Among the historical images in the collection of photos by veteran independent Ugandan photographer Elly Mwine Kabarega Rwakoma are some taken at a political rally at Iganga District playground in eastern Uganda on September 21, 1979.

The event was marred by the attempted assassination of Uganda’s then president Godfrey Binaisa. 

“I came home with three bullet holes in my trousers. There had been an attempted assassination of the president. He had just given his speech. Also there was a young Yoweri Museveni,” Rwakoma says in his book titled All the Tricks – Elly Rwakoma co-published by History In Progress Uganda (HIPUganda) and YdocPublishing of The Netherlands.

“Then the shooting started. A BBC man was filming the event. When I tried to go hide, he said, ‘What are you doing? Aren’t you a photographer? Then shoot! About 30 people died. But the local media did not report the incident and did not print my photos,” he adds.

The black and white images show Binaisa and Museveni addressing the crowd; people taking cover as the gunshots ring out; corpses and the injured getting first aid.

“The situation was shocking. To see people being felled by bullets and others dying right in front of you. The government downplayed the incident and did not want it publicised,” Rwakoma told The EastAfrican in an interview.

Rwakoma, who now lives a quiet life on his farm in Bushenyi district in western Uganda, worked as a social worker and presidential photographer for presidents Milton Obote, Idi Amin Dada and later Binaisa. He was also the photographer for the chairman of the Military Commission, Mr Paul Muwanga. He also took pictures for the media, made portraits for schools, shot wedding pictures and ran a photography studio.

He was then a youth winger for the Uganda People’s Congress party and at the same time a photographer and a community development assistant working for the YMCA.

“I used to take pictures for government officials at functions and they would take the printed copies in picture albums to Obote. They later incorporated me into Obote’s press team. Whenever he had a function I would be called upon to take pictures because my work was quick and good.

"Working under Obote was good. I was in his good books and he trusted me,” he adds.

He also enjoyed working for Binasia and never had problems with him.

Working for Amin was not bad either he says. “Some people thought I was doing intelligence work for Amin because he let me get close to him. They could not imagine that it was only because he liked the way I photographed him,” Rwakoma says.

He recalls that Muwanga was not an outgoing person because he was always locked in his office at Nile Mansions (now Kampala Serena Hotel).

The controversy

Rwakoma’s life as a photographer of presidents came to an abrupt end during Idi Amin’s regime. He fell out with the powers that be when a picture of the president swimming in a pool was published in the international media. 

The picture, in which only Amin’s head could be seen above the water was captioned: “Is Amin swimming or sinking?”

The picture caused a stir. “The whole world saw the picture with that caption,” Rwakoma says, adding that Amin’s handlers wanted to arrest the person who took the picture. “And they knew I was the one. So when I learnt they were searching for me, I escaped to Nairobi.”

Although he cannot recall the exact date he took these pictures, he thinks it was in 1978 when the joint Tanzanian and Ugandan forces were closing in on Amin’s regime, which was ousted on April 11, 1979.

The self-taught photographer says he took several pictures of Idi Amin swimming at the Kampala International Hotel (now Kampala Sheraton Hotel).

Foreign photographers were not allowed to take pictures of Amin then. Rwakoma says he took Amin’s photos and on a visit to Kenya at the time, he sold the negatives to renowned photographer Mohamed Amin (deceased) who ran the Kenya-based independent multimedia company Camerapix.

Rwakoma believes one of these pictures may have been sold to the international magazine, which published it without his byline.

“They (Amin’s security officers) ransacked my studio in Jinja,” he recalls in the book that was launched on May 14, 2015 in Kampala. Rwakoma believes that had the picture been credited to him he would be dead by now.

Rwakoma had met Mohamed Amin in Uganda in 1966 before the Kabaka Crisis. Mo, as he was popularly known, encouraged Rwakoma to take photography seriously. They never met again until Rwakoma visited Nairobi in 1977 and sold him some of his negatives.

“I met Mo in Kenya. He had been to Kampala before, but at that time foreign photographers were not allowed to take pictures. But I had taken those photos. So I gave him the negatives,” he says in the book.

“I lost my copyright when I sold the negatives to Mo. When Dutch photographer Andrea Stultiens of HIPUganda showed me the picture I knew it was mine. I took pictures of President Amin swimming both at Kampala International Hotel and Jinja Club, and one of them appeared in Newsweek magazine and New York Times newspaper. I do not know if he is the one who sold them this picture,” Rwakoma told The EastAfrican.

The famous picture of the late Ugandan president Idi Amin that Elly Rwakoma claims to have taken at the then Kampala International Hotel in 1978. PHOTO | ELLY RWAKOMA

All the Tricks – Elly Rwakoma is the third part of the book series called Ebifananyi/Ebishushani published by HIPUganda. Both words mean “images” in Luganda and Runyankole respectively.

