By Mulengera Reporters
In a bid to frustrate and constrain Dr. Kizza Besigye’s politics going into 2026 campaigns and beyond, a top General inside Gen Museveni’s orbit has offered to part with billions of shillings to buy the Katonga property where the newly-formed Peoples Front for Freedom (aka Freedom Party) is headquartered.
The General (names withheld) is elderly, powerful, wealthy and connected. He actually has a huge high-rise property on one of the prime plots of land next door and has been sending emissaries to Katonga owner Mzee Chaapa Karuhanga offering much more than the property’s market value.
Arguably one of the wealthiest opposition leaders in Uganda, Chaapa Karuhanga currently lives in Southern Africa where his lucrative consultancy business is thriving in three SADC countries including Zambia and Botswana. He is wealthy and generous because God gave him with both hands. In late 2022, he relocated to the SADC region after the political environment in Kampala became so complicated for him and on the day he fled through Tanzania, he had just survived being abducted by Drone men.
Gratefully, he has remained committed to the broader struggle aimed at making Uganda a better-governed country, which is why he has no problem having Dr. Besigye’s PFF group operate from Katonga without having to pay him even a penny. Even if they had the money to pay him rent, Chaapa Karuhanga isn’t someone who would constrain the broader liberation struggle by levying and accepting such charges.
In the newly-formed PFF, he sits on the advisory council of elders whose chairperson is Dr. Kizza Besigye who has been incarcerated in Luzira prison since last October. Knowledgeable sources say that Chaapa Karuhanga has so far flatly declined offers to sell his beloved Katonga property to regime-minded buyers who are motivated by desire to frustrate Besigye’s PFF whose momentum they have calculated will be slowed down once Katonga ceases to be their war command centre as PFF Executive Chairman Erias Lukwago likes calling it.
Mzee Chaapa, who has opposed Gen Museveni for much of the period he has served as President, would rather sell to comrades in PFF at a discounted price (which they can pay in instalments just like his great friend and peer Garuga Musinguzi did for FDC Najjanankumbi property) than handing his hard-earned property over to wealth buyers who are hostile and whose only objective it is to suffocate, frustrate and scatter the PFF struggle.
Otherwise, the unnamed General remains more than prepared to pay any price Chaapa Karuhanga names the moment he makes up his mind to sell. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
