Tamale Mirundi speaking to journalists. PHOTO/ISAAC KASAMANI
What is your favourite Joseph Tamale Mirundi moment? Perhaps it could be when in 2017 he brandished a hammer at a rally in Rubaga Division, Kampala, that was organised by supporters of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) to counter those organised by the Opposition figures as they challenged the lifting of the presidential age limit from the Constitution.
Or was it five years ago when he authored his book Abanyampi in which he was having a go at sycophants of the very regime he was willing to kill for during the rally in Rubaga?
Or could it be in 2017 when he manhandled Simon Muyanga Lutaaya live on NBS television on their now vanquished programme One-on-One with Tamale Mirundi after the veteran journalist suggested that he had applied for a lease from Buganda Land Board, a private company attached to his sworn enemies the Mengo establishment?
Protesting with veins protruding on his face, Mirundi called Lutaaya a fool who had pocketed bribes from his enemies supposedly in Mengo. Yet when Mirundi met his Waterloo mark this week, Lutaaya was among the last people he talked to in his penultimate hours.
This simple synopsis shows that it was very hard to peg down Mirundi into certain corners and conclude that he believed in this ideology or idea. He was an enigma who would sport a huge rosary dangling down his chest and also claim to be “a non-praying Catholic”, yet a few moments later he would be saying he believed in witchcraft and thus he frequents grass-thatched shrines.
When he stood for a parliamentary seat in his native Kyotera District, Mirundi claimed that he rejected proposals fronted by some supporters which were to the effect that if he was to win he had to get blessings from witch doctors or even the Catholic Church.
Mirundi, who spoke English in a typically rural Ganda accent, positioned himself as an intellectual by appearing on all sorts of TV and radio programmes to debate issues of the day and also by writing books some said were pamphlets. Yet at the same, he was good at uttering profanities, a trait he alleged he had inherited from his ancestors.
“I’m a third-generation abuser. My Ssenga [paternal auntie] was among the most acerbic abusers in our village,” Mirundi, a native of Kyotera in Buganda, would proudly say.
Sources say it was this acidic tongue of his that ultimately ended his 13–year–old tenure as President Museveni’s press secretary.
The story goes that in 2015 Museveni was called for a meeting in State House to essentially discuss Mirundi. In the presence of people who had worked for Museveni for a long time such as Linda Nabusayi, who would go to replace Mirundi, Edith Nakalema and Proscovia Nalweyiso, a recording was allegedly played in which Mirundi was said to be insulting Museveni and at the same time he was praising former prime minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi who at the time had decided to challenge Museveni’s decades hold on to power.
Even to his death, Mirundi claimed that these recordings were concocted by his enemies such that he could get kicked out of a job that had made him so popular.
“Those who doctored the tapes are fools wasting time. Do they think Museveni believes them? I’m recorded by the Internal Security Organisation, State House, and another private company. I also record myself. One time Mengo took a doctored recording too, but Museveni rejected it,” Mirundi told Daily Monitor in 2015.
Journalism career
Mirundi’s protests didn’t achieve much. It was time for him to leave State House but being the President’s press, secretary was a milestone for a person whose journalism career was tickled when he was still in high school in rural Buganda.
Mirundi narrated that in the 1980s his literature teacher gave them an assignment to come up with a fantasy story.
On his part, Mirundi imagined that he had written a love letter and sent it through a post office. Mirundi, in the letter, imagined that his female teacher received the letter and put in her bra.
In this fiction, after school, Mirundi’s teacher went home, undressed herself and started reading the letter.
The whole school was thrown into pandemonium when this literature teacher went ahead to read Mirundi’s essay and conveyed it to the head teacher who was male.
Luckily for Mirundi, the head teacher had a different perspective as he forgave him saying the letter was a good sign that he was going to make a good journalist.
“I’m forgiving you because one thing you can make a good journalist,” Mirundi told Daily Monitor, saying from that moment he started working with Munno newspaper and also ventured into vending newspapers. Mirundi would also start two newspapers Lipoota and Voice before they quickly collapsed.
“I started with newspaper vending. I struggled all my life that’s why I say I’m a self-made man,” Mirundi would brag. Just like in life, Mirundi’s birth is riddled with mysteries because he said his mother Molly Mirundi couldn’t recall the year he was born.
Mirundi could only guess that he was born between 1960 and 1964 in Matale, then Rakai District, now Kyotera District. It’s this growing up in rural Buganda that shaped him. Mirundi would tell stories of mob justice.
“Our village never tolerated indiscipline, we had no village courts but justice prevailed,” Mirundi said. Just like many people who grew up in rural Buganda, Mirundi spoke using analogies which were full of imagery and succinct. He never answered without going through analogies.
“A mother of twins is running away from the bedroom and then here comes a virgin who thinks she will go into that bedroom,” Mirundi would say when referring to an inexperienced person.
When Bashir Kazibwe Mbaziira, then his host on One–on–One with Tamale Mirundi, claimed that Buganda got its independence before Uganda got its own, Mirundi used an analogy to show how such a claim is bogus.
“How can you get married and then still claim you are still a virgin? The essence of marriage is to break virginity. If Buganda got its independence before Uganda, then how is it part of Uganda?” Mirundi, whose favourite day remained the day he arrived in Kampala, said.
Perhaps the closest he came to describing himself is when he said he does everything out of self-interest or pragmatism.
“I only befriend someone when our interests meet,” Mirundi, who described himself as a loner, said. Mirundi still used analogies to explain why when he was Museveni’s press secretary, he went out of his way to support his long stay in power.
“If you have just entered the discothèque can you allow those guys who have been enjoying to switch off power? I have just started dancing [getting a government job] and you want me to support the Opposition which is going to put me out of work?” Mirundi said.
