Karibuni mwaka mupya (welcome to the New Year) and the best of the coming 12 months ahead. After joining New Yorkers in Time Square to welcome 2012 yesterday , this morning, without any hangovers, I sat at the table to have my first coffee of the new year and on the table with my laptop open, I reviewed this article below written in 2009 about Museveni’s family governance of Uganda.
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| Yoweri Museveni, his son and Commander of Special Forces Muhoozi Kainerugaba and wife Janet who is Minister for Karamoja |
The article focuses on how many businesses in Uganda are owned and run by the Museveni family and friends. My attention will not be on the negative aspect of this family empire, but on the positive contribution of the business development.
Looking at the list of business provided, one should take comfort that these are mostly physical assets which any future Ugandan government will take over and re-distribute to its citizens. In essence, this is not a loss, as most would like us to believe, but a positive contribution to Uganda’s development. One positive attribute to this is the number of employments these businesses provide to Ugandans.
I am bringing up this now, to prevent and avoid what happened in 1978-79 when Ugandan exiles returned and wreaked havoc by destroying and looting businesses and houses once owned and run by Nubians. The people who did this were Ugandans who later had to go to the international community to seek money for reconstruction and rehabilitation of what they purposely ruined and destroyed. It would be madness if after Museveni’s fall Ugandans wreaked havoc at Garden City simply because it was once owned by the Museveni family.
Instead of focusing on internal destruction, Ugandans need to pay attention to what the Museveni family and friends are doing outside the country and plan to reposes them. Any development the Museveni family and friends are doing in Uganda, to me, that is positive contribution.
In 1979 great schools in Uganda such as Saint Charles Lwanga College Koboko were looted and destroyed simply because it happened to be in Amin’s village. What kind of nonsense is this leave alone the madness portrayed by the so-called post Amin leadership?
The following is what the Ugandan journalist and writer Timothy Kalyegira wrote two years ago about President Museveni’s family ownership of Uganda:
On March 11, 2009, the news magazine, the Independent, founded by Andrew Mwenda, published a cover story titled “Family rule in Uganda”.
The article examined the structure of effective political power in Uganda today and explained:
“Museveni has appointed his wife, Mrs Janet Museveni, as state minister for Karamoja; his brother, Gen. Salim Saleh, formerly a minister of state for micro finance, as Senior Presidential Advisor on defence, a job at the same rank as a cabinet minister; his brother-in-law, Sam Kuteesa, as minister of foreign affairs; his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, commander of the Special Forces, his daughter Natasha Karugire, Private Secretary to the president in charge of Household.
“Museveni has also appointed his nephew, Joseph Ekwau (son of his younger sister Violet Kajubiri), Private Secretary to the President in charge of Medical Services (HIV//AIDS); his sister Miriam Karugaba as Administrator at State House (she is semi-literate) and her husband (therefore Museveni’s brother-in-law), Jimmy Karugaba, as Officer in Charge (OC) of the Accounts Department at State House. Museveni has also appointed his sister-in-law, Jolly Sabune, Executive Director of Cotton Development Authority; his niece-in-law, Hope Nyakairu, Undersecretary for Administration and Finance at State House; his cousin Bright Rwamirama, State Minister for Animal Husbandry; his other cousin, Faith Katana Mirembe, Assistant Private Secretary in charge of Education and Social Services and Justus Karuhanga, Private Secretary to the President in charge of Legal Affairs who is a nephew to Mrs Museveni.”
The article later added: “Many observers say that increasing family influence in government has gone hand in hand with the informalisation of power. Thus, although formal authority is vested in official institutions, effective power is wielded by this informal clique of family and kin. The official structure presents a semblance of national ethno-regional and religious diversity to win the regime legitimacy. The informal but highly powerful structure of the closest of the president’s family and kin is the “real” government.”
That edition of the Independent became the best-selling edition they have ever published and it had to do an additional print run to quench the intense public interest in the story. The day after the story was published, according to Mwenda, a furious President Museveni held a meeting of his family members at State House and said he was going to arrest the Managing Editor, Andrew Mwenda.
