The late James “Jimmy” Bageire, aka MC Afrik. PHOTO/COURTESY
A pie-bald man stood at the centre of the bar, a kafunda, found in the shallows of Ntinda-Kigowa. Although bald or simply shaven bald to conceal his baldness, this man had some swag. He came across as a rapper.
By his own drunken admission, he was the reason for the increasing murder rate on the streets of Los Angeles, USA, while he was in Kampala! It seems that by shooting off his sizeable mouth, he had presented a third force to the Crips and Bloods; gang names under which many Los Angeles African-American street gangs align themselves.
However, this man did not bleed blue or red like these gangs did. He bled yellow. “The First Lady Janet Museveni is my godmother,” he bellowed. Originally observing him with silent regard, the other boozers in the bar were suddenly beside themselves with empty mirth.
On cue, they burst out into synchronised laughter. The bald guy, with the First Lady weighing heavily on his mind, dissolved into what could have been tears, if waragi was not the same colour. The man was blind drunk.
After a while, as he sat there in silence, his head lolling back, he mentioned his father’s name. That’s when I knew that this drunkard was drinking the bitter swill of truth serum. Sir John His father was the late Sir John Bageire. Nobody knows whether he was actually knighted by Queen Elizabeth as it was claimed.
One thing’s for sure, though, Sir John had so much money that he could maintain two families. One family was in London, England, and the other in Nairobi, Kenya. According to the grapevine, Sir John spent two thousand pounds Sterling every day in the 1980s. The British pound has lost 77 percent of its value since 1983. Basically, £100 in 1983 is equivalent in purchasing power to about £431.24 today—an increase of £331.24 over 42 years.
So Sir John spent about nine thousand pounds per day! This rumour mill buzzed with the view that this money came from the Crown, courtesy of his knighthood. Yet knights in the UK generally do not receive special allowances or benefits simply for being knighted. However, with knighthoods primarily conferring a title and social recognition, a “sir” can cash in on the prestige the prefix affords.
Possibly that is what gave Sir John a positive cash flow. He reportedly used part of his money to provide shelter for the First Lady and her brood when they lived in Nairobi, before settling in Sweden for the remainder of the Bush War.
In 1986, Sir John seemed to be a shoe-in to benefit from the National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A) revolution. Sadly, his fortune went pear-shaped.
Broke and broken
In the early 90s, Sir John could be seen dawdling at his Lutembe “Beach”, on Entebbe Road at Namulanda. It was only a beach because it had sand, with a shimmering view of Lake Victoria. Otherwise, Sir John was broken and the NRM bigwigs’ mammoth Celtel phones were suspiciously turned off.
It was as if he was blackguarded by what turned out to be a change of guard. Before he passed away, he cut a forlorn figure doddering along Kampala Road.
He was broken, a finished man. At his church service in Bukoto, St Andrew’s Church, the First Lady praised the deceased Bageire as “compassionate.” His son James “Jimmy” Bageire seemed to carry the old man’s spirit.
His warmth radiated from his stage performances to make him Uganda’s first marquee rapper. Although his technical virtuosity as a lyricist could be questioned, his charisma as an MC (microphone controller) could not.
He was like a moderate-centrist version of Chuck D, an American rapper best appreciated as the leader and front man of top 80s hip-hop group, Public Enemy.
Jimmy’s heyday as a rapper ended in the 1990s. By the time the new millennium arrived, MC Afrik (some write it as Afrique, which was Jimmy’s hip-hop moniker) was passé. He laid down the microphone and became a salesman. His sunny personality blinded many to his struggles with epilepsy.
On top of that, he was adrift in the Kampala of the early 2000s. His boyhood friends, such as Muhoozi Kainerugaba, were reportedly no longer the friends he knew as a child growing up in Daniel arap Moi’s Kenya.
Death of a salesman
Distressed by a soul-crushing career as a pitchman for a conga-line of media houses and probably devastated by his alienation at the hands of childhood friends, Jimmy went swimming alone in the swimming pool of Equatorial Hotel. Due to his epilepsy, his doctor reportedly advised that he should never drive or swim.
An attack on the road or in the swimming pool when nobody was there could be fatal. But like Kwame Nkrumah in his twilight years, Jimmy just seemed to have had enough. He died on April 22, 2004. He had drowned but was reportedly resuscitated before dying upon arrival at a clinic. It was Dr Kizza Besigye’s 48th birthday, and three days before Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s 30th birthday.
DESCENDANTS’ ARMY
Although Jimmy reportedly died an unhappy man, his heart was with the NRM. He was a dyed-in-the wool Movementist. So is Julius Kategaya, the son of President Museveni’s de facto number two (according to NRM lore). Eriya Kategaya, Julius’s father, was a brigadier general in the NRA from 1987 holding army number RO-002.
Yet today Julius is a shut-in, largely forgotten by peers who have no love for the NRM revolution, but plenty of love for the money and power it can afford them. A bright fellow, Julius personifies how the revolution literally eats its children.
However, there are indications that pattern of revolutionary consumption may finally be over.
“I have been discussing with my children, who are now senior adults, the timeliness of creating the DRA (the Descendants’ Resistance Army),” said President Museveni in 2021. If the President means what he says, NRM scions such as Julius may finally be remembered for the sacrifices they made on behalf of revolutionary parents.