HIPUganda collects and publishes photographs from (private) collections and archives about Ugandan history. Rwakoma has 803 photos with HIPUganda.

HIPUganda was initiated in 2011 by Stultiens and her Ugandan counterpart Canon Rumanzi.

Stultiens first saw the picture when watching Mo And Me, a documentary Mo Amin’s son Salim Amin made about his father. Stultiens took a screenshot of the picture showing Idi Amin in a pool with only his head above water with little waves playing around his neck and chin and sent it to Uganda where it was shown to Rwakoma.

“After Rwakoma’s confirmation that this was ‘the one,’ I contacted Salim Amin. I explained to him what I had been told by Rwakoma and asked him what he thought of it. Within 10 minutes he replied that indeed the negative of that photograph was part of their archive and that as far as he knew, his father made it, but his father sometimes did buy negatives from other photographers. He invited me to look through the archive and see whether I could make sense of it,” Stultiens says in Rwakoma’s book.

According to Stultiens, there are basically two shoots with Idi Amin swimming in the Camerapix archive. One set was dated immediately after Idi Amin’s coup in 1971, the other was dated a year later around the time of the expulsion of the Asians. “These dates did not add up with Rwakoma’s story, which took place years later.”

Salim Amin, the chairman of Camerapix, maintained the same position when contacted by The EastAfrican, saying: “I am under the impression my father took those images but he may have purchased the negatives from Elly Rwakoma, of course we would still have ownership of those images. I cannot confirm any more than that as I was not even born then.”

“The image stayed on my mind. I bought the Newsweek issues that had extensive stories on Idi Amin. The photograph was not there. The Newsweek Archive in New York checked their late 1970s issues and said that the image was not in any of them. But I did end up bumping into the photograph on the other side of the African continent,” Stultiens writes.

Stultiens found the photograph of Amin swimming while visiting the National Museum in Monrovia, Liberia. It was among the exhibits in a photo exhibition. According to the caption, the image was made at the Ducor Hotel. The building is now a carcass, stripped to the bone. But it used to be a posh hotel located on the highest point of Monrovia — with a swimming pool. Amin was on a state visit to Liberia in 1976.

There is a slideshow available online in which a hotel employee recalls Amin’s visit. He came to the pool wearing his pistol, scaring the other guests away.

For now, Stultiens told The EastAfrican, “The claim has not yet been verified. I am both hoping to still find the publication, though it cannot be in Newsweek, Elly must have mixed up magazines, and the negative that should be in Mohamed Amin’s archive.”

Rwakoma’s vow never to take beer again while in a bar because of a sudden price increase nearly cost him his life under Amin. “When the price of beer went up from Ush50 to Ush120, I vowed before a bar full of witnesses that I would not drink beer again until Amin was gone. Many people heard my statement and it must have been reported to the intelligence people and I was already connected to the published photo.”

Rwakoma says his best man Eric Sabiiti and other friends were killed in 1977 in unclear circumstances just after he made the vow in the bar.

“On that fateful day I was supposed to go and have a drink with them, but I did not think it made sense, since I had vowed not to drink beer again until Amin was gone. They went to the bar. We heard the shooting from our apartment. I went to look for the bodies. We did not find them, but openly looking for them was dangerous.”

Rwakoma then knew that there was a plot against him. “I was preparing to leave when the soldiers found me at my studio. I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts and did not look like a photographer. They asked me where the photographer was and I told them that he had gone to the bank. When they left I jumped into my car and drove off. After the public witnessed a red Datsun visit the studio and soon they saw my green Renault leave, someone informed my wife of the incident and then she knew I was gone.”

Rwakoma’s friend Mukungu, who owned a petrol station in Jinja, filled his car tank with fuel so he could escape. Another friend who was a captain in the army gave him a military uniform to disguise himself as a soldier and that is how he escaped through Magamaga and then to Busia on the border with Kenya in July 1978. He eventually made it to Nairobi.

In Nairobi, Rwakoma first stayed at the YMCA, which later became expensive for him even though he was volunteering with the organisation.

Later, he moved in with his friend Makumbi who let him use his living room. “We turned part of it into a darkroom. During the days, I worked as a mobile photographer at Uhuru Park. Kenyan colleagues would take a week to finish a film while I would develop and print at night in the living room and deliver the photograph the next day,” he recalls.

“The local photographers became jealous and because I did not have a licence, they reported me. I was arrested and spent three days in jail. After this I turned my car into a taxi and used the earnings to bribe the policemen to let me work the next day,” he adds.

He returned to Uganda immediately after the overthrow of Amin in 1979.

Rwakoma retired from photography in 1987. He says with the onset of technology, everyone can take pictures and photography is no longer lucrative, except for highly professional work that also demands expensive professional cameras.