By Conrad Nkutu
For all those regular consumers of fiction-writing by Hussein Lumumba Amin in his pitiful effort to erase the reality of mass murder from the history of his blood-thirsty father, Idi Amin, let me share some indelible facts:
1. In 2007-2008, one Jaffer Remo Amin and one Maimuna Amin, elder siblings to Hussein Lumumba Amin, set up an Amin-murder denial website. In the single article on the site, they claimed that with one exception, not a single Ugandan had died at the hands of their father’s army.
The single exception was Hon. Shaban Kirunda Nkutu, a senior minister in the Obote1 Independence Cabinet, who was abducted by the army in Jinja on January 11, 1973. In the article, Remo and Maimuna were pained to note that Shaban Nkutu “was an Uncle to our Mum.” They were referring to the former First Lady, Mama Maryamu Kibedi Amin, who is my elder cousin. Clearly, it is an embarrassment for Amin’s family that their blood thirsty dad murdered his own father in law, Shaban Nkutu and buried him in a secret grave, without the knowledge of his family.
To paraphrase the fiction-write up of Amin’s children, who are my former school mates, Amin suspected my father of being in contact with exiled rebels. But that when soldiers were sent to interview him, “Nkutu’s armed supporters opened fire on the army and unfortunately, Hon. Shaban Nkutu was killed in the crossfire…” When I posted the truth on their website, Amin’s children took the website off-line.
In 2016, their younger brother Hussein Lumumba Amin, came up with a new “explanation” for my father’s murder. The occasion was the announcement of the death of my senior cousin, Ambassador Joshua Wanume Kibedi, brother of Mama Maryamu Kibedi Amin.
The murder of Shaban Nkutu forced Wanume Kibedi, who was Foreign Minister, to resign, flee and denounce Amin as a murderer. First Lady Maryamu followed suit and fled the country.
In his condolence message to Wanume’s family, Hussein Lumumba Amin said Kibedi had fled for no good reason because Amin did not kill Nkutu.
In a new height of Amin-whitewash fiction writing, Lumumba claimed that Shaban Nkutu had died of natural causes in his Jinja home “but his family just decided to bury him secretly and blame his death on President Amin…”(!!!)
Most Ugandans who use Facebook were born long after the horror of Amin’s reign of terror and murder. I myself was only 5 years old when my father was murdered. It took us 32 years to discover his remains. We were the first of possibly only 2 families of the thousands of “disappeared ” Amin victims to find the remains of a murdered father.
To the extent that the tragedy and permanent pain inflicted on my family continues to be included in Lumumba’s fiction writing, I will share the true facts below:
1. http://www.newvision.co.ug/…/shaban-nkutu-tragedy-cabinet-m…
2. http://www.newvision.co.ug/…/1317073/nkutu-murder-killed-eac
3. http://www.monitor.co.ug/…/At-school-with-Idi-Amin-s-childr…
4. Reconciliation with Amin’s family? I think I have done more than many would do: http://www.monitor.co.ug/…/688342-1842664-120cdw…/index.html
Jaffer Remo Amin has now dedicated himself to apologizing to the families of his father’s murder victims. I think he means well but his approach is not shared by some of his siblings. We do not blame Amin’s children for their father’s murders but for Amin’s children to dance on the graves of his victims is unacceptable.
So as we mark Amin’s murdering Archbishop Janan Luwum, you can now await the next fiction from Hussein Lumumba Amin.
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