Below is the the Luganda statement that the Katikkiro of Buganda, Eng. JB Walusimbi, issued on the burning of Buganda’s sacred Kasubi Tombs. The main highlights of the statement are as follows;

• Katikkiro sends condolences to Ssaabasajja Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, ba Nnaalinnya, Abalangira n’Abambejja, and the whole of Buganda.
• The Ekibira section, the the remains of the former kings (Ssekabaka) are located suffered serious but limited damage.
• The Buganda kingdom will officially mourn for the loss of Kasubi for one week, starting on March 22, 2010.
• A committee of Buganda officials has already been formed to start investigating what materials and budget would be required to rebuild 130 year old highly unique structure.
• A special session of the Buganda Great Lukiiko has been called to discuss the grave situation on March 22, 2010.

The full text in Luganda is shown below;

March, 17, 2009

EKIWANDIIKO KYA KATIKKIRO KU KW’OKEBWA KWA MASIRO GE KASUBI

Owek. Katikkiro wa Buganda ne nnaku nyingi ategeza Obuganda n’abantu bonna aba Uganda nti enyumba enkulu Muzibuazaalampanga, omwagalamizibwa ba Ssekabaka ba Buganda bana, mu Masiro e Kasubi, abantu abettima abatannamanyibwa baagiteekedde omuliro n’ebengeya mu kiro eky’akeesezza olunaku Lwokusatu nga 16, March 2010.

Katikkiro asaasidde nnyo nnyo Ssaabasajja Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, ba Nnaalinnya, Abalangira n’abambejja n’Obuganda bwonna. Gutusinze mukama waffe.

Ekibira ba Ssekabaka gyebaagalamizibwa abaddukirize baakoze buli ekisoboka okutaakiriza yo ne watayonooneka nnyo. Olubiri luno olwakubibwa Ssekabaka Muteesa 1 emyaka egisoba mu 130 gwe mutima gwa Buganda.

Obuganda buli mu biwoobe era tutandiise okukungubaga. Okukungubaga okutongole kujja kutandika ku Lwokusooka nga 22 March era kujja kumalira ddala sabbiiti nnamba okutuuka nga 26 March 2010. Emikolo girikomekkerezebwa mu Masiro e Kasubi.

Akakiiko ka baminisita kateekeddwawo okukola enteekateeka y’okukungubaga eye sabbiiti ennamba, era kajja kutegeeza Obuganda enteekateeka nga bwe zinatambula.

Olukiiko lwa Buganda Olukulu luyitiddwa bukubirire ku Lwokusooka nga 22 March, 2010 ku ssaawa 4.00 ez’enkya tusobole okuteesa ku nsonga eno enkulu.

Watekeddwawo akakiiko kabakugu akagenda okwekenneenya ebyetaagisa (materials) n’ensimbi ezeetaagisa okuzzaawo Amasiro.

Obuganda butegeezebwa nti Obwakabaka busazeewo okuzzaawo Amasiro ga ba Ssekabaka gano, ng’akabonero k’omwoyo gwa Buganda ogutafa, ogutatya era ogutaggwawo.

Ssaabasajja Kabaka Awangaale!

Eng. J.B. Walusimbi

KATIKKIRO

Most Baganda in North America have reached one conclusion about the fire that gutted Buganda’s national shrine, Amasiro ge Kasubi, the royal cemetery where 4 late kings (Bassekabaka) and many other royals are buried. They put the blame squarely on president Yoweri Museveni and his NRM government. And their suspicions were strenghtned by reports that on Wednesday, scores of Baganda were shot by NRM military police because they gave a hostile audience to Museveni. Museveni went inspect the ashes in the place where the royal tombs once stood. Based on the emails we have received from all over the world, it appears that a huge majority of Baganda view Museveni’s visit as a case of the criminal returning to the scene of the crime.

According to the March 17, 2010 Ekiba Kibe broadcasts, Baganda held big Ggwangamujje mourning gatherings in Boston, New Jersey and Los Angeles on Tuesday and Wednesday. Mourning is expected to go on for sometime but no end dates have been announced.  On the same program, the Chairman of Ggwangamujje Boston describes the various ways Museveni has impoverished, robbed and even killed Baganda. As examples, Mr. Mayanja mentions the young virgins of Budo Primary School who were sacrificed in a ritual dormitory fire, other school fires, the destruction of Buganda agriculture, the closure of CBS, the theft of Buganda’s native lands and the murder of ordinary Baganda. Mr. Mayanja announced more mourning meetings, indicating that in America Baganda might mourn for the Kasubi tombs for longer than the one week which Mmengo wants for Buganda.

