An ugly reality: Tale of a distressed damsel

By Frank R Kasoroza

In the beginning, it was rosy. For 14 years, he frequently topped our chart hits.

Aspiring musicians from all over Uganda wanted to be just like him. He dined with revered Generals, had breakfast with Dr. Besigye at the latter's expansive Kasangati home and his Only Love Beach was a cash cow.

Then in 2017, he joined politics with Trump-like swagger and Bojo like rhetoric. Unlike these agitators, he is no blonde.

He changed his hairdo from his often shabby dreadlocks to a fairish even boyish simplified "French cut"!

Within a year of being in our August house, he recruited and led a team of errant mostly Baganda MPs into an embarrassing fist fight with NRM MPs on the floor of parliament. The Rt. Bon Speaker of the house was aghast.

Never had she ever seen such unjustified unruliness. But he was not done yet. In a 2018 by election in Bugiri, he sided with a certain former university guild president against Dr. Besigye's preferred candidate.

The inevitable split between him and Dr. Besigye was now in full glare. Like Macron tried to court Trump before publicly falling out, Dr. Besigye's eventual fall out with his prodigy would pass a point of no return in August of 2018 at Arua.

But August 2018 also marked this youthful legislator's contempt of all state authority.

Events immediately after Arua - incarceration and eventual flight to America to "seek specialised medical treatment" where he instead spent most of his time dining and wining with DC lobbyists, writing columns in the Washington Post and grandstanding - showed that his allegiance was no longer to Uganda and his supporters BUT to an American based lobbyist group represented by a certain Robert Amsterdam with a global disastrous streak from Thailand- Thaksin Shinawatra, Venezuela, Russia - Mikhail Khodorkovsky in its wake.

But in fact, these US visits started less than a year after being elected, in a by election, by the people of Kyadondo East County. Foreign visits also included sojourns to Jamaica where he, at least once with wife and children in tow, proceeded to "cut money" and "make money" at successive Rebel Music concerts while maintaining, perhaps a better word is alleging, that Ugandans were "oppressed and lacked freedom to express themselves."

The first time she came to our offices, her expensive Dior perfume and Gucci purse could not hide the worry and fear she felt. Inside, she was slowly drifting in and out of a nightmare last experienced in 1994.

By night, he was a calm and almost paragon husband to her and father to the adorable children she bore him.

By night, Camp Wine at Magere a few 20 or so kms outside Kampala was an Oasis with the only noise coming from the hum of frogs and the occasional dog barking at LDUs keeping the neighborhood safe from criminals.

By day, it was a different story. First on the scene were the usual hang-ons that were his crew. They all possessed queer names like Mutwe, Nubian et al. For all his literary ingenuity Naipul couldn't make up these names or even describe these characters.

Together they plotted and accepted interviews from specific media personalities. They never cast a sideways glance at the lady of the house. To them, she did not exist. After all, she was no Naiga, no Nantume or even Nakawunde.

This sad state only got more confusing every time the man of the house, in his splendor, needed proper legal and strategic advice on technical issues. He would summon a certain David Lewis and a fair nosed Kataana.

Both Lewis and Kataana had had close ties with the enemy - president Museveni. They had met him on numerous occasions.

He had graced and financed, twice, an annual East African students conference organized by them at the International University of East Africa in Kansanga. Lewis' education to the level of Masters of Law at Bojo's Alma Mater of Oxford was sponsored by " the old man with a hat" - Museveni.

She noticed her husband always had a calm and measured demeanor around these two. He nearly always sounded smart after meeting these two.

With these two around, it always seemed to her like she was taking a leisurely barefooted stroll in Pope Francis' immaculately kept centuries old gardens at the Vatican.

As soon as they left it was back to the backward tribal cheerio with Mutwe and crew. Before coming to us, she had sought the advice of a friendly Catholic prelate.

He had even made a speech at Rubaga on that sunny Saturday morning when they said their “I do’s”.

He, like Mutwe, had sided with Bizonto in choosing tribalism as a genuine agenda to be promoted by their latest acquisition - a little known political party last heard of by a select few individuals when Dr. Kiggundu led the Electoral Commission in 2005.

It was, she feared, the beginning of another 1994.

April 1994 had begun with the usual pourings of rain across the land of 1000 hills.

What was different was that rather than use his immense wealth to unite all peoples’ in his country, Felicien Kabuga, driven by anger, had turned his vast economic enterprises including the hip-hop and satirical - Bizonto like satire - radio RTLM into a killing enterprise.

The machete’s were for only one purpose - extermination of any body with a liking of and or even a litre of Tutsi blood in them. First on the chopping block was Madame Agathe UwilingiyImana and her husband killed by Col. Bagosora and Maj.Bernard Ntuyahaga.

She was worried for herself, her children and this beautiful pearl Uganda.

If Wine and his increasingly tribal group were somehow able to usurp the reigns of political power what would happen to her and the comfortable life she has helped build for them?!

Have you spoken to him about it?

I asked her! “Yes” she answered, her long lean legs bereft of Gucci shoes toying with the smoothness of our woolen carpet and his reply was “Look at me, am I a savage person? My conscience is clear.”

She then added, “he had literally quoted Pol -Pot.” I often wonder! Are his the hands that broke this Pearl?!