Karumba story during Id Amin days

A Sunday Nation story, “How Karumba’s pursuit of debtor led to his death” made for fascinating reading.

It told the story of Kung’u Karumba, one of the “Kapenguria Six” - the six prominent Kenyan nationalists, including later founding father Jomo Kenyatta, who were arrested and tried at Kapenguria in 1952–53, imprisoned, and released in 1961.

Of the lot, Karumba was the one who didn’t end up in politics, and became a wealthy businessman.

On June 14, 1974, he left Nairobi and drove to Uganda, where he had a thriving textile business. The country then was ruled by military dictator Idi Amin.

According to the story, a businesswoman called on Margaret, in the eastern industrial town of Jinja, owed him lots of money. He went to collect. However, as misfortune had it, Margaret was also a mistress of an Amin army officer.

As was common those days, she called up her boyfriend, who took care of business. Karumba disappeared, never to be seen again, probably his body fed to the crocodiles in River Nile.

Karumba was not the only Kenyan killed in Uganda by Amin’s goons. Perhaps the one that had the more long-term impact was the disappearance of Esther Chesire who was a Second Year law student at Makerere University.

Her story was well retold by Sunday Nation, on July 13, 2017.

She was picked up by Amin security officers in March 1976, as she waited to board a flight to Nairobi. It’s widely believed that it was part of a crackdown. In a case that remains emotive, a charismatic student, Paul Serwanga, who was a classmate of Ms Chesire, was shot to death on March 5, 1976. In a rare show of defiance at that time, university students took to Kampala’s streets, calling for Amin’s overthrow.

To get a sense of how audacious the protests were, one has to remember that Amin’s full title was “His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Alhaji Dr. Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE (i.e. ‘Conqueror of the British Empire’).”

Virtually all but a handful of Kenyan students at Makerere University were recalled to continue studies at the University of Nairobi.

Theresa Nanziri Bukenya, the warden of Africa Hall, where Ms Chesire was resident, was also killed when she refused to fudge the evidence about her death. Eight months pregnant, she was seized, her decapitated body to be found days later.

Those series of incidents led to several students escaping into exile, feeding the myriad ranks of rebel groups that were to band together with the Tanzanians, and oust Amin in April 1979.

But the role of Margaret, either as wife, mistress, or just a regular woman navigating a dictatorship, also speaks to the complicated question of what happened to women – and their men - during Amin’s time.

Forty years later, books and films are comfortable exploring the political excesses and murderous side of the Amin machine. None has really looked at what actually it did to society.

Amin was a contradiction, murderous and possibly insane, he did more to bring women into public life than any African leader at that time – and probably until the late 1980s. He was the first to appoint a woman as permanent secretary, minister, or ambassador.

Perhaps taking a page out the book of his buddy, Libyan crazy man Muammar Gaddafi, he surrounded himself with female bodyguards.

But it is in homes that his rule was most felt. It was a time when it was common to be killed by a soldier so he could snatch your girlfriend or wife. If one of a military men drove by and liked your house, he would come around the next day with his boys, take you away, murder you, kicked your family out, and move in.

Any of Amin’s thugs could stop you on the street if he fancied your car, and kill you for it. And that was it.

At a time when men had all the power, and owned everything, about 99 per cent of Amin’s victims were also men.

To minimise risk, in family businesses, the men would not sit in the shop front or the big corner office. They would hide.

In difficult economic times, if you wanted even a small government tender, your wife is the one who took the documents in and was the face of the bid. Often, she would have to sleep with a bunch of fellows to get it.

It was something some couples accepted as the inevitable cost of feeding the children, and keeping the lights on.

But it ate people inside, and did damage which the country has still not come to terms with. Karumba’s disappearance sheds only a tiny light on the tragedy.