Dr. Stella Nyanzi’s moving poem for slain Gen Katumba’s daughter

A POEM FOR BRENDA
Verse I
Beautiful Brenda, today you died brutally!
Shot unnecessarily by brutish gunmen,
Bullets taking away your precious life
On a slow Tuesday morning;
Just a little after 09:00AM,
As daily commuters were rushing to work
The traffic jam annoyingly slow as usual.
In broad daylight,
On a dusty road in an ordinary part of Kampala,
Assassins vying for your father’s blood,
Filled the tinted windows of his four-wheel-drive car
with bullet after bullet after bullet.
Bullets shattered into your body,
Drawing innocent blood that spread across the dusty tarmac,
And stealing your life away from Uganda.

Verse II
Beautiful Brenda, I earnestly grieve you!
I shake as I imagine the morning’s events:
Your innocent beauty seated in the back-seat
Of your father’s car was violently snatched.
Gunmen riding on two motorbikes
Pulled up on either side of your father’s vehicle,
Shot at the tyres to render the car immobile,
And unleashed rapid fire into a moving car.
The bullets, alas, also killed Haruna Kayondo
He died on duty as a driver to a decorated soldier.
What did he last tell his wife and children?
Who will mourn for Haruna Kayondo?
Who will educate his children?
When the General gets a new driver,
Who will father Haruna’s litte ones?
Who will keep his wife’s bed warm?

Verse III
Beautiful Brenda, you recently returned home.
You got a job amidst massive unemployment.
You excelled at your studies abroad.
Eh, how your success made your father proud!
No wonder, you were at his side as he took oath
You accompanied him to his swearing in function
When he swore to serve Uganda’s parliament.
When he pledged to defend our constitution.
Indeed, you were the apple of his eye.
Even in death, you many took bullets for him.
He got only two bullets in each of his arms.
His wounded arms shook so badly
That his pistol dropped out of his bloody grasp.
And General Katumba wept loudly…
His manly tears mixed freely with his blood.
As a bodaboda man drove him fast to a clinic,
His wounded heart grieved for his dead child.

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