Unlike many public figures who quit the stage without recording their unique life experiences, Dr Wilberforce Kisamba Mugerwa, left behind a memoir. We reviews his book, The Focused Journey.

On December 26, 2003, Kisamba, who was the agriculture minister, received a call from his daughter Proscovia Kisamba, who was working in the UK, complaining.

“How come they are talking ill of the Uganda Government? Have you started making mistakes like the past regimes? You better leave politics dad,” Proscovia said.

Kisamba says after the conversation, he thought deeply about her statement, but he had no plans then.

“What I learnt from her talk was that the bad news easily filters through to the public more than the several good things the Government was addressing on human capital building and the infrastructure development,” Kisamba notes in his book, The Focused Journey.

The call for a job

In February 2004, Kisamba flew to South Africa to attend a conference on sustainable development together with his wife Christine Rebecca Kisamba who was working on her PhD.

“I received a call inquiring whether I could take up a job with the International Policy Research Institute of Social Research based in Washington DC.”

Kisamba says the caller was a search committee member and the salary offered was almost four times his pay.

At the time, Kisamba was a Member of Parliament for Bamunanika County, which he had represented since 1980. Kisamba says he consulted his wife and she approved it, provided it was kept confidential until the job was finalised. That same night Kisamba received a formal invitation and that the job description was within his competence.

On return, Kisamba consulted close friends Khiddu Makubuya, the Attorney General then, and former finance minister Gerald Sendaula. However, Sendaula cautioned him on how to approach President Yoweri Museveni.

Kisamba says he applied for normal absence from office and travelled to the US, for the interviews and was given the job.

He, then faced the task of seeking permission to quit his cabinet job and resign his MP seat. Makubuya provided him with a legal procedure. It took him days to get an appointment with the President.

Kisamba says the President did not approve his resignation. He asked Kisamba to take up the contract and that if he found the job suitable, he would then make a reshuffle. Three months later Museveni reshuffled the cabinet.

He also organised a luncheon for his constituents and invited leaders. Museveni was the chief guest.

During the event Museveni informed the people that he had given Kisamba permission to go and make better friends for Uganda.

Kisamba later wrote to the Speaker Parliament, Edward Ssekandi and his seat was declared vacant. Ali Ndaula replaced him, but later lost the elections to John Muyingo (current state minister for higher education).

After his international tour, Kisamba says he returned home and used his savings and retirement package to complete his house and expand his farm. He would later be appointed the National Planning Authority chairperson, where he served for two terms.

In his book, Kisamba highlighted some personal insights of the things he learnt as he grew up. He says no one is born to fail.

“We are all potentially capable of succeeding. Through my experience I realised that there is no one destined for failure. People are just swayed by circumstances like the biblical seeds. Some fell on the rock, others among thorns and others on good soil.”

Kisamba notes that there is no shortcut to life and urges people to be focused.

He says he never had time to louse about. Even when he started working, he drove a taxi to supplement his income.

“My schedule then was, office to taxi driving, from taxi driving to home.”

He, however, notes that taxi driving had its own challenges that almost cost him his life.

“One Occasion, I was hired from Hotel Equatorial. My clients were visiting their female friends in Ntinda and I had wanted to drop them and go. Instead the persuaded me to join them, since they had not paid me I had no choice. I became part of the visitors though feeling uncomfortable.”

“When they finished their discussion we moved to the car and one of them volunteered to drive and made me sit in the co-driver’s seat. When we were approaching the Vehicle Inspections centre in Naguru opposite Spear Motors, I heard them proposing to go to Mukono. That was around 9:00pm. I had heard of people getting killed in Namanve forest... I could not wait. I decided to jump out of the car,” Kisamba says.

He reported the case at Kira Road Police Station. The next day his car was found parked near the old taxi park.

On another occasion, he got three customers two men and a woman.

“They wanted to be taken to Nansana from Hotel Equatorial. The ‘woman’ was dressed in trousers with a wig and I drove them through Bakuli, Kasubi to Nansana He says the two men asked him to take the woman further to Kyebando and he accepted.

“After setting off along the way, the men pulled out a rope from a bag and wanted to strangle me. I made an alarm and fought with them while holding on the steering wheel tight. It was then that I realised even the ‘woman’ at the front seat was a man who had adorned a female wig,” Kisamba says.

He jumped out of the car.

He recovered his car the next day dumped at Naguru. It had been stripped of all the tires.

Kisamba says taxi driving helped him supplement his earnings because civil servants had a low pay.

A few days later he had to travel with Gen. Moses Ali to the headquarters of the Islamic Development Bank in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a work trip.

“While in the VIP lounge then Brig. Ali noticed I had bruises on my neck. I narrated to him what had happened. He warned me against engaging in taxi business. Gen. Ali told me he would help me get a 14-seater mini bus because taxi driving was risky.”

Gen. Ali later helped Kisamba acquired a minibus.

Since then he has been engaged in the transport business.

Kisamba’s book was published by TFK Luminary the Publishers. One of its founders, Frank Kabushenga says, “Kisamba lived a focused journey. He went through so much, built his first house in Senior Four. he worked hard to make him who he was. A man of high integrity and incorruptible.”

Kabushenga says it was not easy to convince Mugerwa to write a book.

“I initially found it difficult to convince him to write his memoirs. Then he remembered that there was someone who tried to write his book in Luganda, but the person died before it could be completed. So he gave me the manuscript and I built on it to write the book. He was so co-operative and he always fixed time for me. We wrote the story from zero to the end,” Kabushenga says.

Copies of the book can be found in leading supermarkets and bookstores in Kampala.