At a Mass held at St Jude Sub Parish Abayita Ababiri in Entebbe, Lt Gen James Mugira, the managing director of National Enterprise Corporation (NEC), delivered a heartfelt eulogy for Gerald Lumu Galiwango, the late deputy general manager of Luweero Industries Ltd (LIL). Lumu died on September 26. He was buried on September 30, in Kasama, Mpigi District.
Lumu joined LIL in the mid-90s. By then, the entity was helmed by Capt Innocent Bisangwa, who served as general manager until 2000. Then, Ms Jacqueline Susan Mbabazi took the wheels, so to speak. Two years later, on January 8, 2003, I joined LIL. When we first met, Lumu and I observed each other warily-like two dogs straining at their leashes.
Back then, the managerial staff would be shuttled here and there in a Toyota Hiace van. There was obviously no conductor. However, Lumu conducted himself as one by the way he made his inimitable presence felt. Always the loudest and frequently the most eloquent of bears, he could stand out in almost any company of men. I was opinionated, so it didn’t take long before we were trying to punch each other’s lights out using our wits. It was 2006. The World Cup was all anybody ever talked about in the barracks. Lumu seemed to be hedging his bets on who he would back for the Cup. One moment, he seemed to support Brazil. The next, England. When England crashed out, Lumu autopsied the team’s performance. His conclusions on this matter, I felt, were rather simplistic and pedestrian. I told him so. Then, I substantiated my view.
Lumu found my viewpoint and its supporting arguments astigmatic. Painstakingly, with his proverbial gloves off, he unbraided the tangled mess my argument was. It was thin on evidence, bloated by my ego. Chief, a man with an arsenal of repartees, let me know this in no uncertain terms. Indeed, he was a man who valued the intellectual rigours of continuous research and inquiry. It kept him grounded. Paradoxically, this singular quality implied an inevitable sense of superiority on his part when dealing with those who never bothered with the facts.
A generous soul
Lumu, who we fondly and unimaginatively baptised ‘Chief’, decided to put me on the spot. He interrogated me on global football in the last 30 years up until 2006. Each question was accompanied by a dismissal of my answer. At one point, I asked him to dismiss my arguments first before he listened to them. Since he was inclined to dismiss them out of hand after he listened to them. His rejection of my arguments being the continuous thread in an argument I deemed threadbare. He erupted, dressing me down fulsomely. However, at the time, there was something of a vacuum at LIL’s managerial level. The Human Resources and Administration manager, then Capt Sarah Mpabwa, was a shoe-in to become one of 10 army personnel who represented the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) in Parliament.
With her hitting pay dirt and basking in smouldering national recognition in the august House, Ms Mbabazi had to rely on Chief and I more. We virtually ran that factory while constantly having run-ins with one another. I took the reins from Effendi Mpabwa, and Chief decided they constituted enough rope to hang me with. He initially saw me as a beneficiary of cronyism or tribalism, I suspect. The whispered word in the factory was that Ms Mbabazi recruited me because she required a family member to hold the fort whenever she was not in Nakasongola barracks. This impression changed when everybody realised that Ms Mbabazi and I were relatives in the African sense, not by blood. It was not easy matching wits with Chief; not that I ever did. Our intellectual jousts were all sound and fury, signifying nothing but the respect we shared for one another. His knowledge shone through in every argument, and his facility for the correct English word to describe any given situation was a sign of his polish and pedigree.
He was the head boy of St Mary’s College, Kisubi, in the 1970s. Stories of his unquiet generosity are legion. He once gave away his whole per diem before a flight to Europe. Then, searching his suddenly empty pockets minutely, he found he was travelling too light. He then borrowed back a fraction of what he gave away. The operative word is ‘borrowed’ because he intended to repay in full what had been returned to him. Chief had precious little interest in material things, much less so money. This gave him the moral authority to keep the fingers of those who worked beneath him short. But these were desolate times, testing employee determination to prevail.
A crown of thorns
The factory was a byword for disuse, misuse and abuse. Most of the time, we didn’t have two pennies to rub together. So being a manager at LIL was a crown of thorns, a veritable poisoned chalice. Each week we visited Mbuya barracks, we were calmly, and somewhat menacingly, reminded that our factory was living on borrowed time. It was time to offload the freeloaders, some soldiers at Mbuya stage whispered. Although Chief was exposed to such sabre-rattling, he was imperturbable. He spoke frequently with President Museveni, who trusted his brains and integrity implicitly, so he knew those pen-pushers at Mbuya were just saying something just to have something to say.
The government had no intention of shuttering LIL. It is the nerve centre of the army. Chief provided LIL with the foundational ideas that underpinned its productivity, steering it away from treacherous seas towards the going concern it is today. He was intensely practical, often rolling up his sleeves to do what needed to be done himself. His openmouthed subordinates would be left standing there limply, withering on the proverbial vine. This often put him at cross-purposes with all those who preferred the job security that comes with mediocrity. Chief was different. He was not going to go gently into the poet’s good night. He was going to fight.
Even if that meant emptying LIL of its layabouts and restructuring it around less sheltered employment. Those who did not see eye to eye with him on his distinct brand of excellence, experienced Chief’s legendary ability to have no filters whatsoever when directing you to do the unspeakable with your mother’s ‘something-something.’ Despite his famed candour, I rarely heard him use profanity. He preferred profundity.
An avid reader
I will never forget how he ruined my weekend. I was all set to go to Kampala. Then Chief told me about Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code. His copy was 689 pages long. That didn’t stop him from devouring the book in two hours, with total recall of its contents. His brilliance was of the very first magnitude. So was his humour. He often left those in his presence laughing loudly and irresponsibly. However, I never saw him enjoy a belly laugh himself. He always seemed in the moment yet so detached.
Gen Mugira, who had the privilege of working with Chief for many years, described him as a trusted advisor and a valued colleague. In recognition of Lumu’s contributions to LIL, Gen Mugira promised to name one of the company’s structures after him, ensuring that his legacy lives on. I can already guess which workshop that will be. However, NEC might never be able to honour him fully. His impact defies quantification. It can only be appreciated in the round for how his unswerving fealty to the promise of militarily self-sufficient Uganda. On that score, he was not only an engineer’s engineer but as the very personification of what Theodore Roosevelt Jr, the 26th president of the United States, termed The Strenuous Life. Until we meet again, Chief.