By Mulengera Reporters
Some years ago, Rtd Major John Kazoora (a onetime Private Secretary to President Museveni in the early days of the NRA government) relocated from his Mbuya home and moved to go and live in Kigo near Busabala. That side of the Entebbe Expressway.
It’s from that Kigo home, where he used to reside with his deep-voiced wife Naome Kabasharira also Rushenyi County MP from Ntungamo, that the FDC founding member who belligerently always criticized Gen Museveni, lived his final moments. He had surrendered the Mbuya home to his grown up sons including one who works with Uganda Prisons. Indeed, its where his sons live up to this day.
On Easter Sunday, Major Kazoora (who had become frail as a result of terminal illness medication he had been on for years) woke up normally and spent time with his family members.
They had lunch and thereafter he got to the balcony to pass time by playing cards (matatu) with some of the people at home. After several rounds of playing cards, Maj Kazoora all of a sudden felt unwell and told those he was playing with that he wanted to go to his bed and do some rest. He complained of feeling unusually dizzy.
Moments later, his condition escalated and efforts were made to rush him to the nearest health facility and this was a few minutes past 5pm but he was pronounced dead shortly after. He was 68 years old.
Led by Commissioner Winston Katushabe and Romeo Bayenzaki, burial organizing committee members have released a tentative program. It shows that on Monday 22nd April, there will be a vigil at his Kigo home ahead of the Tuesday 23rd April Church service at All Saints Cathedral in Nakasero.
The NRA bush war hero, who fell out with Gen Museveni for scrapping term limits in the Constitution to seek to be President for life, will be buried at his final resting place Rutooma in Kashari County Mbarara district on Wednesday 24th April.
Frail health had confined the once very explosive Major John Kazoora into a political oblivion of some sort and he had to frequently and very expensively travel to Turkey and Israel to go seek more appropriate medical treatment.
Not very long ago, he had to sell one of his prime properties, a residential house in Naguru, to be able to keep coping with skyrocketing medical bills.
Perhaps because the fallen Major’s wife Naome Kabasharira is a close friend and political ally of the First Lady in the Ntungamo politics, a very forgiving Gen Museveni would once in a time be prevailed upon to foot some of Major Kazoora’s medical bills which kept skyrocketing.
The man, who twice represented Kashari County as MP and was never able to win any of his subsequent races after falling out with Gen Museveni, was on cancer treatment besides the other strange age-induced ailments that kept striking him from time to time.
One time during the Ankole Parliamentary caucus meeting, as was reported by Monitor newspaper’s Semujju Nganda, Kazoora stood his ground and bitterly exchanged with his mentor Gen YK Museveni who ended up declaring him a political puppy he would thoroughly defeat in Kashari during the 2006 elections. The discussion was about the scrapping of term limits which Kazoora was vehemently opposed to.
His contemporaries in especially the 7th Parliament included Salaam Musumba, Ken Lukyamuzi, Patrick Musisi, Emmanuel Ddombo, Guma Gumisiriza, Dr. Johnson Nkuuhe, Miria Matembe, Beatrice Kiraso, Bernadette Bigirwa (RIP), Norbert Mao, Augustine Ruzindana, Justine Kasule Lumumba and many others. He one time privately met more senior cadres of the Movement like James Waphakabhulo at Kampala Club at night and tried to incite them to stand up to Gen YK Museveni and defeat his life presidency ambitions.
Some of these betrayed Kazoora when they went and quietly revealed everything to Museveni who often summoned him demanding to know why he was causing chaos inside the Movement. One time he had to drive hundreds of kilometers to go to Gulu, where the CiC was overseeing anti-Kony/LRA military operations, to be grilled on such stuff.
He met with Gen Museveni at might inside 4th Division headquarters from where he grilled and branded him a traitor like there was no tomorrow. In his book, Kazoora writes that he feared the big man from Rwakitura was going to assault him physically from that Gulu night meeting. Thank God, he walked out and drove back to Kampala in one piece.
And gratefully, Major Kazoora has left behind a full and well recorded narrative of his complicated dealings with Gen Museveni and his struggles to make Uganda a better-governed country since his days as a young political science student at Makerere University in the early 1980s. His story is well documented and captured in his controversial memoirs titled “Betrayed by My Leader.”
The book, whose contents naturally perturbed State House, was launched and unveiled to the public during a Kizza Besigye and Bishop Zarc Niringiye-presided over event at Kampala Club in mid-2012. This Kampala Club venue is a neighbor of and shares a wall fence with the Nakasero State Lodge where Gen Museveni lives and works from more than the more spacious Entebbe. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
