By Our Reporters
Going by her demeanor, Teddy Naluswa Bugingo cuts a figure of a modest woman yet she is stinking rich. And our investigations show that the assets she has under her control will enable her live decently for the rest of her life. The most known one is the Kitende mansion which her estranged husband (equally wealthy) Aloysius Bugingo has left her with.
Yet that isn’t all. Naluswa is also deeply into business and owns two large cosmetic shops one at Freedom City and another at Garden City. She imports merchandize directly from the manufacturers abroad. Closely operating with her daughter Doreen Gift Bugingo, Naluswa also deals in Japanese vehicle spare parts with outlets at Kisekka market, in Ndeeba and Old Kampala along Gaddafy road. The decision to go into spare parts was derived from an idea one of Doreen’s campus best friends floated. “We suggested it to her jokingly but we were surprised at how rapidly her mum Teddy put it to implementation and they are doing very well with even plans to expand to other Kampala suburban neighborhoods,” says one of Doreen’s close campus friends.
It’s for this reason that parting with cash has never been a problem for Naluswa who recently shocked her pals when she easily parted with Shs40m to buy a plush car for her youngest daughter (names withheld) now in first year at Nakawa-based Mubs. Her friends say Naluswa has continued spoiling the daughter with lots of cash to the extent that her weekly pocket money is never less than Shs1m. “The vehicle her mum bought her is a source of envy by even our Professors because its way much better than what they drive,” says a Mubs friend to Naluswa’s daughter. “She is sociable and confides in some of us as classmates regarding her family background.”
The S4 leaver also owns a huge piece of land along Mityana Road at a place called Kiwawu. The property is several acres and its where her Munyoro mum (Teddy Nsumbwa) was buried sometime back. It’s the exact Mityana location where a plane famously crash-landed some years back. It was a widely publicized incidence. Naluswa secretly bought the land and registered the title in the names of her mum shortly before her death. Referring to the VIP-like send off the old woman was accorded, a Mulengera news friendly source in A-Plus Funeral Management sales department recalls Ps Bugingo personally parting with over Shs40 paying for the funeral management services that were accorded from when Nsumbwa breathed her last to her final resting place at Kiwawu along Mityana Road.
On the land, Naluswa put up a powerful house which left mourners, mostly from House of Prayer Church, in great awe on seeing the powerful mansion she single handedly constructed there. This now goes for her country home and it’s a quick drive from Kampala. House of Prayer worshippers (for whom she was still Pastor) marveled and enjoyed taking photos inside Naluswa’s palatial Mityana road residence. Many of them had expected her mother would be buried in Nama Mukono where the Naluswas equally have a large family estate which initially had been earmarked to serve as the country home and also burial ground for the extended family comprising of Naluswa’s and Aloysius Bugingo’s relatives.
Our research indicates that the Nama property is one in which Naluswa equally has registrable interest. Her extended family members have also for long been beneficiaries of the Shs5m that the Bugingo Church Ministry has officially been releasing every month to appease them so that they don’t spill Naluswa family dirty secrets into the media. This income has been guaranteed per month for many years until recently when the House of Prayer Ministries’ elders’ council sat and resolved to stop it. The reasoning was that it was too much money being paid out for no value in return. Yet that isn’t all. Doreen’s campus friends (she always confided much in them) say even as a house wife, Naluswa has for long been earning monthly remuneration from her very generous spouse Aloysius Bugingo. Teddy Naluswa also remarkably continues to generously contribute towards the sustenance of their middle daughter, currently a training aeronautical engineering student in London (similar to Winnie Byanyima’s qualification). In a recent TV interview, Naluswa extensively referred to this daughter.
FAMILY B/GROUND
Her father was Prof James Naluswa who was a forestry lecturer at Makerere before quitting to work with the government forestry department in the Entebbe-based Agriculture Ministry. Prof Naluswa (now deceased having died after very agonizing divorce proceedings) hailed from Lwemba Village in current Bugiri district. Naluswa was thus born a Musoga, something she has always been uncomfortable disclosing. Prof Naluswa’s marriage with his Munyoro wife didn’t last. On securing divorce through court proceedings, Teddy Naluswa’s parents parted ways and it was a very acrimonious separation to the extent that Prof James Naluswa cursed his estranged wife and his daughter as well.
He went as far as excommunicating the daughter which explains why even when getting married to Bugingo, Teddy Naluswa’s father wasn’t anywhere in the picture. This story is well known at Ps Joseph Serwadda’s Victory Church Ndeeba. And sources close to Victory Church’s Ps Jamada Gyagenda, who wedded the Bugingos, say Ps Bugingo was never introduced to Naluswa’s father because the young lady had long been excommunicated from the family. One Victory Church source, who has known the Bugingos for long, says the equivalent of the father’s consenting note had to be secured from somewhere in Bugerere because it was inconceivable for Naluswa and her mum to dare face Prof Naluswa asking for the same. These marriage records are kept at the Church along with many others that wedded there.
