Kiwanuka Reaches Into History

Defensive End's Grandfather Was First Prime Minister of Uganda

When Boston College defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka was a third-grader in 1991, his parents decided to take him and his brother and sister to Uganda, the country his mother and father fled nearly two decades earlier because of political unrest.

Before leaving Indianapolis for the east African country, Kiwanuka's mother took her children to a candy store and gave each of them $100. "Go buy candy," she told them.

"As a third-grader, that was heaven for me," Kiwanuka said, as he retold the story in August during the preseason ACC news conference. "Then we went home, and she took the candy. I didn't see it again until we got off the plane in Uganda, and she started handing out candy to all these kids. The first thing I thought was, 'That's my candy.' But that all changed when I saw how happy the kids were."

Kiwanuka also learned how important his family is in Uganda. Growing up, Kiwanuka heard stories about the great leader his grandfather, former Ugandan prime minister Benedicto Kiwanuka, was and how he pushed for education, women's rights and higher minimum wages and crop prices for the working class. Kiwanuka also knew his grandfather was brutally tortured and then assassinated by political opponents more than 10 years before he was born.

"From an early age, my parents told me bits and pieces about it," Kiwanuka said this week. "But it took a while for me to realize the magnitude of it all."

After studying law in South Africa and then London, Benedicto Kiwanuka returned to Uganda in 1956 and became a successful attorney in his homeland and was politically active. In 1958, Kiwanuka was elected president general of Uganda's Democratic Party and three years later won the country's general election and became its first prime minister. Under his leadership, the country gained its independence from Britain on Oct. 9, 1962.

But Kiwanuka's party was defeated by an alliance of Uganda People's Congress and Kabaka Yekka in 1964, paving the way for A. Milton Obote to become the country's second president. Obote imprisoned Kiwanuka in 1969, and he remained jailed until Idi Amin overthrew Obote's government two years later.

Amin, hoping to win the popularity of the country's working class and acceptance from the international community, installed Kiwanuka as chief justice of Uganda. But Kiwanuka quickly became a dissident and wouldn't overlook the atrocities committed by Amin's brutal regime.

Amin sent soldiers to Kiwanuka's chambers and arrested him. When foreign governments demanded the judge's release, Amin tried to claim rebels kidnapped Kiwanuka and his troops had rescued him.

Amin tried to force Kiwanuka to sign documents claiming as much, and when the judge refused, Amin told him, "Don't you know I can kill you?"

"I do," Kiwanuka responded, according to the 1996 biography, "Benedicto Kiwanuka: The Man and His Politics," by Albert Bade. "But I can not deceive the world."

Amin's troops tortured and killed Kiwanuka on Sept. 22, 1972. Amin remained in power in Uganda until he was overthrown by Tanzanian forces in 1979. He and his troops were blamed for the deaths of nearly a half-million people.