International rallying co-driver Moses Matovu narrowly missed out on a podium finish on last weekend’s Toyota Zimbabwe Challenge Rally when he co-drove fellow Ugandan Emmanuel Katto to fifth overall and fourth registered driver in the three day long event.

The lead up to this, the final round of the 2009 FIA African Rally Championship, was not ideal, with Moses having to lend a hand to ensure the Tommi Makinen Rallying prepared Subaru Impreza N14 was ready to rally, and thus the team missed out on the opportunity to recce the special stages. This put Emmanuel and Moses on a back foot and when the car suffered with suspension problems the team focused on securing a finish, rather than challenging for the win.

On Sunday morning Moses even took the wheel of the 300 bhp Subaru for two stages and was pleased to set times comparable with rallying legend Katto on roads he had never seen before!

The Zimbabwe Challenge Rally certainly lives up to its name every year. And 2009 was no exception. We struggled with setup issues and weren’t helped by having to borrow pace notes which were in a different format to our own. The gesture by the other competitors for offering us their personal notes was fantastic and I thank everyone for all of their assistance.

We ended the rally tantalisingly close to securing our third podium finish of the season but at least we scored another finish which helped both Emmanuel and I take third in the title race.

Whilst the 2009 FIA African Rally Championship might now be over Moses still has a busy period ahead of him. The popular Ugandan will travel to Rwanda on 18 September to call notes for rising Kenyan driver Peter Horsey in a Mitsubishi Evo 9. The KCB Rwanda Mountain Gorilla Rally sees the young talents from across Africa go head to head for the Pirelli Star Drive, a fully funded drive in six WRC rounds in 2010!

Final FIA African Rally Championship co-drivers points

Phil Archenoul  42 points

David Shioka                31

Moses Matovu          22

For more on the team please visit www.emkarally.com

For more on the African Rally Championship visit www.africanrallychampionship.com

According to a fund raising video playing on pastor Jackson Senyonga’s website, his Christian Life Ministry (CLM) and President Museveni’s government have agreed that, “if the ministry constructs a new hospital in Kampala, the government will convey  title to the 75,000 seat stadium known as Mandela National Stadium over to us with all its facilities and acreage” to CLM. While Pastor Senyonga might have reached the said agreement with President Museveni, the stadium capacity claim is totally untrue. The official capacity of the Mandela National Stadium which is reported by president Meseveni’s own ministry of sports is 45,000 seats. And according to Uganda laws, the agreement would be illegal since the Uganda president has no constitutional powers to give away public property, even if he has broken the law in the past. And the Uganda parliament has never passed  a bill to support Pastor Senyonga claims.

Pastor Senyonga’s video also contains other controversial claims which many Ugandans might call outright lies. For example, the narrator tells his innocent American Christian audience that, thanks to their past support and the successes of CLM, “Islam was  over 30% in the past but has now reduced to about 10%”. And one of the graphics they use to support that statement shows and Arab man – clearly not filmed in Uganda and possibly included to tap anti-Arab/Moslem feelings among the audience. On the contrary, data from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics shows that the percentage of Moslems has never been higher than 13% since census taking started in Uganda. That is more than 50 years ago.

You can view Pastor Senyonga’s fundraising video at www.christianlifeministries.org.

In August 2008, the Daily Review of San Francisco, California, reported that Jackson Senyonga, 41, of Uganda was arrested by sheriff’s deputies at Oakland International Airport on suspicion of fondling a 13 year girl seated next to him on an August 16, 2008 flight.  The alleged molestation was said to have occurred on a flight from Denver to Oakland. The Alameda County, California prosecutors said that they had referred the case to the FBI because of jurisdictional issues from being on the plane. The status of the child molestation case against Pastor Senyonga could not be established at the time of writing this report.