Rwakitura tales
By GEORGE KAGAME
Jane Mbabazi got her first job at 19, by which time she had been done with a marriage and two children.
She could not afford to take care of the children so she left them with her husband who had a new wife. The new wife promptly advised her husband to take the children “somewhere else.”
The year was 1987 and Mbabazi was hired as a House Keeper at State House.
The Uganda State House was abuzz in 1987; it was one year after Museveni had captured power finally ridding the country from the grip of Idd Amin; the infamous dictator who brought you The Last King of Scotland.
Uganda was rebuilding and many Africa experts described Yoweri Museveni at the time as a rare and “New breed” of African leader.
Having got political liberation for Uganda in 1986, Museveni was faced with a much more dangerous enemy; HIV/Aids which was killing the emerging economy.
Museveni would be the first leader in the world to recognize the threat posed by HIV/Aids in the 1980s and to start a conceited fight back against the disease. It had intriguingly threatened that country’s and the entire sub continental economic set up wiping away villages swiftly as a war would.
For all, Uganda stood, as a shining star in tackling HIV/Aids and Museveni was the poster boy of initial global campaigns to find prevention of Aids as well as dealing with the stigma faced by people living with HIV/Aids. Donors eagerly supported him.
His State House in 1987 and the people working there were highly regarded. It was grand; it sat atop a hill and its windows opened out to the scenic horizons of L. Victoria in Entebbe.
“I was blessed,” Mbabazi said of her first job. She kept the job until she was diagnosed with HIV/Aids in 1999, by which time she was the Head House Keeper of Rwakitura; the private residence of President Museveni’s family in Western Uganda.
She had indeed proved herself reliable because in her career she kept house for important and permanent private visitors to President Museveni like Jean-Baptiste Bagaza the former president of Burundi and Ms. Farah Aideed wife of a dead Somali warlord with the same name.
Her posting to the president’s private residence was coveted, Rwakitura is a Mecca of sorts for all people of note including Presidents of the US and German. As part of her tasks, Mbabazi’s immediate and only boss was the first lady Janet Museveni with whom she dealt regularly.
Janet Museveni was highly regarded as a conservative Born Again Christian otherwise known as Mulokole in Uganda; the same people who insisted on abstinence as the only effective tool against HIV/Aids.
Rwakitura; on top of being the Mecca for all the people involved in fighting HIV/Aids was also amongst the most battered places in the country by the Aids epidemic.
The soldiers guarding the presidential home as well as the intelligence hub they created were the main channels through which Aids spreads. The disease steadily ate away Rwakitura’s landscape and exposed Ugandans to a worse reality; thriving corruption.
The grand house castle sits on a hill and the long winding drive leading to the main gate takes one through more glamorous residences owned by close confidants of the Musevenis. It is a classic “Its Our Time to Eat,” legend.
By 2006 Uganda had lost billions of donor dollars in corruption, most of it going to relatives of the First Lady Jim Muhwezi, the Minister of Health at the time, as well as two of his deputies. Muhwezi alone is said to have to diverted hundreds of millions in US dollars into a personal fortune.
He was a regular at Rwakitura.
Upon being diagnosed with the disease, Mbabazi was immediately fired from Rwakitura was informed never to step near state house again. Her friends shunned her till she died in loneliness.
Janet Museveni who had spoken with her at least once a week shut her out, the house keeper never had any insurance on health or any other scheme.
By 2001 when she was diagnosed with Aids Mbabazi had five children, the youngest aged seven.
On her termination letter; security rather than medical reasons were mentioned as the cause of her dismissal and this designated her as a security threat, even her friends were scared of her.
She survived on her savings until her death in 2006 when Kyambadde offered to take Mbabazi’s youngest child into her family.
Rwakitura was a paradox, it was a symbol of the new Uganda in its adolescent grandiose and yet it also bore the bitter scars of Aids and its industry. Rwakitura in those days was like a shrine for the corrupt.
ENDS.
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