Francis Nyangweso was a
talented boxer who was a long-term amateur national and East African Champion.
In 1960, he represented Uganda at the Rome Olympics, where he failed to medal.
However, he won a bronze medal in the light middleweight division at the
Commonwealth Games in Perth in 1962 and a gold at the Hapoel Games in Israel a
year earlier.
Trained at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, Nyangweso rose up the ranks of the Ugandan Army and was appointed the Chairman of the National Council of Sports after Amin seized power in a coup d'etat in January 1971. That year, he was made the acting Brigade Commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade at Masaka before his appointment as Acting Army Commander in 1972.
He later became the Army Chief of Staff and the Minister of Defence. He left the Ugandan Army as a Major General.
After his army career, Nyangweso was involved in sports administration, becoming the president of the Ugandan Olympic Committee and a member of the International Olympic Committee. His hold on the Ugandan Olympic Committee lasted for 29 years after which he was unceremoniously edged out of power. Nyangweso received unwelcome publicity when a BBC investigation revealed that he was one of two African delegates who had been induced to back the 2000 Sydney Games at the expense of Beijing. He was exonerated after an investigation.
He died of complications related to diabetes, an ailment which affected his eyesight.
His life may have had a
considerably shorter span.
On October 14th, 1974, Nyangweso was summoned to State House by General Amin who challenged him to a six-round boxing contest. Amin began in aggressive mode and succeeded in cutting Nyangweso who retaliated by knocking Amin off-balance with a right hook. Amin, who was a long-term light heavyweight champion of Uganda, responded with vicious body attacks.
Nyangweso, who had initially thought of the contest as a joke, began to use his footwork, moving and shifting his bodyweight as he angled his shots at Amin. Nyangweso's wife appeared to be gripped with fear as her husband employed his skills to give Amin what witnesses to this extraordinary encounter recall as a thorough beating.
"We thought that was the end of Nyangweso's life, everybody feared for his life," Thomas Kawere, a boxing coach related at Nyangweso's burial.
But instead of earning Nyangweso a death sentence, the contest brought both men closer. Aside from his military appointments, Amin made him the Minister of Culture and Community Development. In fact, he became the de facto President of Uganda for a fortnight in 1975 while Amin was on holiday.
His rise was however halted by the politics of the time. A Christian from the eastern part of Uganda, Nyangweso fell out of favour as Amin increasingly relied on his kinsmen to remain in power. His "fate" was a remarkably soft one as he was handed an ambassadorial post to the Central African Republic.
Nyangweso was, if anything, a survivor.
© Adeyinka Makinde (2020).
Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England, He is the author of Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal.
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