However, some of his family urged him not to make that move, as it would give the story greater publicity than it was already getting. They settled on the idea of keeping watch on Mwenda and then one day, at the slightest opportunity, say if he drove past a red traffic light or his car road license expired, arrest him and claim that this was the real reason for the arrest. The story, of course, confirmed in print what many Ugandans knew in fact.
However, it still came as a sensation to thousands of Ugandans who did not know, up to that point, the extent to which national power had been concentrated in the hands of one family, the Museveni family and that there was, in reality, no Uganda government in existence. Whoever thinks they work for a Uganda government is, in effect, working as a servant to the Museveni family.
How, then, did this Museveni family, pretending to be a government, really work? In the middle of the year, a crisis erupted at the national electricity firm, Umeme, the successor to the Uganda Electricity Board (U.E.B) There were all sorts of abuses at the company, the main one being that meters had been tampered with and Ugandans were paying much higher for their power than they should. Also, Umeme, it was said, had been conning the Uganda government of millions of shillings in the arrangement by which the Uganda government was supposed to be subsidizing Umeme each year.
When the crisis turned into a public outcry, President Yoweri Museveni asked his half-brother, Gen. Salim Saleh, to set up a committee to investigate the problem. Computers were seized at Umeme’s offices. “Police anti-fraud squad raided the offices of Umeme, Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA), Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL) and confiscated their computers. Police also raided the home of [Umeme Managing Director Paul] Mare. They also raided the office of the energy ministry Permanent Secretary, Fred Kaliisa, and confiscated his computer too,” reported the Independent in its Aug. 11, 2009 edition. These first appeared at this link: http://oneuganda.com/?p=759
Let us recap. Ugandans were told that the government had sold off U.E.B to the South African national electricity company Eskom and this new entity was what later came to be re-named Umeme. The crisis of 2009 was the most serious Umeme had faced in Uganda so far. But something odd was noticeable: no single board director or other official of Eskom, the supposed parent company, flew in from South Africa to Uganda to deal with the crisis or at least address a press conference to allay public frustration and anger.
Instead, President Museveni appointed his brother to probe the Umeme crisis. This should have raised the question of who actually owned Umeme. Somehow, the mainstream media failed to ask the question, at least publicly. A source told the Uganda Record on Saturday Dec. 19, 2009 that “Stanbic Bank belongs to the [First] family. They are paid 200million [Uganda shillings] per month as administration fees via an escrow account in [South Africa].”
An escrow account is a kind of temporary account awaiting verification of goods and services.Sources at Stanbic Bank talk of cheques being signed to pay the Museveni family “administrative fees” even though they do not have supporting documentation to justify or explain the payment.
The way the Museveni family is paid royalties, or rent, by escrow accounts for their ownership of the title deeds of the Stanbic Bank business name in Uganda (what was once the Uganda Commercial Bank, Uganda’s largest banking group) is the way it is paid for their ownership of other apparently South African or foreign-owned businesses in Uganda.
These sources say that it is Stanbic Bank that is used to finance businesses like Roofings Ltd, Speke Resort Munyonyo, the J&M Hotel along the Kampala-Entebbe highway, businessman Hassan Basajjabalaba’s hotel and Kampala International University, all of which actually belong to the Museveni family.
Information gathered by a team of journalists at the Daily Monitor in June shed astonishing light on the extent to which the Museveni family has taken control of Uganda. This information was shared with the Uganda Record.
In 2002, some officials at the African Development Bank (ADB) headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, and who had once held President Museveni in high esteem, were shocked to discover, after some investigation, that the money that built Garden City shopping complex in Kampala had been from a loan borrowed from the ADB.
However, the ADB officials said that this loan was then used to appear to finance the construction of Garden City, and yet in reality the money that built Garden City had been looted from the Ugandan treasury and the ADB loan was used by the Museveni family to give the Garden City project the appearance of legitimacy.
