In death, Katanga jolts relatives, State power

In the three weeks since his death, details have emerged sketching his family’s dominant silhouettes in money lending and other private businesses, military contracts and State power.

Katanga, who was in his 60s, showed entrepreneurial acumen early in life and after a sojourn in Japan, he returned to Uganda to chisel a fortune in grain trading and commodities.

The dictates of culture handed him a wife, Molly Bunanukye, originally married to his elder brother who died and left her expecting, Mbarara District Chairman Didas Tabaaro, who was late Katanga’s friend, recounts. 

The fondness held for more than three decades, and the couple was blessed with children.  In Molly, Katanga found not just a woman, but another astute and influential entrepreneur whose own relations and networks landed them the juiciest of deals, including classified army supplies.

The couple made money. Husband and wife each became billionaires. Their public portrait, however, remained low profile, enabling them to escape scrutiny of the media.

Yet, each at a moment’s notice accessed and hobnobbed with the mightiest on the land. In short, they held keys to some of the most important offices in Uganda and other countries of business interest. 

More than a dozen generals and top technocrats in the military and parent Defence ministry as well as intelligence seniors gravitated as close friends and business associates of Katanga’s family in ways that blurred the lines of authentic commercial partners and proxies.

This was no accident. The Katangas, as princes and princesses, orbited in the higher echelons in western Uganda, commanding honour and respect despite the fullness of their royalty being frozen in the abolished Ankole kingdom.

There are sharp differences among would-be subjects on whether the kingdom and a king should be restored in the backyard of President Museveni who has himself said he has seen no resolutions by district councils in the region, in line with constitutional provisions, to authenticate the universal desire of people there for the restitution of the kingdom and Obugabeship.

Those regal appellations and cultural contestations aside, Katanga partnered or socialised with others across classes, ethnicities and international borders. 

The power of his riches revealed in the several millions of shillings he could advance borrowers as a private lender.
His office on Nkrumah Road in Kampala’s central business district teemed with high-profile guests, many asking for money, favours and prospecting business opportunities.

He burned his fingers multiple times when borrowers he trusted defaulted, but Katanga did not give up on others --- and continued lending big amounts. 

For his personal integrity and wealth, Maj Gen Sam Kavuma, the deputy national coordinator of Operation Wealth Creation (OWC), revealed at the November 4 funeral service at All Saints Cathedral Nakasero in Kampala, that they unanimously designated Katanga, who was a member, the treasurer of their investment club.

The club galvanises many of Uganda’s notables, among them, Lt Gen James Mugira, the managing director of UPDF’s business arm, the National Enterprise Corporation (NEC). The three-star general was previously the Chief of Military Intelligence.

He and late Katanga were cousins while Maj Gen Kavuma, who in his eulogy fondly called the children of the Katangas his own, was the go-between for the marriage of their daughter, Ms Patricia Katanga Kakwanza.

The widespread infusion of the family tree of the Katangas in State and security architecture of Uganda revealed itself in the aftermath of his death on November 2, turning his quietness in life to contrasting loud wails and demands for justice for his loss. 

For instance, he had called the Deputy Commander of the Special Forces Command (SFC), Brig Charity Bainebabo, his cousin, alongside Lt Col Albert Kashakamba, Lt Col Benon Muhinda Biteeya, and Lt Gen Mugira. 

The Deputy Inspector General of Police, Maj Gen Geoffrey Katsigazi, is also among the relations.
Maj (rtd) Bright Rwamirama, the state minister for Animal Industry, was late Katanga’s uncle, with the maternal familial ties stretching to the doorway of the First Family.

There are two explanations people who knew the deceased offered for the intricate web of bonds in western Uganda, which has subsequently been imported into government. One rendering is that the multi-layered and shared relations are a result of flexible culture on marriage.

The other, in specific reference to late Katanga, is many of his siblings and extended family members, despite being royals, enlisted in record numbers first as National Resistance Army (NRA) rebels that propelled President Museveni to power in 1986 and, afterwards, into the regular state security and intelligence services.

These men and women in uniform over the years scaled the ranks to presently head State and security institutions or occupy other influential command deployments. 

Before them, Katanga’s late brother Akanga Byaruhanga headed the predecessor outfit to SFC, placing him to superintend the overall safeguarding of the First Family and critical state assets, while their other deceased sibling Arthur Kasasira was bodyguard to the President.

Of nine siblings, Katanga became the eighth to die, leaving their nonagenarian mother Mirieli Kyobuhoro with bottomless chasm of pain. 

Widowed Naomi Kashishane, now the only surviving child, said she in the confusion upon receiving news of the demise of her brother and benefactor, wished she passed on as well.

