he is the man associated with a paramilitary group that he created before 2001 general elections for the purpose of helping President Yoweri Museveni campaign in pursuit of presidential victory in the 2001 elections.
Those who were old enough in 1980, will remember Kakooza mutale the journalist who wrote in his Economy newspaper a story headlined: ‘Bad news Akena Adoko is back’.
Akena Adoko being closely associated with the government of the time, beaten to near death and dumped into a hellish prison in Makindye where the anti-government suspects were taken to be executed.
He survived, but it is said he emerged from there as good as dead, with all his head bandaged up. He is quoted in ‘The Treason Files. Roland Kakooza Mutale [Witness]’ posted on December 5, 2014 by Angelo Izama inter-alia thus:
“Throughout my period in Makindye they used to bring in people and kill them at night. When you leave the quarter-guard you go towards the sick bay, just beside there was a grave.
If you try to dig there is a mass grave. I saw this, I participated in burying in darkness. There was [also] an underground cell, which was dark. Everyday you would hear wails and crying, a man crying for some time then the crying would cease, then you would see bodies removed from the place.
“Certain moments intensified the killings. When [Yusuf] Lule was supposed to come back there were many people who were killed. To be pro-Lule at the time would actually earn you death.
Then on the eve of [Milton] Obote’s coming back also spelt death because some people were arrested and brought as anti-UPC or anti-Obote and they were killed.
“One time a soldier took his bayonet and I was sitting down then, he tried to pierce this bayonet into my heart.”
Now in response I put up my hand so if I took off my shirt here; there is a big scar where the bayonet stopped. I put up my hand to save my heart when the man cut. There was another cut on my hand and the man licked the bayonet. He just licked it. These were the kind of people keeping us”.
After surviving death, he joined the liberation war of 1980-1986, waged by the National Resistance Army (NRA) in the Luwero Triangle. In 1986, the NRA led by Yoweri Museveni overthrew the ‘bad’ governments of the time and established the national resistance government that has been in power ever since.
Whatever happened to ‘freedom fighter’ Mutale, he has since metamorphosed from fighting for other people’s freedoms into fighting those who are today fighting for what he was fighting for and for what he was prepared to die for in his 1980 struggles.
A few weeks ago, Mutale invited the media in a Luwero bush camp where he returned to after the liberation war. Only that this time, it wasn’t about fighting for freedom. He wanted to introduce to the journalists, a group of people he is training to neutralize people who are opposed to Museveni’s fifth term in office.
He told his guests, ‘Mbabazi and Tinyefuza fear me. They know what I am capable of. I don’t want to disclose what they should expect, but you will see’!
How people forget so quickly. Our question though is this: If Kakooza Mutale can be let to train illegal militia, how can government threaten to arrest Lord Mayor Lukwago for training militia to resist Mutale’s militia?
