MP Zaake: The man who has faced death countless times

Mr Zaake, 31 is also a commissioner of Parliament, following his appointment by the National Unity Platform (NUP), Uganda’s biggest opposition political party.

NUP is a youth dominated party, which was formed about a year ago under the leadership of Robert Kyagulanyi,  alias Bobi Wine.

The short and vocal youthful MP is not the best orator, especially in English language, but he has mastered the art of delivering punchlines in criticism of the current government. 

He has been in Parliament for about six years but has on more than five occasions cheated death at the hands of security personnel. All these times, he has been whisked or dumped at hospitals half dead.   

The Arua episode

On the eve of the by-election to replace slain Arua Municipality MP Ibrahim Abiriga in 2018, security ransacked Pacific Hotel in Arua Town in search of opposition politicians who had gone to canvass votes for independent candidate Kassiano Wadri. In the scuffle that ensued, many Opposition politicians sustained injuries before they were detained at Arua Police Station.

Following the alleged torture during the Arua melee on August 18, 2018, Mr Zaake was dumped by unknown people at the gate of Rubaga Hospital in Kampala about 450 kms away. In the news days later, the police released a statement indicating that the motionless man had escaped from the lawful custody of police and that he had also injured his own ears multiple times hence the bleeding.

As Mr Zaake was still getting medication, security picked him up and took him to Kiruddu Referral Hospital where he was kept for more than two weeks under tight security surveillance. Some media reports and social media announced him dead.  

“I was rotting because they were not giving me any kind of medication. They wanted me to die but God has always kept me (alive) because I know there is a mission he wants me to fulfill for him,” Mr Zaake told this newspaper in an interview last month.

He was later transferred to the US together with his party leader Bobi Wine to get specialised medication where he spent more than four months before he returned.

Mr Zaake would later win the case in court about the torture allegations and was awarded Shs75m against the government.

Perpetual torture victim

The youthful MP has gone through turbulent times with the state security but is not ready to relent. Mr Zaake seems to be attracted to those troublesome situations and it appears as though he is given extra attention by the men in uniform when they are torturing him.

The most recent was last weekend, after triumphing in the East African Community Inter Parliamentary Games in the 100m race, Mr Zaake was on the next flight to Kampala before he headed straight to Kayunga District to canvas support for NUP candidate Harriet Nakwedde in a by-election to replace the slain district chairman, Ffefeka Sserubogo.

Ms Nakwedde, who was being escorted by Mr Zaake and other leaders were allegedly waylaid and beaten by the soldiers as they headed to the town council where they were meant to hold their final campaign.

While fellow leaders with whom he had been allegedly attacked and beaten got first aid from nearby clinics and subsequently went back to work, Mr Zaake was being transferred, in critical condition, to Rubaga Hospital, about 72 kilometres from Kayunga District.

He had sustained injuries on the head and a swollen hand which looked fractured. Sunday Monitor had not accessed the medical report by press time.

But his wife, Bridget Namirembe said Mr Zaake had sustained soft tissue injuries, a fractured hand, a head and back injury.

“When he was leaving on that day, I had a feeling that he would get into confrontations with the security and I asked him why he was going there. He told me that is what he is called to do and he cannot go selling in a shop or deliver fruits to customers, so he went; only to be called in the hospital that he had been beaten,” Ms Namirembe says.

Zaake’s origins

Until mid this year when this reporter visited his home for an interview, the young legislator had spent more than four years on crutches. His home in Nalumunye, Wakiso District is surrounded by other apartments but Mr Zaake almost trotted to welcome us into his compound. 

Also, unlike the many times he had done interviews cradled in a wheelchair and straining to see through black sunglasses, this time around the MP opted to answer some questions while standing. 

At the time of our meeting, Zaake had just returned from the US where he says he received specialised treatment, hence the current relief.

“I have always been targeted by the government and I was meant to be dead by now but it is because God is still on my side. The treatment I got is so effective that is why you can see me here today. I am now very fine and I guess I will die of some other disease and not necessarily torture,” he says as he narrates to us his life story.

He says perhaps his misfortunes could have followed him the very day of his birth on January 6, 1991, in Butebi Village, Mityana District. As his mother was battling with labour pains, a storm swept a fire from a nearby burning bush and threw it onto their only grass-thatched house, burning it to ashes.

