Mpagi Edward Edmary

by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (April 30th 2015)
Turbulent Times
It began as any other summerʼs day, but Mpagi Edward Edmary and his cousin Fred Masembe were about to have their lives ripped apart. They had lived through the turbulent rule of Milton Oboteʼs first rule. They had seen Obote overthrown by the vicious tyrant Idi Amin. They thought the political instability and tyranny were but memories of a horrid past.
Little did they know that Paulo Muwangaʼs decision to declare Obote the winner of disputed elections would have consequences for them. The family dispute between Edmaryʼs family and that of neighbour and Obote supporters, William Wandyaka, would destroy their lives in an unexpected fashion – a case that had it been a film script would have been rejected as far too implausible.
Things like this simply do not happen – they canʼt happen. It was just too absurd for words.
Outrage
In early June 1981 – probably the 5th – Edmary and Masembe were arrested at their homes in the Masaka district of Butenge, Uganda – about 130 kilometres from the nationʼs capital, Kampala. Their ʻcrimeʼ was the murder of Wandyaka. But this was no ordinary case. Edmary and Masembe told an incredible story – one that simply could not be true, except it was. They pleaded not guilty at Masaka High Court.

Mpagi Edward Edmary at the school

They met their state-appointed lawyer just twice before the trial. Edmary could understand some English – the language of their trial – and Masembe could not. They were not provided with translators. The State called many witnesses – it would later be shown that those witnesses were a veritable roguesʼ gallery of perjurers, but that would take years and wrecked lives to establish.
On April 29th 1982 Edmary and Masembe were found guilty. They were sentenced to death and sent to the condemned section of the notorious Luzira Prison. The State had apparently proved that they had murdered Wandyaka. Their appeal was dismissed on October 18th 1983.
Mercy
After their appeal was dismissed and the mandatory death penalty upheld, they had little option but to ask for the prerogative of mercy to be extended to them – an abomination in its own right for clearly innocent men. That was refused. Instead, callous indifference resulted in a murder, that of an innocent man through negligence and lack of care.
Masembe was laid low by malaria. He and Edmary begged the prison to provide medication. That did not happen. The pleas for help for Masembe were met with a callous response from the prison authorities. He was denied medical treatment. They told him that as he was a prisoner condemned to death, they would not waste resources, attention and medicines on him.
On August 28th 1985 Masembe died of asthma, stomach pains, depreciation, physical and mental anguish. This illustrated the lack of concern for the welfare of the prisoners – innocence made no difference. If Masembe had been treated he would have lived. It is approaching 30 years since Masembe was judicially murdered.

Mpagi Edward Edmary

Rotten
The prerogative of mercy was denied. It was now a lottery if Edmary would be hanged for a crime that he did not commit. There was little time for goodbyes to family and friends. The lottery was the whim of the guards. Edmary came close to being hanged five times, but guards interceded on his behalf. During his ordeal over 50 people he had known and helped were hanged.
Despite his ordeal he was a calming influence. He helped other prisoners, teaching some of them – a right denied to his own family. He dreamed of one day proving his innocence, being vindicated and then fulfilling his mission. He wanted to build a school to give the poor an education and chances in life they would not otherwise have had (for more information on the school including their urgent needs this week see http://dreamoneworld.org/). But first he had to scale a mountain – one higher than Kilimanjaro.

Tragedy and Farce

Milton Obote had regained power as a result of the Commission headed by Paulo Muwanga declaring him the winner of the December 1980 elections. Many believed that the poll was rigged. Yoweri Museveni returned to guerrilla warfare to bring down Obote’s government. Muwanga’s decision to join Obote’s cabinet as Vice-President justified Museveni’s decision.

In his first term Obote was intolerant of opposition. Dissent was seen as a personal betrayal. His policies and actions isolated him, making him vulnerable for overthrow. His protégé Idi Amin, proved to be one of the continent’s most brutal dictators. That paved the way for Obote’s return, but Obote’s flaws had not deserted him. They had become worse in some ways.

Obote had been betrayed once – he feared treachery. The notorious Luzira Prison and others were filled with opponents. Torture was rife. It appeared that Obote had learned nothing from his previous overthrow. Nor had his régime. Muwanga’s Nile Mansion Office was notorious. A summons to it was to be feared, but Muwanga sometimes interceded for those about to be arrested if asked to. Nevertheless, he was feared.

