By John V Sserwaniko
Wilberforce Kisamba Mugerwa (73), NRM Minister for 15 years, has spilled President Museveni’s secrets. In his new book (titled Kisamba Mugerwa’s Focused Journey; a Tale of Courageous Strides), the man from Bamunanika exposes how Museveni treats and responds to Ministers who seek to retire. Referring to his own 2004 experience when he had to quit for an international job, Kisamba implies Museveni never takes resignations lightly. He falls short of saying the man from Rwakitura takes such to be an insult. It’s something for which one can easily be misunderstood and get into problems with Museveni. From the Kisamba story, its clear Museveni apprehensively reacts to such situations.
HOW IT HAPPENED;
The year was 2004. As Agriculture Minister, Kisamba was in Pretoria South Africa for a conference on sustainable development. Christine Rebecca, his wife since 1975 & a PhD student at Rhodes University, had joined him at the hotel. As they slept, a phone call. It was someone appreciative of his profile as an excellent minister with a professional background in academia. It related to a job offer at International Policy Research Institute of Soil Research in Washington DC. “Are you ready to take it up?” Kisamba was asked. They wanted someone to serve as regional Director for Africa, Asia & Latin America. The caller was a search committee member. The salary was 4 times higher than what Museveni paid his ministers. Kisamba consulted his wife and followed up with an email in the morning. Besides being Minister, Kisamba was also MP Bamunanika County which he had represented since 1980. Notwithstanding a few disappointments here and there, Kisamba was happy and doing well at MAAIF. But Constituency demands were increasingly becoming too much on him as a person. According to his wife Christine Rebecca, the constituency demands sometimes became too much and Kisamba had to financially struggle to even provide for his family. Constituents had insatiable material and financial needs that Kisamba sometimes struggled paying school fees for his own children studying abroad. On top of that he had 60 constituency students whose tuition he was paying. For a politician that was never corrupt, that was too much money. So this international job offer couldn’t have come at a better time. Weeks earlier, Kisamba had come under pressure from family members to quit the Uganda government politics because of the bad image the international media was beginning to portray. His first born Proscovia Kisamba, who lives & works in UK, urged him to quit because of the bad picture the Western media was beginning to portray about the GoU. This partly resulted from the anti-Besigye violence that was unleashed during and after 2001 elections. Kisamba felt this was being unfair because to him, a lot had been achieved under Museveni’s NRM. In another engagements, his nieces mothered by his late sister Norah Musoke corroborated Proscovia’s concerns during a luncheon in UK. So by the time the Washington DC job offer came, Kisamba was living under this dilemma. Yet that wasn’t all. The way he had been reshuffled prior (sometimes after only 2 years in a docket) had made him realize he would totally be dropped some day. He didn’t want to wait to be fired and begin to regret forfeiting such a well-paying job (4 times higher). This is someone whose cabinet posting had been protested by some bush war fighters on grounds that he didn’t fight. As the NRAs fought, Kisamba was DP MP in Obote’s Parliament. Though poorly paid, he proudly recalls noise he made exposing UNLA Luwero atrocities as Bamunanika MP (1980-85).
CONSULTS BACK IN K’LA;
On return to Kampala, Kisamba secretly consulted two best friends Prof Edward Kiddu Makubuya who was Attorney General and Gerald Sendawula who was Finance Minister and fellow DP through the 1980s. To them, he expressed fears of being misunderstood in case information leaked and Museveni got to know of it through rumors. Wouldn’t Museveni, who endured Luwero bush war fighters’ criticisms and made him minister, feel betrayed? In his characteristic legalistic approach, Makubuya guided Kisamba on how one can legally resign from cabinet and Parliament. Sendawula told him in Museveni’s Uganda a cabinet minister being allow to resign wasn’t that easy. He shared his own experience; how he had several times requested to retire to his private businesses but Museveni wasn’t letting him go. This increased Kisamba’s dilemma and nervousness. The truth is there was family and even financial pressures for him to move to a better paying job. And he had to act promptly because the guys in Washington had given him a time frame within which to communicate his decision. Financial pressures yes because for someone who had been MP and Minister for so many years, Kisamba was yet to complete his two storied house in Kikonda village in Bamunanika. The wife kept wondering why someone who worked so hard would struggle to even pay tuition for his own children. Consensus in the house was that platform politics, and the resultant Bamunanika constituency, was financially too expensive for him. Kisamba says in his book it took him 14 days to get Museveni to share what he considered emergency. Sendawula and Makubuya encouraged him to follow his heart and not fear being misunderstood by the President. Meanwhile, he had sought permission from the Prime Minister to officially be away for two weeks. He then travelled to the US, met and interacted with executives of the organization that was to give him a job to confirm the offer was real. Actually three other equally eminent scholars had been headhunted and asked to become interested but through the interview process, Kisamba emerged the best. After properly securing himself in Washington he returned ready to face Museveni and break the news. Before going to meet Museveni, Kisamba fasted and prayed as advised by Sendawula who had to be on treatment in Nsambya hospital in order to eventually be let go.
