Full Speech: Chris Rwakasisi on how Museveni turned from worst enemy to best friend

Former minister Chris Rwakasisi on Wednesday delivered a deeply personal and emotional speech at the 2025 National Prayer Breakfast held at State House Entebbe, giving a glimpse into one of Uganda’s most remarkable stories of transformation. 

Once a powerful figure in the Obote II government and a sworn enemy of President Yoweri Museveni, Rwakasisi spent 24 years on death row after being convicted by a court during the early years of the NRM government. 

In his moving testimony, he reflected on his journey from power to prison, through bitterness and hatred, and ultimately to spiritual renewal and reconciliation with the very man he once despised.

Below is the full transcript of his extraordinary speech:

Today’s National Prayer Breakfast theme is ‘The Power of Forgiveness and Reconciliation.’ And there could be no better candidate other than myself. Forgiveness is not a favour. It is an obligation and a command and the center of Christianity.

For good or bad, I was a household name. I was hated as much as I was loved. My story started after the elections of 1980. President Milton Obote had travelled with me around the country, telling everyone that I was to be his Prime Minister.

But after the elections, he called me to the State House and told me a new candidate for the position had been picked. He decided instead to make me his State Minister in the Office of the President. This brought me to the center of everything and made me literally his assistant. My office was opposite his. Everybody was calling me honorable and I almost forgot my own name.

I had so much power; my convoy was almost like the president’s. Nowadays I see these people who move with convoys pushing me from the road and I say, ‘Well…’

I grew bigger and bigger and forgot God. I never prayed or went to church. But time came when I saw all the glory crumble like a house of cards. A man who was saluted by generals, I was now being ordered by privates to sit down.

When the NRA were in the bush, I faithfully hunted them. I can testify that there was not a single minister that went to Luwero Triangle during the bush war. But I was there all the time, hunting the rebels down. Yet when the government changed, here I was, all my glory gone.

I was not arrested by the new NRM government but by our very own army. Of course, when the NRM came to power and found me in prison, I was a prize to them. I was taken to court and charged, first with murder and later with kidnap. In court, they brought witnesses I had never seen including one Katabazi.

After 6 months of trial, the judge gave a 10-hour judgment, which he concluded by pronouncing the death sentence. I remember after the judgment, the court stood up and said a prayer which ended ‘...may his soul rest in eternal peace.’

I was taken to Luzira and transferred to the ‘condemned’ section. I was a very bitter man. I hated two beings: one was God. I questioned how He could allow such a thing to happen when He knew I was innocent. Another person I hated was Museveni. For him I even had spare hatred. We had known each other from our youth.

When he came from Dar es Salaam, he was brought to my office and I was his boss. We worked together and I loved him very much because he was very vibrant, fresh from university and full of theories. But after the 1972 coup, we separated.

In Luzira, I asked myself how a person I had worked with could treat me like this. On election campaign trails he often claimed that I killed his children. I wondered which children I killed because all his children, Muhoozi, Patience, Natasha and Diana were there.

Three months after I was condemned, my OC told me that he had been ordered to transfer me to isolation. In Luzira Upper there is Boma (GenPop), then condemned section, and then isolation. That meant I was in a prison, inside the prison, within a prison! My bitterness increased because in that place, you are not supposed to hear or see anybody.

It was in that place that I really hated life and prayed that if I will, I should die. Then I looked around and saw something that looked like a brick and picked it up, hoping to use it as a pillow. It turned out to be a Bible.

So I used it as a pillow because I never liked it anyway. But because I had no one to talk to, I read it from start to finish. I picked nothing from it. Then I read it for the second time, and all I picked were stupid stories, like that of Abraham whose 90-year-old wife was admired by the King of Egypt. It seemed that the book had not been edited well to make sense.

But the third time I read it, God removed the veil from my eyes and I saw a different book. Like in the Gospel of John 1:11. I went into some kind of trance and I heard a voice that said, “Fear not, you will not be killed.” Three days later I was brought back to the condemned section. I established a church there and up to now it is still there.

Despite all this, the question of forgiveness was so hard for me. I could forgive anyone else but not Museveni. In my zeal to read the Bible, I had read Psalms 108:6 in which David prayed, “Kill my enemies, let their children have no bread, when they die, let their graves have no headstone…” I said, this is a very good prayer. I would go down on my knees, hours on end, praying for the death of Museveni, and his army, and his parliament… but the more I prayed, Museveni continued winning election after election. Those who were captains in the army became generals.

Then the Holy Spirit helped me. I remembered Jesus’ teaching that he who does not forgive will never be forgiven. Then I changed my prayer from a hate list to a love list. I started praying for Museveni and his family and his government. Some inmates thought I was running mad, but I was very genuine and felt a heavy stone lifted from me.

What followed? In 1998, Museveni announced publicly that he had forgiven me. Then his generals such as Elly Tumwiine started sending money to my wife to buy me things. The situation started becoming very easy.

In 1995, I got diabetes and the President sent his aides to come check on me. The next day, the presidential medical staff came to treat me in prison. Then the President ordered for me to be taken from Condemned to Boma. I stayed in prison, but I was a happy man.

After 24 years, time came and I was summoned by the OC, who handed me a blue letter and gave it to me. The heading read, ‘Instrument of Release’ and it was signed by the President himself. That was January 19th, 2009. On March 3rd, the President called me asking if I could meet him. I met him the following day, at State House Nakasero at 5 pm.

When I walked upstairs into the room, he was already there. He walked towards me and we embraced. He said to me, “Chris, welcome from prison.” I told him, “Welcome from the bush.” We sat down and talked like old lost brothers. That was reconciliation.

In November of that year, he called me in Fort Portal and handed me an appointment letter to be his Senior Presidential Advisor – Special Duties.From then, now 17 years, I have been with Museveni. And if you ask me today, who is your greatest friend in Uganda, I will tell you without flinching that it is Yoweri Museveni.