Prime
He fled Mak a student, returned as a lecturer
Returnee. Prof. Edward Grace Galabuzi during the interview at his office at Makerere University in Kampala recently. Photo by Henry Lubega.
What you need to know:
Tough journey. A group of four students from Makerere became fugitives for challenging the 1980 General Election and for demanding improved security at the university. Edward Grace Galabuzi, then in his Second Year at the university, was one of them. He shares his story with Henry Lubega.
I was the general secretary of the students’ guild in 1981, with Opiyo Oloya as the president. We were challenging the elections, which we believed were fraudulent. We were also concerned with the abductions and disappearances at campus of both students and lecturers.
As student leaders, we sought audience with the Education minister to air out our concerns. The minister instead sent us to the Permanent Secretary, who told us that the Education ministry was not responsible for security affairs, and he directed us to the head of the police.
The commissioner of police we met told us he didn’t know what was happening at the university. But students were being picked from campus by officers from the military police.
With no help coming from the ministry and the police, I wrote a circular, which was posted to all places of residences calling on students who knew anyone missing to come to the guild office and give us some information. Instead, a group of Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) youth wingers came to tell us that if we wanted to know where those people [military police personnel] were coming from, we should go with them to Mbuya Military Barracks.
They didn’t stop at that, they mobilised their supporters, who came to the guild office and threw us outside and they took over the office. We also mobilised about 200 students and we went and threw them out of the office and changed the locks. Following the standoff the university administration responded by banning the students’ guild. We responded by circulating flyers asking students not to sit for exams.
By that time, soldiers had been deployed at the campus and we were put on the wanted list.
The four of us – myself, Opiyo Oloya, George Otto, the minister of internal affairs and Oryema –camped out at the Medical School for a couple of days until our hideout was discovered. We immediately left the place and went to some residence in Kololo for two days.
We were now on the run, and we were accused of belonging to the Andrew Kayiira’s Uganda Freedom Movement rebels. After two days in Kololo, we fled to Mbuya Catholic Church, where we stayed for a week.
Somehow, word of our hideout got out and we had to run again. We went to Jinja, from where we managed to cross into Kenya.
Escape route
The security agents didn’t know who we were. We had our passports in Makerere student’s identity cards. We had also created other identities. The different cards were to be used depending on the circumstances.
There were several roadblocks on the way to the border, but the worst was at the [Jinja Nile] bridge. On the roadblock, I was singled out to explain why I was going towards that direction. Two of my friends said they had finished their medical studies and were going to Naivasha where they had got jobs.
Oloya and I, were left in a dilemma. I told the security officials that Oto owed me money and we were going to Busia to meet his uncle and I get my money, then return home.
At the border, we just walked over to the Kenyan side. The immigration officer was out for lunch. As we waited, we engaged some Kenyan police officers in conversation until the immigration officer returned. As we queued up for clearance, Oloya was in front of me. When his turn came, he was turned away and told to go get clearance from Uganda. I didn’t wait. I just followed him. Our other two colleagues were far behind to know what had transpired.
As we stepped out of the immigration office, one of the police officers we had earlier been chatting with asked whether we had been cleared and we answered in the affirmative. He didn’t check as he wished us a safe journey. We walked towards Busia-Kenya, knowing that any time, we could be called back. Fortunately, we made it.
Our two friends were denied entry, later in the evening, by fate, John Oryem was noticed by his former schoolmate, who was a security operative and he was helped to get across.
Oloya and I managed to reach Busia Town (Kenya). We went to a bar as we waited for our colleagues.
Oloya took some beers but I refused to drink because of my Christian background. Later at around 7pm, our colleagues joined us and we boarded the last bus to Nairobi.
Our destination in Nairobi had been arranged by then chairman of Kampala City Council Football Club. He was protecting me as a player, having joined the team in 1978. He secured me a place at a guest house, where we stayed for four days, before I managed to get in touch with a relative, who took us in.
After some mobilisation with other relatives, we secured a house in Buruburu Estate, from where we got refugee status. Before relocating to Buruburu a Nairobi-based British journalist had got to know about our plight and he interviewed. The story helped us in acquiring refugee status.
Different embassies and the UNHCR got interested in our case. Through the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, we were connected to a group called World University Service of Canada. But they had only a limited number of scholarships. Three of my colleagues went to Canada and left me behind, before I joined them later.”
Life in Canada
“I reached Canada in 1982. In Makerere, I was a Second Year student doing a double major in economics and politics. I was enrolled at the University of Winnipeg as a fresher doing a general degree in Economics, and also got involved in students politics until my graduation in 1986.
The move to Canada also interrupted my football career. In Canada, I tried to get back into football during the summer breaks but the available chances were with teams that were racially biased. I played with a Portuguese team, where I was nicknamed Eusebio, but along the way, I got mutually attached to the daughter of the club owner, who did not like it when he found out and sacked me from the team. I later played with the Montreal Monics in Montreal. Soon, the team closed down due to lack of money. Thereafter, I gave football a break and concentrated on academics.
After my graduation, I moved to Toronto and I worked for a couple of years with a company called Environment Candy. I got bored and decided to go back to school at York University for a degree in Political Science. Thereafter, I worked in Ontario provincial office for five years, before enrolling for Master’s degree and stayed on at York University to do a PhD, which I completed in 2005.
By the time I completed my PhD, I was lecturing politics and public administration at the University of Ryerson as assistant professor. After graduation, I was promoted to associate professor, until when I applied to join Makerere in January in 2018, teaching History of Economic and International Political Economy.”
