Henry Kyemba

The man who saw it all dies at 84

COVER STORY | THE INDEPENDENT | Henry Kisadha Magumba Kyemba, the veteran Ugandan politician, civil servant, and author has died aged 84 years. Family members said Henry Kyemba passed on peacefully early morning on Oct.19. The next day, Oct. 20, President Yoweri Museveni’s office promptly announced he was granted an official burial.

The official burial was befitting because Kyemba lived an eventful life close to power and could not go out any other way. Born in 1939 to an African colonial administrator, Kyemba was swung into the heights of Uganda’s political activity at an early age.

He was just 23 years old when he was appointed the first as Assistant Secretary in Charge of Ceremony and Protocol and then as Principle Private Secretary to the first Prime Minister of Independent Uganda, Milton Obote.

The two had first met at the prestigious Busoga College Mwiri in the mid-fifties and appeared destined for a turbulent life together.

In past narrations to journalists, Kyemba spoke of how overwhelmed he felt on taking up that job as a fresh graduate from Makerere University (which was then affiliated to the University College of London) where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in History.

“(And) it was a big challenge. I had known Milton Obote from Busoga College Mwiri. But here is the young man after Makerere in the Prime Minister’s office just before independence. Serving him as I must to the best of my ability,” he reportedly told URN.

Pride and peril

Kyemba said he thought he would spend at most two years as the Private Secretary to the Prime Minister because “serving as a private secretary is not the kind of job where you say it is a cup of tea”.

He described good parts of the job, such as the fringe benefits that come with being close to the head of state.

“You travel first class, you stay in the best hotel where the President stays, and very rarely do you pay your bills. You have your per diems but the host government pays for your bills,” he said.

Being close to Obote and living within the same precincts, Kyemba witnessed firsthand momentous events such as the 1966 Buganda Crisis when Obote deposed then President of Uganda, the Kabaka of Buganda Sir Frederick Mutesa II.

But being close to power also has its perils. Kyemba was just one seat away on two occasions when Obote escaped being assassinated.

The first time was on December 19, 1969 when an assassin shot then-President Obote as he was leaving the UPC annual delegates’ conference at Lugogo Indoor Stadium in Kampala. The bullet struck Obote in the face, breaking two of his teeth and passing through his cheek.

The second time was a few months later, in June 1970, when they were driving into Kampala city from the Prisons’ headquarters in Port Bell Luzira. Kyemba was in the front seat of the presidential vehicle with Obote seated in the back seat with his cousin. On this occasion the assassin’s bullets hit the car in which Obote’s Vice president at the time, John Babiha, was traveling. Kyemba says the assassins had laid the ambush to shoot Obote but by a miracle, they passed unscathed.

But even more dramatic events were to unfold two years later when Gen. Idi Amin Dada who was the commander of the Uganda Army grabbed power from Obote in a military coup.

Obote was away in Singapore attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) and Kyemba, true to his job, was part of the 30-person Ugandan delegation.

In fact, breaking the dreaded news to Obote that he had been overthrown by the army led by Idi Amin fell on Kyemba’s young shoulders.

Kyemba was briefly in exile but when President Amin allowed the civil servants who had traveled with Obote to Singapore to return, he took up the offer.

He narrated an interesting encounter with Amin when they met for the first time about his job.

“I came and I was led to the command post to report to the new head of state. When we were introduced to the head of state, he told me `we see you on Monday’.”

“I said which office? He said your office. But I said I was the private secretary to Obote. He said you are now my private secretary,” Kyemba narrated to URN.

Amin later appointed him Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Culture and Community Development. But the most dramatic appointment was to come in September 1972. At the time, Kyemba was also responsible for the Community Training Centre at Nsamizi which trained community development officers.

On the fateful day he was traveling to Entebbe to wait for his minister, Ambassador Yekosophat Engu when he heard on the radio that five of the ministers, including Engu, had been dropped from cabinet. Engu was supposed to officiate at a function at Nsamizi. So Kyemba telephoned the State House to inquire about the new minister but he was told the president was not available.