Click on Ekiba_Kibe17Mar10C and on Ekiba_Kibe17Mar10D to listen to the Ekiba Kibe programs of March 17, 2010.

According to an official Buganda Kingdom news release, the minister for Local Government and Cooperatives, Jolly Lutaaya has advised Masaza Chiefs to intensify the registration process of every one in their areas of jurisdiction.

Owek. Lutaaya who was meeting the chiefs at Bulange in Mengo explained that this registration, which should include the newly born babies, the youth, adults, immigrants and the dead is very important in the planning process of the Kingdom and the country at large.

He added that the registration furthermore is intended to help fight immoral activities that are infiltrating most communities.

Lutaaya further advised the chiefs to work hard and earn their respect as Kabaka’s officials among the society they serve.

He added that with maximum respect from the people, all their calls will be responded to accordingly which will lead to great improvements in people’s lives.

The minister also advised the chiefs to promote Omummuli Programme spearheaded Katikkiro Eng J.B. Walusimbi which is geared at developing the people of Buganda.

In the same meeting, the minister of state for Local Government and cooperatives in the Kingdom George Nsamba Kumama also called upon the chiefs to promote the spirit of the Cooperative Unions right from the county to the village level.

Kumama explained that cooperatives will help the communities in villages to improve their income earnings and promote their living standards at home.

The announcement by Mmengo is a major change in the way Kabaka’s peoples are registered. For more than 100 years Kabaka’s government encouraged Baganda clans to register their members (bazzukulu) at Mutuba, Ssiga and Kasolya levels. Even late last year the Buganda government announced plans to register Baganda in their clans. It now seems like the registration of Baganda in their clans has been completely dropped.

The United State government sent a clear signal recently that it recognizes the Kabaka of Buganda, Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II and his government as a critical power centre in East Africa when the US Ambassador Jerry P. Lanier trekked to Banda Palace to meet the Lion of Buganda. On February 18, 2009, Ambassador Lanier ignored the NRM’s claims that the Kabaka and Buganda nation are ancient and dying cultural institutions without any political power. He held extensive discussions with His Majesty on matters of mutual interest to the two nations of Buganda and United States of America.

The meeting was attended by Katikkiro, J.B. Walusimbi, the Attorney General, Owek. Apollo Makubuya.

Ambassador Jerry P. Lanier is a career diplomat with 26 years of service in the Department of State. Prior his appointment as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Uganda, he served as the Foreign Policy Advisor for U.S. Africa Command headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany.  Previously, he was the Director of the Office of Regional and Security Affairs in the Africa Bureau at the State Department.  Mr. Lanier has also served in the Philippines, Kenya, Thailand, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Ghana.

The president of the NRM occupation government in Uganda is stubbornly continuing with his tour of Buganda despite increasing rejection by the citizens of the kingdom. After getting embarrassingly small and hostile crowds in Kyaggwe, Butambala, Buddu and Bugerere counties, the Ugandan dictator decided to take his tour to Busiro, where he fought much of the guerrilla war that brought him to power. But his statehouse decided to change tactics after getting reports that, even there, Baganda were plotting to embarrass him by not attending his functions or with tough questions about CBS PM Radio.

A source close to the presidential protection brigade has informed our stringer in Entebbe that Museveni’ s new tactic for the rest of his Buganda tour will be to avoid big public venues and direct contact with politically bold Baganda peasants. The focus is now to be put to reaching as many places as possible but in impromptu meetings at family homes where even if only 30 people come it is not bad. As part of this tactic, state house will arrange for the president to inspect farms and businesses where it is easy to claim that the purpose was not to get big crowds. It is also much harder for the villagers to ask Museveni challenging questions about CBS FM radio or Kabaka when only a few people are around.

Our source also said that Museveni’s new tactic helped him avoid a major embarrassment in Kakiri, Busiro, two days ago. According to the source: “Museveni made a blunder of going to Kakiri, where Kabaka got crowds of tens of thousands of people only a few months ago. State house found out late that the people could be too few so they arranged for him to visit a few farmers and a widow. They also hurriedly arranged for him to stop at Masulita Secondary School and pretend that he went there to open a building, although it had not been on the original program. Obviously they also got the big crowd of the students.”

The source claims that Museveni will not abandon his Buganda tour again, as he did late last year, because he is not willing to allow Kabaka Mutebi or Baganda to determine what happens at the 2011 elections or after. He said: “Museveni will continue with the tour and continue giving bribes to grass roots people, researching why people love the Kabaka, and collecting information on NRM opponents. And they will only have rallies in places where they can bring in people. You are not likely to see too many photos or TV video even in government owned papers and stations because people will automatically compare to Kabaka Mutebi’ s huge crowds.”

