I helped Besigye escape – Col Mande

Q: What happened when you were incarcerated at Makindye military barracks?
A: I was locked up in a place where a human being should never be put to live even for one hour - a tiny room called the Kashilingi room. It was a beans’ store but underneath was a dungeon with very little oxygen and no light. That’s where the beating.

Q: How long did the torture last?
A: It happened several times over the five-year trial period. I would be incarcerated and if they failed to try one case, they would release me on bail to plot another charge and re-arrest and torture me. The first false charge was that I stole millions of dollar.

Q: Was that the $2 million you, as Uganda’s military attaché to Tanzania, allegedly used to buy military equipment for Rwanda?
A: There is no substance at all in those allegations; it was intrigue. The public knew that I was facing charges of embezzlement while the Intelligence was interrogating me for supplying arms to [another renegade NRA officer-turned-Uganda National Democratic Alliance] rebel commander, Herbert Itongwa; that I was trying to overthrow the government.

One time when court asked for my case file, they said that I had stolen the file. Me from the go-down (dungeon) stealing a file well protected in the Chief of Military Intelligence (CMI) offices!

It was a frivolous charge to try to get me out of circulation, de-humanise, humiliate and send me to the trash can because of my political views. Where is the evidence that I was ever given $2 million? To be precise, I was not a vote holder at the Ugandan High Commission in Dar es Salaam. The money that the ministry of Defence had was under the supervision of the Ambassador and the accountant. The person who was responsible for clearing military cargo was Lt. Fred Zaake. So, how did I meet this money?

Q: What was so significantly different about your political views that you needed to be singled out and victimised?
A: The point of departure cannot be pin-pointed because it is cumulative. The first problem I had with the leadership of NRM was my insistence soon after we had overthrown the Okello Lutwa regime that we should have a broad-based government. I moved a motion in a meeting we held in Lubiri and forced President Museveni to bring on board people like [former Democratic Party) Paul Ssemogeree and others into government. I was subsequently marked as a DP agent and that remained in the record.

The second incident was when I led the capture of Gulu in 1986 and got in contact with the late Lord Andrew Benedicto Adimola and Father John of Alokolum Seminary. Remnants of Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) had approached them seeking to negotiate their surrender to us and I gave them assurances that we would not kill them. The first officer who came to negotiate was now Brig. Charles Otema Awany, the UPDF Chief of Logistics and Engineering, Charles Kareba and the late Lt. Col. Okoth. I gave them food and assured them the NRA policy was never to kill a prisoner of war or a person who had surrendered willfully. They went and told their friends who surrendered in large numbers. I called the President and showed him all the weapons they had brought back willfully; and he said that was a good move. These guys were ready to join the government; so, I put them in Pece stadium in Gulu town. As I was doing this, Gen. David Ssejusa a.k.a Tinyefuza was posted as Brigade commander and I was the commanding officer, and he got instructions, I don’t know from where, but he gave instruction that I should stop handling the Acholi people with kid’s gloves. That meant to molest them, but how could I molest people that had come out willfully?

Q: Which brigade was this?
A: By then NRA formations were not properly constituted. It was named a brigade but was just a group of battalions under one brigade called 157th brigade. I was in the 15th battalion but the 19th battalion, 13th battalion and elements of the 1st battalion had fused to capture Gulu.

When I refused to accept what my conscious told me were wrong orders, Tinyefuza said I had led a mutiny and I wanted to use UNLA soldiers who had surrendered to overthrow government. An Intelligence briefing was prepared that I was linking up with DP elements in Gulu to undermine the NRA authority. Gen. Salim Saleh and Brig. Matayo Kyaligonza were sent to quell the purported mutiny. I told them there was no mutiny, but that I questioned instructions which broke the code of conduct of the NRA. To be specific, vehicles and soldiers of my battalion had been deployed by the Brigade commander (Tinyefuza) to take property which was rather acquired wrongfully from the population to south of Uganda and to take some of the soldiers they rounded up to Kibulala prison farm in Ibanda district. Those soldiers that were taken south have not been traced.

Q: How many were these soldiers?
A: They were ferried in five lorries; they could have numbered 200.

Q: And you say they were never seen again?
A: No, they were not seen. Those who survived being taken to Kibulala vanished from the place they had willfully assembled at in Gulu, they went back to hide and the Brigade commander gave orders to round them up. In the process, I saw suspected UNLA soldiers tied Kandoya (hand to back), people lost lives and others had to defend themselves. That is how the war in northern Uganda was provoked. I sent the President a message [about the developments] and he said I should stop being an alarmist.

Q: What did your message say?
A: The message was very clear that we were committing crimes, we had provoked the war, things were being moved to southern part of Uganda and he needed to intervene immediately to stop this. I had so many causalities already of my troops and facilities that could help them were just busy ferrying looted properties.

