The late Mulindwa Muwonge Never Recovered From Peter Sematimba’s Betrayal

The late Mulindwa Muwonge Never Recovered From Peter Sematimba’s Betrayal 

The late Mulindwa Muwonge was a self made intellectual

One chilly evening (it must have been 2013) I met a colleague and former work mate Mr Tony Owana on Parliament Avenue and he told me that he felt I should defend one of the articles I had written in the print media ( am not mentioning the name of that media house).

I had written an article about NRM Mps who had opted to rebel against their parent party- which I thought was a total breach of a principle and in effect corruption of the highest order.

In my view I thought that we shouldn’t define corruption as a form of embezzlement or theft of public funds alone but rather define it as a breach of a set of principles. 

If we agree in principal that all party members must adhere to the party principals, then anyone who deviates from those principals must be considered as a corrupt person.

At that time NRM’s Hon Muhammed Nsereko had campaigned for DP’s Hon Mathias Nsubuga  as opposed to the Hon Nsambu , who belonged to NRM.

The pertinent  question of that moment was ;How could a party member use the party logo to enter parliament, but then turn around to campaign against the same party that he used to get  to the august house??

My view was that if we were to have a mature multi party democracy, then we should stick to the rules of multipartism.

So I got a call from Mr Semakula Gyagenda who also got interested in the article and he invited me to the UBC television studios for a program that was supposed to start at 8am to discuss that article.

So I maneuvered through the early morning traffic and did the show , code named Good Morning Uganda.

Meeting Mulindwa Muwonge

But I was leaving the UBC premises, I met  Mr. Mulndwa Muwonge in the compound and labored to talk to him.  I cheekily introduced myself to Mulindwa Muwonge thus;  “my name is Dosie Malor of the BBC World Service”

To which MM, unaware of my prank, answered, please come again?

I then told him that I was playing a prank on him derived from a program he did with that man Dosie Malor when he visited the BBC studios in London some years ago.

But Mr Gyagenda let the cat out when he told him that i was Fred Kamwada , who writes THE FACTS LOGIC AND RATIONALE column in the media.

To which he laughed heartily and wondered how I had listened to that show.

I then told him that I mostly listen to the BBC radio and East Africa fm because Uganda radios are full of clowns.

To which he replied in the affirmative that it’s true that Ugandan radios have been invaded by clowns.

He then went on to remind me of an article I had written about him in which i had made the mistake of caling him a clown.

‘’Oh,,, so you are the Kamwada chap who wrote about me in the newspaper ?’’ he enthused.

He was a little bitter that I had put him in the same category of comedians who worked on radio.

He then went on to remind me that he had qualifications in mass communications and was still upgrading his qualifications ( by the time of his death he was doing law).

In that article in which i mentioned him as a clown, I decried the fact that the Ugandan media had sunk so low that comedians and clowns got jobs ahead of qualified students of mass communications from bigger universities like Makerere.

Below The Belt

I brought in Mulindwa Muwonge’s name as an example of one of the comedians who had taken the Ugandan broadcasting by storm. I had also hit him below the belt when I mentioned his ignorance that propelled him to oppose the value added tax which had been introduced in Uganda.

In that article I mentioned that Mulindwa Muwonge had been one of the few who vehemently opposed VAT prompting president Museveni to visit the CBS radio studios to enlighten Ugandans about the new tax.

So when I got the opportunity to meet him he said ‘’otyoo,,you man you said I was a clown ,, yet am a qualified journalist’’

“”I went back to school my dear”” as he pulled me to his office.

We had a lengthy discussion which ranged from the socio-economic, politics to the sensitive issue of land.

I must honestly confess that despite of the fact that I have read widely about land matters, I have never comprehended them in detail.

So I asked MM why the Buganda kingdom had monopoly of land in Buganda ahead of its citizens- what came first , the kingdom or the people?.

And he passionately explained that it was an anomaly which needed to be corrected.

I asked him where Mengo bought that land. To which he simply shook my hand and said, that is the question Ugandans need to ask those Mengo people.

I learnt from his office that Mulindwa had dedicated his life to reading a lot of books about a wide variety of subjects.

He had a book almost on most of the topics we were discussing.

its actually sad that it was the first and last time i met him.

Meeting His Son

But I also noticed that he was not the bullish, confident Mulindwa I used to hear on radio some years before.

This time his battery was a little low in energy and he was a bit not in the real moods I expected him to be.

he was the Omugabi Mulindwa Muwonge who used to roar on radio.

But some years later I was privileged to meet his son Bayola Moses on a radio talk show.

I asked Bayola (also a journalist working with UBC) why his dad was no longer the confident man he used to be. And he confided in me that his dad lost his steam after a very bitter spat with peter Sematimba.

He told me that both men (peter and MM) had combined brains to form Super FM but somehow disagreed either on procedure, administration or finances. 

Mulindwa Muownge felt that peter Sematimba (above )betrayed him so much

Bayola intimated to me that if both men met in streets, one of them would not come out alive!

It’s believed that Mulindwa felt betrayed by Peter Sematimba and never recovered his sense of self esteem.

There are time he would do a program, and then lament in reference to peter Sematimba by saying, “banange akassajja ako simanyi oba mukama katonda ali kasasula” (I don’t know if God will pay that man for betraying me).

So when I heard that he had passed on, I not only got shocked but also got a quick reminder of what had really brought his life to near collapse. 

The Man Of Reason 

I also noticed that despite of being modest (academic-wise), he was very intelligent and was someone who usually gave you a good intellectual conversation , a breed that is very rare in a country that is full of complete idiots.

Many people have spoken good and bad things about MM, but I will never forget him for the question he posed to Hajji Naduli during an interview  that “between president Obote who arrested the five ministers in 1966, and president Idi Amin who released them in 1971 , but started killing one by one who was a better person”

That question by Mulindwa Muwonge put Alhajji Naduli ‘s hatred for president  Obote to shame!.

Rest in peace Omugabi Mulindwa Muwonge

Ends

 Fred Daka Kamwada Is A Ugandan Blogger