By Our Reporters
As Chief Executive Officer (CEO) overseeing the running of the Uganda Law Society (ULS) secretariat, Joyce Nalunga is ordinarily expected to be the epitome of decorum, fairness and good conduct. That is the minimum that is expected of her because the ULS she leads is a non-profit making organization mandated to ensure the powerful don’t use their positions to marginalize the weak and voiceless. To the contrary, her name has come up in a dispute at the center of which is the ownership and occupation of a residential house seated on a 25 decimals piece of land. Situated in Kyebando Central Zone, the prime property belongs to an old man called Josefu Yokana Kasirye who for more than 20 years was married to Joyce Nalunga’s deceased sister Flavia Kasirye. She died many years ago and concerned LC leaders and friendly clerics who have been involved in negotiations aimed at peaceful resolution of the dispute have now given up saying Nalunga (because of her powerful ULS position) has made it hard for Yosefu Kasirye’s family to have any peace. The two families are strong Christians whereby even Nalunga’s father Mzee Samuel Kasirye (a retired public accountant) is a renowned evangelist canon in Church of Uganda. Her mother Sizon Kasirye is a retired teacher and a powerful influence in the CoU’s mothers union. The powerful family lives in Namere near Mpererwe just three kms from Kampala and it’s their ancestral burial ground. “It’s a very rich family with powerful children like Joyce Nalunga who are preachers, University dons, doctors and lawyers in the US. This is why we are surprised they are fighting hard to dispossess their son-in-law Yosefu Kasirye of his modest piece of land in Kyebando. At first the matter was a secret within the family but over time it has become a public secret and everybody is in shock why the rich can never be satisfied. Many people in the Church are now aware and some LC1 officials in Namere and the neighors because Canon Samuel’s children have been discussing loudly about the Kyebando house while belittling their brother in law Yozefu Kasirye,” says an LC official in Namere adding that it’s hard not to become aware of this land wrangle given the prestigious status Nalunga’s family enjoys in the community there.
FAMILY SPILT
Fear for the resultant embarrassment has caused some of Mzee Samuel Kasirye’s children to disagree with the ULS boss over the right path to take regarding the Kyebando residential property which legally is Yosefu Kasirye’s because it’s registered in his names as the sole owner. Rev Eric Kasirye, an elder brother to Nalunga, leads a group of liberals in the family whose view is its unfair to interfere with Yosefu Kasirye’s quiet enjoyment of the Kyebando residential property because its legitimately his own. Eric has consequently been trying to be a voice of reason in the family but all in vain because Nalunga and the rest seem to constitute the majority view that is insisting on throwing Yosefu Kasirye out of his own house without any legally justifiable claim of right to the same. Family friends recently got concerned about the impending embarrassment to the respectable katinvuma family of Namere and convened some reconciliation meetings to find a way forward between the widowed Mzee Yosefu Kasirye and the Nalunga group. Many preliminary meetings had gone well but matters escalated about two weeks ago when a meeting organized at a hang out along Entebbe road ended in chaos after Joyce Nalunga (the ULS boss) and his sister Sandra Kasirye (a lecturer and PhD student at UCU) became angry and furiously walked out leaving the much revered reverends, pastors and other clerics in total humiliation. Saying she wasn’t prepared to give any concessions, Nalunga made two very unreasonable demands in that meeting the most frightening of which was that Yosefu Kasirye hands over the house and immediately vacate. She insisted something significant would happen if Yosefu Kasirye continues refusing to surrender the house and goes ahead to marry another woman who the two sisters vowed to ensure doesn’t peacefully live in that house. They also went native to the extent of demanding to take away all the house hold items in the Kyebando house so that Yosefu Kasirye vacates and goes to start a new life from scratch with whoever he eventually chooses to marry. The two babes indicated that those two demands weren’t negotiable. One of the clerics at the meeting looked the two sisters in the eye and told them about the dangers of their hardline position, something that prompted them to vehemently storm out of the meeting.
