Christmas has come and gone, but one of the events that preceded it and which warmed my heart was the olive branch that President Museveni extended to Wilson Okwenje, former minister of Public Service in Milton Obote’s second regime, to return home from Canada where he is reported to have been living in exile for several years.
Firstly, I was pleased because Okwenje is a personal friend of my family who even baby-sat some of my children when we were both serving at Uganda’s diplomatic missions in London and Washington D.C., and secondly, because I knew him as a patriot, a man of peace and a gentleman who could not even kill a fly, I could not understand why he had not returned home.
He lived in Takoma Park in Washington D.C., while I lived in Silver Springs, Maryland. But we spent most of our free time together and, before my family joined us, we used to cook and eat together with our other colleague and friend, Chris Katsigazi.
It was after his stint as a foreign service officer when he went into politics, joining the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC).
An honest man, he contested a seat in Busia in the 1980 elections and, unlike many of his colleagues in UPC, consented defeat by his Democratic Party.
These are the elections which were believed to have been won by the Democratic Party, but which UPC stalwart, Paul Muwanga, manipulated and handed victory to his party.
As a consequence, Yoweri Museveni went to the bush and started the guerilla war that propelled him to power in 1986.
My information is that while Mr Muwanga was overturning the tables and announcing Okwenje among the winners, Okwenje was on his way to Kampala to confirm to the party headquarters that he had been defeated.
A married man with children at the time, Okwenje weighed the consequences of sticking to his declaration that he had lost against buying Muwanga’s lie that he had won.
Defying Muwanga’s decisions at the time was tantamount to committing suicide, while the alternative of going into exile was equally a bitter pill to swallow for Okwenje. He decided to buy Muwanga’s lie and stayed with UPC until it was overthrown in July, 1985.
The reader may ask why, against that background, Okwenje stayed in exile when the NRM took power.
My assumption is that having witnessed the loss of life that occurred during the war between Museveni’s guerilla army and Obote’s regime, Okwenje feared for his life and that of his family.
He was smart enough to know that in the aftermath of war, even claims of having supported the cabinet decisions of the ousted regime under the cover of collective responsibility could easily be ignored.
What Okwenje needs to know is that Uganda is now at peace, and that if that peace prevails after the forthcoming elections as President Museveni and other leading candidates have promised the country, all will be well for him to return and spend the rest of his life among his countrymen and women.
Mr Kiwanuka is a journalist,
retired foreign service officer and author.
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