Q: What properties?
A: Anything that they would land on, they would claim the UNLA had stolen it from Luwero and Kampala; it could be a fridge, a sofa set, any machine; a car, anything. Even Lacor hospital lost a generator. They were on rampage. I was warning the president that we were going to start a war that we may never finish and that is when he called me an alarmist and he gave me a transfer to Karamoja, and later to Jinja. I expected he would have transferred Tinyefuza.

Also, I remember when we had just captured power, the parish priest at my father’s church organised lunch for us and Intelligence people wrote a report that I had been in a closed-door discussion with Catholics, and chased away everybody. That I was holding dubious meetings!

Q: Is that why you taken as a military attaché to Tanzania?
A: I remember after I returned from military training in Nigeria and immediately the president read my report, he gave me an assignment to start our own Staff and Command College at Kimaka in Jinja because my report detailed how we could re-train the NRA and transform it from a militia or guerilla force to an army with international standards. In addition, he tasked to write the UPDF Establishment document.

This was important because we had an army whose personnel did not know how many they were, without standard on what constituted formations, no doctrine and specification of what weapons should be used at what level.

Other members were Brig. Bernard Rwehururu, Col. Mark Kodili and we were put under then Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Sam Nanyumba because by then I didn’t have an office. I gave much of the inputs that turned the NRA into UPDF and I’m the one who baptised NRA as UPDF, which the Constituent Assembly passed.

(Col. Mande in an emotional narrative says he has variously been misunderstood or misrepresented because he was born to a Catholic Mukiga father Cyprian Kabyeseza but grew up with a Catholic Muhima foster dad, John Wilson Nsheka.)

Q: How did the issue of your parentage and religion come to affect you in adult life and public service?
A: Our leaders thought I was a Muhima, there are some secrets I accessed that I think they think I should not have known. But growing in different ethnic communities helped me to belong to two cultures and overcome sectarian tendencies.

When I see someone employing sectarianism, I automatically know this is an enemy of the people, I cannot accept anything that is sectarianism.

Q: What secrets?
A: There were some people who thought they would rule as a dynasty forever and they thought I should be one of them, those who thought I was a Muhima but when they learned that I was not a Muhima, it became a problem.

Until recently, DP had caused a psychological problem for Museveni because [Foreign Affairs minister Sam] Kutesa trounced him in the 1980 elections in Nyabushozi on DP ticket. So he (Museveni) will never forget the DP. Why we took long to organise the first election was because he thought DP would win. When he started learning that I was also a catholic in addition to being a Mukiga, then this reports going to him that I was with Father John in Gulu; in a meeting with catholic priests meeting in Rukungiri, he said: Oh! We are carrying an enemy with us because sincerely I was very close to Museveni because of my performance and my straight forwardness. Many people told him lies, I didn’t, I would tell him this one I can’t do, this one I have done and if I told Museveni I had done this, he would consider it done.

Q: These secrets you are talking about, the dynasty talk, was it designed in the bush or these were things discussed after you took power?
A: These are things he (Museveni) himself designed way back even before we started fighting Idi Amin. He would share them with a person he wanted to confide in, not a group. [It was] not a policy, no. There were many things he did not tell everybody.

Q: How was the dynasty supposed to work?
A: That we rule this country forever [by] playing on other people’s intelligence but we keep the power.

Q: But when President Museveni came to power and there was the first debate in 1989 to extend his tenure by four years, he said no and proposed only two additional years. How do you say that such a person planned early for a dynasty rule?
A: We are dealing with a scientific liar, a scientific dictator and that is how he has kept manipulating his way, manipulating everybody up to now. When he senses danger, he knows how to manipulate his way. If you don’t know Museveni, it is hard to know what he is up to; that’s why I don’t blame people who remain in that government serving.

Q: You spoke of Museveni’s plans to rule Uganda as a dynasty, and now his son Brig. Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s rise to Special Forces commander has stirred acrimonious debate. What are your thoughts?
A: First, as a person who has knowledge that Museveni had or still has the intent that this country be government as a dynasty, when I see how the son came into the army illegally, his accelerated promotions and when I see the sensitive areas he is being appointed to manage, it just confirms [the plans]. I have that slight privilege [of earlier] knowledge that this guy wants to build a dynasty and now I know that the dynasty is being built around his family because of what he is doing with his son.

I have no problem with his son becoming the president of Uganda, because it is his right like any other Ugandan, but what I detest is what is breaching the law to promote or make him president.

Q: In the bush you believed that you were to change Uganda for the better. How did things go wrong?
A: We went to the bush for various reasons. I joined the rebellion because of personal insecurity; the UPC militias collectively condemned us - the people western they associated with [Museveni-led] FRONASA rebel group - and they started killing us.

