By Mulengera Reporters
If you thought President Museveni would just step on MTN Uganda’s deeply vested interests and walk away with it, just read this. The South African telecom giant is seemingly refusing to go down without causing significant discomfort to their tormentor Museveni. Specifically, the dramatic deportation of 4 expatriate staff has caused the Ugandan veteran leader to face very troubling diplomatic backlash from a number of countries with which Uganda has diplomatic ties. A report in the East African newspaper shows that Rwanda, South Africa, France and Italy have all reached out to Museveni vigorously protesting perceived maltreatment of their citizens working in Uganda as expatriates. For starters, all deported staff so far hail from these countries namely CMO Olivier Prentout (French), Ann Tabuura (Rwanda), Elsa Muzzolinni (French/Italian) and CEO Wim Vanhelleputte (Belgian). The French government for instance dispatched their Ambassador in Uganda Stephanie Rivoal who drove to State House Entebbe as Museveni prepared to travel to Addis Ababa for AU engagements. While there, Rivoal formally protested to Museveni wondering why Uganda was increasingly becoming this unsafe for foreign expatriates to work from. Museveni told her that whereas it was excusable for anyone to be opposed to the OTT and mobile money tax, he couldn’t tolerate those hiding behind doing expatriate work to carry out espionage activities in the interest of a hostile foreign country. “My sister that’s abominable,” he repeatedly told her during the meeting. This news website has established that the other countries have equally made strong protestations over the same. Diplomatic confrontation is one thing Museveni takes very seriously and always tries to avoid whenever confronted with a strong adversary. And battling a combination of such very strong powers namely the French, Belgians and South Africans is something Museveni wouldn’t like to have at this point in time when he has so many difficult challenges to confront on the domestic front. In a related development, details have emerged why Wim fired MTN Chairman Chares Mbiire’s blue eyed boy General Manager Anthony Katamba who had served MTN for 18 years. In the sacking letter which Katamba initially refused to receive, Wim referred to previous torture allegations former employees like Patrick Sentongo had on record made against Katamba saying he had become so unpopular to continue serving at MTN. Reference was also made to Justice Lawrence Gidudu’s ruling which documented many torture incidences by policemen hired by MTN legal department (which Katamba headed) to secure false confessions. Renowned for his deep connections in government, Katamba in return assured Wim he would fall first before getting him out of MTN where he served so powerfully for such a long time. Indeed Wim’s downfall has prompted the likes of Muzzolinni to wonder whether the MTN top management team hadn’t for long been infiltrated by 5th columnists spying for the State. Watch this space for more updates on the MTN saga.
