Kony family appeals to Museveni to fulfil pledge
Tuesday December 05 2023
Ali Salongo Kony (L), his mother (C) and other family members during a press briefing in Gulu City, Uganda in November, 2023. PHOTO | DAILY MONITOR
The family of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) most wanted rebel leader Joseph Kony has appealed to Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni to meet the pledges he made to them more than three months ago.
The family says they are living under difficult conditions with nothing to survive on since returning to Uganda about five months ago and it is only the government that can help them.
“We are here toiling and living hand to mouth. We came back since others don’t want to welcome us or support us. We knew President Museveni would take us as his own and this is why we want him to listen to us,” Kony’s wife Selly told The Daily Monitor.
Read: The rejected victims of Kony's war
“We sleep hungry or just survive on a meal per day,” she added.
She also said she knows a number of her husband’s relatives, but they have not been helpful.
Moses Komakech, Kony’s eldest son whom Museveni had promised to secure a job, claims the people the president tasked to organise another meeting with him have not been helpful.
On August 25, Museveni met the family at state house Entebbe where he promised to improve their welfare.
“We will help them (the Kony family) to set up a commercial farm so that they work together as a company and then share the profits. All the children and the wives should be shareholders. This is what I have been telling all Ugandans,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, at the time.
Ali Salongo Kony, Kony’s other son, also claimed that some people are deliberately blocking them from accessing the Museveni.
Read: Memories of LRA war haunt survivors as they struggle for their identity, livelihood
“I cannot name them, but the president knows the people he is working with. Following our discussion with him at the state house, there was a path created for us to reach him easily but right now that path has been blocked and interfered with,” Ali said.
State house speaks
When contacted, the Deputy Senior Presidential Press Secretary Faruk Kirunda on Monday said he was unaware of any other planned meeting between Kony’s family and Museveni.
“I cannot comment over the family’s claims, because I do not have any details about a planned meeting,” Kirunda said in a telephone interview.
Kony’s family arrived in Uganda on July 1 after being repatriated from South Sudan with support from the Ugandan Embassy.