This is the type of column I never wish to write. But there is only one theme any Ugandan or Pan-Africanists outside the country reading this column will be expecting to read: a tribute to my dear friend and Comrade, Brigadier-General Noble Mayombo.

I have tried to write this column several times and so many times I have had to abandon it. The words were not just coming because my mind has been blank since I heard the news. I don’t know what to write, where to start or end. Like many of us who know him at personal, political and professional levels, the sudden ‘illness’ and consequent death of Noble has numbed us.

Only God knows the tearful prayers that had been crashing through heaven’s gate since Mayombo took ‘ill’ over the weekend. Prayers against prayers and hope against hope, but Mayombo, like a shooting star, a meteor or a comet, here now and gone in the same moment. Desperate phone calls and anxious texts meeting all kinds of frustrating ‘network busy’, ‘line not available call later’, from friends and comrades in the UK, Liberia, Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, the US and other parts of the world finally tracked me down in my small home town of Funtua in the North West of Nigeria where I could not share my loss with anybody because they did know him. The only person who could have known the magnitude was my younger brother, Sikiru, who had known him but he had also passed away late last year, only a year younger than Mayombo (42). Pain becomes even more unbearable when there are no people around to share in one’s grief.

But the texts came ifrom all directions, initially by people who want to confirm and wishing I could just say ‘it is not true’, but subsequently to solidarise and share the grief of the sad loss of a comrade who had touched our lives and did so in many positive ways. A sample of them attest to the extent of the feelings: ‘our brother is gone’, ‘the comrade has left us’, ‘we have lost him’, ‘he was one of us’, ‘he was our only hope’, ‘how could it happen?’, ‘ Who did this ?’. A younger colleague from the Pan African Movement , Deo, who now lives in Canada, in his text stated ‘when you write your column do bear in mind the anguish of many of us at this sad loss’.

I have asked myself many of the usual questions and many more of the unusual ones. Much as I tried to disabuse my mind to the speculations surrounding his sudden illness, joining others in prayer and hope that ‘he pulls through’, ‘he survives’, now that the worst has happened the speculations return to one’s mind. Our anger, pain and frustration over this most untimely exit of such a very dear person put one’s mind in the ad-hoc therapy theatre of why, whom? Asking these questions and simulating others and building all kinds of scenarios and playing flying detective may somehow help us to dull the pain, albeit momentarily, and provide a relief cushion for our denial that a loved one is no more.

There are other psychological tools at one’s disposal to cope at these times including ‘putting it in the hands of God, giver and taker’ or consoling oneself that ‘he has gone to the right-hand of God’. Another key coping mechanism is to share memories, remembering all kinds of things about the person. Surviving Parents, siblings and other close relatives dig deeper in their memories about when the person was born, growing up, childhood escapades and youthful certainties, etc. Friends and associates juggle their memory to remember when and how they met the person and how their friendship and association had developed over the years.

I have known Mayombo since 1992 when I first arrived in Uganda to help coordinate the secretariat for the 7th PAN African congress then scheduled to be held in November 1993 but had to be rescheduled and was held in April 1994.

General (then Col.)Kahinda Otafiire was the convener for the 7th PAC. Two other gallant officers, both also sadly deceased were my immediate colleagues: Lt. Col. Serwanga Lwanga and Major Ondoga ori Amaza. Serwanga was then the Chief Political Commissar of the NRA while Ondoga was the Director of the Army Publications. Major Sabiiti Mutengesa, now in exile in the UK, was also on the preparatory committee.

Our international team consisted of Napoleon Adbulai (from Ghana but like me then exiled in the UK), Thomas Deve (from Zimbabwe) and myself.

It was Serwanga who seconded Noble to the team.
Serwanga felt that the volume of work needed demanded a key interface between the various intelligence,security and government bureaucracies, and the various factions and fractions of the much more broad based NRM of those days. ‘Tell Afande Otafs to ask me to second Noble to you’ that was weeks after Lt. Mayombo had already joined us endlessly shuttling between Mbuya and our Parliament Avenue and later Muyenga offices in that famous SANTANA H4RA 1010 of his! Due to our shared political outlooks the camaraderie and comradeship just flowed automatically.
You will think we have known each other all our lives.

Through his unflinching devotion, and commitment to duty, fierce intellect, warm personality, and infectious good nature Mayombo soon became the pivot around which the secretariat’s activities revolved. He was a Ugandan patriot (a devotion that made us to refer to him as ‘The State’) and a Pan Africanist to the core. He had incredible energy and a glutinous capacity to work through the most cerebral issues down to the most mundane. But above all Mayombo was always respectful, courteous and possessing of a humility that betrays the well-brought up son of a Bishop that he was.

Mayombo was a sharing person, a practical man of liberation. He shared whatever he had including sharing his comrades with his family. All those who were close to him will attest to his willingness to take you home (where Christine combined a full time Civil Service job with full time home-making, never knowing how many people were coming for lunch or dinner), introduce you to his family, the kids Samora and all the other siblings, his numerous brothers and sisters and their Mzee who was more present in Kampala than their late mum. Once you are a close friend of Mayombo you become an adopted member of the family. Historical, Chief, Winyi, Gertrude, Okwiri, Patrick, Dan, Priscilla, David and numerous cousin’s become your friends too.

The last time I saw Mayombo his younger wife had just delivered their last baby and despite that, along with Thomas Deve who was visiting from Harare, he insisted we go home where we stayed up till early hours arguing passionately about all kinds of hot political issues inside Uganda, the region and at the Pan-African levels and also global concerns. Over Easter I was in Kampala. We spoke on the phone while he was with Napoleon and his wife, Afi, whom he had invited. We all thought we were having a reunion not realizing Noble was saying good-bye to us!

He had always said we should go to Fort Portal together but somehow we never did. Now I along with other comrades will have to make that trip, sadly not joking, arguing and exchanging banters with Noble but to pay our respects.

If ever any man was deserving of his name, it is was Noble Mayombo who was indeed a very noble man in character and in deed. Only ignoble persons would harbour ill-feelings to the point of adminstering poison against such a Noble man. Unfortunately there are many of these people around, both near and far.

“Forward ever , backward never”…..Kwame Nkrumah (1909 – 1972)

………..DON’T AGONISE!……….ORGANISE!!…………..

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Thursday Postcard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.