For Godfrey Kisembo, 53, rising from a ragtag footballer
to a State House driver, was a breakthrough in life. And becoming
President Museveni’s chief chauffeur for 17 years was the icing on the
cake.
But while many Ugandans pray for an opportunity to
shake the President’s hand and perhaps shake off poverty with its
associated misery, Mr Kisembo’s 17-year close association with President
Museveni did not save him a stint at Luzira prison.
Now he is struggling to see the President and to get his life back on track.
Apparently, he failed to pay a debt after a land
deal gone bad. Mr Kisembo says while busy with State duties, he bought
land without seeing its size but after using surveyors to check the
land, he found he had been sold less area than he had been told and for
which he paid.
He tried to decline paying the balance of the
money but lost the case and failure to pay legal costs landed him in
prison. His problems came in droves. A house for his family was sold to a
bank without his knowledge using forged transfer forms and signature;
and the bank wants his family out. That is a story in itself. But what
does Kisembo say?
“I drove the President from 1987 to 2005. I was
appointed chief chauffer after Mutabazi [the chief chauffer] ran away.
He is in America; he got little money and left,” said Mr Kisembo.
In 2005, Mr Kisembo says, the President ordered
that he gets deployed as a head driver with an office at Okello House
where he sits to date. “But I am useless. They didn’t give me an
appointment letter…up to now I don’t have an appointment letter,” he
said in a soft but terse voice: “When I ask they say you will get it…you
will get it; up to now!”
‘In things’
Mr Kisembo, who is out of prison on medical
grounds, said he accepted to give Sunday Monitor this interview because
his 17-year association with President Museveni and his continued visits
to State House created a perception that he was still “in things” as
Ugandans would love to say, yet he was battling challenges some of which
arose from his dedicated service to the President.
“People who see me think I have money. I was put
in Luzira [prison] because they thought the President would pay for me.
Some think I am a spy for the President,” Mr Kisembo said.
He added: “I still earn the same salary of per
month like any other driver and some monthly allowance,” he said. “They
gave me a desk at Okello House but I sit there as a picture; they say
that is the boss…that is the boss yet I don’t know anything going on, I
don’t deploy any driver.”
“I am there but I don’t know my work, I have been
jobless since 2005. I left and went home but in 2008, they called me
that they had given me an office which is only a table.”
Was moving from chief chauffer to head driver a
promotion or demotion? “I don’t know,” Mr Kisembo said, adding: “One
day, he [Museveni] called me saying ‘Kisembo, why are you complaining
about allowances?’”
According to Mr Kisembo, it was a good job driving
the President but it had no money, forcing him to bargain for better
terms. “I tried to complain sometimes even to the President but he began
calling me ‘Afande Allowance’; he became scared because I wanted
money.”
“They said it was too much money and they removed
it; it was shocking to drivers,” Mr Kisembo says and added that as the
one closer to the fountain of honor then, he voiced the concerns of
other drivers. But that did not please the President.
“I continued with my job which I did well but
whenever he [President] wanted to stop, he would say ‘Afande Allowance,
you stop…Afande Allowance don’t knock my people…Afande Allowance let me
greet my people.”
Apparently, Mr Kisembo’s fight for improved pay
started in 1994 when he offered to resign. In a letter to the Principal
Private Secretary to the President, he gave three reasons for his
resignation: “The salary and allowances I am getting are not enough to
maintain me and my big family; I wish to seek better employment from
somewhere else [sic] and my family has no accommodation at present as
you know the recent earthquake in Fort Portal spoiled my house.”
Resignation
He added: “…I am kindly asking you to accept my
resignation and to give me recommendation to enable me look for another
employment somewhere else.”
The resignation was not accepted.
In 1997, he wrote another letter to the State
House Comptroller raising questions why he was not being paid allowances
entitled to him and yet others were getting it.
Mr Kisembo said since he stopped being a
presidential chauffeur in 2005, he has never met the President and does
not know whether he is the one disinterested in his service or it is the
State House staffers deliberately blocking him.
“I have written two letters and tried many times to meet the President but up to now, I have failed,” he said.
Frustrated by not seeing the man he chauffeured
for nearly two decades, Mr Kisembo tried other family members whose
errands he also ran then.
“I tried Muhoozi [Kainerugaba] and saw him. He
promised to give me some money but it took another one year to see him.
When I saw him, he said ‘right now I don’t have money.’ I decided to
leave him alone.”
Brig Muhoozi is President Museveni’s son and
commander of Special Forces Group that takes care of the President’s
security detail. “I drove those children and they were all good
mannered; I thought they would still remember me,” Mr Kisembo remarked.
After failing to get help from Brig Muhoozi, Mr Kisembo said he tried to reach the First Lady but he failed.
When asked why he didn’t try other family members,
Mr Kisembo said: “But the girls are now married and it’s not good to
disturb them in their homes. I went to Muhoozi because he is a man like
me,” he said.
