"When you meet somebody who’s a psychopath and so brutal, the first thing you say to yourself is ‘so he actually exists’. You wish you could open up his brain to understand why he does what he does.”

In an interview with Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Betty Bigombe recalls her first encounter, deep in the jungle in Northern Uganda, with one of Africa’s most brutal warlords, Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

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Betty Bigombe, 55, was awarded a major Dutch peace prize on 13 March for her work as a mediator in the conflict in which thousands of people died, over 80 thousand children were forced to fight, and an estimated 1,7 million people had to flee the fighting in her native Northern Uganda.

Face to face

Betty Bigombe is one of the very few people who have met the man held responsible for this face to face. Their encounter, 15 km deep into the jungle, is still very much alive in her mind, “like a big drama. Some of his people were singing religious songs and making recitations in case I had bad intentions. They poured oil on me that they used to protect themselves so I would be cleansed of any evil thoughts towards them. The whole scene was totally crazy.”

The Geuzenpenning is awarded each year to human rights defenders by an association founded by people involved in the Dutch resistance against Nazi occupation in 1940-45. Previous laureates include Czech President Vaclav Havel, Human Rights Watch, and the International Campaign for Tibet.
 

The complete interview with Betty Bigombe will soon be available in our radio series Africa in Progress, produced in partnership with radio stations in Africa.
 

She was conscious that she was risking her life, but she was determined to bring an end to the war. "I wanted to stop the suffering, that was my passion."
 

The meeting did not happen overnight. A born mediator, Betty Bigombe knew it would take time to gain Kony's trust. It took one year of careful preparation. After her appointment as young “Minister for pacification of the North” in the government of President Yoweri Museveni, Ms. Bigombe moved back to the volatile North. She staed in refugee camps and listened to the victims of the atrocities, many whose lips, noses and limbs had been cut off. She started seeking contacts with Kony’s commanders, through their wives in the villages and refugee camps.
 

“It was a calling. Sometimes the situation was very depressing, there was hunger, dead bodies, and sometimes a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, but how could you turn your back and run away from that?”

Just a girl

As a young woman minister she was not taken seriously. Why had the President sent just “a girl” out North? Was he not serious about ending the war? Was she perhaps his mistress?
 

Her determination was put to the test, later by Kony himself.
 

There were two aborted meetings before he finally showed up to meet her. They spoke for 5 hours. Only when he started calling her “ mother” in their native Acholi language, did she feel she had won an important psychological victory, as “a mother cannot want to hurt her children.”

'Pulling them by the balls' won´t do

Betty Bigombe believes in the patient art of negotiating. She disagrees with the late US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who according to her once said `you should just pull them by the balls and then their hearts and souls will follow´. You cannot start trusting your enemy overnight, she says. "You need time to build that trust and work behind the scene to find out who is a moderate, who is an extremist. Personalities are very important."
 

Her patience paid off, but not for long. Further negotiations with the LRA led to a lull in fighting and to peace talks that to her dismay were called off by the Museveni government, close to the signing of an agreement in 1994. Feeling betrayed by people she says had vested interests in the war, she left her country to take up a job with the World Bank in Washington. Fighting resumed.
 

She got involved in the Ugandan peace process again in 2003. Once more, she sought contact with the rebels. This time, she felt it was important to involve the international community, because "this adds credibility to the talks", and the Sudanese government which had been supplying arms to the LRA. This led to another meeting with Joseph Kony who meanwhile had been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, rape and sexual enslavement.

Same Kony

Kony was more "sophisticated" this time, she remembers. He had more demands, but "it was the same Joseph Kony who talks forever and tries to defend whatever he did".
 

With an ICC arrest warrant against him and Ugandan government troops tracking him down, Joseph Kony is believed to be hiding in Southern Darfur, with the protection of the Sudanese government.
 

The guns may have fallen silent in Northern Uganda, but the community is deeply fractured, Betty Bigombe says. What is needed is not only rebuilding physical infrastructures, but "restructuring peoples' lives". And justice still needs to be done.
 

Betty Bigombe believes that it is important that the LRA leader is arrested, as he and his rebels are now causing suffering in other countries in the region, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Sudan.
 

The last time Betty Bigombe spoke with Joseph Kony was back in November 2008. He no longer answers his cellular phone.