Mr George Bashukwa and his wife Perepetwa. COURTESY PHOTO.
Society may intend prison to be a place of retribution and correction but much more than that, one retired prison officer in Uganda believes God has used it as a place of refinement and transformation.
Mr George Bashukwa started serving with the Uganda Prisons Service in 1963, and later saw this as an opportunity to transform the lives of inmates, their families, and other victims of crime by introducing them to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
He rose through the ranks during his time of service to become a principal officer.
Bashukwa told a local news daily in a report published 7 Feb. 2020 that his first posting was to Patiko Prison in Gulu District in 1964 and four years later was he promoted to prisons corporal and transferred to Kigo prisons. He later served at Isimba, Bihanga, Bugungu, Kakika, and Mbarara main prisons.
At Bugungu, he joined the Christian Lite Foundation, an inmates and wardens Christian foundation where he started preaching to inmates.
His retirement from prison duty occurred 1994, which allowed him engage deeply in evangelical activities within prisons in western Uganda.
“I started in Mbarara, Kabale and Tooro. I am the coordinator for southwestern region prisons preachers. God has done wonders in this ministry and I hope I will be doing this until God calls me,” Bashukwa told the Daily Monitor.
On a daily, he ensures that he at least talks to several inmates on how they can turn their lives to God so that they can be resettled in communities or face a long life in prison with faith.
“The work of a prisons officer is hectic that even after all these years of retirement you feel there is a lot you missed doing. The prisoners have life, challenges but the greatest thing is they also can repent. That is why I wake up every day thinking about what I can tell them to change their lives,” Bashukwa said.
The prisoners have life, challenges but the greatest thing is they also can repent, he explained.
There are more than 65,000 inmates in Uganda, and some do acknowledge that coming to prison was probably the most profound thing that ever happened them, because they encountered Christ.
Born in 1938, Bashukwa went to Ruhanga Sub Grade Primary School in 1952, Itojo Primary School and later to Kyamate Primary School where President Museveni was a year ahead of him. He joined Kako Junior Secondary School but dropped out and he escaped from home because his parents wanted him to marry.
“It is then that I got a chance to join prisons in 1963 as a recruit warder,” he said.