According to sources in Kampala, the  Banyankore owned Luganda daily paper Kamunye, is now an important part of the NRM’s program to spread anti-Buganda and anti-Kabaka propaganda. This week Kamunye published a story claiming that president Museveni of the Uganda occupation government had decided to go and pay a visit to Kabaka Mutebi at his Banda palace, to extend an olive branch, since the Lion of Buganda has been unresponsive.

A Kampala based Muganda analyst with close links to Mmengo sent an email which dismissed the story as silly and typical of NRM tactics of creating kavuyo (confusion). He said: “Now Museveni thinks that Baganda will forget the damage he has done to our kingdom and give him votes simply because he visited Kabaka? This is what they call a trial balloon and I hope that Katikkiro Walusimbi is not part of this one. The Kabaka must not be exposed to the hooligans anymore.”

Kamunye is a sister paper to the Red Pepper which also recently printed another Nagenda planted story saying the NRM government was going to take over Bulange. Red Pepper was originally sponsored by Salim Saleh and is often used by the NRM to leak both true and fake stories. Many of its current reporters are known to be ISO and ESO spies.

An email from a source close to president Museveni’s state house reveals that, since October  2009  the Ugandan dictator’s people have been struggling to put together a real plan to deal with the accelerating anti-Museveni and anti-NRM feelings in Buganda. The people who seem to be the brains behind the plan include Museveni himself, John Nagenda, Tamale Mirundi and one Mafabi. Also involved in some meetings are Museveni’s half brother Salim Saleh (Caleb Akandwanako), David Tinyefuza, David Magara, Wabudeya, Kirunda Kivejinja, Moses Kigongo, Hope Mwesigye, Robert Kabushenga, Namayanja and others.

According to the email: “A lot of experiments have been made to see how to change Baganda either through fear or love. Nothing seems to work. For example, Museveni started a tour of Buganda after the Kayunga riots with plans to give out cash to key NRM people to bribe villagers. But the tour has been terrible from last year.  Whether it is in Butambala, Kyaggwe, Bugere  or Buddu, every place the president goes Baganda have been coming in small numbers and only demanding for the opening  of CBS.  Even when state house decided to show power by having mambas go with the president to Kyaggwe the people were not impressed and only put up more pictures of Kabaka Mutebi and Nnabagereka in their taxis and shops.”

The president’s people are sort of divided according to our source.  Tinyefuza, Janet Museveni,  Magara, Otafiire and sometimes Saleh, lead the group which wants to use straight force. This group pressured the president to force Kabaka Mutebi to come to the infamous “gun on your head” Entebbe meeting late last year, where the Lion of Buganda refused to be bought. The group also claims that Museveni did not go far enough in crashing the Kayunga disturbances. Salim Saleh is also on the second side with Kivenjinja, Kuteesa, Tamale Mirundi, Mwesigye, Nagenda and others. This “divide and conquer” group prefer to isolate Kabaka from Baganda by destroying Mmengo as an institution and confusing people until the 2011 elections are over.  This team believes that if the Europeans and the USA are happy with the elections, which Museveni is guaranteed to win, Buganda will have nowhere to start.  Museveni would very much like to use force but  he also knows that Baganda youths have become too strong to let him win on force while America and Europe are watching. For now he is siding with the second team.

Our source adds: “Recently a plan was kicked off for president Museveni and Salim Saleh to soften the tone on Buganda and show respect to Kabaka Mutebi and leave people like Mirundi, Nagenda, other Baganda and even Tinyefuza or Otafiire to be the bad guys. That is why Museveni went to Kayunga (Bugerere county) and said that the county can never leave Buganda. This is the man who has been calling the county Bunyala for 6 months and stopped the Kabaka  from going there without permission from his Sabanyala. The problem for state house is that again, most peasants had boycotted Museveni’s visit. The 400 or so people at the rally were 80% schoolchildren who were brought in by lorries. And that is why the crowd was never shown on any TV stations.

“Salim Saleh did not do any better when he went to Kalisizo (Buddu county) to speak the at the funeral rites (lumbe ceremony) of Tamale Mirundi’s father. Saleh used the opportunity to claim that he wished Buganda well and was involved in the tough job of bringing Kabaka Mutebi and Museveni to together. He even asked the crowd to pray hard for him. However, the peasants were not impressed at all. They insisted that if he wants their prayers he must fist deal with the problem of opening CBS. Chaos followed when Tamale Mirundi asked local NRM officials to stand up for introduction. First they seemed to be afraid to do so and when they did, people started to boo them and call them traitors. Then Tamale tried to let a senior NRM official from Kampala to say a few words. The people told him not to do so or they (the villagers) would walk away. That is when Tamale Mirundi turned to Saleh and said ‘Afande nawe obirabye, mu gombolola zino NRM telinaamu kalulu’ (‘As you can see the NRM has no votes in these sub-counties’).”