Life had become empty and meaningless to her as to several who depended on late Katanga’s largesse.
“He would call me … we talked all we wanted to talk,” Ms Kashishane told mourners on November 4, recollecting their regular telephone engagements with the last one being at 8pm on the night Katanga succumbed to bullet wounds.
He had in apparent premonition warned the immediate elder sister to be less talkative. “My mother’s child has gone,”

Ms Kashishane said at All Saints Cathedral Nakasero, “but human blood doesn’t go like that. God is a witness.”
Hers were poignant words that captured the enormity of subsisting rancour, pitting relatives against relatives, security and intelligence honchos against one another, influence peddlers against stoppers and money against money.  

At the start, it was police detectives investigating the demise of a man who seemed so ordinary. 

However, rapid developments, including a contested decision on the third day to bury Katanga in Kiruhura District against expressed wishes of sections of the family that preferred the remains interred in Kashaari, Mbarara District, snowballed the differences.

One insider described the tensions as “severe” that some shared close relatives and friends, to avoid taking sides or being misunderstood, simply stayed away from the scene of crime, vigils, funeral service and burial of Katanga.

It may have been a wise self-preservation instinct, especially that chief prosecutor Jane Frances Abodo on Tuesday, this week, sanctioned murder charges against Molly, the widow, accused of gunning the husband. Still hospitalised, she is expected to be formally indicted in court on December 4.

Three suspects, including the deceased’s daughter Patricia Katanga Kakwanza, have since been remanded to Luzira Prisons after being charged at Nakawa Chief Magistrate’s Court with either destroying evidence or being accessory after the fact of murder.

Prosecution announced investigations are ongoing, suggesting new charges could be brought up, sparking panic among actors in rival camps on who might be next in the dock.

For many high ups in uniform, said a senior official, it is a moment of reckoning as fears mount of risks to careers. 
One insider told this publication on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter that “with relatives fighting and eating themselves up like grasshoppers”, unfolding arrests and reprimands could boomerang to shake up the State as some of those adversely named are powerful and influential. 

It is a fall-out that on the one hand illuminates conflicting loyalties among shared relatives and on the other tests the power of the State and government apparatuses against those that make them powerful.

The playout exposes the Katangas to scrutiny in ways both the late and widow avoided.  According to friends and relatives, among them, his cousin Kiraka Bwarenga, the deceased was a man of his word who lived a quiet life. 
“He was a very peaceful man,” Mbarara District Chairman Tabaaro, who was a friend, said of Katanga in comments for this article. 

Mr Safari Mugyenyi, a resident of Sanga in Kiruhura District, remembered the deceased as a “social person and businessman who liked farming”. 

That modesty, another friend said, manifested in Katanga hanging out regularly at City Square, an improvised hang-out in Kisaasi, outside Kampala, famous among patrons for its tasty pork.

There, like at popular happening places in the upscale Bugolobi outskirt which neighbours his Mbuya home, Katanga liked taking wine and the bitter and picking bills for friends.  

Some of those in his inner circles said the deceased on occasions appeared bothered, whether by business or domestic distresses, and stayed longer out on some nights, returning home in the wee hours as he did the morning he met his death.

As a man of few words, it was difficult for peers to decode what was eating him up internally, leaving all to guesses and surprises. One such amazement was when fellow patrons, who had hanged out with Katanga on a Saturday, learning on social media that Katanga’s daughter, Patricia, was wed the next weekend with no information shared with them about the ceremony. They later learnt he may not have had authority on the choices of guests to the nuptials.   

For being many things rolled into one, Lt Gen Mugira eulogised Katanga as a “man among men”. No wonder in death, he has as the man among men jolted influential relatives and State power. 

Timeline

Nov 2: A shooting happens at the residence of businessman Henry Katanga in Mbuya
Nov 3: News starts to trickle in about the death of Katanga
Nov 3: Ms Milielly Kyobushooro Katanga petitioned the High Court Family Division, seeking to secure an injunction to stop Molly Katanga, the widow, from burying her husband in Kiruhura or any other place rather than Rubindi, Kashari in Mbarara District.
Nov 4: Police commence investigations into the possible death of Karanga with several people, including the daughters, being part of those required to make statements.
Nov 5: Katanga finally buried in Kiruhura
Nov 6: Police spokesperson Fred Enanga while addressing the weekly security presser in Naguru, Kampala, declines to comment on the progress of the investigations into Katanga’s death.
Nov 16: Two family members of the late Henry Katanga file an application for judicial inquest into his death before the Civil Division of the High Court.
Nov 17: Court allocates the case file.
Nov 21: Five people, including the widow, two daughters are indicted in connection with the murder of Katanga with three physically being arraigned before Nakawa Chief Magistrates’ Court. The three are Patricia Kakwanza, Charles Otai and George Amanyire. They are sent on remand at Luzira prison until December 4 when they will return for bail application.