“Then a policeman came in. and said they want you on the telephone. Being escorted by a policeman from the rostrum by a policeman was not good news. And certainly, somebody wondered whether that was the last they were seeing of me. I didn’t know whether the firing of the minister and me the permanent secretary were connected. I went and who was on the phone? Idi Amin. He said Kyemba, what is it? I said I’m here at Nsamizi we are having a graduation ceremony but the minister who was supposed to preside has been fired. And Idi Amin said `oh you are the minister’.”

That is how Kyemba became one of the 18 ministers under President Idi Amin Dada. He also served as Minister of Health under Amin.

Fallout with Amin

For many years, Kyemba has faced questions about why he kept serving under Idi Amin even with the alleged atrocities and killings. Some of his relatives like Shaban Kirunda Nkutu were killed. He at one moment said he did not know whether he should take credit for going to exile or be punished for having stayed.

Kyemba indicated that he had the opportunity to go into exile in 1972 when he traveled to Lagos. At the time, Benedicto Kiwanuka, the then Chief Justice had just been murdered.

“I thought if I went, my own brother Nabeta who was CEO of National Insurance Corporation, my other brother who was a magistrate, and my mother above all would be at risk. I thought it was wrong for me to leave them. So I said I better go and come back.”

He stayed on until February 1977 when the Archbishop, Janani Luwum, and two cabinet ministers were murdered. “My mother told me that I don’t want to see you because they are going to kill you. I thought hard about the murdering of an Archbishop”.

Being the chairman of African Health Ministers, Kyemba took advantage of the then-upcoming Health Conference at WHO in Geneva where he was elected Vice President of the World Health Assembly in 1977.

“While busy working for my country, Idi Amin was arresting ministers and my five-year child in Jinja and then telephoning me in Geneva,” he said.

After Geneva, Kyemba took the first flight to London. “The fact was that you could not resign from the Amin government and think that you could walk on the streets. Many of us were praying to be dismissed so that they go underground,” observed Kyemba.

“And I can tell you that the most humiliating thing you can ever go through is to go and live in exile. Because you are seen as a pest, a parasite on the hardworking people where you got refuge,” Kyemba told URN.

Authoring State of Blood

While in exile in a flat in Oxford, Kyemba wrote a book titled “State of Blood”, the inside story of Idi Amin.

He said the stories he narrated in that story will always be part of Uganda’s history. The book was written within one month in order to beat the deadline of the UN General Assembly that was to be held in September 1977. It was to be presented as a true story of someone who had been close to the government.

“And maybe one can say I was an accomplice. And I was ready to go to ICC or anything like that. To record what I felt the world ought to know what they were dealing with, in the regime of Idi Amin,” Kyemba said. Kenya then travelled the world, telling the Amin story.

He only returned to Uganda after Idi Amin was over-thrown in 1979. But he did not stay when Obote became president a second time; from 1980 to 1985 when he again toppled in a military coup.

Kyemba returned to Uganda permanently in 1986 when President Yoweri Museveni took power from the army junta that toppled Obote.

When Museveni’s government in 1989 announced it was expanding the National Resistance Council (NRC); as the national legislative body was then called, Kyemba was elected to represent Jinja Municipality West Constituency.

Then when elections were called in 1994 for members of the Constituent Assembly; the body that would debate and write the new national constitution, Kyemba was once gain elected as the Jinja West delegate.

President Museveni later appointed Kyemba to different ministerial positions, including as Minister of State for Animal Industry and Fisheries. In 2001 Kyemba retired from elective politics. He went on to serve on various national bodies; including the Judicial Service Commission. He became a distinguished member of Rotary; the global service organisation where he was district governor.

Professor Derek Peterson, the American cultural historian from the University of Michigan who has documented and archived part of Uganda’s historical events; especially those related to Id Amin’s rule said Kyemba was a fixture in Uganda’s public life. He described him as a, “dedicated civil servant, courageous critic of Amin’s brutality, and custodian of memory”.