David Baagala Mutaaga and Deborah Naizuwa Mutaaga had looked forward to a happy and enjoyable golden age of retirement in Uganda. After four decades away from home, during which they had worked very hard in Switzerland, they moved into their lovely home in Entebbe following their retirement in 2021. They began to re-stablish their lives in their native land. Their daughter Isabel, and their son Mark stayed back in Switzerland, confident that their parents were safe in their ancestral land. Isabel and Mark probably dreamed of family reunions in Entebbe, and even their own eventual relocation to the land without winter, about which their parents had told them stories of their childhood and traditions.
All who visited the Mutaagas in their home were struck by their friendly calmness, their gracious hospitality, and their joyful gratitude that they were home at last. However, someone or some people wanted them dead. David and Deborah probably did not know this. The killer(s) struck on the night of Sunday July 6, and murdered David and Deborah with a savagery that was as numbing to us as the fact of their deaths. By all accounts, the actual killing was by one person. Though the motive remains unknown, it was not a robbery, and it was not a random killing. David and Deborah were probably killed by someone who knew them very well.
The news of their death hit us extremely hard. An active member of our international community of Old Budonians, Mutaaga was a much loved and respected brother and friend. More than a week after their murders, one still feels incredulous and paralysed. There is deep sorrow, not only because of their horrifying death, but also the loss of the old, decent land of promise in which I cut my first teeth many decades ago.
Notwithstanding our messy political beginning at the time of independence in 1962, Uganda stood on a strong foundation of cultural and religious morals that met the expectation of the Goldn Rule, namely, “do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12). Outside of politics, late colonial and early post-independent Uganda was a safe and peaceful land. It was not perfect, of course. Homicides occurred with a bothersome frequency but were mostly restricted to fights over small pieces of land, marital discord, and alcohol-induced loss of self-control. Kigyezi and Bugisu were the districts with the highest homicide rates.
However, most people lived without fear of getting killed. People with formal education and good employment, who mostly resided in towns and hamlets, lived without fear of violence. Theirs was a world in which murder of a person in their home was a very rare occurrence. It was a world where concrete perimeter walls were constructed at a few stadiums, and state and county prisons, but not round people’s homes. Private home security guards armed with guns were a foreign concept.
That was why the country was shocked to the core by the murder of the Honourable Zakariya Babukiika, the MP for Kigyezi South, on the night of Sunday November 21, 1965. Babukiika, a former minister of Health, whose mutilated body was found in a roadside ditch in Seeta, about 17 kilometers east of Kampala, met his violent end at the hands of two men who were sentenced to death in 1966. The motives for their gruesome crime were non-political.
A tragedy has befallen our country during the sixty years since Babukiika’s murder. Greed, envy, devaluation of human life, culminating in murder, have become the trademark of a savagery that has the land in a firm grip. Citizens and other residents are less afraid of wild animals than they are of fellow humans, even those with whom they have close DNA matches. There was a time when our parents and earlier generations sought refuge and safety among their relatives and clansmen. Today, their descendants feel safer among complete strangers in the cold lands across the oceans.
That fear has many expressing serious reconsideration of their plans to retire in our homeland. Yet most Diaspora Ugandans that I have spoken with over the years have readily declared their plans to retire in Uganda. Our beautiful homeland has a powerful magnetic pull that helps us transcend the transient paralyzing fear that a tragedy like our dear friends’ murders triggers.
Speaking for myself, even as I go through my grief over the Mutaagas’ murders, my plan to retire in Uganda, where I belong, remains firm, the Lord willing. Forty-eight years away from home, forty-four of them in this beautiful country which has been very good and kind to me, have not dented my attachment and love for my motherland. The years have intensified my relationship with Uganda.
Yes, my country’s soul was stolen long ago, now replaced with a dark one that has brought us the sickening spectacle of many sane citizens celebrating the deaths of people like Eli Tumwine, Rajiv Ruparelia, and Cedric Babu. It is a country where the fruits of people’s sweat and sacrifice in distant, cold and culturally lonely lands, are claimed by their kith and kin who are burdened with envy, and a sense of extreme entitlement.
Yet Uganda is a country that retains a special love affair with her Diaspora. It is a complex relationship that was aptly expressed by Paul Kavuma-Kazadi, an Old Budonian, now a resident of Perth, Australia, in a message he shared with us six days after the Mutaaga murders. Kazadi wrote, in part: “Events around the world, but most importantly what happened in Uganda last Sunday, have contributed to my heightened anxiety which has morphed into loneliness and frustration. By extension, there’s a sense of helplessness due to a failure to share the fear and fortitude held deep in my heart where sorrow and joy reside, each fighting the other for supremacy. Consequently, my mood has become one of an existential fight within an existential dilemma: because I am here, I feel safe, but I also want to be among friends in Uganda where my roots are, friends with whom I share formative and cultural commonality as well as other inextricable components of my identity.”
Kazadi spoke for many. While it is too early for us to claim triumph over the paralyzing fear triggered by our friends’ murders, we must soon turn our attention to the lessons learnt from their violent deaths. I pray and hope that the desire to return to Uganda will triumph over fear. Millions of our countrymen live in Uganda until the end of their days. Many Diaspora Ugandans have returned home and have successfully integrated into their communities. We who plan to retire in our homeland, will need their wisdom to do the right thing. But return home we must. It is our country.
© Muniini K. Mulera