Uganda: Rugumayo’s ‘Why Fireflies Glow’ Memoir Covers Up Genocide, Treason

By Zacharia Kanyonyozi

Photos: Facebook\Book Cover\YouTube Screenshots

“On November 28, 1978, Milton Obote called a meeting of Ugandans to unite and chart out a path for the removal of Amin, supported by Tanzania,” writes Professor Edward Bitanywaine Rugumayo in his autobiography “Why Fireflies Glow”.

 

Before adding, “An ad-hoc committee was formed at that meeting. Right from the start, both [Dani] Nabudere and Omwony [Ojok] were uncomfortable with Obote’s handling of the meeting and accused Obote of undemocratic decision-making processes and divisive tactics.”

In writing his memoirs this year, Rugumayo recycles the age-old fallacies which have long since been discredited by Gen. Museveni’s treasonous rule.

Yes, we say treason as Gen. Museveni himself agrees.

When commenting on the just concluded Oyam North Parliamentary by-elections, dictator Museveni said, “I condemn and demand action taken against the lawbreakers that are said to have ticked the ballots on behalf of [National Resistance Movement-NRM] voters. This is treason…”

There was rigging in that by-election and there has been rigging since 1989, after the first National Resistance Council elections which placed Gen. Museveni’s position as head of state beyond contest by not even putting his name on the ballot.

By these acts and by dictator Museveni’s own admission, he has committed treason and thus must face the full extent of the law.

Back to Rugumayo’s work of fiction being positioned as some revelation of the past.

Can Rugumayo refute the fact that he and his Museveni-sympathizers used to call members of the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) at the Moshi conference (after the fall of Idi Amin) “Cockroaches”?

It is a fact that we challenge Rugumayo to refute or controvert: he personally used to call the UPC delegates at Moshi in 1978-9 “cockroaches.”

Sure, you may term this as good old fashioned ribbing and thus nothing to raise hackles over.

However, let us place the epithet “cockroaches” in context with respect to the wider East African community, post-Amin.

William A. Donohue, a professor of communication at Michigan State University, wrote in 2019 how “Dehumanizing language often precedes genocide”.

“One tragic example: Extreme dehumanizing language was a strong contributor to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. As I have written, the Hutu majority used a popular radio station to continually refer to Tutsi tribal members, a minority in Rwanda, as ‘cockroaches,’” wrote the professor.

Adding: “As support for this characterization grew among Hutus, it essentially stripped away any moral obligation to see Tutsis as fellow humans. They were just vermin that needed to be eradicated.”

Rugumayo cannot dare put the language he and his colleagues used against UPC in his Pulp Fiction of a book because this language was the germ of genocide.

The stage was set in the Luwero Triangle. Then, in 1987 onwards, for over 20 years genocide was committed in the North.

The North of Uganda was said to be the last bastion of UPC and so in calling the UPC ‘cockroaches’, Rugumayo and his fellow genocidaires, led by Gen. Museveni, dehumanized the presumed supporters of the UPC, Northerners, and killed them in the most brutal ways.

Possibly only Foday Saybana Sankoh, the founder of the Sierra Leone rebel group Revolutionary United Front, which was supported by Charles Taylor-led NPFL in the 11-year-long Sierra Leone Civil War, starting in 1991 and ending in 2002, was as brutal as what we saw in the north of Uganda.

But wait, even the Rwanda genocide was equally bloody and Gen. Museveni and his fellow Bush War genocidaires were knee-deep in that war, too.

Is it a coincidence that the language which preceded the genocides, the use of the word cockroach, in the north of Uganda and Rwanda was employed by the same people?

It is clear, without a shadow of a doubt, that this mass murder was not only premeditated by the Museveni junta. But is also a system of rule by Gen. Museveni and his toadies, such as Rugumayo….a fake professor right down to his yellow NRM underwear!

By Zacharia Kanyonyozi