The second deputy prime minister, Kirunda Kivejinja is dead.
Kivejinja, 85, who was also the minister of East African Community Affairs, died on Saturday evening at around 5:20 pm at Mulago hospital where he has been under treatment for over a month.
"We have learnt with deep sadness the passing on of our elder, friend and comrade, 2nd Deputy PM Alhajji Ali Kirunda Kivejinja. His passing is [a] huge loss to the country, of a great Pan Africanist & repository of our history and journey of social, political and economic transformation," the Prime Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda said on Twitter.
Born on June 12, 1935, Kivejinja was popularly known KK, was a very bit a cynic who served in more than 10 ministerial positions. He was arguably the country's most decorated minister.
Kivejinja ministerial positions
1986: Minister of Rehabilitation
1987: Minister of Transport and Communication
1988-1989: Minister of Information
1991-1994: Minister of State for Foreign Affairs
1994-1995: Minister of Works, Transport and Communication
1996-1997: Minister without Portfolio
2003-2004: Minister in Charge of the Presidency
2006-2008: 3rd Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Information and National Guidance
2008-2011: 3rd Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Internal Affairs
2016-2019: 2nd Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of East African Affairs
2019-2020: 2nd Deputy Prime Minister & Minister without Portfolio
A few years ago while on the campaign trail, one voter asked KK to show what he had done for his constituents during his long time in government. Instead of elaborating, KK shot back and asked the elderly voter what he himself had done for the constituency. At the slightest provocation, he gave similar cynical responses whenever he is challenged.
"He is very blunt…But if you can put up with the nonsense that he tells you at first and stay with him a little longer, you will find him more caring than the others." Wasswa Balunywa wrote in the book, The Sapoba Legacy, a part political story and, part memoir of the co-authors, former ministers Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, Ali Kirunda Kivejinja and Kintu Musoke.
Kivejinja was born in an aristocratic family but often claimed that he embraced a classless world. He was born to Muwabe Kivejinja, a son of Kirunda – the son of Nkuutu. Nkuutu was the son of Kibbeedi, who himself was a son of Kakaire who came from Bunyoro kingdom.
Magoola, the father of Kakaire, was the son of Nyamutukura Agutamba, the Omukama of Bunyoro. Kirunda, a prince from the royal family of Bugweri in Busoga, says his mother Aisa Naigaga has descendants who hail from Bunyoro.
He went to Bukoyo primary school, Kibuli Junior School, where he met Bidandi in 1952. He also went to Busoga College Mwiri for his higher education before he left for Delhi University, in India in 1957, where he met his friend Kintu Musoke. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Zoology.
From sciences to politics
Though KK wanted to be an entomologist, his childhood wish changed when he moved to Dehli.
"I was introduced to an international centre, where we constantly interacted with different people and I began to recognize the curse of imperialism, how it had held our people back, and the need to fight it," KK wrote in the book.
Interestingly, Kirunda, a scientist, was most known in political circles and this goes back to his student days in India. He was elected as leader of the Delhi African Students' Association, he had an opportunity to interact with the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who nudged him into becoming a politician.
As a student leader then, he met the future post-independence African leaders like Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Julius Nyerere (Tanganyika), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) and many others, as well as communist leaders like Fidel Castro (Cuba) and Nikita Khrushchev (Russia).
It is this interaction with communist leaders and the literature he read that persuaded him to become a socialist. No wonder, KK named his first born son, the late Lumumba Kakaire, after Patrice Lumumba, the first post-independence leader of Zaire now DR Congo. In 1961, when Lumumba was executed, KK, while in India, led demonstrations against the US and Belgian governments for their role in the execution of Lumumba.
KK's communist beliefs and dislike for western imperialism influenced him to lead an assault on enemy embassies in 1962 soon after Uganda got its independence.
"After getting the certainty of the hoisting of the Ugandan flag and the downing of the British flag, we were assured that now Uganda was a free and independent country…I organized some of our youths, who moved clandestinely to the American embassy and stole the American flag. They went on and stole the flags of all the nations we considered to be enemies of Uganda," KK writes.
He says these radical actions saw him banned from travelling to the US until the 1990s when he was a Foreign Affairs minister in the NRM government.
KK made his first foray into Ugandan politics in 1961 as a UPC youth winger. He later became its secretary for research and in charge of the information bureau, before he was expelled from the party in 1965. While in UPC, KK used his communist links to introduce UPC leaders to Asia.
After leaving UPC in 1965, he took leave from active politics until 1980 when he participated in the formation of the Uganda Patriotic Movement that evolved into the NRM of today.
Liberal Muslim
Although he was born a Muslim, KK's perception of the world was not influenced by Islamic dogma. In fact, when he went to Delhi University in 1957, he undertook to study a pre-university course at Madras Christian College in South India for a year. KK, just like his colleague Bidandi, married from the Christian faith. His wife Deborah Nakafeero Wavamunno is a cousin to Bidandi.
KK was among the first indigenous Muslim graduates alongside the late Abu Kakyama Mayanja, the former Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister. Kirunda was an all-embracing man and a person who believes in huge families and had 14 children with two wives and in addition to his nuclear family, his home took in many other children (many adopted as orphans).
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