Is Andrew Mwenda an ISO agent?

There are persistent reports in Kampala that Andrew M. Mwenda, the well-known Monitor journalist, is on the payroll of the Internal Security Organisation.

Some sources say when Mwenda was in Lumumba Hall at Makerere University, he stayed in his own room when he was still a first-year student, something which indicated that he had strong connections to the state.

Some sources claim that when Mwenda went to the UK for his Masters' degree at the School of Oriental and African studies, he did not surrender his pistol.

One afternoon in 2001, Mwenda was traveling in his Black car with a Kampala journalist when he got out of the car to enter a restaurant or a place nearby the road.

The journalist saw a bank statement near the gearbox that had 100 million shillings on Mwenda's account. That was the kind of money that a journalist in Kampala at Mwenda's level could not have, the sources said.

But other sources say Mwenda is not an ISO agent but enjoys certain advantages because of his relationship with President Museveni's son, Major Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

It is now well known in Uganda that Museveni's first wife was a Mutooro woman called Hope who was a sister of Museveni's Ntare School friend, Valeriano Rwaheru. Hope was also a relative of the Muhanga family, where Mwenda comes from.

Hope was a Foreign Service officer in the 1970s and it is said that the Idi Amin regime planted her on Museveni to spy on him from her base at the Uganda High Commission in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

When Museveni murdered his friend and FRONASA comrade, Raiti Omongim, Hope reported the matter back to Kampala. Museveni murdered his wife and mother of Muhoozi.

That was when he ended up with the girlfriend of his former comrade, Janet Kainembabazi Kataha.

Former President Milton Obote during his appearance on the "Andrew Mwenda Live" radio show in 2002, made the claim and asked Museveni to "tell us where she is," meaning, Hope.

That evening, Museveni listened to the show live from State House in a room. He switched off the lights and ordered his bodyguards out of the room. Museveni heard Obote making the allegation and State House has never dismissed Obote's claims.

When Muhoozi grew older, he was told about his real mother.

During his first year holiday at Nottingham University, Janet Museveni took Muhoozi to Fort Portal to meet his late mother's relatives.

Before his wedding day in July 1997, Muhoozi bitterly insisted that his Batooro relatives should be invited and be given places at the high table at the reception, but Museveni and Janet turned him down.

To hit back at them, Muhoozi invited Andrew Mwenda to Mweya Safari Lodge where he had gone for his honeymoon with his new wife, Charlotte Kuteesa.

The three flew back together on board an army helicopter.

When Mwenda was arrested on August 11, 2005 for statements he made on radio on the death of Sudan's John Garang, Muhoozi visited him at the CID headquarters in Kampala.

Mwenda's protection is not that he is an ISO operative, but because of his relationship with the powerful son of the President who also happens to be his maternal cousin.

Even if Mwenda was in ISO, he would not be saying what he says, because two of his siblings, his sister Margaret Muhanga and his brother Kayanja are in intelligence and would have been arrested by now.

This is the background to why Mwenda is the only journalist or commentator who can say things on radio or publish them in newspaper pieces that nobody else in Uganda can dare say or write in public.

What is true is that western diplomats in Kampala, most of all the American and British diplomats, use Mwenda's connections to State House to probe him on what is taking place in the corridors of power. They meet him regularly over dinner at Speke Hotel in Kampala or other venues.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda also knows of Mwenda's connection to Muhoozi and State House and that is why Mwenda is always given an audience with Kagame when he visits Kigali.

In his most recent meeting with Kagame in mid 2005, Kagame told Mwenda that he is worried that Mwenda's habit of writing and comparing Uganda and Rwanda and the weaknesses of the Ugandan army, will make Museveni think that it is Kagame who is giving Mwenda that information.

But the fact is that Mwenda is not an ISO agent.