Consequently, having been excommunicated and cursed, Naluswa grew up largely with her maternal relatives. Prof Naluswa is said to have had sharp disagreements with his Munyoro wife including the latter’s refusal to stop pipe-smoking (okufuwa emindi). It’s the way Nsumbwa always went about her tobacco smoking. It’s something the Professor considered to be very disturbing. Yet it’s something Naluswa’s mother carried on with up to her death. In fact the lung cancer to which she eventually succumbed resulted from that prolonged tobacco smoking (fairly a common habit in city slums of those years). In the end, she became terminally ill and Bugingo, largely the only relative/in-law with means, had to foot the bill. She was living in a house in Kawala as she kept on treatment. Prof Naluswa, about whom not that much is known by the family, had died earlier.
Like any other teenager of her day, Teddy Naluswa liked dancing and occasional clubbing which could be the reason why she didn’t immediately become Born Again despite relentless efforts by her brother Charles Kyuma to bring her to salvation. He was the man who bought two tickets for Teddy Naluswa and Aloysius Bugingo (who had just become lovers) to go to KPC (now Watoto) Church to watch a play titled “Heavens Gate.” It was at the end of that play, during the Christmas week of 1992, that Bugingo (then a shoe vendor) gave his life to Christ. To the dismay of Kyuma, Naluswa didn’t. She took another 2 more years in the world before finally accepting salvation.
Now in his 50s, Kyuma works as an administrator at Bugingo’s House of Prayer Ministries. He is one of the key people overseeing the security and welfare of worshippers at Canaan Land. This makes him a salaried employee of the Church and his fair-mindedness is the reason Bugingo has continued closely relating with him even in the midst of the ongoing marital turbulence.
Despite being a Business Studies graduate from Makerere, Kyuma didn’t immediately become gainfully employed until the House of Prayer opportunity came knocking. Even now when relations are so strained and the two don’t talk directly anymore, Kyomu is the person through whom the Bugingos communicate. For instance he is the one through whom Bugingo delivers his obligations to materially continue supporting Naluswa as she lives in the Kitende mansion.
Sources close to the daughters say that the other Naluswa sibling is a lady who lives in Namataba near Mukono and earns her living through being a building site planner. Actually along with Kyomu, this Namataba lady is mothered by a woman (another Nakyeyombekedde) who was closely associated with Teddy Nsumbwa (Naluswa’s mum) as they raised their children in the ghetto neighborhoods of Kazo Muganzirwaza in Kawempe Division. The modest joint estate the two elderly women (now deceased) left is being administered by Kyomu.
HATING KAYIZZI
Of all the elders at House Prayer Church, Naluswa hates grey-haired Ps Kayizi mostly because (as she says) she tried many times to get him onto her side in her marital wars with Bugingo but the old man preferred neutrality. One time during a mediation meeting convened at the Kitende home aimed at narrowing the wedge between the Bugingo couple, Naluswa incited one of her daughters to badly attack Kayizi accusing him of being a heavily compromised old man. The young girl went as far as telling off Kayizi that “you actually grew old for nothing.”
She also suspects Kayizi is the one who caused Bugingo to always be cautious about potential employees that would be recommended or preferred by Naluswa and her daughter Doreen. At some point, the team that would operationally and logistically be in charge of the baptism requirements (Bugingo always takes new converts for Baptism to grow their faith) was 100% answerable to Naluswa and her daughter, something Kayizi is understood to have prompted Bugingo to be very cautious about.
With time, some of the other House of Prayer Church elders began wondering why Naluswa and daughter often referred to recorded episodes at home each time they had a bust up with Bugingo during private family engagements. One elder close to Kayizi repeatedly argued “these people must be working towards a certain build up. Which case are they building because every time they call for our mediation on anything, they refer to a recording in their possession?”
It’s also true (as Red Pepper credibly reported last week) that at some point, Bugingo endured a sexless relationship for 10 straight years. One of the long serving family doctors tells Mulengera news that this involuntary sex ban (which Teddy Naluswa often referred to as a testimony as she preached at Canaan land) was occasioned by a Fistula-like persistent hemorrhage that gripped her from 2003 to 2013. “As medics we did everything and money was there. We went as far as sending samples to best labs in the UK, USA and South Africa but there was no cure. We painfully gave up but time came and God miraculously healed her and that rejuvenated the couple’s sex life resulting into the birth of their only boy,” explained the knowledgeable family medic strictly begging not to be quoted. (For comments, email us at mulengera2030@gmail.com).
