Everything Museveni says about his biography must always be taken with a very large pinch of salt from his place and date of birth, his parents and even his Nationality of birth, nothing can be taken for granted.
Not even his real name is what we Ugandan think, we know him as it is. The only truth is that he is the firstborn of Esteri Kokundeka but his real father is Gershom Kayibanda, Amos Kaguta’s half-brother both were sons of Karaca and grandsons of Nyiracwende (who Museveni has Kinyankorised as Nyinacweende from its original Kinyarwanda).
Kayibanda fleed Rwanda in 1959 during that country’s pre-independence upheavals. He transited through Mpororo in the then Kigezi district and moved on with his cattle to settle in Murongo Kaisho in Karagwe district of the then Tanganyika.
Museveni real name Yoseri Tibuhaburwa Rutabasirwa used to visit his father and his family regularly when he was at Dar es Salaam University.
Eventually Kokundeka and her son Yoseri also moved from northern Rwanda to Ntungamo, where she settled in with Kayibanda’s destitute half-brother Amos Kaguta as his concubine.
The circumstance of Kayibanda’s relationship with Kakundeka that resulted in Museveni’s birth and what led to his separate from Her and his son are still shrouded in mystery.
What is known is that unlike his half-brother, Kaguta was a pauper without cattle, and that Kokundeka and her son lived in very strained circumstances in Kaguta’s household.
These are the childhood circumstances that shaped Yoseri Tibuhaburwa Rutabasirwa’s character.
It is what explains his secretive nature and why he plays for keeps. He is also extremely vengeful against anyone he thinks has slighted him, as Mzee Boniface Byanyima who was Museveni’s childhood benefactor found out to his cost when Museveni ascended to power.
Those who know the Byanyima home tell you the living-room/ dining-room had two levels. The raised level was for family and honored guest of the same or equivalent social class as the Byanyimas. The lower level was for the indigent youth who the generous elder Byanyimpa received, housed and even paid school fees for, youth like Museveni.
Clearly, Museveni must have felt such treatment as humiliation, forgetting that the Byanyima had no obligation to help him with fees, accommodation and board during his studies and holidays.
After he took power he would pay back the generosity he received from Byanyima’s, sending armed men to their ranch in Nyabushozi and setting hundreds of landless people on it, destroying everything the family had built on it, stealing the cattle they found there and infecting those left there with disease
That decimated the stock.
This is an embittered Museveni’s payback to those who had opened to their home to him and support him during his youth, anyone can imagine what he is capable of to those who have thwarted him and not benefitted him in any other way.
The question many often asks is whether Museveni is really Ugandan or a Rwandese?
In my view this is moot. Kakundeka and her son arrived in Uganda in the early to mid-1950s while Museveni was still an adolescent, he has lived in Uganda for almost his entire life.
While his mother spoke only Runyarwanda (as did Kayibanda)
Museveni speaks only Runyankore though he understands Runyarwanda perfectly (not surprising since it is the language in which mother spoke to him). It is also important to understand that most people in northern Rwanda also understand Runyankore-Rukiga and can alternate between Runyarwanda and Runyankore-Rukiga at will, as can people from Southwestern Uganda because the two people are literally indistinct.
Museveni can therefore pass himself off as a Ugandan or a Rwandese without a difficulty, he also arrived in Uganda before independence and could therefore argue that a subject of the British protectorate and subsequently a Ugandan at independence.
In any case, he has been the leader of Uganda for almost the last 40 years and the question of whether he is Ugandan should really be irrelevant by now.
The only issue about Museveni is to understand that much of his biography is fictional. He has re-invented and embellished it to fit his political needs and may even have reached a point where he himself now believes the legend he has created of himself