Museveni, Nyamwasa, Rudasingwa’s self-serving sacrifice of others
On January 22, 1973 three members of Fronasa rebel movement, Yoweri Museveni, Mwesigwa Black, and Mwesiga Martin, were surrounded by Idi Amin soldiers in Mbale, Uganda, at the house of Maumbe Mukwana, a Fronasa mobiliser in the area. Without alerting his colleagues, Museveni snuck through the back door and took off, “I jumped over the hedge, hoping that my colleagues would follow my example and scatter in different directions. At this time, I did not realize that they had not done so,” Museveni wrote in his autobiography, “Sowing the Mustard Seed,”regarding the death of Mwesiga and Mwesigwa, two fighters who had reached for their guns and bravely fought Amin’s soldiers only to lose their lives as a result.
They mistakenly thought Museveni was with them in the fight against the enemy. If he had alerted his colleagues of the intent to dart out of the back door, perhaps all of them would still be alive. But Museveni must have made a coldheaded judgement that he stood a better chance of survival if he made the escape alone, instead of all of them having to try to do so. He must similarly have believed his comrades’ engagement of the enemy would provide covering fire for his escape. Indeed, had Museveni joined them to engage the enemy, he would also likely not be alive.
In his memoir Museveni’s only reflection on the matter is that, “the revolution must have sacrifices.”
Similar incidents litter the course of Museveni’s life as a “revolutionary fighter.” Just last week on July 7, Yoga Adhola wrote in The Daily Monitor that Museveni’s “totally self-serving” tendencies fail to account ,for instance, for the fact that “by the time of the 1985 coup, Museveni had been defeated and had even returned to Sweden” and thereby abandoning his soldiers on the battlefield.
Kayumba the “Cowardly armchair general”
What Adhola is referring to above is shared by Kayumba Nyamwasa, according to Theogene Rudasingwa, with whom Kayumba formed the RNC. Rudasingwa describes Kayumba as a person of “manipulation and intrigue,” able to dupe RNC soldiers into fighting in the DRC from the comfort and assured “security and protection of the South African government.”
Rudasingwa’s rebuke of his colleague was published July 1, 2019 in an article titled, “General Kayumba Nyamwasa must account for the loss of Rwandan lives in DRC.” He takes issue with Kayumba’s selfishness that exposed an “isolated and impoverished ragtag rebel army” to getting massacred. He doesn’t even believe it’s a real army, referring to call it an “army.”
“Since 2016, Nyamwasa has recklessly and selfishly steered RNC into adventurous militarism, leading to the loss of Rwandan lives as the current fiasco clearly shows.
First, he sent over 400 mostly young Rwandans in the jungles of DRC without political guidance, oversight, and means of survival. He shares this responsibility with Gervais Condo (USA), Jerome Nayigiziki (USA), Corneille Minani (USA), Emmanuel Hakizimana (Canada), Jean-Marie Micombero (Belgium), Jean Paul Turayishimye (USA), among many others in RNC’s undisciplined or otherwise clueless entourage.
Second, being a cowardly armchair general, he commanded his miserable ragtag army from far away in the comfort of South African hospitality, through the proxy services of his civilian brother-in-law, Frank Ntwali.”
Rudasingwa also thinks that Kayumba’s past of causing divisions – like he tried to do in the RDF – for selfish ends followed him into exile in the RNC and in his own army, “Just as his reckless pursuit of power led to the factions and collapse of RNC in 2016, his legendary pursuit of cheap popularity led to divisions and split within the nuclear force as soon as it encamped in Minembwe, South Kivu. Divided, without political and military leadership, lacking logistics and supplies, the fate of the rebel soldiers was sealed,” he writes, comparing all this with his own defection from a sinking ship due to Kayumba’s selfishness.
Rudasingwa’s crocodile tears
Rudasingwa is no spokesperson for the vulnerable, however. Rudasingwa’s anger towards Kayumba is rooted in the fact that they share a similar trait: this very selfishness and greed; the “totally self-serving tendencies,” that Adhola characterises with regard to Museveni.
Consequently, Rudasingwa’s rebuke of Kayumba should be seen in this light; they are nothing but an opportunistic overture intended to flatter Museveni, their joint benefactor and nudge him into abandoning Kayumba and shifting all the support he was giving him towards Rudasingwa’s wing that broke off from the RNC in 2016 and has since been in oblivion. In other words, in the massacre of RNC rebels Rudasingwa sees an opportunity of a lifetime; he smells blood and is pouncing at the opportunity.