Mr Kisembo feels betrayed because he committed himself to work but he is ending on a sad note.
“I was on safari every day and my wife was taken
by another man,” he said: “Sometime I went to the north with the
President and we spent more than two months. When I returned home, I
found my wife pregnant and she decided to run away,” he said.
He does not blame the wife. “My job always kept me
away from home. We were only two drivers then unlike today when the
President has seven; five soldiers and two civilians.”
He said due to the hectic nature of the job with
low motivation, other drivers ran away. “I deployed someone to drive the
President to his farm in Kisozi and the driver warned me that ‘if you
deploy me to go there, I will run away’. I forced him but the man
resigned. He was called William Kizito. He died some years later.”
Mr Kisembo said while chauffeuring the President,
he had no connection with the world outside State House and many things
happened to his family and social connections.
“I tried to get State House scholarship for my
children but failed and I had to use loans when others were getting [the
scholarship]. The President gives other people money but for me, I
don’t know why; I think it’s bad luck.”
When told he still has a job, Mr Kisembo. “I just go there to sit; I have no appointment letter and no work,” he said.
So what does Mr Kisembo want?
“I want to see the President first,” Mr Kisembo
said before Sunday Monitor asks again: Won’t you put yourself in
trouble? And the answer was: “If they dismiss me then I have nothing to
do. I have asked for help and they have all dodged me; I will go and
dig, knowing that I tried all ways. When I die, they will say he was a
good man; he was hardworking man yet they have left me in trouble.”
His lawyer Muzamil Bikanga said Mr Kisembo is
facing hardship. “I think we have decided to treat it as a just cause.
We are even thinking of writing to the Vatican begging them to assist
this man because he is proud of having driven the Pope,” Mr Bikanga
said.
But State House spokesman Tamale Mirundi said:
“Kisembo’s problem is that he is facing a civil case and was recently in
prison and those demanding money [from him] are threatening to put him
back to Luzira.”
Mr Mirundi added that if Mr Kisembo did not raise
his issues when he was driving the President, then he should not be
raising them now. “To say I was a driver so as to get automatic access
to the President is wrong but on humanitarian grounds, he can be
helped.”
Mr Mirundi said State House employs more than
1,000 people therefore “if we all go to the President, where will money
come from?”
On the issue of working without appointment letter, Mr Mirundi said it was a matter that Mr Kisembo should pursue.
“How security could vet him and entrust him with
the life of the President and now he is not appointed. Maybe he did
something wrong,” Mr Mirundi said.
******
Kisembo’s recollections of chauffeuring leaders
Kisembo’s recollections of chauffeuring leaders
The Pope
My best time was when I was chosen to chauffer His
Holiness Pope John Paul II when he visited Uganda in 1993. As the
presidential chief chauffer, I was the one trusted to drive the Pope for
the six days he was in the country. He gave me a rosary which I wear
daily up to today.
I don’t know whether the rosary will help me
through these tough times or not. There is nothing else I could get from
the Pope other than the blessings he gave me. I remember his private
secretary gave me $50.
‘Gaddafi was my best passenger’
I have also chauffeured several visiting African
presidents. I drove the late Col Muamar Gaddafi, Kenya’s former
President Daniel Arap Moi, Tanzania’s Benjamin Mkapa and Rwanda’s Paul
Kagame, among others.
Among all of them, Gaddafi was the best. He was
not mean. Whenever I chauffeured him, he would give me at least $200. I
remember one time Moi also gave me $100, but only once. But for Kagame,
he never gives; may be these days.
Experiences with Museveni
It was good driving the big man. People fight to
see him but for me I would see him daily. But I have remained a small
man yet all those who were small people then are all big men now.
His first PPS was the late Lt Col Serwanga Lwanga.
Then Sam Kavuma who is now a Brigadier was ADC. I have worked with the
late Brig Noble Mayombo, Stuart Agaba and Brig Mbadi plus others. I saw
Gen Kale Kayihura as a Captain. They are all big people now. In the car,
it would always be the President, his ADC and me. He is very jolly in
public and with outside people but he is tough with those near him.
Of all those who worked with him, it’s only Lwanga
who was his friend. They would joke a lot. Lwanga would say “you
kiwalata man [bald headed] man, come and we go; leave those people, you
will see them later’. And the President would say ‘Okay…okay let us go’.
The rest feared the President and could not make any jokes.
******
Museveni and his great memory
One thing I know about Museveni is that he has
great memory. If he meets you once, he will never forget. When you meet
again, he will remember when you met and where. But he can also quarrel.
When one driver makes a mistake or gets an
accident, he will abuse all drivers. He would say ‘you westerners are
giving me headache; I am going to employ my northerners because for them
when they don’t like you they let you know’.
I also remember one day when he told us to send a
car to pick the late George Cosmas Adyebo. We found the man shabby
drinking malwa (millet brew) but we brought him to State House like
that. They bought him new clothes and announced him Prime Minister.
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
