Moses Isegawa: Snakepit

He had always felt wounded when his father accused his mother of sleeping with the southerners she sold mats to. These fights mortified him; his parents seemed to be ignoring the real enemy. The fights were always over money. His father wanted all the earnings from the mats to go to his pocket despite the fact that he hardly bought anything for the house. His mother refused. General Bazooka decided to solve the problem. He started doing odd jobs after school. He washed cars, mowed grass in rich neighbourhoods and off-loaded coffee at nearby ginneries. He stole things from the shops where he occasionally worked. He attacked civilians and drunkards, and he wondered why his father would not use his gun to enrich himself instead of whining. He kept going to school despite his hatred of it. At school the social contrasts irritated him. The children of the mayor of the town were brought to school in a chauffeur-driven Boomerang 500, the car of his dreams. The show of wealth would make him think of the most important event in his life: the coronation of the kabaka (king) of Buganda in 1942, the beginning of his fixation with kings and his dreams of becoming a prince. The coronation had also been his father’s fondest memory as a soldier. The old man would reminisce about standing on guard, enjoying the glamour, the pageantry, the music and especially the gun salutes.

With Bazooka’s education and fanatic drive, the army could not ignore him. He showed a genius for all things military. He was, above all, fearless and serious. He revelled in the discipline, the hierarchy and the obsession with detail. He adhered to the hard rules of reward and punishment with missionary zeal. He got promoted quickly. His talent for football made him popular. He avoided drinking, smoking and laxity, the unholy trinity which ended careers before they began. He was stationed at Entebbe at the time, not far from the military airport. He and his friends occasionally did window-shopping in town. One wanted a green bicycle, the other fine clothes. They were good men but they lacked ambition. In those days he liked socializing with civilians even though he was hurt by their disregard for his achievements. They did not think much of soldiers in general. They thought of the army as a leper camp, patronized only by the sick, the outcasts.

He told his friends that he would be the first sergeant to own a gold-plated Oris Autocrat wristwatch with a round face and luminous hands. They laughed at him. Autocrats were worn by bank managers, generals, doctors, people in higher leagues. It was at a party that he first saw this watch of his dreams, gleaming on the wrist of a young man of his age. A doctor, lawyer, pilot? He almost had a fit. A month later, on Christmas Day, he stalked his quarry. The Autocrat would be a wonderful Christmas gift. He caught up with the man at one of those parties which sprouted everywhere on religious holidays. People were in a good mood. They had saved all year long in order to enjoy and indulge themselves for this once. The euphoria was contagious. Bazooka stood a distance away, hardly able to resist the temptation to rip the watch off the man’s wrist and dash away. The gold had probably been mined in South Africa or Zaïre, exported and then worked by skilful Swiss hands. The man had probably bought the watch in London. Many died mining gold; many died wearing it, he mused grimly. At ten o’clock he made his move. He joined the group at the table and said to the man, “The Autocrat or our lives.”

“Over my dead body, you stupid goat-fucker,” the man replied angrily, drunkenly.

“Well and good,” said Bazooka, removing a stick grenade from his pocket. He unscrewed the cap and held the pin. “Nobody moves. The Autocrat or our lives.”

The four other men in the group begged the man to surrender the watch, saying things like, “Our lives are more precious than that piece of junk,” “Think about our wives and children,” “Don’t do this to us.” But the man refused.

Bazooka ordered two men to remove the watch by force and hand it over to him. In the ensuing scuffle the grenade went off. Bazooka barely managed to dive out of harm’s way. The explosion rocked the place, blowing limbs and clothes off people. Prize in hand, momentarily deaf in one ear, he made a speedy return to base. News of the incident was reported in the morning paper: THREE KILLED IN GRENADE ACCIDENT. His friends called him General Oris.

“I will make general one day,” he said grimly. They did not laugh.

He continued to excel. His big break came when he unearthed a plot to kill two British military instructors and three African officers. A friend alerted him. He handed over the names, the details of the plot. Under interrogation the plotters confessed. The ringleaders were shot; Bazooka was promoted.

He distinguished himself in combat, fighting like a devil, planning with genius. The sixties, with their profusion of armed robbers, were a boon. He was put in charge of the Armed Robbery Cracking Unit. The capital city and the entire Central Region came under his command. He led operations against heavily armed car-thieving rings and wiped them out with a minimum loss of men. He tackled kondos, the armed robbers who terrorized households, by luring them into traps and ambushes and destroying them in do-or-die shoot-outs. He usurped police powers, taking the war to the criminals and undermining the credibility of the institution, rendering it helpless.

At the zenith of his power, he was made a full colonel and he met General Idi Amin, Commander of the Ugandan army. It was love at first sight. In Amin he saw a leader under whom he could rise to the very top. Amin, for one, recognized his potential, his future useability. In addition to the rest of his functions he was made head of a mobile brigade that carried out secret operations for Amin. He was sent to secure the South-western Region, where the January 21 coup found him. He took over the big towns of Masaka, Mbarara, Fort Portal and Toro. He locked up uncooperative army commanders, blocked roads with battle tanks and killed troublesome people. The mayor of Masaka, a staunch supporter of a recently fallen leader, was made to smoke his own penis before his body was dragged through the streets of the town.

Bazooka had fond memories of those pre- and post-coup days. It was like a dream, the way one government crumbled and another one ate it up, sprouting, spreading like a devil mushroom to fill the void; the adrenaline, the testosterone, the euphoria, the sheer terror of it all. .

It took General Bazooka some time before he decided on how to handle Bat. On the one hand, he wanted to sabotage and destroy him; on the other, he wanted to give him a chance to prove or damn himself. He considered bugging his house with the help of Russian friends. But to what effect? Did he expect Bat to go around the house shouting anti-Amin slogans? The most effective way might be to put him at the mercy of Victoria Kayiwa. Two southerners destroying each other would be entertaining to watch. Victoria would do.

BAT’S LIFE CHANGED almost overnight. A week after his interview he moved into a government villa at Entebbe, thirty-two kilometres away from the seat of government in Kampala. The house was built on a hill overlooking Lake Victoria and was serviced by a gardener, a cook and a watchman. It had a red-tile roof, huge windows, heavy oak doors, a long curving driveway, a flower garden and trees all the way down to the lake. To the north was the golf course, the Botanical Gardens, the zoo and the civilian and military airports. To the east, the new State House, a Catholic church and the town centre.

Bat cherished every moment of his new life. The first thing he saw in the morning was the lake in the distance, and a sky with intimations of the day’s fine weather written across it. It was a postcard picture of beauty which never failed to captivate him. A number of colonial officials had occupied this house in the forties and fifties, although there was no physical evidence of their having passed through. In the garage he had a green racing Jaguar XJ10, a car which reminded him of London, Cambridge and his postgraduate dreams. He had bought it from a departing expatriate. In the first week, he cleaned it himself, soaping and rubbing it down, dusting the carpets and greasing the nuts and bolts. Villeneuve used to sing the praises of the Bentley, but Bat found it too thick, too big-bottomed to make an elegant driving machine. The Jaguar was smooth, lean and mean — in other words, perfect. There were two other XJ10s in the country, both owned by generals. For that reason, the soldiers at roadblocks never stopped him and some saluted when he passed, which sometimes made him laugh.