Can Smart Musolin's reports be believed?

Some people have written to Radio Katwe dismissing Smart Musolin's credibility.

His latest report listing the ESO spies planted by the NRM to monitor Ugandans in America and Canada has sent shockwaves throughout the 100,000-strong North America-based Ugandan community. It is being taken very seriously.

The question is, how credible are Smart Musolin's dispatches? Let his record as desribed below be the judge:

Smart Musolin told Ugandans some months ago around the time of Colonel Kizza Besigye arrest on November 14, 2005, that Brigadier Henry Tumukunde had escaped during the arrest. It later transpired that Tumukunde was still in jail.

Did Smart Musolin get it wrong this time? The answer is no.

From cross checking information received and its own investigations, Radio Katwe has concluded that Smart Musolin was right. Tumukunde had indeed escaped.

From what we have uncovered so far, the escape plan was not well-coordinated and eventually flopped. Tumukunde that afternoon escaped in the boot of a white Toyota Carina car (or Toyota of a similar type Corona/Corolla etc) and he was being driven at high speed toward Masaka, maybe heading for the Tanzania or Rwanda border.

The people who were part of the escape plan failed in their coordination of information and the car was intercepted by Military Intelligence at or around Nateete, along the Kampala-Masaka road. Tumukunde was re-arrested.

The question is, why was he re-arrested and taken back to the Kololo Officers' Mess to continue to live in relative comfort and not punished by being sent to a dark cell at Luzira Upper Prison or Makindye Military Police barracks?

You would expect Museveni to have had Tumukunde given harsh treatment after his attempted escape, but now we are reading on the Daily Monitor website that in these days of punitive power cuts, Tumukunde has been agressively asserting his "right to light" and has been allowed to use a generator to light up his room, and watch TV. So, why the kid gloves?

The answer to that question is something very, very few Ugandans know (until now, as they read this.)

There was once a rumour doing the rounds quietly in Kampala that Tumukunde had attempted to overthrow the Museveni government. Radio Katwe can confirm to the reader that this rumour is true. For those of you with the access, any senior intelligence officer can confirm that.

But interestingly, whereas coups in governments dominated by the military are nothing to marvel at, what makes this one remarkable is that Tumukunde was going to stage the coup in full conjunction and cooperation with none other than the First Lady, Janet Museveni.

Mrs. Museveni is related to Tumukunde. That is the connection and that is one of the real reasons why Tumukunde was arrested in the first place, not because of what he said on CBS FM radio protesting the state of the army. And that is also what makes his "crushing" or "we will defeat them" as Museveni is wont to say, a very delicate matter.

So Radio Katwe, like many Ugandans, ar first didnt understand Smart Musolin's report in mid November that Tumukunde had escaped, because on checking, the man was still a prisoner - until more light emerged on this foiled escape.

Secondly, there is something Smart Musolin wrote recently about Military Intelligence Director Colonel Leopold Kyanda being Museveni's son. Many people wondered if Musolin was beginning to lose his sharp edge.

Radio Katwe wrote a note asking Smart Musolin to clarify on this issue, since it was well known that Kyanda is a son to the late UPC secretary general John Kakonge. See that story here

But just last week, on Thursday February 2nd, Radio Katwe received information from two sources deep inside the intelligence service which gave the picture that Kyanda's true father is not as clear as we thought.

It is known in certain circles of the Bahima community that Museveni has had or once had a long-standing relationship with Violet Kakonge, the widow of the late John Kakonge. Mrs. Violet Kakonge is a Muhima, but her husband was from Bunyoro.

She is the mother-in-law of Major General Mugisha Muntu the former army commander and now senior FDC official.

It is not known whether or not this relationship between Museveni and Mrs. Kakonge ended because these days Mrs. Kakonge lives in Canada.

Leo Kyanda was born in 1963, at a time Museveni who was reportedly born in 1944, would have been 19. But there are other reports that insist that Museveni has been hiding his age all these years. Whereas Radio Katwe cannot confirm Musevenis real age yet, we would bring the readers attention to an interesting event. A book in the United States Information Service library in 1987, when its was still located at Mackinnon Road near Nile Hotel, said that Museveni was born in 1942, not 1944. One day, that book disappeared mysteriously from the shelves. It would be of great interest to locate it and source the information.

John Kakonge was a brilliant politician but also had a well earned reputation for chasing one skirt too many, perhaps like former US president John F. Kennedy.

Maybe while he was out with other women, the then firebrand UPC youthwinger Museveni got to "know" Mrs. Kakonge the UPC leaders wife really, really well and out of that Kyanda could have been conceived. Given the sexual mores prevalent in that part of Uganda, there is nothing strange about this.

After that tip-off from the intelligence informer, Smart Muolin's version of Kyandas paternity gained serious credibility.

But it all shows that you dismiss Smart Musolin's reports at the risk of remaining in the dark. With the Museveni regime, truth is indeed stranger than fiction. You cant make this stuff up.