Dr Kizza Besigye

About: Dr Kizza Besigye

Everything you need to know about Dr Kizza Besigye.
Warren Kiiza Besigye Kifefe was born in Rukungiri, southwestern Uganda, in April 1956. He attended Kinyasano Primary School and Mbarara Junior School. Both his parents died before he finished primary school. He later joined Kampala's Kitante High School and then Kigezi High School in the southwest.

Besigye enrolled at the prestigious Makerere University in 1975, graduating with a degree in human medicine in 1980. He then worked briefly for the Aga Khan Hospital and then the Kenyatta National Hospital - both in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi - before joining Museveni's rebel National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A) in 1982.




While in the bush, he became Museveni's personal physician. When the NRM/A came to power in January 1986, he was appointed - at the age of 29 - minister of state for internal affairs. He later held the positions of minister of state in the president's office and national political commissar. In 1991, he became commanding officer of the mechanised regiment in Masaka, central Uganda, and in 1993 was appointed the army's chief of logistics and engineering.

In 1998, he married Winnie Byanyima, who was then a member of parliament for Mbarara municipality in southwestern Uganda. Byanyima, an aeronautical and mechanical engineer who worked at Uganda's high commission in the United Kingdom and served as ambassador to France in the 1980s and 1990s, is a childhood friend of Museveni's and a former member of the NRM/A who later joined the opposition. She and Kizza Besigye have one son, Anselm.

In 1999, Besigye wrote a document critical of the government, entitled "An Insider's View of How the NRM Lost the Broad Base". The document accused the NRM of becoming a sectarian kleptocracy and a one-man dictatorship. Besigye was charged before a court martial for "airing his views in the wrong forum". He later brokered a deal in 2000 in which the charges were dropped in exchange for an apology for publishing the document.

In October 2000, Kizza Besigye announced that he would run against Museveni in the 2001 elections. He retired from the Uganda People's Defence Forces in 2001, having attained the rank of colonel.