By Mulengera Reporters
On Tuesday, NUP activist Habib Buwembo came to Mulengera News offices to share his story on how he for years was persecuted and made to shrink by the outgoing Speaker Anita Among.
The very uncompromising Habib Buwembo was originally an FDC NEC member but currently belongs to NUP where he serves as the head mobilization. He says he left FDC party because the Secretary General Nandala Mafabi sent him emissaries requiring him to stop criticizing Among.
Detailed video interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryANDWFUL6I&t=459s.
Buwembo, who also prominently participated in the ‘Anita Among must resign’ demonstrations which protested grand corruption at Parliament, says that when Anita Among mocked MP Francis Zzaake’s torture wounds, he felt obliged to fight back.
He mobilized fellow activists and they organized a defiant press conference at Pope Paul Memorial Center where they criticized Among.
They gave her seven days within which to retract her sarcasm or face their wrath. Among, who he says has always been a thin-skinned person unable to stand criticism, learnt of the press conference and witch-hunted him.
Buwembo recalls being kidnapped from his Busega home very early in the morning by a squad of security operatives who travelled in five vehicles. He claims this was ordered by ex-IGP Okoth Ochola who Anita Among rang and deceptively told that Buwembo was a leading a team of activists who raided her home seeking to kill her for refusing to retract her anti-Zzake sarcasm.
Buwembo was to be remanded in Luzira for six months and was on trial for 1 year and half (2022-2023) up to when the Magistrate dismissed the case for want of prosecution after the complainant Among failed to come to give evidence against him. Upon coming out of prison, he dragged Among to the High Court but the case has never taken off up to this day.
Buwembo says that later on, Among got him re-arrested after her efforts to compromise and buy him off through her PA Rajab Kaaya and a former FDC MP failed.
He is now happy that Anita Among, whose inappropriate conduct he says first manifested while still in FDC where she used money to controversially defeat Salaam Musumba for the EALA flag bearer position, has finally been crippled through criminal investigations aimed at establishing her culpability.
He says that Gen Museveni should ride on that momentum to go after other corrupt officials in his government.
Buwembo condemned what he called violation of Anita Among’s rights in the ongoing investigations and raids onto her private palaces but ruled out ever joining a demonstration or organizing one to demand due process for her.
“She has had the opportunity and platform to demand for good governance and for a government that respects human rights but she didn’t. She instead used the office of Speakership to promote repression. Dr. Kizza Besigye, who mentored and treated her generously in FDC, has been rotting in Luzira now for almost two years for nothing yet she never did anything to demand that the executive accounts for his incarceration or that of other political prisoners. What’s happening to Anita Among is saddening but no sane Ugandan should shed any tears for her because she has always lived by the sword and she is a tyrant who has finally fallen,” said Buwembo a law student at one of the Universities in Kampala. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
