DIPLOMATIC SCANDALS | The topsy-turvy world of Uganda's foreign missions is the stuff of legends and one for the gods. They shock you, shock you again, before finally just 'unshocking' you by their usualness.
The joy of Jane Acheng was all gone as her flight of no-return from her duty station in Canada was due to touch down at Entebbe International Airport today. It is the flight of ignominy, a flight delivering a diplomat deported by a host country.
Ambassador Acheng, whose first name, Joy ,must have preceded all her intentions, had been captured in a video clip so joyous just weeks ago, a clip that some say sealed her fate—although the alleys of diplomatic walls suggest much more than that.
But her career in diplomacy looks done after that ignominious tag: PNG or persona non-grata, which aliens being thrown out of a nation with orders to never step back there get stamped in their passport.
Amb Acheng might have gotten away with the particular stamp owing to her diplomatic status, but the damage on her lapels is so bad she might need Viagra-fermented detergent to wash it all out.
Uganda's sticky stain of diplomacy certainly did not start with the Joy of Acheng. Even as she took the one-way flight, she was probably being consoled by Henry Mayega, the deputy ambassador to the UAE and consular general to Dubai until last week.
Amb Mayega was recalled in a cloud of infamy after revelations that the Ugandan House in Dubai had been partly turned into a casino.
He had been fingered for importing gambling machines and installing them at the embassy building in what some critics insist was done with the blessing of his boss, General Jeje Odongo.
The decision to take up gambling as a fully-fledged business at the embassy followed earlier tinkering with the idea of closing the mission. If the government had gone ahead with the suggestion, it would have left the Uganda House in Dubai idle.
It appears that Mayega—or whoever is behind it all—was drawn into laying an early marker (forgive the pun), but they lost the gamble with Mayega being recalled following some questioning by the authorities.
The complexity of diplomacy is such that everything about one must be without reproach of any kind. Even something as small as innocently wearing a Gomesi when your nation cannot stand it.
And it happened. Ask Ambassador Sedef Yavuzalp, who was recalled by Turkiye after she was photographed at a reception for her country's annual Republic Day wearing a dress inspired by ancient Greece.
The career diplomat of five years hosted the reception in Kampala for the annual October 29 holiday marking the founding of the modern Turkish Republic in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
But the event in 2021 backfired in her face as she was accused of hyping Helen of Troy by wearing a robe similar to what is depicted of hers and another Turkish official of wearing a toga to look like the Greek god Zeus.
Small-small thing, huh?
That is why Nimisha Madhvani must either be very influential in the book of the appointing authority, or she worships a god that only she knows.
Amb Nimisha, daughter of the first son of the founder of the Madhvani Group empire, has been recalled twice from her tour of duty, with one incident so embarrassing.
In January 2017, Nimisha was posted to Abu Dhabi but was later recalled for causing a diplomatic incident between the UAE and the Ugandan government over an invite to legislators to travel to her host nation to investigate allegations of enslavement of Ugandans.
Nimisha bounced back, and by 2020, she was posted to Copenhagen in Denmark and handling the Nordic countries when a bad one landed in her face. At the time, Nimisha and her brother Nitin were feuding over the rights to their father's 25 percent shares in the Madhvani Group empire.
The well-heeled heiress to Jayant Madhvani was exposed in a leaked audio recording in which she was heard dishing out leftover embassy money to members of her staff.
The money was part of funds allocated to aid displaced Ugandans affected by the Covid-19 global pandemic.
Anyway, each time Nimisha has been recalled, she has quietly submitted. But it was different with Phoebe Otaala in Nairobi, Kenya.
When she was replaced with Hassan Galiwango (now deceased), she took issues with everyone and herself, too. She insisted she would not leave and told Galiwango to find another vacant mission and take his seat.
"We've five embassies hanging. They did not vet him for Nairobi; if they did, then is bwoya bya nswa (insufficient as white ants)," she barked.
"I'm not even about to leave. We cannot be two ambassadors at the same place. He can go to China, Japan, or Angola... he should not look at where I am. Nairobi etandise okumpomera (Nairobi is just beginning to get sweeter)."
Did she leave? Of course.
Amb Farid Kaliisa probably looked at Otaala and wondered if she would take up Kinshasa, where the Congolese president had ignored him for three flat years.
The Ugandan ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to DR Congo was overlooked by Felix Tshisekedi for so long that his stay in Kinshasa was more like a kateebe than a serious job.
If there was anything worse, it is deportation like what Simon Mulongo went through. After one term in Parliament ending in 2016, Mulongo was posted as Africa Union Mission to Somalia deputy head when the government of the restive nation gave him just seven days to leave.
Mulongo would swear his ignorance of what happened, but Somalia said he had been engaged in activities incompatible with Amisom’s mandate and Somalia's security strategy.
This would read like some underground dealings that compromise security, and knowing the restive Somalia is like a flea market for arms trade, the penny is on the loose for a wild guess.
And it is arms deals that felled Stephen Katenta-Apuli in New York when a sting operation on August 18, 1992, netted the Ugandan ambassador to the US and a presidential aide, Innocent Bisangwa.
The two were arrested in a warehouse in Orlando as they allegedly made final purchase arrangements for the anti-tank missiles.
The government had to pay some good backs during the negotiations as Katenta would not be charged due to diplomatic immunity, but Bisangwa was facing it rough.
Then Treasury Secretary Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile had to take $60,000 for lawyers of Bisangwa, while Katenta quietly left the US two months later after Washington asked Uganda to drop his diplomatic immunity to be prosecuted.
But Washington did not have to ask Uganda to drop any diplomatic immunity for Dickson Ogwang, who had appalled them enough that expelling him was the safest bet.
Ogwang was accused of arms dealings, only that this one wasn't some missiles for destroying Kony's hideouts in Garamba forest, but his own hands that he used to batter his wife.
The US police got an emergency call from Ogwang’s residence. They found his wife covered in bruises after being battered.
As a penalty, the State Department asked the Foreign Affairs ministry to recall Amb Ogwang to Kampala since he could not be arrested or prosecuted in the US.
But the doyen of Uganda's clowning moment of diplomatic gaffes could as well go to Sam Kutesa. The former Foreign Affairs minister quietly retired after being designated by the US Justice Department for allegedly receiving a $500,000 bribe from Chinese fixer Patrick Ho.
Ho was later convicted of the charges that Kutesa denied but ultimately paid the price for when he was dropped from Cabinet in 2021.
Mr Kutesa was said to have dealt with Ho during his tenure as the President of the UN General Assembly.