“I was told that my father had gone fishing at the lake and he could not rescue anything in the house. Neighbours could only rescue my mother who had just given birth to me and evacuated us into a neighbour’s house.  That is where my suffering started, maybe because I have grown up in such situations,” he says.

His radical style of politics can be traced back to his time at Nkumba University when he contested for guild president in 2011. With support of  his wealthy father, Mr Emmanuel Ssembuusi Butebi,  Mr Zaake had put up a strong resilient campaign which would later win him a slogan, “Zivugge Zaake,” which he uses to date.

Unexpected beatings

On days when no one expected a confrontation with police, Mr Zaake was always the target to have his share of torture from the security.

In July last year, when President Museveni had imposed a nationwide lockdown as the world battled the first wave of Covid-19 pandemic, Zaake offered to give his constituents some food relief at his home in Mityana District.

The police picked him up in a Hiace van, commonly known as a drone and drove him to Kireka Police Station. He was denied access to his lawyers and family members as well as fellow Members of Parliament. He was charged with flouting Covid-19 guidelines and attempts to spread an infectious disease.  

When they later accessed him, Zaake’s lawyers filed a Habeas Corpus to the court, indicating that their client needed urgent attention in a specialised hospital. He was later given a police bond. After his release on police bond, Mr Zaake narrated his ordeal at the hands of security detailing how the police poured liquids into his eyes and suspended him by his hands as they punched him hard in his stomach.

On another occasion after the 2021 presidential elections in January, Zaake showed up at one of the roadblocks near NUP leader Bobi Wine’s home after Wine had been placed under military house arrest. On seeing him, the security advanced and pounced on him.

Mr Zaake was beaten, driven to Kasangati police station, and detained together with other party leaders before they were driven to Nagalama Police Station and hospitalised at Rubaga Hospital.

 All this while, fellow detainees easily shook off the injuries sustained but it took Mr Zaake 10 days in hospital for him to stabilise.

Counting the cost of torture

After the Kasangati beating, Mr Zaake had to be flown to India for further medication. Sources familiar with this matter told Sunday Monitor that most of the expenses were funded by NUP supporters  in the diaspora.

“This has been the case with the other party leaders, whenever they get beaten or injured the diaspora organises for their flights and pays the fees but we do not want to talk about these matters in the media because we know we are helping and this is our role,” the source said.

Mr Zaake says he has since then spent fortunes on hospital bills. 

For instance, after the Arua saga, he spent more than Shs500m in hospital bills and a little less after the beating at his home during Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.

By his calculation, correcting his sight and legs which took four years, cost him more than Shs750m.

These harrowing episodes, however, have propelled one of the youngest MPs in the current parliament into a national figure. And to date,  Mr Zaake, remains arguably the most clobbered MP in the current August House.

Genesis of Zaake’s woes

In 2017 during the fracas that ensued as the House debated the amendment of Article 102(b) to remove the age limit from the presidency, Mr Zaake was punched into a coma and dumped at Case Clinic in Kampala by fellow MPs.

One of the first people to visit him as pictures on social media would later make rounds, was the Kayunga Woman MP, Ida Elios Nantaba.

When Gen Katumba Wamala finally visited him in hospital, the leaders mended fences over the attack on each other and the latter apologised for beating Mr Zaake.

Most of his colleagues in the NUP, especially party spokesperson Joel Ssenyonyi, have on many occasions described him as ‘kawonawo’  loosely translated as ‘the survivor’. 

“This gentleman has faced death so many times but was somehow kept and protected by God. He is the one who knows all kinds of brutality in this and he inspires so many of us in this party and the Opposition,” Ssenyonyi said in his introductory remarks during one of their press conferences at the party headquarters in November.

Perhaps it could be because of the many times that the youthful MP has been brutally arrested and beaten but Mr Zaake’s speech has always been filled with emotion and anger especially when it comes to commenting about the government and President Museveni.

Asked what his family thinks about his continuous confrontations with the security, Mr Zaake says, “My father already gave me to this country as a sacrifice because he knows what I like and he has been supporting me all through, even when I got my first beating during the age limit in Parliament.”

But his wife wonders why he has always been targeted by the state: “Is there any personal grudge the state has with my husband? It feels so bad that every time there is a confrontation, he is targeted and always beaten so badly. I am always there because he is my husband but I feel bad that these things keep happening to him.”