Church of Uganda ready to commemorate the 44th Janani Luwum day
By Angela Nyakuni
Church of Uganda has revealed that the 44th Commemoration of Janani Luwum Day will be broadcast live on Tuesday, 16th February 2021 at 11 a.m. on UBC and other local television stations.
It will also be live-streamed on the Church of Uganda’s YouTube Channel at www.youtube.com/c/ChurchOfUgandaCommunications.
The Most Rev. Dr. Stephen Samuel Kaziimba, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, will preach on the day’s theme, “Life in its Fullness,” from John 10:10b. His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the President of Uganda, will be the Chief Guest.
Janani Jakaliya Luwum was born in 1922, but murdered on 17th February 1977. He was the archbishop of the Church of Uganda from 1974 to 1977 and one of the most influential leaders of the modern church in Africa. He was arrested in February 1977 and died shortly after. Although the official account describes a car crash, it is generally accepted that he was murdered on the orders of then-President Idi Amin.
Since 2015 Uganda has a public holiday on 16 February, to celebrate the life of Janani Luwum. Archbishop Luwum was a leading voice in criticizing the excesses of the Idi Amin regime that assumed power in 1971. In 1977, Archbishop Luwum delivered a note of protest to dictator Idi Amin against the policies of arbitrary killings and unexplained disappearances. Shortly afterwards the archbishop and other leading churchmen were accused of treason.
On 16 February 1977, Luwum was arrested together with two cabinet ministers, Erinayo Wilson Oryema and Charles Oboth Ofumbi. The same day Idi Amin convened a rally in Kampala with the three accused present. A few other “suspects” were paraded forth to read out “confessions” implicating the three men.
The archbishop was accused of being an agent of the exiled former president Milton Obote, and for planning to stage a coup. The next day, Radio Uganda announced that the three had been killed when the car transporting them to an interrogation center had collided with another vehicle. The accident, Radio Uganda reported, had occurred when the victims had tried to overpower the driver in an attempt to escape. When Luwum’s body was released to his relatives, it was riddled with bullets.
Henry Kyemba, minister of health in Amin’s government, later wrote in his book A State of Blood, that “The bodies were bullet-riddled. The archbishop had been shot through the mouth and at least three bullets in the chest. The ministers had been shot in a similar way but one only in the chest and not through the mouth. Oryema had a bullet wound through the leg.”
According to the later testimony of witnesses, the victims had been taken to an army barracks, where they were bullied, beaten and finally shot.