Fred Gisa Rwigema (also sometimes spelled Rwigyema; born Emmanuel Gisa; 10 April 1957 – 2 October 1990) was a Rwandan military officer and revolutionary. He was the founder of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a political and rebel group formed by Rwandan Tutsi exile descendants of those forced to leave the country after the 1959 Hutu Revolution.
Fred Gisa Rwigema | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 10 April 1957 Gitarama, Ruanda-Urundi (present-day Rwanda) |
| Died | 2 October 1990 (aged 33) Matimba Hill, Rwanda |
| Cause of death | Gunshot wound |
| Resting place | Remera Heroes Cemetery, Kigali |
| Spouse | Jeannette Rwigema |
| Children |
|
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | |
| Years of service | 1976–1990 |
| Rank | Major General |
| Battles/wars | |
Early life and rise in Uganda
editRwigema was born in Gitarama, in southern Rwanda. Considered a Tutsi, in 1960 he and his family fled to Uganda and settled in a refugee camp in Nshungerezi, Ankole following the Rwandan Revolution of 1959 and the ouster of King Kigeli V.[1]
After finishing high school in 1976, he went to Tanzania and joined the Front for National Salvation (FRONASA), a rebel group headed by Yoweri Museveni, the brother of his friend Salim Saleh. It was at this point that he began calling himself Fred Rwigema. Later that year, he traveled to Mozambique and joined the FRELIMO rebels who were fighting for the liberation of Mozambique from Portugal's colonial rule.
In 1979, he joined the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), which together with Tanzanian armed forces captured Kampala in April 1979, forcing Idi Amin to flee into exile.[2]
He later joined Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA), which fought a guerrilla war called the Ugandan Bush War against the government of Milton Obote. It was here that Rwigema first fought alongside a number of future RPF leaders including future Rwandan president Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Patrick Karegeya and Kayumba Nyamwasa.[3]
After the NRA captured state power in 1986, Rwigema became the deputy Minister of Defence. He was regularly at the front line in northern Uganda during the new government's operations against remnants of the ousted regime as well as other rebel groups.[4]
Leadership
editFred Rwigema was amongst the initial 27 armed individuals, led by Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, who took to the bush in 1981 to begin a guerilla war following Uganda's contentious Presidential elections of 1980, where Apollo Milton Obote's party the Uganda People's Congress was accused of engineering an election fraud to get victory over the Democratic Party which was led by Paul Kawanga Ssemwogerere and Uganda Patriotic Movement, which was led by Yoweri Museveni.
By 1985, Fred Rwigema had emerged as one of the most significant military leaders so much so that when the National Resistance Army (NRA) secured a military victory against a military government that had staged a successful coup d’état against Milton Obote's regime, Fred Rwigyema was one of the three former rebel leaders who were commissioned as General Officers in the NRA. He was commissioned a Major General alongside Yoweri Museveni's brother Salim Saleh Akandwanaho and Elly Tumwine. Yoweri Museveni himself was made a Lieutenant General.
Fred Rwigema was a charismatic military leader, who was loved by all soldiers and officers who served under him. He especially earned his reputation in counter insurgency operations in Northern Uganda, where the army defeated by the National Resistance Army was holding out. Fred Rwigyema also stands out in his contemporaries for not being involved in any war crimes while he was directing operations in Northern and North Eastern Uganda. That earned the nickname “Mungu wa vita”, Swahili for “god of war”.
He was appointed Deputy Minister for Defense following the capture of power by the National Resistance Movement, but that did not take him away from directing military operations in Northern Uganda.
Rwandan Civil War and death
editOn 1 October 1990, Rwigyema led the splinter group of 10,000 NRA troops in an invasion of northern Rwanda.[5] This event started the Rwandan Civil War. What became the RPF chose this date as it was close to Ugandan independence day on 9 October.[3] This served as an opportunity for Rwigyema, as the movement could be disguised from the main NRA as a military parade.[3]
On the second day of the civil war, Rwigyema was shot in the head and died at Nyabwenshogozi Hill.[6] His death was kept secret for a month so as not to harm morale.[7] There is a dispute about the exact circumstances of Rwigyema's death; the official line of Kagame's government was that Rwigyema was killed by a stray bullet.[8][9] However, historian Gérard Prunier states that he had established "from incontrovertible evidence (including an interview with an eyewitness to the killing)" that Rwigyema was killed by his subcommander Peter Bayingana, following an argument over tactics, and excused his readers for having accepted the "cooked version of facts [the RPF] provided" him with.[10]
Rwigyema is considered one of Rwanda's national heroes. His body was buried at the Heroes Cemetery in Kigali.
Notes
edit- ^ "Gen Fred Rwigyemas untold story". www.newvision.co.ug. Retrieved 13 April 2019.
- ^ "Today in history: RPA invades Rwanda". New Vision. 1 October 2019. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
- ^ a b c Waugh, Colin M., 1955– (2004). Paul Kagame and Rwanda : power, genocide and the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., Publishers. ISBN 0786419415. OCLC 56058176.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Cooper & Fontanellaz 2015, p. 52.
- ^ Suhrke, Astri. (1999). The Path of a Genocide : the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire. Adelman, Howard. Somerset: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 9781351477673. OCLC 993780868.
- ^ "Was Rwigyema assassinated?". Daily Monitor. 2 February 2021. Retrieved 8 September 2021.
While the official version from the RPF is that he was killed by the enemy bullet while on the front line, there is a persistent contrary allegation that Rwigyema was in fact assassinated and that the conspiracy to eliminate him was instigated by a fellow RPF senior commander Maj Peter Bayingana who conspired with Maj Chris Bunyenyezi.
- ^ "Death of Maj Gen Rwigyema". Daily Monitor. Retrieved 13 April 2019.
- ^ Government of Rwanda (2009). "Chronology of Events Leading to Liberation". Official Website of the Government of Rwanda. Archived from the original on 7 March 2012. Retrieved 9 May 2013.
- ^ Prunier 1999, pp. 95–96.
- ^ Prunier 2009, pp. 13–14, note 50 for "cooked version of facts". For "incontrovertible evidence", see p. 355.
References
edit- Cooper, Tom; Fontanellaz, Adrien (2015). Wars and Insurgencies of Uganda 1971–1994. Solihull: Helion & Company Limited. ISBN 978-1-910294-55-0.
- Prunier, Gérard (1999). The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (2nd ed.). Kampala: Fountain Publishers Limited. ISBN 978-9970-02-089-8.
- Prunier, Gérard (2009). Africa's World War : Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe: Congo. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-970583-2.