By Mulengera Reporters
The list of tycoons fallen business mogul Mukwano Karmali mentored is leaked here for the time-and also their individual shocking money-making secrets.
One of these is Simba Telecom boss Patrick Bitature whose school fees in the UK University Mukwano paid. After school, Mukwano gave him a job in his cash office and when he got tired of working, Mukwano connected him to Dubai tycoons and even gave him start up capital.
Their friendship started in Entebbe Uganda Airlines office where Bitature’s mother worked as a secretary. Mukwano would buy his airtickets through that lady and that’s how younger Bitature admired him.
Bitature paid back by working hard to succeed and last week when Mukwano died he chaired the funeral organizing committee. The other tycoon Mukwano helped was property owner William Byaruhanga who is also the Attorney General in the government of Uganda.
Byaruhanga, who was the external lawyer for Mukwano group for long, owns many big businesses including Village Mall Bugolobi, Rwenzori Coutts among others. Indeed on his death bed, Mukwano sent for Byaruhanga and Bitature and bid them farewell moments before his death.
The other is Col Robert Sekidde of Seroma Enterprises who became the owner of a very prime commercial building or property courtesy of Mukwano’s large heart. Back in the day as he struggled to grow his empire, Seroma was approached by his wife Margaret Sekidde at their Good Shed offices.
She had been contacted by Mukwano who told her he had a strong feeling of God directing him to sell his building to them (not that he was broke and looking for money). This is the Mukwano Center building behind Shoprite. It’s the building next to Mega Standards supermarket for Aponye.
The Sekiddes said they don’t have the money. Mukwano said he was selling and the buyer had to be them. He went as far as reducing the price to $5m and even accepted to be paid in installments.
They took the building and the rest is history. Years later when Equity Bank moved to attach Church House land on Kampala Road and Plot after then Archbishop Henry Orombi failed to pay up, Sekidde offered his Mukwano property as security in order to save the Church of Christ from being disgraced.
To this day, the Sekiddes credit their riches to Mukwano. Yet that isn’t all. Mukwano also mentored and financially built up famous controversial city lawyer and University law don Sam Mayanja.
Mayanja, who remains very close to the Mukwano family, says in the 1990s when he had just returned from exile he didn’t have many friends for guidance and advice on how to begin a new life in Kampala. It was Mukwano who became his friend, financier and foster parent.
Mayanja was then working as Company Secretary for Uganda Development Bank. He would every evening pick his kids from school and drive to Mukwano where he would have evening tea with the big man who would give him deals and counsel him on how to succeed in Kampala.
Mayanja says Mukwano’s resilience gave people like him hope that after all life was still possible in Uganda which had become a laughing stock of the world because of the way the ruinous regimes of Amin and Obote had messed up things.
That when he got tired of being employed with UDB and desired to start his private legal practice, Mukwano directed his son Alykakhan Karmali to avail Mayanja with all the resources he desired to launch successfully. Mayanja went ahead to have a very successful private legal practice up to this day when he is among the few private lawyers the President retains to defend his cases.
Mayanja recalls Mukwano being a generous giver who was always cautious to avoid humiliating beneficiaries of his philanthropy. That his office would on Fridays be crowded with hundreds of the urban poor who were used to getting their weekend package from him.
He was a giver who never despised those coming to him for help and that one didn’t have to be known to him that much.
A fluent Luganda speaker, Mayanja recalls Mukwano cheerfully referring to everybody as “Seebo or Nyabo.” Yet the man who was bred from Bukandula in Mpigi/Gomba also mentored many others including city lawyer Marvin Baryaruha, Robert Sawa and Katarikawe who later quit Mukwano Group employment to go and found a law firm with Justice Kwesiga.
For Makerere Chancellor Prof Ezra Suruma (also former Finance Minister), Mukwano was the workaholic who repeatedly reminded those he closely worked with to always keep their word because man is always as good as his word.
Suruma recalls closely relating with forex-seeking Mukwano in his then capacity as Director research at BoU. Mukwano badly needed forex to import raw materials to commence the manufacturing of soap which had become very scarce.
He says that the humble Mukwano was part of all the discussions that were had regarding the stabilization of the Uganda shillings under the guidance of the World Bank and IMF in the late 1980s when Museveni had just become President. (For comments, call, text or whatsapp us on 0703164755 or email us at mulengera2040@gmail.com).