MEETING M7;
Kisamba says Museveni told him being offered a big job in the US was good for him but he didn’t have to resign. He advised him to take up the contract but stay as Minister. Museveni assured him it was possible and he wouldn’t even drop him in the subsequent reshuffle. How could this work out? Museveni’s answer only escalated Kisamba’s dilemma. Museveni advised that instead of writing a resignation letter, Kisamba should just write thanking him for the opportunity to serve this far and ask for permission to be away for some time. This meant he would still hold the MAAIF docket in absentia. And to Museveni, it didn’t matter whether output at the Ministry would decline and Kisamba is perceived by the public to be incompetently holding onto the job. On seeing Kisamba wasn’t enthusiastic about his proposal, Museveni suggested a way forward that would enable Kisamba eat and keep his cake at the same time. He advised him to organize a luncheon at his Bamunanika residence (it was still an incomplete home) and invite all opinion leaders from parish and sub county levels. Museveni attended and told the leaders that “I’m the one sending him abroad to go and make new friends for Uganda.” In the same speech, he told the gathering this doesn’t mean being a Minister wasn’t a better job than what Kisamba was taking up. Making new friends for Uganda was as important as any other assignment, Museveni clarified. At that same luncheon, 7 politicians spontaneously declared ambition to replace Kisamba and they had to be reminded the seat would effectively become vacant after Speaker of Parliament (then Edward Sekandi) proclaimed it so. After the function, Museveni asked Kisamba not to write to Sekandi informing him of his departure until after he reshuffled his cabinet and dropped him. The 7 aspirants at the luncheon included Ali Ndawula, then a popular kadongokamu presenter on radio Simba, who eventually won the 2004 by-elections and served up to 2011 when he lost to Kisamba-backed JC Muyingo (now Education Minister). Ndawula had belonged to Bakayimbira Dramactors where Charles James Senkubuge mentored him in comedy and drama acting.
LIFE IN WASHINGTON;
On relocating to Washington, Kisamba was posted in Addis Ababa where he served as Regional Director for International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He had office in Washington DC, Costa Rica, New Dehli & Addis. He learnt many things there including the essentiality of keeping time. As part of his orientation, he was to make a lecture before his IFPRI superiors and was at the Washington venue 16 minutes earlier. He thought the others weren’t coming but 5 minutes to time the room was full; everybody was in the house. He also deepened his global connections. Kisamba, who Museveni took to MAAIF after Specioza Kazibwe drowned in the valley dams’ saga, also became more IT-compliant as the IFPRI job required having many meetings via teleconferencing. His work was to mostly support national research organizations (NARO in our case) to grow their research capabilities. In Washington, IFPRI bosses asked him to pioneer a Division that would promote and oversee food policy research in Africa, Asia & Latin America. Accordingly he had to travel widely and recalls being questioned by US authorities at one of the airports when they looked at his passport and found it suspicious that an African would be travelling so often through the US airports. In Addis and Washington, Kisamba rubbed shoulders with heads of many African research organizations including Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), ASRECA etc. The IFPRI policy encouraged top bosses to take up teaching and supervision of graduate students besides the organization’s main work. Kisamba took up an offer at Williams College of Massachusetts were many finance ministry and BoU technocrats trained public finance. It was here that professorship was bestowed upon Kisamba. As a visiting professor, he gave public lectures on rural economy, poverty, natural resources management as well as food and nutrition policies. Some of these connections benefited Bugema University on whose Foundation Committee he sat. CoU-owned Ndejje University, where his wife was Council member under Prof Mwaka, also benefited from these academia connections. Kisamba later became Ndejje Chancellor, a position he holds to date.
M7 LURES HIM BACK;
Towards the end of Kisamba’s contract at IFPRI, Museveni who apparently had keenly been following his works in Washington & Addis, reached out seeking to harness his new connections and experiences to make Uganda a better place. Museveni, who reached out through Keith Muhakanizi, specifically wanted Kisamba to use his new expertise to write the development vision for Uganda. This became Vision 2040. Muhakanizi had to travel to Addis to ask Kisamba to come and head NPA which Gerald Sendawula says was on the verge of collapse due to inept leadership. Museveni now wanted NPA to become the government think tank on matters of long term development planning. Kisamba, who says he made very good money from the IFPRI job to complete his house, was pondering sinking deeper into the academia and the Muhakanizi delegation struggled to convince him to return and help Museveni raise the profile of NPA. Government was changing its development strategy from MDGs-enshrined poverty eradication to wealth creation and long term planning. “It was a difficult decision for me,” writes Kisamba whose traumatic experiences for 5 years as a back bench MP in Obote II’s Parliament will be shared in our subsequent article. Voters opportunistically begged him to return to Bamunanika, a request he flatly rejected and instead endorsed JC Muyingo in 2011. With the IFPRI salary, he was able to construct a modern house at Kikonda village and to also purchase more land to expand his farming activities. And today, he easily ranks among greater Luwero’s most successful commercial farmers. He also used his NSSF pension to consolidate farming activities in Kikonda.