We wrote the 10-point programme during the bush war in 1983 to specify what we were going to bring to the country because there was confusion as to why we were fighting.

Q: You mean the 10-point programme was not a product of one man’s vision?
A: No, we sat down for two weeks in meetings chaired by President Museveni and Maj. Benon Biraro was the secretary. The 10-point programme was about what we would do when we attained power. Before NRA’s code of conduct was in place, a lot of unpleasant things happened.

Q: Can you break down these unpleasant things.
A: We are talking about things like those arbitrary arrests and deaths of people. The general administration was not thorough; the way comrades were disappearing, a case would come up but you did not have a mechanism to investigate them and there were people who would say this is the jungle; this is the jungle law.

Q: As commander of the 15th battalion, you were accused of raiding a bank in Kasese during the NRA war. Do you regret your action?
A: It was the right thing to do.

Q: Why?
A: Because we were the government of the day [in western Uganda]. I went to secure – mark my word, secure – Bank of Uganda currency centre. My mission was to secure that money for the use of our government because Gen. Tito Okello Lutwa was in charge of half of the country, we had taken the other half; so, this was the central bank under us. So I was not a robber and when I went to the bank, I signed for all the money we removed, I made sure I went with then Sgt. Bright Rwamirama, who had banking knowledge, and we counted the money, signed forms and delivered it to the NRA headquarters in Kasese with vouchers. I have no regret.

Q: How much was the money?
A: I think it was Shs1.4 billion.

Q: And do you know what it was used for?
A: Yes, for purchasing food and medicine for the soldiers and the civilians that we were taking care of. Administering that money was not my business.

Q: Isn’t it that this bush culture of bank break-ins has now morphed into raid on the Treasury, including allegedly for buying votes?
A: These ones are dipping fingers into the Treasury for personal benefit, but ours was for government work.

Q: How did you escape from Uganda?
A: That is my big secret which I lent to ex-FDC leader Kizza Bsigye, late Edson Muzoora, Col. Anthony Kyakabale and Dr Wilbrod Okungu, and which I may need to lend to other persons when needed.

Q: Are you saying that you helped Col. Besigye escape to South Africa? How did you do it yet he was under 24-hour security surveillance and you out of Uganda?
A: Yes. I can still do it for some other people and that is why I will never disclose the trick because we are still dealing with the same situation and several other people might need that kind of service.

Q: You mentioned Col. Muzoora, do you know the circumstances under which he died in May, this year?
A: I do not know. I only helped him to go to exile.

Q: Did you keep in touch after he went to exile?
A: Yes, we would ring each other when he was in South Africa. I was also surprised when I saw it in the news that they had found his dead body in front of his house.

Q: Government in 2005 said you and Col. Kyakabale were the commanders of the People’s Redemption Army (PRA) rebel group, resulting in arrests and long incarcerations of people mainly from West Nile. Did you plot to topple Museveni government?
A: According to the information I have which is reliable, the External and Internal security organisations started that PRA project to use it against us who had fled, to use it against the Reform Agenda youths because the 2001 elections opened people’s eyes and everybody was now saying: we must take this government out. So they wanted something to use to justify repression.

Q: What do you do for a living here in Sweden?
A: When I reached here I had to learn Swedish. I would study and sweep or get any odd job. But soon after I did a Bachelor of Science IT and Masters in Business Administration courses, I started a business management and planning consultancy firm. I write projects for people and get paid.

I have successfully done a number of projects for African countries and clandestinely in Uganda.

Q: You have been quoted as demanding a national dialogue, truth and reconciliation commission as pre-condition for your return to Uganda. How are you walking the talk?
A: I have met emissaries; they always come and say why don’t you go home? I have met several groups claiming that the president has sent them they want me to go home but every time I say that you can’t single me out of the situation but that we should have a dialogue to discuss these national issues, they don’t come back. For instance, [Health minister Ruhakana] Rugunda was in this (Scandic Sergel Plaza) hotel and I laetr met him in London, and he said that I would be okay if I returned. How can I be okay when people are in ten years of detention without trial under my name, when people have been killed and justice has not been done, when people cannot access a City square to discuss issues that affect them and the nation, when people are being grabbed? These are issues that forced me to flee the country, a situation that I do not want to return to Uganda when it is still the same.

Q: Museveni is the president and there is no indication he is going away anytime soon…
A: Whether he is the president or not, he should not be wielding the power he is wielding right now.

Q: Would you support the removal of the president from office by force because he does not seem to be losing any election anymore anyway?
A: I don’t go by the election the way they are done in Uganda; I don’t respect them because they are not free and fair. The president is not willing to have free and fair elections in Uganda neither is he willing to abandon or denounce the idea that a leader comes in office by force and he gets out by force which he stated in 1996 when campaigning against Paul Ssemogerere.