Injustice

Opposing Obote or even Muwanga came at a price and there was the corruption that had overtaken the criminal justice system too.

No case illustrates that pervasive corruption better than the appalling miscarriage of justice suffered by Mpagi Edward Edmary and his cousin Fred Masembe. Police and a pathologist conspired to allow William Wandyaka and his family to pervert the course of justice. Edmary and Masembe were wrongfully convicted in 1982 of the murder of Wandyaka – a crime that had not occurred.

A year later their appeal was dismissed. Masembe fell victim to malaria. He was denied medication by the prison authorities – why waste resources and medicine on a man they were going to execute anyway? Edmary and Masembe appealed for clemency which was denied.

They could have been judicially murdered at any time, but there was a problem – a huge one. Not only were Edmary and Masembe innocent, but the supposed murder victim William Wandyaka was in fact alive and well throughout their ordeal. They were victims of a corrupt judicial and political system. It cost Masembe his life – a crime Edmary had to watch, but was powerless to prevent.

Photo of Mpagi Edward Edmary courtesy of Scott Langley.

The Sudan Problem

Obote quickly faced rebellion. Museveni had returned to the armed struggle – this time against his former ally – and two years into his term Civil War broke out in Sudan again. Sudan had played a role in his downfall, as some took advantage of Amin’s ties to southern-Sudan to join the Ugandan army.

They were involved in Amin’s atrocities against Ugandan citizens. Obote never forgot nor forgave it. Inevitably the Sudanese conflict affected the north of Uganda as well. It continued despite changes in government, especially in Sudan. Gafaar Nimeiry was overthrown in a military coup. The governments that followed were unable to resolve the issues. Uganda echoed Sudan’s experience too as both countries militarily affected each other’s affairs. That continued until further coups in both contries brought Omar al-Bashir and Yoweri Museveni to power in 1989. A year later both signed non-aggression pact in Kampala.

The Seeds of Discontent

Muwanga was an influential and powerful man behind Obote’s throne. He had powers of life and death. Muwanga wasn’t all bad. Even the opposition say that he occasionally interceded and secured the release of prisoners that they [the opposition] were concerned about. Nevertheless, Muwanga wielded considerable power and an accusation of helping Museveni from him came at high price.

Obote’s second term left many victims, dead, maimed, falsely imprisoned, fearing when the security forces would come for them. Suffice to say, the human rights abuses were legion. Having been overthrown by his former protégé, Idi Amin, Obote was slow to trust and very quick to see plots against him. Some were genuine, others not, but Obote had learned little from his first overthrow. Indeed, he sewed the seeds of his second overthrow. After the brutality of Amin, this was inexcusable.

The Sudan Problem

The disputes between the government of Sudanʼs President Gafaar Nimeiry and the Sudan Peopleʼs Liberation Army (SPLA) impacted upon its neighbours too. Milton Oboteʼs involvement in the war spilled over as Uganda was fighting its own Civil War due to Yoweri Museveniʼs refusal to accept Paulo Muwangaʼs decision to declare Obote the winner of the 1980 election.

Both Nimeiry and Obote were ousted from power in military coups in 1985. The Ugandan War was approaching its close, but Sudanʼs dragged on for the best part of another twenty years and it had serious ramifications for Uganda, both during Oboteʼs second term and afterwards. Sudanʼs problems had spilled over into Uganda (see Obote II – History Repeats at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=1073).

Museveniʼs support for SPLA leader John Garang, whose politics veered from ʻleft to rightʼ, came at high price. Sudanʼs leader Omar al-Bashir retaliated by funding the vicious and depraved Joseph Kony and his Lordʼs Resistance Army, but that was still a long way off and came after both leaders signed a non-aggression pact in Kampala in 1990.

Oboteʼs Second Government

Obote soon showed that he had learned little from his first term as President of Uganda. He still could not brook dissent. Opponents were subject to arbitrary arrest, imprisonment in the notorious Luzira Prison among others. Torture was rife.

Oboteʼs government was tainted, especially Muwanga, as after declaring Obote the winner in elections that Museveni and others contested to the point of resuming the armed struggle, Muwanga joined Oboteʼs government as his Vice-President. Muwanga was later captured and accused of several offences ranging from kidnap to corruption.

