Emmanuel Mulondo
10 June 2011
The family of the late Mutebi Nekemiyah Guweddeko, one of the Luweero fighters whom President Museveni had named to be honoured with a hero’s medal, yesterday declined the honour, describing it as an insult to the deceased.
Speaking to Daily Monitor last evening, Mr Fred Guweddeko gave three reasons which he said informed their action.
“We have written to Gen. Tumwine four times asking him to withdraw their honours but they continue featuring our father on their lists. We want them to stop using our father’s name but they continue,” Mr Guweddeko, a researcher at Makerere University, said.
He said the government has since 1986 denied the family an opportunity to give a decent burial to their beloved one and that the undertakings reached by Museveni and the late Guweddeko had not been honoured.
He said there is also a tendency to use the dead for the continued hegemony of those who are in power.
“Since the war ended in 1986 President Museveni has prevented us from giving our father a befitting cultural burial. You can’t deny somebody a cultural burial and then turn around and declare him a hero,” said Mr Guweddeko.
“If he is a hero why do you leave him in the bush?”
But Gen. Elly Tumwine, one of the historical officers of the NRA, turned UPDF, a member of the UPDF High Command and chairman of the government’s Heroes/Honors’ committee, referred to Mr Guweddeko as a “mad man” who was trying to seek audience.
“He called me complaining that we are not recognising his father but we did so long ago and awarded him with Kagera (honour) but someone who is probably FDC (opposition Forum for Democratic Change) is trying to make something out of it,” Gen Tumwine said, adding he could not tell the year the late Guweddeko was honoured.
The late Guweddeko reportedly brokered the 1981 deal at Matugga that saw the merger of the late former President, Prof. Yusuf Kironde Lule’s Uganda Freedom Fighters (UFF) and Museveni’s People’s Resistance Army (PRA) to become NRA.
Many of the UFF officers had reportedly rejected the idea of the merger with Museveni saying he had participated in the removal of Lule from power in 1979.
But the late Guweddeko’s efforts paid off.
He subsequently became the NRA second in command but was killed in 1983 in “friendly fire” meaning he died at the hands of fellow NRA soldiers.
“They were returning from a battle when he was killed and buried at the High Command,” Mr Guweddeko said.
“He is the highest officer to have died during the war. There was an attempt by some Baganda officers to break away from NRA after the killing of my father but the President prevailed on them and punished their leaders,” Mr Guweddeko said yesterday.
An insult?
“This business of declaring people heroes is partly meant to reduce others to have been servants of Mr Museveni other than co-owners or key people in NRA. I think this is an insult,” Mr Guweddeko said. “My father led Lule’s army to bring justice to Buganda against what (the late Milton) Obote had done in 1962-6.
When the war ended, instead of honouring the agreements reached at the late Maj Kyobe and Omutaka Mbajja’s homes in Matugga, Museveni violated them,” Mr Guweddeko said.
He added: “Giving the Baganda something different from what they fought for and to a different group now called Mengo, it was a betrayal.”
AllAfrica – All the Time