Kisamba Mugerwa died before receiving award for his book

Former minister Wilberforce Kisamba Mugerwa on Thursday succumbed to COVID-19 before he could receive an award for his book A Focused Journey.

The book was selected as the best of 2019 in the Culture/Ethics/Biographies category of the Uganda Book Awards.

"Kisamba lived a very focused journey. He went through so much, built his first house in Senior Four, did a lot of hard work to make him who he was. A man of very high integrity and very incorruptible, he always wondered how a minister would get into money scandals," Frank Kabushenga the propriety of TFK Luminary the publishers of the book said.

Kabushenga noted that in November last year, he called Mugerwa and wanted to deliver to him the award.

"We agreed we should meet and I give him the award. I set off from office then he called me and told me to give it to him later but unfortunately the later never came to be," Kabushenga said.

He noted that he would deliver the award to his family.

"For those who want to read his book it's available at Aristoc, Capital Shoppers Ntinda, and Quality Supermarket," Kabushenga noted.

He also noted that it was not easy to convince Mugerwa to write a book.

"I approached him and 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 the book could be completed.

So he gave me the manuscript and I built on it to write the book. He was so cooperative and he always fixed time for me and we wrote the story from zero to the end," Kabushenga indicated.

Kabushenga notes that Mugerwa's book was filled with interesting stories.

"He was working as a personal assistant to Gen. Moses Ali but he was also a taxi driver. So one day some clients called him and along the way, they turned out to be robbers and they attempted to strangle him but he managed to escape but they took the car.

When he went back to his office, Gen. Ali saw the scars and asked to know what happened. He gave him money to buy a new taxi but also told him to stop driving it and instead get a driver. Since then, he has always had a taxi on the road," Kabushenga added.