By Our Reporter
NATIONAL
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni also Commander In Chief of the armed forces has revealed what killed Gen. Elly Tumwine.
In his condolence message, President Museveni said that General Tumwine died of lung cancer.
“Countrymen and Countrywomen, especially the NRM- NRA- UPDF fraternity. With deep sorrow, I announce the death of General Elly Tumwiine which occurred at 5:46am this morning in Nairobi, from lung cancer.” Museveni said in his 10:48am tweet this morning, 25th August 2022.
Museveni also revealed that the General has passed on at the age of 68 having joined the FRONASA in 1979.
“According to his widow, with whom I have just talked to on the telephone, Gen. Tumwiine was now 68 years old. I had taught him at Burunga Primary School in 1967, after our A-levels, as a student teacher, before going to university, later that year.”
He joined FRONASA with 9000 others in 1979, went to Monduli Military School in Tanzania and was the one who fired the first shot on the 6th February 1981, at Kabamba, at the beginning of the 1981-1986 war of Resistance.
Since that time, Gen. Tumwiine has been part of the leadership of the NRA- UPDF as well as serving the government in various capacities.
Those capacities included being Army- Commander, member of the High Command, Director-General of Intelligence, Minister of Security,
The former Security Minister, Gen Elly Tumwine, 68, was flown to Nairobi early this month and admitted to Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.
Relatives and associates reported that weeks ago, the General collapsed at the marriage ceremony of a prominent female journalist, and was later booked at Nakasero Hospital in Kampala.
His condition worsened, prompting a relocation to Nairobi for more specialised medical care.
The ailment hasn’t been publicly disclosed, but the general in the past received treatment at the Uganda Cancer Institute in Mulago Hospital.
ABOUT GENERAL TUMWIINE
Gen Tumwine has been number two of six original members of the then NRA High Command as of January 26, 1986, according to the UPDF Act, 2005.
The others are President Museveni, his brother Gen Salim Saleh Akandwanaho, Gen David Tinyefuza (now David Sejusa), late Eriya Kategaya and Brig Matayo Kyaligonza.
By the virtue of being a historical member of the High Command, Gen Tumwine and five others are permanent members of the Defence Forces Council and High Command, both the army’s highest policy and decision-making organs.
In that capacity, he attended the July High Command meeting at State House Entebbe which came hot on the heels of the military being placed on Standby Class One, the highest level of combat readiness.
Gen Tumwine undertook cadet officers course at the famed Tanzania Military Academy in Monduli before proceeding in 2005 among pioneer students to train at the Senior Command at Staff College in Kimaka, Jinja.
He reportedly obtained other military qualifications in the former Soviet Union.
Presently a senior presidential adviser on security matters, Gen Tumwine was among top generals lined up to retire last month, but the army later said it did not have enough resources to clear the benefits, putting the send-off ceremony on an indefinite halt.
A fine artist by profession, he joined the military struggle in 1978 under Front for National Salvation (Fronasa), the precursor to NRA.
After the 1980 General Election, Tumwine banded with Mr Museveni, who had lost in the presidential elections, and was to gain post-victory fame for firing the first bullet that started the five-year National Resistance Army (NRA) guerrilla war. NRA toppled the Tito Okello Lutwa government in January 1986.
The four-star military general previously served as the Commander of the NRA until 1987, a year after they had taken over power, when he was dropped from that position. Two years later, the President named him the State Minister of Defence.
A singer, who drew swords with Parliament over his questionable takeover of Nommo Gallery, formerly a public facility in the leafy Nakasero State Lodge neighbourhood, for private business, Gen Tumwine has been a high-pitched man regularly on the charge in self-defence made elaborate by his proud invocation of his role in liberating Uganda.
One of his eyes was damaged during the NRA war, and had to be removed. Recollecting such personal tragedies is a common tact by the NRM historicals whenever cornered, or when they want to project battlefield sacrifices.
Critics both in and outside Parliament have derided the display as calculated to hold the country at ransom for a destructive war that no one voted the fighters to fight, and a convenient pretext to evade scrutiny for official commissions and omissions.
The perception that the old guard hold a sense of entitlement has led Gen Tumwine to clash with opponents on the floor of Parliament and in television studios over the years.
He occupied Nommo Gallery in Nakasero in 1998, and housed his Creations Limited business there, and used part of the public facility to open a private restaurant.
Parliament later discovered that he had not paid a single coin to government in rent computed by 2018 to gross Shs1b. Ms Rebecca Kadaga, the then Speaker of Parliament, ordered him to vacate Nommo Gallery, which he hasn’t done. His paintings and music compositions, some of martial genre and others similar to variations of existing songs, have featured prominently at military parades while the songs have played on the state broadcaster.
The general was until 1996, when Uganda held its first vote under President Museveni, the director general of Uganda’s External Security Organisation (ESO), which collects and analyses intelligence about states and individuals outside Uganda.
During the period of different deployments, Gen Tumwine remained a representative of the army in the legislature for decades until 2021 when he was designated a presidential adviser on security after losing the line Cabinet slot.
Shortly after the change, the four-star general quipped during handover that he intended to commit to advise President Museveni, in power since 1986, to plan a succession and leave peacefully.
Nothing is publicly known about whether he made good on his word, or if he meant to call the president’s bluff.
Dealing with Opposition
Back in the run-up to the 2006 General Election, Gen Tumwine was appointed to chair the General Court Martial, the military’s highest appellate court. It was then that Opposition flagbearer Dr Kizza Besigye was arrested on treason and taken there.
Dr Besigye’s treason case was later transferred to the civilian courts after a constitutional judgement before it was dismissed.
But Gen Tumwine’s remained a key state actor, bouncing in 2019 to superintend the powerful Security portfolio which oversees Uganda’s spy agencies.
While holding this docket, the Internal Security Organisation was accused of illegal detention of innocent people. Then more trouble unfolded in 2020.
Uganda was set for a presidential vote in January 2021. One entrant who turned heads was a younger celebrity musician-turned-National Unity Platform party presidential candidate named Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine.
Accused of flouting strict rules against mass campaigns to stem the spread of Covid-19, security forces arrested Bobi Wine in Luuka District.
The result: a violent protest in Kampala that a government own investigation found led to the shooting dead of at least 54 people.
The police probe concluded that only 13 of the deceased were “rioters”, while the majority succumbed to “stray bullets”.
The condemnation and demand for accountability for what rights defenders and Uganda Law Society called “cold blood murders” peaked, Gen Tumwine showed up to publicly proclaim that security personnel have a right to shoot and kill civilians if demonstrators reach a certain level of violence.
