What could be driving James?

Last week, a powerful man in Musevenis government (henceforth "James") was in the news again. He was appearing before the commission of inquiry into how the Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria was misused in Uganda.

The swindling of the money led to the Fund cutting off more than 145 million dollars in funding in 2005 to Uganda.

The public has failed to understand this powerful man James. He has been removed from public office before but quickly bounced back. He has money and great wealth that cannot be easily explained, but he cannot be removed from the political scene.

When he faced Justice James Ogoola last week to testify his side of the story, Ogoola asked him, "Have you no sense of horror?" Justice Ogoola was asking the wrong question and addressing the wrong man.

In this intelligence briefing, Radio Katwe will briefly outline the public life of this man in the hopes of helping the public understand how he operates.

James was born into a Bahima family in Rukungiri in western Uganda, of the Bahororo sub-tribe (the same group of the Chief of Defence Forces, General Aronda Nyakirima.) His father was an Anglican Protestant Reverend and a staunch supporter of the Uganda People's Congress ruling party of Milton Obote.

Radio Katwe has not managed to find out the name of the secondary school he attended for his O'Levels, but he reportedly fled that school after he was accused of knowing something about a rape case of a female student there.

He completed his A'Level exams at Old Kampala Senior Secondary School. He joined Makerere University in the late 1970s where he studied for a Law degree. At that time, he also secretly joined FRONASA, the rebel group commanded by Yoweri Museveni.

Museveni found a way of getting him to join Idi Amin's State Researh Bureau, the intelligence service at that time. He was planted in the State Research Bureau to gather information that would help Museveni fight Amin better.

During his time at the State Research Bureau he saw something which shocked him. Some of the killings under Amin which were allegedly being committed by Amin's Kakwa, Lugbara and Nubian tribesmen were actually being committed by a few exilees from Rwanda recruited from refugee camps in Uganda (the Banyarwanda) on orders of Museveni as part of the covert/sabotage operations against Amin.

The purpose was to commit these heinous crimes and have the world blame them on Amin who we might add, roundly deserved it. That was when he developed an intense hatred for the Tutsi.

After Amin fell, this powerful man joined the Uganda police force while still a Museveni sympathizer. He was arrested in 1981 after Museveni started his bush war and he was detained by the UPC government at Jinja Road Police station.

He escaped, he claims, with the help of Hope Kivengere, the daughter of the late Bishop Festo Kivengere.

In the bush, Museveni appointed him head of intelligence after the then head of intelligence, David Tinyefuza, misbehaved so many times. He continued in that role when the NRM came to power in 1986.

In 1987, he married a pretty girl who we shall call Susan. Part of their wedding was hosted at State House.

According to some reports Radio Katwe has, like many of his fellow NRA officers he left no skirt unturned, resulting into incidents like the one where he fathered a child with a woman who worked with the UNDP (in Nairobi or Kampala office), which woman is said to have turned out to be a relative (cousin).

He also loved the flashy life and used to siphon off money from the classified security agency budget for his extravagant lifestyle.

Some relatives who have lived in his home say he is once too often vain and self-conscious, sometimes spending as much time as his wife in front of the mirror each morning.

One day at Kisementi in Kampala around 1997 or 1998, he was trying to impress a certain woman at the Just Kickin' sports bar. He pulled out a ward of U.S. dollar bills from his wallet and was running his fingers through them.

He had an affair with the Kampala lawyer and socialite named Candy.

But although he has that pimp-ish character, under his watch as a security chief until he was replaced in 1996, there was no coup in Uganda or too much instability to threaten the centre of power, Kampala.

Rumor has it that in the late 1990s, the Ssabagabe of Uganda started sleeping with this mans wife. He was humiliated but as a serving officer he could do nothing about getting even with his top commander.

In 1998, president Museveni told a meeting at State House of Ankole members of parliament that he had information that this man James was plotting against him.

Even recently in February, Smart Musolin reported that he had refused to give rooms in his Rukungiri hotel for the Elect Museveni task force.

In the early 2000s, he wooed a girl called Kandehura, aka "Kande". Kande is related to his wife and was invited to their home as guardians.

Kande's father, as Radio Katwe has reported, was Mr. Sabiti, a Muhima civil servant resident in Entebbe whom the State secretly ordered murdered in 1983 near the Lake Victoria Hotel so the blame could be put on the then Vice President Paulo Muwanga and also get the angry Bahima to hate the UPC government and support Museveni's NRA.

James started being very intimate with Kande and even put her up in a flat in Bugolobi at his expense but it seems his wife did not suspect anything.

But one day, his wife picked up James cell phone and noticed that there were many SMS messages from Kande. She wondered what was going on and kept track of her husband.

Susan realized that these two were having too intimate a relationship and she went mad. She called her brother Kabonero and they called for a wider family meeting to put James to task.

It was decided that Kande, who at that time was in London, should be summoned also to the family tribunal. James was at the airport to receive Kande and they came walking hand in hand.

At the family meeting, James told his wife Susan point-blank that she was his "third wife" and Kande was now his fourth wife, so Susan should leave him alone.

James asked the assembled family members one question: "What moral authority did Susan have to question his relationship with Kande?"

The family members were quiet because they knew he was hurt and humiliated and he was indirectly talking about Susan's escapade with the Ssabagabe.

The other way he took revenge for the Ssabagabes trespass with his wife was to go where it hurt most, by sleeping with a favourite princess who we shall call Natasa.

So that is James for you. The man you see in public flashing money about and dressed in sharp suits has many unhappy moments in his private life.

The way he was answering Justice Ogoola, the head of a commission appointed by President Museveni, told a lot. By trying to dismiss Justice Ogoola, he was indirectly daring Museveni to sack or publicly discipline him. He was not really attacking Justice Ogoola. He was hitting at Museveni.

Also, he knows that Ssabagabes fears him for a number of reasons. He is the one man in Kampala who knows the Ssabagabes most petty and embarrassing weaknesses better than almost anybody in the world. After all, it is he who has acted as his pimp for many years.

When the Ssabagabes appetites needed to be whetted by housemaids, cooks, office secretaries and women secretly included on the entourage on his trips abroad, it was James who used to make the arrangements.

James also knows the Ssabagabes personal record of massive corruption and theft of state money and assets, so he knows that by being accused of embezzling Global Fund money, the real culprit is being let off the hook.

James also knows the inside story of who did what on the shooting down of the plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994 and the genocide that followed.

That is why he knows he is untoucheable. He knows who the Thief-in-Chief is in Uganda. These are things that only Radio Katwe can bring you in Uganda. We give you sketches of the political, money, and sexual forces that operate behind the scenes in the regime.