Employees working at Roofings Ltd., owned by Janet Museveni, openly tell their colleagues about how they have been forwarded to the company by State House and how it is owned by the Museveni family. The chairman of Stanbic Bank Uganda, Hannington Karuhanga, is not without coincidence a cousin to Janet Museveni.
This ownership of Kampala International University is the reason (and there is no other reason) that explains why Hassan Basajjabalaba is repeatedly given bailouts by the Bank of Uganda on orders of President Yoweri Museveni. Sometimes, it almost appears that Museveni is forcing Basajjabalaba to take the money.
Appearing as a guest on Capital FM’s programme Desert Island Discs on Easter Sunday on April 8, 2007, Museveni was asked by the interviewer Desiree Barlow what he planned to do with his life if or when he finally retired as head of state. Museveni was categorical. He said he would go into the hotel industry. Those who do not know what has been going on in Uganda under Museveni were bound to be puzzled. Museveni does not seem like a person interested in the hotel and hospitality industry. Why would he mention hotels as his retirement pursuit?
And since he usually likes to plan his life well in advance, was he going to start taking interest in hotels when he turned 75 or had he already started laying the groundwork for that?
If the Independent magazine thought it had reported on First Family rule in Uganda in its March 11, 2009 edition, it had only touched the tip of the story.
Below is a list of the Museveni family and henchmen’s property in Uganda as compiled by the investigative teams at the Daily Monitor and the Uganda Record. Notice the number of hotels listed:
Akamwesi — Salim Saleh and Hope Mwesigye
Aya Hotel — Yoweri Museveni
J & M Hotel — Janet Museveni
Greenland Towers — Janet Museveni
Roofings Ltd — Janet Museveni
Sameer Dairy Corporation — Yoweri Museveni
Malaysia Furniture — Janet Museveni
Nakumatt complex — Yoweri Museveni
Cham Towers — Yoweri Museveni
Crested Towers — Yoweri Museveni
Imperial Royale Hotel — Yoweri Museveni
Imperial Resort Beach Hotel — Yoweri Museveni
Bidco factory — Yoweri Museveni
Umeme — Muhoozi Kainerugaba
Uganda Telecom — Muhoozi Kainerugaba
Entebbe International Airport — Yoweri Museveni
Orient Bank — Sam Kuteesa
Garden City — Yoweri Museveni
Zain — Salim Saleh
Warid Telecom — Amelia Kyambadde
MTN Uganda — Yoweri Museveni
ARVs drug factory — Yoweri Museveni
Speke Resort Munyonyo — Yoweri Museveni
WBS Television — Yoweri Museveni
The investigating teams at the Daily Monitor, by Dec. 2009, were not yet sure about the ownership of the Serena Kampala Hotel and the International Conference Centre. Information from the Daily Monitor indicates that there was an arrangement that if the Aga Khan was to take over, or buy the former Nile Hotel (now Serena Hotel), then President Yoweri Museveni would own the Bujagali Dam Project and if the Aga Khan wished to own the Bujagali project, then the Serena Hotel would be owned by Museveni.The details of this were still under investigation.
In the eastern town of Jinja, residents had been frustrated by the poor condition of their roads. But when the Bidco factory that produces cooking oil and other products was established in Jinja, suddenly the road that had lay in ruins for years was fully renovated from its start to where it ends right at the Bidco factory. It is a well-known secret in Jinja that the Bidco factory there belongs to Museveni.
Never has greed been so naked, never have the national assets of Uganda been stripped so completely by a single family. The story of the looting of Uganda’s property and the attempt to take total and single-handed control of the Ugandan economy is an even more incredible story than Museveni’s guerrilla adventures.
The revelations of how Uganda found itself in 2009 under the control of a single, as reported by the Independent magazine and investigations by the Daily Monitor and Uganda Record teams is certainly one of the biggest stories of the year, if not in Ugandan history.
Comments made in this article are entirely those of the author of the article and are not necessarily those held or opined by The London Evening Post.
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