Janet Museveni
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Janet Museveni (née Keinembabazi, born August 15, 1949, in Bwongyera, Kajara, Ntungamo, Uganda); First Lady of Uganda since May 1986.
Janet Keinembabazi Kataha Museveni was born to Mr and Mrs Edward Kataha in western Uganda and attended Bweranyagye Girls' Secondary School.
After high school, she lived with a cousin, John W. Kazzora, who financed her overseas studies. She attended a secretarial course in Wales and on returning to Uganda got a job as a ground hostess with the then East African Airways.
She had originally applied to be an air stewardess but was turned down because of her epileptic condition.
In 1971, she met and fell in love with a young man named William Mwesigwa, nicknamed Black Mwesigwa. When Mwesigwa fled to exile in Tanzania and got involved in guerrilla war against the new government of President Idi Amin, Janet Kataha joined him there.
After Mwesigwa's death in 1972, Kataha drew romantically close to a young guerrilla leader and comrade of the late Mwesigwa, Yoweri Museveni.
Museveni himself had another child called Muhoozi Kainerugaba by another woman.
Some reports say Museveni and Kataha got married in London in August 1973. However, most information available in Uganda has it that the two have never formally legalised their marriage, a source of tensions between them.
When the Amin regime fell from power in April 1979, the Musevenis moved back to Uganda from Tanzania.
A daughter, Patience, was born to the couple in 1980 and their last child, Diana, was born in 1981.
In February 1981 when Museveni launched his guerrilla war against the new government of former President Milton Obote, Janet Museveni and her children re-located to Nairobi, Kenya, where they lived with family friends until 1983.
In 1983, the Museveni family moved to Gottenberg, Sweden, where they lived until May 1986, four months after Museveni had captured state power in Kampala.
Janet Museveni founded the Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO), a private relief agency in late 1986 which she said was shaped by her experience as a refugee.
She became involved with the HIV/AIDS campaign in Uganda all through the 1990s.
However, during this same period the impression grew in Uganda that Janet Museveni, behind her modest Christian beliefs, led an extravagant lifestyle.
In May 2000, the government-owned New Vision published a story saying that the Libyan leader Col. Mu'ammar Gadhafi had donated a $100,000 BMW car to Janet Museveni.
The light green BMW, model 740, was flown to Entebbe International Airport from Libya in October 1999. Abbas Misurati of the Libyan embassy in Kampala confirmed the reports, saying the car was a personal gift from Gadhafi to the First Lady.
Janet Museveni has been widely rumoured to be a core shareholder in a number of Uganda's largest businesses ranging from hotels to real estate and telecommunications.
In November 2005, she announced that she would seek the parliamentary seat of Ruhama in Uganda's general election set for February 2006.
External links
- Janet Museveni speech given at IISD conference in Kamala, April 2004.