Institute for Healing of Memories

Struggling to Abolish the Death Penalty, Healing and Signs of new Life in Uganda.

“Please ask Nelson Mandela to speak to President Museveni of Uganda to abolish the Death Penalty”

Fr. Michael Lapsley, SSM

Kampala

Uganda

14.12.2002

Over a year ago, a friend of mine in Cape Town, Fatima Swartz, was doing a course in conflict resolution in the United Kingdom.

Fatima spoke to one of her fellow participants, a certain Joseph Sirrah from Uganda about the work of the Institute for Healing of Memories. Joseph wrote to me and told me about the National Reconciliation Aid Foundation.

NAREAF’s has a multi-sectoral approach to tackling the issues of ex-combatants and other conflict affected groups. They emphasize the need for such people to be given the opportunity to share their stories, views, feelings, truth and their suggestions towards achieving genuine dialogue and hence reconciliation. NAREAF also co-operated with Friends of Hope for Condemned Prisoners to be part of the program, which we offered in Uganda.

After nearly a year of planning and postponement, together with Barry Bekebeke, we flew to Kampala on December 1, to offer a healing of memories workshop, to train facilitators and undertake various media interviews and speaking engagements at a number of prisons.

Samali Ruth Nakanjja met us at Entebbe airport with a warm smile and a bunch of flowers. Ruth is a former prisoner who had lost relatives in prison and had herself been condemned to death and spent nine years in prison. She now works in a prison ministry with a Pentecostal church.

The following morning we met leaders of NAREAF including retired Major General Zeddy Maruru and Joseph Sirrah, a former soldier, exile and prisoner who has also become a pastor.

During the morning we were introduced to Geoffrey Muganyi, a very energetic and personable young man in his late twenties who had been condemned to death twice for an offence he had not committed and Elias Wanyama a man who had also been on death row and spent 18 years in prison before receiving a pardon. What immediately impressed me about my new co-workers was the depth of their compassion for their fellow ex-soldiers and those still languishing in prison and on death row.

(We learnt that Ugandan courts are still condemning people to death although their appears to be an informal moratorium at present on carrying out executions. The last executions took place in 2000 when 28 were executed.)

The first healing of memories workshop in Uganda was scheduled to begin two days after our arrival. Already running several hours late we left the anarchic traffic of Kampala in two carloads for Busana in Kuyonga about two hours drive out of the capital and not far from the former military camps of Umkhonto We Sizwe. About an hour out of Kampala one of the vehicles broke down and only reached Busana 10 hours after the workshop had been due to begin. (I used to think we had problems about time in South Africa!)

We finally began the workshop at 10am the following day with 21 of us all in all. Seven of us had come From Kampala and other participants arrived on foot and bicycles from local communities.

For those of us from the city it was a shock to the system to find ourselves with no electricity or running water and pit latrines. The local chief told us that they believed there would be electricity within three months. The workshop took place in a community centre whilst our group discussions took place under surrounding trees.

On the second day of the workshop participants created peace symbols out of mud used for building houses that participants had brought from their homes. Although not exactly what we had in mind, two people’s symbols were radios to listen to a radio program on healing of memories that was going to take place with us the following weekend and an aeroplane to take us safely back to Cape Town!

The area where the workshop took place had all the external appearances of great poverty. This was offset to some degree by the abundance of tropical fruit and other crops grown in the area. Before returning to Kampala we drove a few kilometres to the Nile and witnessed a succession of men riding bikes laden with bananas arriving at the river. Their crops and bikes were transported by canoe to be sold to a neighbouring community on the opposite side of the river.

Those from Kampala and the majority of the participants understood the focus of the workshop. However one man did say he had come to learn how to become wealthier and another said his expectation was to gain more farming skills, which seemed to have been the focus of the previous workshop held in the area!

Some of the written evaluations of the workshop included the following comments about expectations:

· I got more than I expected

· the washing away of bad memories e.g. anger, hatred, death and has brought compassion. Its an experience or lesson gone through which seemed childish but effective

· a lesser burden on my heart, new friends, acquired knowledge

- I expected to come out of this workshop changed. How to receive healing, to know more about the workshop to be able to help others

· I had many hurts, sadness, pain, anger and hatred due to the injustice suffered but with the workshop I feel relieved. Am I healed already?

· To know how a memory can be healed and why it is necessary also who needs healing of memory, the Victim or the Victimiser?

