{UAH} The Observer - 'Private' Muhoozi turns 40

http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31434:private-muhoozi-turns-40&catid=34:news&Itemid=114

The Observer - 'Private' Muhoozi turns 40

News

Friday, 25 April 2014 01:22

Written by SULAIMAN KAKAIRE & SHIFA MWESIGYE

First Son Muhoozi Kainerugaba turned 40 yesterday, with no "public show."

Brigadier Muhoozi had declined to comment about his birthday and life when he was contacted on Tuesday, suggesting these things were private.

But at least some things are known about the boy born in foreign lands, who would come to be seen as a potential president of his country. In her book, My Life's Journey, Janet Kataaha Museveni offers some insights about Muhoozi's birth and early life.

Janet says that as a young newly-wed couple, Museveni and herself left London and went to Dar es Salaam in 1973. A few months after arriving in Dar es Salaam, Janet realised that she was pregnant.

"I had morning sickness and could not stand many little things in the hotel," she says of Palm Beach hotel. "For example, there was a particular soap that they always placed in the bathroom called Rumi and every time I smelled that soap, I felt sick and would throw up. The hotel menu was quite limited for choices and I could not eat much of anything they cooked."

She notes that they were running low on cash and they were in arrears with the hotel management.

"They let us know this by cutting off our supply of other meals like lunch and dinner. So, all we could have was breakfast and evening tea," she writes.

Subsequently, the couple managed to get an apartment in Kurasini beach with just a bed and nothing else. Janet started making orange marmalade in her kitchen which she sold to a supermarket. With the money from her marmalade, she booked herself into a private hospital on Ocean road for the birth of Muhoozi.

In his book Sowing the Mustard Seed Museveni writes that Muhoozi was born during hard times. "We were so short of funds that our electricity had been cut off...  In fact, we were not able to have it restored until Muhoozi was three months old. You should have seen his jumps and laughs when the lights first came on!"

Muhoozi born

Janet writes that on April 24, 1974 her labour pains started in the morning and a kind Scandinavian woman, who lived in the apartment building, offered to drive her to the hospital. Muhoozi was born at 6am on April 24, 1974; "He weighed nine pounds. He was a beautiful brown baby with a thick mass of hair on his head. He had dark marks that looked like sideburns on his cheeks, a trait that Museveni used to call the Museveni mark, because his children were born with it." 
Janet remembers that when Museveni walked into the room that morning and found the newly-born baby lying peacefully in his cot, "his face could not contain the smile that spread across [it]."

They named their son Muhoozi, which means "Avenger", because among the Banyankore, when a man has a son, he feels he has someone to avenge him.

"The birth of our firstborn was an emotional experience for me. Muhoozi was mine, my son. He had come forth from me and he would always be mine," Janet adds.

Humble begining

Despite the hard times that his family faced when he was born, Muhoozi would later become the talk of today. He got his early education in Tanzania, Kenya, Sweden and Uganda. He joined Nottingham University in the United Kingdom in 1994, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Political Science. He later joined the military as an officer cadet.

He attended the commissioning course at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK. In 2000, he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the UPDF. Currently, Muhoozi is a brigadier and he heads the Special Forces Command, which is in charge of offering protection to special installations, very important persons and overseas sophisticated missions.

He is a graduate of the command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (2008) and the US Army's airborne school in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Dangerous spectre

Muhoozi's rise in the army ranks has been construed by his critics as a projection to being a possible successor to his father. One of his critics is, Gen David Sejusa, a former head of intelligence. Sejusa  fled to the UK in April last year, after writing a letter demanding an investigation into an alleged assassination plot against government officials opposed to Muhoozi's perceived presidential ambitions.

In an interview with Peter Clottey of Voice of America television, Sejusa, better known as Tinyefuza, said: "As to whether the young man [Brig Muhoozi] is being prepared or not, that should be investigated but there are feelers...you would not promote a person from a private in 10 years to a general; that has never happened in the world," he said adding that "...everything points at something basically wrong on how the president has been handling the issues of his son, and by the way, the onus is on him to clarify these issues," Sejusa said.

Last year, the president wrote refuting allegations that he is propelling his son to replace him. However, in a paper presented to the annual Buganda Convention at Hotel Africana last year, Prof Joe Oloka-Onyango, a law don at Makerere University, said: "You need to be protected by somebody whom you trust 110 per cent.

While I don't believe in the Muhoozi project, as articulated by General Sejusa, I nevertheless contend that Muhoozi presents a very dangerous scenario for Uganda's future, primarily because the Special Forces Group (SFG) which he heads is effectively an army within the army."

Muhoozi is married to Charlotte Kutesa with whom he has three children.
skakaire@observer.ug
smwesigye@observer.ug

The Observer - 'Private' Muhoozi turns 40

http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31434:private-muhoozi-turns-40&catid=34:news&Itemid=114

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