An Extraordinary Story

The death toll will never be known, but victims piled up and not just political opponents. Among the victims of Oboteʼs second term were two young men with an extraordinary story. What started as a dispute between two families those of Mpagi Edward Edmary and William Wandyaka escalated into one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice of all time. Wandyaka was allegedly murdered in 1981 by Edmary and his cousin Fred Masembe.

Wandyakaʼs body had supposedly been subjected to a post-mortem examination. Edmary and Masembe stood trial for Wandyakaʼs murder. They told a strange story – an outrageous one. They were not only innocent, but there had been no crime. Wandyaka, they insisted was alive and well. Edmary even claimed that Wandyaka had attended the trial.

A Preposterous Injustice

It sounded preposterous, but time would eventually prove that Edmary and Masembe were indeed innocent and for the reason Edmary had claimed all along. Wandyaka was indeed alive and well throughout the judicial process – one that had claimed Masembeʼs life. Both Edmary and Masembe were sentenced to death.

Masembe died from complications after being weakened by malaria. He was denied medication, callously told that as he was going to be executed anyway, there was no point wasting medication on him. They were both jailed by a corrupt judicial system that facilitated and maintained an appalling injustice.

Vindicated

Masembe lived just long enough to see Obote deposed again, but it was scant consolation. It was already far too late for Fred Masembe. He died in prison for a crime that never occurred.

It took a change in government and 18 years on Death Row for a Presidential Commission to recognise the awful truth – Mpagi Edward Edmary and Fred Masembe were the victims of one of the most shameful miscarriages of justice ever.

Edmary was freed from Death Row. He is a valued member of The Fitted-In Project and is active opposing the death penalty as well as building a school to give the disadvantaged of Uganda a chance of a future.

The Return

The Chairman of the Presidential Commission of Uganda Paulo Muwanga declared Milton Obote the victor of the election of December 1980. The decision was rejected by among Ugandaʼs current President Yoweri Museveni. His supporters conducted a five year guerrilla war as a result.

Muwanga had played a part in the fight to achieve independence. He had also contributed greatly to bringing down the bestial régime Idi Amin, but so had many others, among them Museveni and Obote, although the latter benefited greatly from the support and assistance of his friend the then Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere.

Muwanga was an important figure in Ugandaʼs post-colonial development, but it is not just his controversial role in the 1980 election that tarnishes his reputation. Having been the Chairman of Presidential Commission that declared Obote the winner, Muwanga became Oboteʼs Vice President. He therefore bears some responsibility for the atrocities which contributed to Oboteʼs downfall.

Independence

The burgeoning cost of the Tanzanian intervention that had brought down Amin came at a high price. The Ugandan government could not afford to pay, so Nyerere withdrew Tanzanian forces. The new government, which included Muwanga had to survive on its own. And it had to deal with a guerrilla war, led by Yoweri Museveni.

Many died in the Luwera Triangle, especially from the Baganda tribe, which largely supported Museveni. There is no question that torture and other atrocities occurred during Oboteʼs second term. Muwanga was accused of complicity in several abuses. The brutality of Oboteʼs second term came at a heavy price. Obote was once again overthrown, but foreign issues played a part, especially those of Sudan.

Sudanʼs Influence

The pervasive problem of Sudanʼs issues. The Anyanya – precursor of South Sudanʼs independence fought a rebellion against Sudan from 1955 to 1972. The rebellion developed into war in 1969. The Anyanya was led by Aggrey Jaden from 1964 -69.

Jaden had rejected an agreement in 1965 with one of the architects of Sudanʼs independence from Britain, Ismail al-Azhari, because there were no international observers. Al-Azhari was no supporter of South-Sudanese rights and had used force to suppress it. Jaden, fearing for his life moved to Nairobi.

Gordon Muortat Mayen succeeded him and this coincided with a change in government in the northern dominated government. Gafaar Nimeiry led a coup dʼétat in Khartoum that ousted al-Azhari in May 1969. Months later al-Azhari died and Jaden was in exile. Open war followed. Mayen was ousted by Joseph Lagu in 1971. Lagu had been part of Sudanʼs army since 1960.

That training would come in useful for the Anyanya later, as would his political nous. The Anyanya were supplied with weapons by Israel but through Lagu. This monopoly of the supply of weapons meant that Anyanya fighters depended on him to be able to fight. He was then able to demand loyalty to him in return for weapons.