· It made me realise that every living person needs healing n one way as we all have wounded hearts

· To discover the turning point when healing begins

· The workshop should be extended to many more people

Highlights included:

The sharing of what healing of memories is and sharing or stories by drawing as well as reflecting on them later.

· People of different experiences which are hard to be aired out freely self forgiveness and acceptance; forgiveness; oneness to overcome dejection

· the making of symbols gives you time to think

· the way participants openly shared their own experiences of both sad and happy memories

· drawing our life paths and group sharing

· getting to separate feelings and anger

· to forgive what has happened to me in the past

· to be together and to respect each other

· to forgive wrong people

· self introductions, review of the past, moulding exercise

Several days after the workshop we held a facilitator training workshop in Kampala for six of the participants. It was clear that the participants had benefited hugely from the workshop and had a profound grasp of the intention of our model of healing of memories. During the training it dawned on some of the participants that facilitating may not be as easy as they had first imagined. At the end of the training, the group unanimously elected Grace Sirrah to co-ordinate the healing of memories initiative in Uganda.

After returning to Kampala we had two one-hour radio interviews. One was a talk back program on self-discovery hosted by Maria Balyamujura whose own husband had been murdered many years ago. The program focussed on forgiveness, reconciliation and healing of memories. Later the same evening in a program called Fireside Chat, I was asked to speak about my life with an opportunity for a studio audience to comment and ask questions.

Two of our new friends, who had been on death row, Godfrey and Elias took us to meet Fr. Tarcisio Agostoni, MCC, a young 83 year old Comboni father who is leading a national campaign for the abolition of the death penalty in Uganda. He is the author of a book called “May the state kill?” Fr. Agostini is also Program Director for the Catholic Radio Station Radio Maria. He invited me to speak on his weekly program where he seeks to mobilize public opinion against the death penalty and encourage families and death row inmates directly. The condemned prisoners are among those who listen to the radio program every week. During the interview I commented: “I am very proud as a South Africa that my country has abolished the death penalty. By removing from ourselves the right to take life we have become a more civilised country”.

Prison Chaplain Ruth Samali took us to visit the inmates at Luzira, Uganda’s only maximum-security women’s prison where she herself had been incarcerated for nine years and includes 12 women on Death row. Wondering what to expect I was most surprised to find behind the tall fences the layout of what could easily have been a rural boarding school in many African countries with a number of cows mingling with the women on a hillside with beautiful vistas to surrounding hills and valleys.

I was very struck by the sharp contrast with other women’s prisons I had visited in South Africa, Cuba and the United States.

After Barry and I spoke a little of our own experiences and talked about healing of memories a number of the women asked questions all of which centred on the theme of struggling with forgiveness.

When we met Fr. Agostoni, he invited us to join him on a visit to the Condemned section of the Maximum Security Men’s Prison, which houses more than 300 men, who have all been condemned to death.

(Uganda’s penal code apparently requires a compulsory death sentence for a range of crimes including sexual offences and armed robbery. We heard a number of accounts which point to miscarriages of justice and people ending up with death sentences as a result of personal malice or motivated by one’s political opponents.

We were told that like South Africa, Uganda’s constitution has a “right to life” clause but anomalously continues to execute its citizens. This issue is also under the spotlight in a constitutional review commission.

It is also an extra challenge to abolish the death penalty whilst civil war is in its sixteenth year in the north of the country with no apparent signs of a negotiated settlement or a return to multi-party democracy.)

To visit “the condemned” we needed a letter from the Commissioner of Prisons. In the absence of the commissioner, his deputy eventually agreed to give us such a letter because of the respect, which the Commissioner had for Fr. Agostoni. Even armed with the correct documents in quadruplicate form, the prison authorities kept us waiting for an hour, whilst they debated the genuineness of our documents. Fr. Agostoni had arrived earlier to celebrate Mass and attend to the various needs and requests of the individual prisoners on death row.

The contrast between the security and the bleakness of the physical conditions of the men as compared with the women was dramatic. Whereas the women walked in green open spaces the men were cramped in concrete courtyards with high walls.

To my surprise our appearance among “the condemned” was greeted with loud cheers. Many of them had heard me speak on the radio program with Fr. Agostoni a few days previously.

I was deeply moved by this encounter with hundreds of men waiting to die and hoping against hope that the state would not take their lives in cold blood. The gallows were there in the same building.

