By Mulengera Reporters
Last month, the opposition NUP organized an event to honour persons with disabilities (PWDs) and other special interest groups including women, youths, older person and others. And even when he isn’t a disabled person himself, Augustine Ronald Nyanzi, a party official based in Nsangi in Wakiso district’s Kyengera Town Council, prominently participated in that event. He was among those who flanked the NUP Principal Bobi Wine Kyagulanyi Ssentamu as he addressed the guests and went ahead to be among key organizers who spoke to reporters and media cameras after the event.
In his media interviews, Nyanzi explained that, having been dominated by the ruling NRM government for such a long time, the moment had come for the National Unity Platform being the biggest party, to lead the rest of the opposition in working to ensure that Gen Museveni doesn’t continue to be the only one to dominate the PWDs who are a key constituency and political demography in the country.
“We won’t allow NRM to exclusively dominate support of the special interest groups like the PWDs and youths elections anymore. We are here today to demonstrate a new beginning whereby as NUP, we won’t be leaving the PWDs and youth slots to be Museveni’s exclusively. We need support of both the youths and PWDs and vote too for purposes of having an inclusive struggle,” Nyanzi explained to reporters during an event that was attended by more than 100 PWDs.
This was the first time an opposition party was being deliberate about wooing this constituency that had always been ignored and left for Gen Museveni’s NRM to enjoy alone. NUP equally invested much energy in winning over youth seats prompting the NRM regime to subject many of them to torture and intimidation tactics. Youth elections at grass roots levels, before moving to district and city level, were concluded recently in the whole country and the fight NUP put up caused many of its cadres and mobilizers, like Augustine Ronald Nyanzi, to become targets of unprecedented levels of intimidation and persecution from the regime and security operatives who are pro-it.
The PWDs at Kavule seemed a humble innocent event but state operatives seemingly took this very seriously having seen it as an attempt by the opposition to begin real time attempts to diminish Gen Museveni’s grip on special interest groups like youth and PWDs whose support he has always dominated in his 40 years of being Uganda’s only President.
Indeed, many organizers reported threats and being trailed by strange persons riding on numberless motorcycles after the very successful PWDs event at NUP head offices at Kavule on the outskirts of Kampala’s Central Business District. In the case of Nyanzi, he had been confronted on his way to another meeting by men that very day late in the evening who demanded to know why he was full of resentment towards the President and his NRM. He was advised to tread carefully or else he would be made to pay for his anti-regime political activism, while sheltering under Kyagulanyi’s NUP.
Because he had been through a lot of political persecution since defecting from DP to NUP, Nyanzi disregarded the threats thinking this was the usual intimidation by regime functionaries seeking to cow him into silence. He ignored and went about his business only to be attacked at night while sleeping at his home in Nsangi Town Council. His family turned out to be among those funding the NUP youth volunteers in Nsangi-Kyengera Town Council as they went about mobilizing to defeat NRM in this year’s special interest groups elections.
Probably having been sedated by his attackers, Nyanzi only realized later what had happened to him but doesn’t remember how he ended up badly bruised and soaked in blood that was oozing from his head.
He was hacked and clobbered by assailants who left him for dead. During a recent media event in Kampala, Nyanzi told reporters he only concentrated on medicating to treat his wounds as opposed to wasting time reporting to Police.
“They are part of the state which has been witch-hunting and persecuting us for our political beliefs and support for NUP. Why should I risk going to report a case? I fear to be framed and that’s why I didn’t even bother going there. I rather raise money for medication rather than stressing myself even more by going to Police,” explained Nyanzi hinting on the possibility of ending up being arrested by Police yet he is the complainant.
His wife, who used to fund NUP women league activities a lot, had fled to Germany exile earlier on having come under a lot of political persecution that included being arrested and tortured in the regime’s safe houses, protesting her involvement in many NUP political activities.
Nyanzi says that the violent attack that was done to him is these days common place as NUP activists often end up in double jeopardy as opposed to being aided by Police. Nyanzi has continued to live under extreme trauma and fear even when his wounds are rapidly healing, after medics discovered that miraculously his skull hadn’t been cracked or his brain injured during the attack.
He says that because of too much trauma, he isn’t comfortable having effective sleep and rest in that same home where the attack happened and has since resorted to hiding but he continues to be trailed and surveilled by strange men.
His children and other relatives equally live under fear of retribution from those who wanted him dead. His wife Nanyonjo Hadijah Kayaga, with whom they used to be activists in DP before the advent of NUP, had gone missing two years earlier. She was last seen in active NUP political activities before June 2022 when she went missing after several of the peers and contemporaries, she had been mobilizing with to recruit women into NUP got arrested and locked up, over controversial claims linking them to politically subversive activities against the regime in Kampala. Kayaga used to generously fund NUP activities for especially the women league, something that attracted growing regime hostility to her resulting into her escape to Germany.
The timing of the brutal physical attack on Augustine Ronald Nyanzi signals the violent crackdown and persecution that awaits opposition activists as Ugandans countdown to the 2026 campaigns and general elections. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
