Big interview: "I do not regret associating with Mike Ezra," says Kabuleta

Despite suffering a big loss in the 2021 election, Joseph Kabuleta, the former presidential candidate, also a city pastor has vowed to continue preaching the same message of financial liberation as he looks forward to strengthening his political career.

For those who may not know anything about the man of God, Kabuleta was one of the most prolific sports journalists in Uganda before joining evangelism and is now a politician seeking to unseat President Museveni who has been in power for 35 years.

In an interview with The Nile Post, Kabuleta talked about his association with controversial tycoon, Mike Ezra and argued that Ugandans need to first be economically empowered before meaningful political change can happen.

Excerpts below:

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You have been so outspoken about the lifting of the lockdown. If you were in President Museveni’s shoes what would you have done to prevent the outbreak of the second wave of Covid-19?

First of all, I would have not put a lockdown. I would have looked at Uganda’s health situation holistically because there are so many other causes of death apart from Covid-19.

The lockdown has increased the number of deaths from other causes as we try to fight the pandemic. I would have taken an approach that cautions the people to follow the standard operating procedures and take personal responsibility to protect themselves from the virus.

Maybe certain aspects of the economy might have waited a bit to be opened but a complete lockdown is a recipe for a disaster and actually it is a cause of carnage from other causes of death apart from Covid-19. So one thing I would never have done is putting a lockdown.

You designed a good message of economic liberation as a presidential aspirant in the 2021 but analysts claim that you didn’t dissect it properly for the population to understand.

What I meant is that there are a few people who are in charge of the economy and they are the very people who are benefiting mostly from Covid-19. They are the one who benefit most from the resources and from every business. They are the one who take control of every contract etc. So what I meant by liberation is that people should be free to earn money from the wealth that God gave us a country.

I wanted to liberate people to be able to earn money from agricultural wealth which is very big and from mineral wealth and from other sectors which have been closed out.

For instance the oil contract which was done was very secret, the mineral mapping which was done was very secret, so when you have something but you don’t have the liberty to get all of it, then you are in bondage, you need liberation. So that is what it means, liberating people financially to go and earn from the wealth God has given this country.

In your view what should be done to lift and improve the country’s economy which has been greatly hit by the pandemic.

Throughout the lockdown other countries put some measures to try and lift the economy. For instance in Kenya, there was a six month holiday from loans, so people who were repaying loans in banks were given a six month holiday. We never took such a measure .They [Kenya] took certain measures which were meant to restart the economy after the lockdown but we have never done any of such things.

To kick start the economy first of all there are certain things that could have been done and they can still be done in regard to bank loans, taxation. The first thing that needs to be done is to open the economy, so that people get back to work. It might take us some time to recover from this because we were still in the recovery process from the first lockdown and the second one came.

Many people think that you are so 'corporate' for our kind of politics and yet dealing with President Museveni needs someone who is very rough and aggressive. How will you make it with that kind of style?

The reason why people think like that is because that is the picture they have heard of me but now I am building my grassroots capacity and the next time I come, my grassroots capacity will be big.

None of the presidential candidates, even the president himself who has been in power for 35 years, could have a better idea than I did. The thing is how to present those ideas to people and the people who buy them, so that is what I am going to do.

When you contested in the 2021 general election, some Ugandans took a swipe at you that you were just trying to make a name. What is the truth?

That was not an easy task. Do you know what it takes to go and get a hundred signatures from almost a hundred districts and what it takes to pay Shs 20 million for nomination? That is a lot of money to pay for a name and that was just for a nomination and after that there were other things. I travelled the whole country, why would somebody do that just to make a name?

I already had a name and even if I didn’t, it is not easy to travel the whole country spending a lot of money on accommodation, fuel, radio and so on. But there are people who maybe wanted to make a name but for me I wanted to put a message a cross and now the whole country knows that there was somebody who brought the message of financial liberation.

You have done a lot of things in your life, right from journalism to pastoring and now to being a politician. Is that how you planned your life?

No, that is not how I planned it, even journalism I just landed on it by mistake because by the time I was doing some kind of building work and then somebody told me maybe you should try journalism. I went there and I had a lot of success there .From there I felt of going into church Ministry, so I went there. Ten years ago, I never thought I will be a politician.

To be a pastor means taking on a calling to serve God by preaching the word, giving hope and courage to those facing adversity, helping the needy, cultivating peace among others.

What motivated you to join politics?

The way our country is being mismanaged...and there is a lot of poverty and yet we should not be poor because we have enough resources to make us a fairly wealthy country. We have enough resources for our people to live a decent life.

We had complained enough and I saw that instead of complaining maybe I should actually just stand up and offer myself so that even if I don’t go through, at least I would have tried because most of the people know exactly what is wrong with this country. So I said instead of just seeing people crying, let me offer myself and that was my motivation and that would be a motivation for so many people.

How do you balance pastoring with politics. Are these two things compatible?

People who join politics have other things they do. They have a profession. There are doctors in politics, there are engineers in politics, there are accounts, there are musicians, there are comedians among others .So all of them have their other things that they do .

There is nothing incompatible about pastoring and politics. They can go very well together. Actually the people of this county need a leader that they can hold up to a certain standard. So I think those two things are very compatible.

There have been and will continue to be questions about your tight and cozy association with Mike Ezra Mulyoowa more than a decade ago. The man who once displayed millions of dollars in cash and wore a garb of sports but had a serious credibility question mark. Do you regret having associated yourself with him?

I don’t have any regret because Mike Ezra was a man who loves sports and I was in sports as your remember. He is a man who supported sports and even paid money for our national team to go and play a qualifier when we had failed get the money. I am just sad that maybe he fell on hard times but when he had money the people in sports benefited from him.

I didn’t know where he was making his money from and he came and he wanted to sponsor our sports events. My work is not to find out where people get their wealth and by that time I knew he was living his life normally and nobody had come out and said that he had done anything wrong. He came and offered us money and he did a good job. He was a wonderful sponsor for sports.

In any case, do you know where he is right now since you were good friends back then?

I don’t know and I have no idea. I haven’t spoken to him in like ten years. It was not only me that associated with him. FUFA associated with him, the Ministry for Education and Sport associated with him but we have a culture that we want to trump on people because they fell on hard times, I am not like that.