One man came and showed me that he too had lost a hand as a result of a gunshot, but with no prosthesis.

“Please go and tell the world about us. Please ask others to help Fr. Agostoni in the work he does to assist us and improve our conditions.”

“Please would you speak to Nelson Mandela and ask him to speak to President Museveni of Uganda to abolish the death penalty.

Before we said our farewells the leader of the Catholic community on Death Row, himself a former Inspector of Prisons, reminded us that we had come to meet Christ in prison echoing the words of Jesus, “ …as you did it to the least of these my sisters and brothers you did it to me…” He also pointed out that they had all been sentenced by a bad law and by wrong actions of some police that had caused them to end up in such a horrible predicament.

In response to my query Fr. Agostoni observed sadly that he receives little support for his Front-line ministry from his fellow religious or from the Catholic Church.

After leaving the prison we went to visit the world famous shrine of the Uganda martyrs of 1886. I called to mind the martyrdom of Archbishop Luwum under Idi Amin. It was an opportunity to pray for a land and people who have known so much strife and violence and where there is so much need for healing the individual and the nation.

On our second to last day in Uganda Ruth Samali took us to visit another maximum-security prison at Kigo about an hour’s drive out of Kampala - a place of great beauty beside a lake. We drove through several villages and had fleeting glimpses of many different communities with all their variety and vibrancy. In contrast to the countries of Southern Africa it is hard to imagine anyone starving in Uganda no matter how poor they may be in other ways.

At the prison there was an opportunity to speak in an introductory way about healing of memories to a large group of very receptive prisoners. Although built for 400 there were nearly 700 prisoners there. At least there were plants, trees, and green grass inside the prison unlike the concrete yards of the condemned men at Lucia. In response to a challenge I made to him one of the prisoners said that in time he would write his own book about healing of memories and promised to send it to me.

In two weeks we had been given a rare opportunity to listen to the pain and appreciate the love and beauty of the Ugandan people. If so invited we promised to make at least two more visits to contribute to healing of memories in Uganda.

I pray for Uganda, for its healing journey, for the condemned prisoners and for the abolition of the death penalty in Uganda and throughout the world.

Ends.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Name: Elias Wanyama

Age: 52

Country: Uganda

Address: P.O.Box 27340 Kla

E-mail: eliaswa2oo2@yahoo.com

Effects of Healing of Memory Workshop

1982 was a beginning of my 18 years stay in prison, a life that had seemingly become a permanent big wound in my life, that was too difficult to wipe out. What begun as a detention in 1982 turned into a death penalty sentence in 1988, only latter by Gods mercy commuted to life imprisonment and then by miracle, released on Presidential pardon in 2000.

The whole episode shattered my life, lost hope and meaning of life, that on release found life still more challenging and memory held only the misery of the 18 years of imprisonment. This has made the two years to date after my release a life lived in a dilemma, of a free man with a memory only full of the imprisonment and blocking out all the new experiences.

The news that I was one of the 25 to attend a Healing of memory workshop, brought to my heart a new tickle of hope that may be my life may get a new meaning. But how?

To imagine that the three days workshop would give me a re birth of new life ’s meaning, to my painful past memory was very far fetched. It all became a beginning of a kind of miracle, when on day one sharing made me realize that though I had been in prison for 18 years, some people in the very much desired freedom, had been through worse tests, more painful and devastating situations than mine .the reality that indeed all humanity at one time or another go through some kind of pain and all are nursing deep wounded hearts, some trying very hard to put a show of a smiling face with a bleeding heart, of hate, anger, desire for revenge etc.

It became clear to me that I was not alone with the hurtful of misery .The reality being that offering each other a listening ear a shoulder to cry on, a great journey to memory healing could be opened and indeed mine was opened on 3rd December, the day one of the three day workshop at Busana, Kayunga District in Uganda.

Being now a Death Penalty Abolition Advocate, I feel that the Healing of Memory workshop can be of great help to all people especially our third world countries, that have been through various political changes in the name of revolutions/liberations, and still continue in turmoils, would get a great opportunity to discover self and learn of the ingredients of healing of memories like forgiving and being forgiven, both for the victims and the victimizers.

My thanks go to Fr. Michael and Brother Barry of the Healing of Memories Institute in South Africa, who have helped me to be on this new path and praises to God by whose power and love, Fr. Michael lives and continues to dedicate self to help us on the other side, the otherwise helpless.

Elias Wanyama.

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