The email from our source also says that, as part of a state house propaganda kick off, John Nagenda started his bad guy activities with his New Vision column last Saturday. In his column, he trashed the Mmengo institution, suggested that it is irrelevant and claimed that it will die. Nagenda also arranged for the Banyankore owned Luganda daily paper Kamunye to print negative stories about Kabaka Mutebi. Kamunye is a sister paper to the Red Pepper which also recently printed another Nagenda planted story saying that the NRM government was going to take over Bulange. Red Pepper was originally sponsored by Salim Saleh.

Robert Kabuye says no to the claim by UDII members that every one against the presidency of Yoweri Museveni is fighting for the same thing. In his Ekiba Kibe program of February 8, 2010, Mr. Kabuye make it clear that when he organized the Baganda demonstration of January 26, 2010 at the United Nations, he advertised that it was about the liberation of Buganda.  He says: “Buganda Post kyeyayogera kyali kituufu..byetwakootinga byaali bituufu. Kubanga ffe twategeka okwekalakaasa kwe New York era kwali kuyitibwa ‘Okununula Buganda’” (“Buganda Post was correct. What we quoted was correct. Because we organized the New York demonstration and it was called ‘Liberating Buganda’”). Mr. Kabuye requests the UDII people to come out and state what their true objectives are [not just saying that they are against Museveni].

Mr. Kabuye and his Ekiba Kibe program are  probably the most visible action ever by disapora Baganda to advocate for Buganda liberation without apology or signs of “ate banagamba batya?” (“what will the others say?”). According to our sources in Boston, many older Baganda with dreams of becoming major political figures in Uganda have made attempts to claim closeness to Kabuye. Even Ruhakana Rugunda, the NRM ambassador  to the UN, has reportedly paid people to set up fronts to recruit Kabuye and then disorganize him. However, most of the them have been disappointed when the Ekiba Kibe program and Bu man has stubbornly insisted that anything he does must be focused on the liberation Buganda from Museveni, the NRM and their occupation Uganda constitution. Kabuye says on his program that Buganda must be ruled as an independent kingdom with Kabaka on top. And he has previously explained that the independent nation system worked for over 600 years. Yet the foreign systems of Unitary, Regional Tier, Decentralization, and Federo have all failed to work for Buganda and Uganda in the last  40 years.

In a related story, we have been able to confirm reports that Kibanda Cinema (video hall) operators in Wandegeya (Kyadondo county), Kalisizo (Buddu county) and Mukono (Kyaggwe county) were caught by the NRM police playing Ekiba Kibe programs to their customers and were told to stop or they will be arrested. The CDs with the recordings were also confiscated.

Click on Ekiba_Kibe08Feb10B to listen to the February 8, 2009 Ekiba Kibe broadcast.

On February 7, 2010, the SMS based Ekiba Kibe program which is broadcast on Free Buganda Radio reported that Beti Kamya had been endorsed by  Katikkiro JB Walusimbi to campaign for Federo. The same program then asked Ms. Kamya to explain what the Katikkiro’s endorsement means.  The presenter,  Robert Kabuye of Boston tells Ms. Beti Kamya in Luganda: “MP owa Lubaga North, … Beti Kamya, watugambye eggulo nti wagenze ewa Walusimbi Katikkiro n’akwendosiinga ogende oyigirize Federo… Katikkiro oyo yayimirira mu lukungaana lwa Baganda nagamba nti Abaganda tuleme kweyisa nga bajulizi. Kati nnyabo, MP, gwe olina bukakafu ki nti taveyo naggamba nti oleme kwefula mujulizi?” (“Lubaga North MP, … Beti Kamya, yesterday you told us that you went to Katikkiro Walusimbi and he endorsed you to go teach Federo…. That same Katikkiro told a Baganda meeting that we, Baganda, must stop sacrificing for our nation as if we want to become martyrs. Now, Ms. MP, how do we know that he will not come out and similarly tell you not to sacrifice.”

Kabuye adds: “Bino ebitu tetwelabira. Abaganda aberabira baafa!” (“On these matters, we shall not forget.  The Baganda who forget died a long time ago.”)

Click on Ekiba_Kibe07Feb10 to listen to Kabuye’s full February 7, 2010 broadcast in Luganda.