him go to Iraq… Peace and security is a public good… I think I understand security better than Museveni… That is what I think. I am a security expert… Oh, Jesus Christ! You really think laying the whole northern region, a third of the country, in waste, 20 years of war, is how you bring security into a country? Let him resign today, let me become President and you will see what I will do.”