In so doing, he does his best to absolve Museveni of responsibility for this RNC mess, “as the matter of Nyamwasa’s army in DRC became public knowledge,” he begins to massage Museveni’s ego, “the RNC was happy to deceptively ride on the wave of publicity. Nyamwasa lied to his followers who had donated money to believe that he had support from Uganda and Burundi, and that his army in DRC was growing and functional.”
As he reaches out for Museveni’s support, Rudasingwa leaves nothing to chance, trying to bury Kayumba alive, “General Nyamwasa and his RNC should face the public and account for each of the young Rwandans they sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo. South Africa, USA, Canada and the United Nations Security Council should take the lead in seeking accountability from General Nyamwasa and other top RNC leaders,” adding, “It is time for General Nyamwasa and the RNC to wind up their deceptive and dangerous business by declaring themselves politically and militarily bankrupt,” he writes about his colleague.
“Rwandans should be fully aware that General Nyamwasa and his RNC are a very dangerous clique which does not care for the lives of Rwandans, and whose only agenda is to capture power and maintain the RPF-DMI bloody dictatorship without Kagame. If they are unable to care for 400 people, how will they care for a nation of 12 million Rwandans?”
Rudasingwa’s nail in the coffin calls for the international community to hold Kayumba “to account for the crimes he has committed and for the continuing loss of lives of Rwandans” and for the people of the Great Lakes region to, “Beware of General Nyamwasa and his RNC!”
Rudasingwa is correct in all this, however his motives are no different from Kayumba’s; selfish ambition.
feigning concern
If Rudasingwa was not merely opportunistically reaching out to Museveni and was truly concerned for the lives of Rwandans, he would have raised the alarm against Kayumba Nyamwasa’s RNC long ago when, for instance, it was involved in terror operations – including throwing grenades in markets and taxi parks – that claimed the lives of innocent Rwandans and maimed others.
Moreover, Rudasingwa should have sounded the alarm when the young people who met their death in the jungles of the DRC were being recruited in different parts of Uganda before they were facilitated to the DRC by Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI).
Indeed, he should have spoken up as RNC officials were making frequent visits to Museveni for consultation as well as during coordination meetings with the FDLR under Museveni’s minister of state for regional cooperation, Philemon Mateke.
Rudasingwa is in no position to accuse Kayumba of “shameful silence” following the obliteration of his armed band because the two have conspired in this silence.
What is now obvious to everyone is that as Museveni, Kayumba, and Rudasingwa play the manipulating game against each other, the lives of innocent people keep getting sacrificed. As the retreating RNC soldiers were being pursued, they tried to engage Kayumba in South Africa from where he was commanding them, according to a soldier who survived the battle. They were crying out to him that they were under hot pursuit. He told them he was in contact with the authorities in Uganda who were ready to receive them to join others who were already undergoing training there. Only they didn’t make it, as their route was already sealed off and were encircled. Another call to their commander, Kayumba, returned this, “you are soldiers, find your way!”
The moment they realised what the captured soldiers might say, the Museveni propaganda machine that had initially been reporting that RDF was being decimated in the DRC, implying the significance of Uganda’s support, made an immediate about-turn after the bodies of the dead began to surface. Suddenly, these were a weak force that could not have been mercilessly wiped out were it true that it had Uganda’s support! Their total defeat was clear evidence Uganda was not supporting them!
Kayumba Nyamwasa, pulling from Museveni’s playbook, is comfortable in South Africa while his forces are getting decimated in the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most of the rank and file of the RNC now understand they had been duped into joining his armed rebellion. For the junior officers of the rank and file, they may not have been in a position to ask the hard questions and naively ended up joining a terror outfit that was only going to sacrifice their lives. They can legitimately claim to have been deceived. However, there are people who are captains and majors, supposedly seniors, who the lingering questions as to how Kayumba convinced them to go to a place where he himself took great care not to be. Unless, of course, they planned on taking over the movement. They should have been in a postion to ask him: “Why aren’t you here?”
One thing to read from this is the calibre of people Kayumba prevailed on to be his patsies, people who couldn’t muster the courage to ask him such hard questions. Some have now learned the lesson, but the question that is still relevant is: Why isn’t he there?
For Museveni, the majority of the rank and file were foreigners who would not take over the country even in success; they could win the war and hand him the fruits of their labour, the reins of power, a situation that was not likely to happen in Kayumba’s case.
Like Museveni in Mbale in 1973, Kayumba’s thinking can’t be far from the logic that, “the revolution must have sacrifices.” But don’t count on them to make any sacrifice.
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