That meant that the fighters had little choice but to pledge loyalty to Lagu and his coup against Mayen. Lagu became the leader of the Anyanya and before long it was consigned to history to the disgust of among others Jaden. Within a year of Laguʼs coup the war was over. Nimeiry and Lagu signed the Addis-Ababa Agreement that brought the war to an end.

South Sudan Problem

Jaden was the first to denounce the deal, which ignored self-determination for the South and had settled for far less than the demands that led to the war. He returned to Sudan in 1978 and was vindicated in 1983 when Nimeiry reneged on the Addis-Ababa agreement and tried to impose Sharia Law on the country.

Meanwhile, Lagu had rejoined the Sudanese military and helped incorporate the Anyanya fighters into the Sudanese military.

Consequences

The South was granted some autonomy and Lagu was appointed Nimeiryʼs Vice President, remaining in that position until the coup that ousted Nimeiry in 1985. Among those incorporated into Sudanʼs army was Laguʼs protégé John Garang joined the Sudanese military as part of the settlement, rising to the rank of Colonel. He would later make that experience work in his favour.

Nimeiryʼs decision to renege on the limited commitment in the Addis-Ababa Agreement reignited the war with the added problem of South Sudanese who had been incorporated into the military sympathising with the Sudan Peopleʼs Liberation Army (SPLA). The SPLA wanted an end to Nimeiryʼs régime, which had started off as a ʻsocialistʼ one.

Garang would rise to lead the SPLA. They had support from Libya, Uganda and Ethiopia in the early stages. Garang would later follow the example of Lagu, reaching agreement with Sudanʼs leader Omar al-Bashir to become Vice-President in 2005. He died later that year in a helicopter crash after an unannounced visit to his friend, Ugandaʼs President, Yoweri Museveni.

The Temporary President

With the Bush War nearing its end Idi Amin fled into exile, claiming that his 1979 ouster would lead to a return to colonialism. Dr Yusuf Lule was chosen to lead the country by the Ugandan National Liberation Front (UNLF), even though he had played only a small role in Aminʼs overthrow.

However, Lule was to become the definition of interim. He arrived in a Mercedes bearing the British rather than Ugandan flag and retained power for under ten weeks. It was the shortest Presidency ever – just 68 days.

Lule was chosen to unite Ugandans – necessary after Amin. Nevertheless, his Presidency made history for all the wrong reasons, but he almost had a second chance. His Uganda Freedom Fighters joined forces with Yoweri Museveniʼs Popular Resistance Army in 1981 to form the National Resistance Army, but he died shortly afterwards and was succeeded by Museveni who led a five-year long guerrilla campaign.

Both Milton Obote and Amin before him had confiscated property from Asians and expelled them. Lule refused to reverse this policy. Lule governed through the National Consultative Commission (NCC), but fatally underestimated where real power lay – Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, Paulo Muwanga, later to become President for a few days and the UNLF.

Coups

Lule tried to usher in reform of the military, which was seen by veterans of the liberation struggle as punishing them. A coup removed him from power in June 1979 and replaced him with Professor Edward Rugumayo, but faced with riots he was rapidly replaced with Godfrey Binaisa.

Meanwhile, Lule was exiled to Tanzania, where he was placed under house arrest. He was allowed to leave for treatment in London and finally died there. Almost a year after Lule was overthrown Binaisa suffered the same fate – the coup that toppled his government was carried out by Muwanga, Museveni, David Oyite-Ojok and Tito Okello.

The Return of Obote

Muwanga was installed as President for a few days before the Presidential Commission of Uganda was established. That Commission was chaired by Muwanga and oversaw elections, which gave Nyerere the result that he wanted – the return of Obote.

Muwanga declared that Obote had won the elections that were held in December 1980. Museveni did not accept the decision and began a guerrilla war against Oboteʼs government. Muwanga would later pay a price for his decision when Museveni toppled Oboteʼs second and last administration in 1985. Muwanga was jailed for kidnap. He was released a few months before his subsequent death.

After announcing the contested result in Oboteʼs favour Muwanga became Ugandaʼs Vice-President. Sadly, his second coming as President showed that Obote had learned little from the mistakes that plagued his first term and eventually would lead to the same end.