Professor Edward Rugumayo will be turning 90 at the end of next year. By virtue of his longevity, he has seen a lot. Being a Ugandan, more so. He may not have seen the heights to which his country can rise but he has definitely seen the depressing depths to which it can descend.
You wouldn’t tell when we met for an interview recently.
Physically he is in relatively good health, a laugh not far below the surface,
testament that the depravity of his country’s past has not infected his soul.
He loves his country, so much so that he once threatened a colonial
administrator that for refusing him a passport, leading to his failure to study
in the US, he was going to jump into politics and see English back to their
country.
"The threat maybe, made in the heat of the moment was taken
seriously enough that Miss King, the provincial education officer, within two
weeks managed to wangle a scholarship for the young Rugumayo to go and study in
the UK....
But before that Rugumayo was born in Mukole, in the current Kyenjojo
district.
“We grew up in a huge polygamous but Christian family,” he
couldn’t resist a smile at the contradiction. “I was the youngest of my
mother’s children, but the other mothers were much younger”
Going by his account he seems to have been a hyper active
kid eating everything and anything, running the village paths at will and
getting up to no good. It took the firm hand of his mother – her kitchen he
once burnt down, to set him on the straight and narrow.
“One day I skived, I did not go to school. I went up a
mutoma tree and one day my mother looked for me found me up there pulled me
down and dragged me back to school. I never played truant again… this was about
P1,” Rugumayo remembered with a laugh.
"A voracious reader from an early age, Rugumayo wanted to be a detective after reading Sherlock Holmes, but his elder brother dismissed his plans of being a pipe smoking sleuth, arguing it was a waste of time and a good brain....
He wanted to be a reverend but that did not last very long.
After completing his schooling at Nyakasura School he wanted
to be a doctor, but Makerere University did not offer him medicine but instead
stuck him in Agriculture.
The hot headed Rugumayo protested this gave up his place at
Makerere and returned home.
“My argument was that the colonial government only did
research into cotton and coffee and not on food. That was my excuse,” said Rugumayo,
who even now shakes his head at the fallacy of his youthful exuberance.
Back home he worked at the kingdom headquarters but was
interested in a scholarship to the US to study facilitated by Dr Hosea Nyabongo.
He had two options to go to Central State College in Ohio to study Mathematics or
to University of Georgia to study pharmacy.
“I was no longer picky. After being in the village for three
years with no real future prospects I was ready,’ Rugumayo said.
But fate was not done with him. Apart from the colonial administration
throwing a spanner in his plans to go to the US, he met and fell in love with his
first wife, Nesta. Their wedding almost did not happen as two weeks to the
wedding he was diagnosed with appendicitis.
“When they did an enema to prepare me for the operation, I felt
fine and told the nurse I was ok. The doctor checked and discharged me ‘this
man had a special case of constipation he is ok,” he said. He has never
suffered appendicitis since.
All these events put paid to his US ambitions and led to the
fateful confrontation with Miss King. And his getting a scholarship to the UK.
To study what?
“Education at Chester College.”
He eventually studied Botany & Ecology at the University
of London before returning to Uganda. But he did not stay around much as he
posted to Ghana to help author biology books.
Rugumayo taught briefly at Kyambogo, before he was recruited
to the president’s office to do research. While there he had a regular Friday/Saturday
column in The People newspaper, Katondokahozi.
During one of those days the newspaper got information about
irregular allocation of government flats in Bukoto Housing Estate. According to
the information, senior government officials were allocating flats to their
mistresses.
On the night the column was published Rugumayo got a midnight
call from his friend Pincho Ali. “Edward you are in trouble… we have been
summoned to the president’s office,” his friend said down the line. The column
had ruffled feathers in government.
He reported to the president’s office with his editor Ateker
Ejalu and Pincho Ali. They were seen into the office where President Milton Obote,
secretary to cabinet and head of civil service Frank Kalimuzo, inspector General
of Police Wilson Erinayo Oryema and Akena Adoko head of the General Service
Unit.
The journalists were grilled about the article, whether they
did research and eventually asked by Obote, whether they knew it would land
them in jail.
The tension in the room was so thick you could cut it with a
knife. The journalists were by now quaking in their boots, fearing the worst. But
Oryema and Kalimuzo diffused a potentially sticky situation by dismissing the
article as the work of over enthusiastic youth.
"Just before he left the room Obote spoke to him directly, “Rugumayo…. Let us see how you will behave when you get into power.” This must have been around 1970, Rugumayo thinks.
Rugumayo eventually served in Idi Amin’s government briefly,
was instrumental in the transition from Amin to the Obote II government and
served severally in the NRM government as ambassador and minister of internal
affairs and eventually trade minister.
The good professor not wanting to give up too much in his
book, called the interview to an end.
His book “Why fireflies glow” will be launched tomorrow 20th
May in Fort Portal and will be available in leading bookshops and for delivery
from mahiribooks.com
