Re:GERTRUDE BYANYIMA MUM 2 WINNIE IS DEAD ! 1 Month, 2 Weeks ago
Byanyima attacks Museveni at burial
Hussein Bogere & Alfred Tumushabe Nyamitanga
The rift between President Museveni and the Byanyima family reached new lows yesterday when Mzee Boniface Byanyima, vowed to avenge the scars inflicted on his late wife, Gertrude, by people he described as “Museveni’s men”.
The depth of the rift between President Museveni and the family that looked after him for many of his childhood days emerged as Mzee Byanyima eulogised his wife who died of a brain haemorrhage last week. She was aged 75.
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GRIEVING: Mzee Byanyima (R), his daughters and son-in-law Dr Besigye (standing) at the funeral of Getrude Byanyima in Mbarara yesterday. PHOTO BY GEOFFREY SSERUYANGE
“I want to tell you a secret,” Mzee Byanyima told hundreds of mourners who gathered at Nyamitanga Cathedral in Mbarara District during a funeral service.
“My wife is going to the grave with many scars on her body inflicted by Museveni’s men. It should be written in Democratic Party books,” Mr Byanyima said. “A day will come when DP must ask these people why my wife was beaten. Muhanguzi and Akanjuka and the big people should be asked why my wife was beaten.” He did not give details.
Mzee Byanyima is DP’s former national chairman while his wife was the head of the party’s women’s league until 2005.
He said although the Church advocates forgiveness, it is not for him or the party to forgive those who had wronged his family.
Mzee Byanyima said, “I know the church will tell me that these people should be forgiven but that is not for me, and I think DP. We must revenge. There will be some day when they will experience scars too.”
Mzee Byanyima’s wife, a member of the Ankole royal family, served as the head of the DP youth wing at the time Dr Paul Ssemogerere was party president.
She campaigned for her daughter Winnie during the 1994 Constitutional Assembly elections and remained a DP mobiliser until her death.
Although President Museveni had been expected at the funeral service and the burial, he did not appear and neither was there a statement from State House, as is the norm.
A few years ago, the Byanyima family rejected a consolation cash of Shs1 million from the President when they had lost a relative.
The fallout between the family and the President goes back to around 1990, when armed men illegally took over a farm owned by the Byanyima family. He said he and his wife were tortured when they tried to reclaim the farm.
Mzee Byanyima told mourners, who included the Inspector General of Police, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, that his wife was once beaten up by armed men when she went to spray the cows at the farm. The soldiers were later released on the orders “from above”, he said.
The Presidential Press secretary, Mr Tamale Mirundi said while the President was expected to attend the funeral, he too did not know why there was a change in plans.
“I am not also aware why the President didn’t attend. His decision on whether to attend or not depends on what is appropriate at the time. He is expected in Nigeria today,” Mr Mirundi said by telephone from the West African country.
Yesterday’s funeral service and burial were attended by family, friends and several prominent opposition officials.
The family’s most famous child, Winnie attended accompanied by her husband, Dr Kizza Besigye, who fell out with President Museveni and contested elections against the President in 2001 and 2006.
Ms Byanyima’s casket was draped in the DP colours of green and white. Mourners described her as a woman of many virtues of love, hard work and strong Catholic beliefs.
“There is a huge shortage of principled politicians of the calibre of Gertrude and Mzee,” Dr Besigye said. “I believe that there are two parties in Uganda today; those that promote justice and those that promote injustice.”
DP President Ssebaana Kizito said Ms Byanyima, who worked as a primary school teacher, was a strict disciplinarian and a strong pillar in the party who had recruited many members. Ms Byanyima was later buried in Ruti, on the outskirts of Mbarara town.
Re:GERTRUDE BYANYIMA MUM 2 WINNIE IS DEAD ! 1 Month, 2 Weeks ago
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Unmasking the Museveni, Byanyima rift
Benon Oluka & Alex B. Atuhaire
Kampala
The declaration by Mzee Boniface Byanyima at the funeral of his wife, Gertrude, on Wednesday that he would seek revenge against President Yoweri Museveni rather than forgive, is perhaps the biggest indication yet of how deep the fall out between the family and the man who spent most of his formative years in their care has deepened over the years.
Mzee Byanyima has said in previous interviews that his fall out with Mr Museveni was due three factors; his mistrust of Mr Museveni, the grabbing of his land by what he calls “Museveni’s people” and the persecution of his children.
Mzee Byanyima, a Democratic Party supporter, has in at least three newspaper interviews stressed that the grabbing of his ranches by “Museveni’s men” was a point of no return in their relationship gone sour. “ I have a very big quarrel over my ranch in Nyabushozi. He sent people to grab it. They eventually took it,” Mzee Byanyima told Sunday Monitor in an interview published on September 26, 2001.
In the 1990s, the NRM government took over ranches owned by individuals as part of a restructuring exercise. M
zee Byanyima says he later learnt that this was a ploy by the government to grab his ranch.
Said Mzee Byanyima in the 2001 interview, “If the government wanted to restructure land or ranches, then proper channels should have been followed through Parliament. Museveni didn’t do that. He just sent his men, gave them soldiers to protect them and they took people’s ranches”. He added, “Very many people lost ranches. I was roughed up because I put up resistance. My wife was also beaten up.”
Mzee Byanyima says he called Mr Museveni several times but he was disappointed by the President’s reluctance to address the issue each time. The paper quoted Mzee Byanyima as reminding the President how he looked after Mr Museveni’s mother. “ I took her to my house …looked after her while you were in the bush, until you came to government. And… that is how you have paid me.”
At the Wednesday funeral outburst, Mzee Byanyima blamed Mr Museveni, for the suffering his wife underwent. “A day must come when DP must ask these people why my wife was beaten,” said Mzee Byanyima, emphasizing that revenge must be thought. Since Mzee Byanyima raised this issue, at least in the 2001 Sunday Monitor interview, Mr Museveni has never publicly stated his position on the matter.
Mr Museveni did not attend the Wednesday burial of Ms Byanyima as he was travelling to Nigeria on official duty.
Mzee Byanyima’s 2001 interview with the Sunday Monitor was prompted by the arrest of her daughter- former Mbarara Municipality MP Winnie Byanyima on September 9, 2001 in the aftermath of the 2001 presidential elections in which Winnie’s husband Kizza Besigye, challenged Mr Museveni .
Mzee Byanyima said the said harassment of his children was essentially because they supported Dr Besigye’s 2001 presidential bid.
Mr Byanyima has said in several interviews that he would not like to meet Mr Museveni. His vow to seek revenge shows that the two are unlikely to mend fences soon.
Mzee Byanyima revealed that he thrice rejected Mr Museveni’s attempts to marry Winnie.
How they met
Mzee Byanyima first met Mr Museveni in the late 1950s at Mbarara High School where the latter was a teacher and the former a student. The two are said to have got along so well that Mzee Byanyima eventually let Mr Museveni stay in his home at Ruti, Mbarara. When Mr Museveni went to the bush, Mzee Byanyima says he looked after the guerrilla’s mother. Later, Mzee Byanyima’s daughter, Winnie, left Manchester University to join Mr Museveni’s group in the bush, a move that did not please her father – even after the group took over power