Until he denounces that, he abandons that thinking; he is only advising Ugandans that you need force to get me out of here.

Q: What are your genuine fears about going back home? Is it going to jail?
A: I don’t fear going to jail, I was in jail for a period of over five years already. I fear lack of justice, I won’t get justice, I was there and I subjected myself to prosecution, I did not get justice. And there are many things that have been happening like people dying in unexplainable circumstances. I survived then; I don’t think I can survive this time. I fear for my life.

Q: So what are you doing outside here to achieve reforms in Uganda?
A: We are trying to force this thinking out of his head using pressure of the international community, of the Ugandan diaspora, linking up with the masses and all stakeholders in Uganda who want change.

Q: Do you genuinely believe that it’s in the interest of Museveni after 27 years, it will be 30 years when his current tenure expires in 2016, to undertake reforms that could see him lose re-election?
A: It is in his interest because it is like an olive branch we are giving him, if he doesn’t see it that way, he will remember my word at the last minute when he becomes another (toppled and slain Libyan leader Muammar) Gadhafi. If he accepts the political reforms, in return we forget what he did and offer him soft retirement to Rwakitura or wherever he chooses and then Ugandans will start afresh. I will be very happy if that point can reach him, I don’t want him to say we didn’t tell him, or he didn’t know or he didn’t get it clearly.

Q: You pick lines similar to ones used by Gen. Tinyefuza in addressing President Museveni, would you accept working with Tinyefuza since both of your agenda seem similar?
A: I will borrow former South African President Nelson Mandela’s wisdom; he said even though he did not like [his predecessor] F. W De Klerk, he needed him for the sake of continuity of our nation. So in that perspective, I can work with any Ugandan and I encourage Ugandans to reconcile and put their differences aside because we have wronged each other.

However, we cannot heal our wounds unless we accept that we have wounds. We need a process of healing that includes telling people the truth, doing justice to those who were wronged, reconciling.

Q: These are salient issues UPC party president Olara Otunnu has repeatedly raised since he returned to Uganda. Are you working together?
A: He was here in Sweden and this is what we shared and I am very happy that he accepted, kept and is giving this message to Ugandans. We cannot change the past but we can change the future, and to do that is to first recognise the mistake we did.

Q: Have you and Tinyefuza been in touch, and what are you two up to?
A: When a person has just left the country, you wouldn’t judge him ... he may be panicking, maybe he is still angry. But what he is saying is similar to what we are talking about except we only need to give him and ourselves some time, may be this time he may be serious [unlike in mid 1990s when he made a U-turn to government saying he had been confused by bad spirits].

We are in the process of meeting, we have talked over the phone, so we can see how we can iron out those [past] differences and we look at the current situation with the view of how we can work together to help the situation, especially when it comes to transitioning Uganda from dictatorship, we need everybody on board. We may not like each other , we may have abused each other, we may have problems but we need each other, we need all Ugandans on board to attend to this situation, since we could not have a good past, we should not continue to have a bad future.

Q: There are allegations of gross human right abuse by UPDF soldiers under Tinyefuza’s command in northern Uganda. Does it bother you that you are actually entering a marriage of convenience with him?
A: I will not enter any marriage of convenience. If I’m going to work with Tinyefuza, it has to start with truth which should include delivering justice and then reconciliation. I will not just join or allow him join me for the sake of joining forces. There are issues we must discuss: I want to find out from him, why he behaved in a certain manner, maybe he has reason to convince me why and then I want to know how he is going to settle that with the population that got affected by the way he operated and if the truth comes out, and if there’s remorse, and if in our dealing the population sees that justice is going to be delivered, then we can work together. But just working together for the sake of changing the government is not my intention.

Q: Doing justice to victims might involve standing in the dock to answer for his alleged transgressions. Is that one of the things you want to address to Tinyefuza during your planned maiden meeting?
A: When we talk about reconciliation, we look at a truth, justice and reconciliation commission and if I offended any one in some operation, I would be very happy to go through that process. This is the question I want to put to him: Is he willing to go through that process? And if he answers in the affirmative, I will start believing that he is a person that has come out and we would look on the future.

Q: Has there, for instance, been any attempts on your life since relocating to Sweden?
A: Yes, when I had just come here. Some that I saw by myself and others I was warned about by Swedish authorities. I would not go into those details but it happened within the first three to four years after I came here.

Q: What motivates you?
A: I am consoled by the fact that youths in Uganda, and Ugandan Diaspora, have increased their activism and since youths are the majority and have the most at stake than ourselves because it’s their future we are talking about, it gives me courage that Uganda will soon be a better country since the youths are now awake, have the technology and some of us are here to advise them. I would encourage all youth of Uganda, wherever they are to join our call for pressure for national dialogue, political, social and economic reforms and unite so we can deliver our country into the first world, faster than other people think.

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