BECOMING MINISTER;
In 1988, Museveni attended a CoU fundraising for Luwero Diocese whose pioneer Anglican Bishop Minsuseera Bugimbi complained of political marginalization. The cleric wondered why, despite all the sacrifice residents made to bring NRM to power, Luwero didn’t have a single minister. The crowd approvingly cheered as Museveni uneasily turned in his seat. Kisamba, who was already the NRC MP representing Bamunanika, humorously recalls seeing Museveni scanning through the congregation “as if he was looking for somebody to appoint there and then.” Days later, Kisamba who deeply rooted in the church was invited to State House Entebbe. He had been an outspoken back bencher who had been elected on individual merit since parties, including his DP, had been banned. He had also famously chaired the (NRC’s) privileges committee of Parliament which moved government to buy cars for MPs. Before joining the expanded NRC, Kisamba had prominently served as pioneer Resistance Council 5 Chairman for great Luwero which covered current Nakasongora and Nakaseke districts. But this State House invite was his first close one on one meeting with Museveni who then was a very revolutionary popular leader. There was no caucus then through which Museveni would regularly have met & known loyal MPs. Besides the NRC work, Kisamba still held his teaching/research job at MISR. And indeed after meeting Museveni in Entebbe, he as scheduled travelled for research field work in Karamoja. This was part of his research consultancy on land tenure systems in pastoralist communities. In Entebbe, Museveni found Kisamba very insightful and tasked him to write for him a paper titled Luwero Triangle Rehabilitation Plan. He gave him then powerful PSST Emmanuel Mutebile to be his contact person. It was like a consultancy which the state was to pay him for and Mutebile had to handle the payment. He was also to deliver the document to the President once Kisamba was done. On his 3rd day in Karamoja, Kisamba travelled from Kabong to Kotido. As you can imagine, roads then were impassable and it wasn’t uncommon for people to take a nap during the journey. Indeed as Kisamba rested, his driver Mustapha listened to radio Uganda news. It was a cabinet reshuffle and Kisamba had been appointed Minister in Charge of Luwero Triangle. “This Entebbe meeting must have been an interview,” he excitedly said to himself. During the discussion, Museveni liked Kisamba’s views on how Luwero would be lifted from poverty through boosting house hold incomes, accessing people to credit facilities and donating iron sheets to enable people rebuild homes that were ravaged by war. It was also about rebuilding schools, hospitals, police posts and sub county headquarters which the NRA war had razed to the ground. The docket was part of the Presidency. Kisamba was allocated a one-roomed small office on 3rd floor President’s Office on Parliamentary Buildings. It was full of cobweb and in the middle one was a very old table which the new Minister used to do his work. It was a one man’s show. Only him and no other employee. The PS Presidency assigned him a secretary who sat 4 rooms away. The docket covered the old Luwero district, Mubende and parts of Mpigi-all the way from Nansana to Kafu; Kiboga and bordered Hoima and Masindi. There was no budget because the FY1988/89 was already on. It was in this docket, when some modest funding was eventually allocated in FY1989/90, that Kisamba pioneered what later metamorphosed into the Entandikwa scheme covering the whole country. Originally designed to cover 50 households in each of the 72 sub counties making Luwero Triangle, the Entandikwa program was approved by Cabinet and MPs who pushed Museveni to turn it into a countrywide program. This diminished its impact because the funding was never increased from the Shs8bn Kisamba had proposed to Museveni as enough for the 72 Luwero triangle sub counties to be gradually rolled out in 3 years. Donors also moved in and protested misappropriation of $62m they had allocated for Luwero rehabilitation programs before Kisamba came in. They did an audit which showed that only $32m had been put to proper use. The rest was unaccounted for. That is how Kisamba’s subsequent $96m comprehensive Luwero Rehabilitation Program was denied funding by the donors protesting grand corruption manifested in the $62m they had previously contributed. Museveni then told Kisamba to improvise by relying on Works, Education and Health ministries’ budget allocations to re-open feeder roads, rebuild schools and hospitals in war ravaged Luwero triangle. For comments, call, text or whatsapp us on 0703164755.
