Uganda has become a story of shattered hopes, according to retired Bishop Zac Niringiye.
The Bishop presided over the launch of Maj. (Rtd) John Kazoora’s book, Betrayed by My Leader, a memoir that centres largely on Kazoora’s role in the 1981 to 1985 National Resistance Army struggle and later the National Resistance Movement government under President Yoweri Museveni.
Niringiye, who until his retirement in June this year was the Assistant Bishop of Kampala, said that the hopes of the National Resistance Army fighters and the entire country have over the last 30 years been shattered or left unfilled.
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Maj. Kazoora says that the book is an expression of the extreme betrayal and exploitation of his youthful years.
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The book is not just Maj. Kazoora’s memoir, but also a reflection of the feelings of those who fought the 1981-1985 bush war, which brought Museveni to power. In reference to President Museveni’s inaugural speech, The Fundamental Change, Maj. Kazoora writes that “From fundamental change, things changed fundamentally to no change, then to paka-last and paka-lost”.
At the launch, Kazoora’s ten-year-old son, Calton Akampurira, read an excerpt from the book, the part where Maj. Kazoora learnt of his father’s death while still in the bush as one of the NRA commanders
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Col (Rtd) Dr. Kizza Besigye, the President of the Forum for Democratic Change, said that Maj. Kazoora’s book will help correct some of the distortions previous books on that period in Uganda’s history have made. He added that the book’s title and contents are indeed suitable because the National Resistance Army’s objectives have been betrayed. Besigye, also one of the bush war fighters, said that the greatest betrayal has been of the peasants of Uganda, whether they were armed or not, during the bush war.
