A short story about NRA and the smell of coffee

My cousin Hamza Abbas was a suspect in a murder case. He is said to have killed a UNLA soldier (the so-called Obote army).

In a typical situation of that time, the UNLA soldier had forcibly grabbed Hamza’s live-in girlfriend in a nightclub in Muhokya (which is my hometown). But that alone did not give the soldier enough satisfaction: he also wanted to humiliate Hamza with a beating. Hamza (Munyarwanda mother and Nyamwezi father) was not the kind of man to take such things lightly.

In an instant, he disarmed the soldier (who reportedly died three days later) and severely beat him. With murder hanging on his mind, Hamza took refuge in our fatherless home. As a DP activist during the 1980 general elections (the old man was vice-chairman of the sub-province DP), his father had crossed the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo out of fear for his life. Hamza had undergone military training (weapons use) when he worked as an army driver with the Wakombozi (Tanzanian occupying army). He had also been trained in martial arts by a rogue Italian engineer who worked with Stirling Astalidi, the company that built the airbase at Nakasongola in the 1970s.

At Muhokya he was known as ‘the commando’. With a Tanzanian father and a Munyarwanda mother, Hamza pretended to be a Tanzanian; and no one challenged him on it because his father Abbas Juma was a Tanzanian.

Needless to say, the Wakoombozi enjoyed working with him (using the Stirling Astalidi hauler) in poaching animals in Queen Elizabeth National Park. When Kasese fell to the NRA rebels, Hamza disappeared from our house only to reappear a month later in torn and diseased hands. appropriate combat equipment. He was now a rebel soldier of the NRA. He only passed by home on his way to appropriate (steal?) a truck from Mutanywana Secondary School. I joined him.

So my main contribution to the Luweero thing is that I participated in the theft of a school truck. With this truck, Hamza returned to his former job as an army driver (and yours was really his unofficial conductor or turnboy). As a turnboy, my first assignment was to steal coffee supplies from Nyakatonzi Co-operative Union in Kasese. Yes, the NRA had a thing for the smell of coffee. I hear this was common in many other places.***************

In 1994 I was working on my own business in Kigali (Rwanda). Kagame and his Inkotanyi boys also minded their own business to stop the genocide. And then some NRA people also minded their own business in Kigali. At the NRA in Kigali I had the opportunity to witness another incident where the NRA smelled some coffee.

The story goes that there was coffee ready for export in Rwandex in Gikondo (the industrial area of Kigali). As mentioned earlier, NRA people in Kigali were minding their business. The problem, however, is that the NRA would also have been concerned about the export-ready coffee in Rwandex. Then the coffee stocks in Rwandax disappeared. A certain Paul was an NRA intelligence officer in Kasese when the Nyakatonzi Co-operative Union’s coffee supply disappeared.

Paul, who was familiar with the NRAs smelling like coffee, immediately suspected that the NRA individuals were responsible for the disappearance of the Rwandex coffee. When I heard that certain Ugandans associated with the NRA were involved in planning the disappearance of Uganda Coffee Development Authority, I smiled knowingly, a sense of déjà vu. My advice worth ten Congolese francs is: the Ministry of Agriculture should focus on agronomy and leave the agricultural industry to the private sector. And the UCDA should retain its agency status for regulation.