WAY FOWARD
That was the point at which many concluded peaceful resolution of the conflict wasn’t going to be possible because of the two sisters’ unreasonableness. Indeed in the days that followed, at the prompting of CEO Joyce Nalunga, Yosefu Kasirye’s two children unceremoniously left the Kyebando home saying their auntie had called them to go for the Don Moen concert in Kampala. That was the last time Yosefu Kasirye saw his children who the Namere family has concentrated in intoxicating and manipulating to hate their dad as if he is a monster. They are repeatedly told how their father Yosefu Kasirye is a very bad man who doesn’t wish them well yet in actual sense the gentleman has been paying school fees at Buddo and providing every other need of the children since the death of their mother in 2016. As if the confinement of the children wasn’t bad enough, Rev Samuel Kasirye and his wife (perhaps with the backing of the daughters) recently drove to Zirobwe after Gayaza where they stormed the home of Yosefu Kasirye’s parents. While there, the two elderly CoU Christians demanded for assurances that Yosefu Kasirye wasn’t planning to remarry and bring the new wife to the Kyebando house whose possession they demanded for as well. Yosefu Kasirye’s Zirobwe parents defended their space by telling off the two arrogant Namere residents who left the Zirobwe home very much deflated with an egg on their face.
LAWYERS DENOUNCE CEO
In a bid to seek a remedy, some of the pro-Yosefu Kasirye Church elders connected to the Namere family have been reaching out to some city lawyers seeking views on how the matter can be legally resolved. It’s some of these lawyers who leaked this info to this news blog insisting that time has come for the imprudent Joyce Nalunga to leave the office of ULS CEO. “She is total disgrace and many ULS members have lately been alienated because of her poor leadership of the secretariat. She is draconian and disrespectful to us as ULS members and this Kyebando saga is an opportunity we are going to ride on to demand her exit from the CEO office,” said a female ULS member adding she knows much more about Nalunga’s improper leadership of the secretariat. Talking to other ULS members and lawyers, it became increasingly clear that one of the reasons why the learned friends resent their CEO relates to the manner the past ULS elections were conducted. “Many of us were dissatisfied with the way the secretariat handled that election and whoever supported a losing candidate felt Nalunga and team should have done better,” said another lawyer insisting that unless Nalunga is booted and a new CEO is recruited, many of the ULS projects and initiatives will stall. “In fact that Kyebando land saga and the very traumatizing mistreatment that Mzee Yosefu Kasirye has excited many lawyers who see it as an opportunity to make a case justifying Nalunga’s ouster. That is why many lawyers are researching on it to get a complete file and begin calling for her removal because people have suffered a lot because of her indifference as ULS CEO. In fact many of them are trying to establish contact with Mzee Yosefu Kasirye so that they get firsthand information and demand recruitment of a new CEO because we can’t stand a CEO who isn’t a proper emissary of the ULS,” disclosed one of the lawyers we spoke to for this article. It was further revealed that many ULS members remain unhappy that the Joyce Nalunga-led ULS secretariat never made any efforts to reach out to mend fences with vanquished contenders in the past ULS elections and this has created bitterness which members want to manifest in the subsequent general assembly by moving a vote of no confidence in the CEO. Such members are seeing the Kyebando saga as a god sent opportunity to make their case by adding it to other earlier transgressions by the CEO.
NALUNGA SPEAKS OUT
When reached for a comment, ULS boss Joyce Nalunga admitted being aware of the dispute but disclaimed as follows: “No comment. Its a family matter and not in anyway linked to ULS and we shall solve it in family fora.” Her brother Rev Eric Kasirye, who has been insisting on letting Mzee Yosefu Kasirye enjoy his property, said: “I’m busy with my studies and I don’t want to be dragged into those things because they are unhelpful to us as a family. But kindly call my sister Joyce Nalunga for better details because she has been more involved in it than myself.” The two siblings agreed the potentially very damaging dispute was avoidable in the first place and hoped it will in the end be resolved. For comments, call, text or whatsapp us on 0703164755.
