Forty years ago on Saturday February 10th, 1973, residents of Kabale woke up in the morning to experience one of the darkest days in post-colonial time when three of their residents Joseph Bitwari, James Karambuzi and David Kangire were publicly executed in Kabale Stadium.
These men, recruits in the guerrilla army of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the Front for National Salvation (FRONASA) were gunned down in the packed stadium by soldiers of high handed President Idi Amin Dada.
Museveni who until the coup was working as a researcher in President Apollo Milton Obote’s office, left for Tanzania and started mobilising clandestine activities against the new government. He started recruiting people into Fronasa, and among the recruits were Karambuzi (picture), Joseph Bitwari and David Kangire who was a student at Kigezi College Butobere.
In his book, Sowing the Mustard Seed, Museveni narrates Fronasa’s leading role in the September 1972 attack on Simba Barracks in Mbarara, now the Second Division army headquarters at Makenke, in which the rebels were nearly annihilated by the Idi Amin forces.
Following the attack, the Amin regime launched reprisal attacks hunting for suspected rebels and their collaborators where several young men were arrested in different parts of the country, including Karambuzi, Bitwari and Kangire.
A military tribunal sentenced the suspects to death by firing squad, to be carried out in the suspects’ home areas. In Kabale, these executions were carried out on February 10, 1973 at Kabale Municipal Stadium.
Similar executions took place in Mbale where a former soldier, Captain Tom Masaba from Bugisu and a one Nkoko from Busoga were killed. In Fort Portal, two other Fronasa recruits, Phares Kasoro and Abwooli Malibo were executed at Boma Grounds.
The military government put announcements in the media asking the public to attend these executions in Kabale stadium. After the execution a public announcement was passed to warn all those that were involved in rebel activities to stop else would face the same fate.
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