The surviving children of the late Uganda’s top medical expert, Dr. Ivan Sajja Kadama, who hailed from Jinja district, are homeless after they were thrown out from their father’s property.
Dr. Kadama, who was one of the earliest Ugandans to qualify and become medical doctors, is up in arms against their own brother and heir, Dr. Patrick Yowasi Kadama, daughter Dr. Racheal Kadama Kituuka, and son-in-law Nelson Kituuka.
A former WHO senior staffer in Geneva, Dr. Patrick Kadama, is accused of ganging up with his daughter, Dr. Racheal Kadama Kituuka, and her husband, Nelson Kituuka, to persecute a group of 15 Kadama siblings while chasing them away from the estate of their father, the late Dr. Ivan Sajja Kadama, who fell sick and died of natural causes in October 1979.
The deceased, who was a well-educated and traveled man, left a will dated 1st June 1978 (he breathed his last in October 1979).
In the will, entrusted to his brother Ignatiyo Kadama, Dr. Ivan Sajja Kadama disclosed his property, the vastness of his estate, and how it was to be distributed amongst his three wives and more than 20 children.
Upon retirement from the WHO work in Geneva, the stinking rich Dr. Patrick Kadama a few years ago returned to live in Uganda, where he luxuriously lives with dear wife Christine Kadama in the upscale Bugolobi neighborhood.
While in Uganda, Dr. Patrick Yowasi Kadama deepened his relationship with his son-in-law Mr. Nelson Kituuka, who married his daughter Dr. Racheal Kadama Kituuka—and went into joint business ventures of some sort. The Kituukas are wealthy money lenders with lots of commercial and residential property or apartments in several upscale Kampala suburbs.
Whereas Racheal is a medical doctor, Kituuka is into money lending and savings’ mobilization, which he does under his larger-than-life company called Card Pesa.
When the government’s intervention into the money lending space resulted in the interest rates at which cash is lent out being capped, returns from money lending began to shrink, which caused the Kituukas to become more inclined towards coffee farming because these days coffee prices are globally booming and very competitive.
Large-scale coffee growing requires large chunks of land, which Nelson Kituuka’s father-in-law, Dr. Patrick Yowasi Kadama, has in plenty, courtesy of his late father, Dr. Ivan Sajja Kadama’s vast estate spread out across Busoga. It comprises more than 50 acres of land in Wairaka Jinja and another more than 3,000 acres at Magamaga.
A company called Tina Investments was recently incorporated to enable the Kituukas to go into large-scale coffee farming. In order to make land abundantly available to the Kituukas, Patrick Yowasi turned against fellow Kadama siblings and declared land at Wairaka and Magamaga to be exclusively his; something a total of 15 Kadama siblings have vigorously protested.
He disregarded the designated and undisputed administrators of the Kadama estate, namely David Beeyo Kadama (son), Agnes Kalibbala Kadama (daughter), Frazer Robert Kiiza Don Kadama (son), and Ivan Kadama (grandson)—and declared his own unilateral declarations and actions. This disruptive conduct has left the majority of the Kadama siblings and larger extended members appalled and disgusted.
Dr. Yowasi Kadama took charge of the land at Magamaga, which for years had been used for sugarcane growing, and made it available for coffee farming by the Kituukas. The intrigued Kadama siblings are now cursing him for this because their late father meant this to remain family land as opposed to being exclusive to one person.
Dr. Patrick Yowasi Kadama, the heir, equally barricaded and enclosed the burial grounds land at Wairaka (covering 50 acres of land), depriving 15 other Kadama siblings of access to the same.
There is even security, and the Kadama siblings can’t even access their parents’ graves. Patrick Yowasi has refused to allow them access, even after the aggrieved Kadamas escalated the matter to court.
Some of the grandchildren, benefiting through their fathers who were direct children of Dr. Ivan Sajja Kadama, are these days homeless with nowhere to stay after Dr. Patrick Yowasi Kadama, backed by the Kituukas, decreed to deny them any access to the ancestral home.
All this contradicts Dr. Ivan Sajja Kadama’s uncontested will dated 1st June 1978. He died in October 1979, fourteen months after authoring his will. He was an old man by that time and had developed prostate complications among other health problems.
He made it clear that his home at Wairaka is for all his children and siblings. That whoever desired to be buried or live there was free to do so without any deprivation. So, by ganging up with the Kituukas to chase away his own siblings, Dr. Patrick Yowasi is contradicting his late father’s written and well-stated wish as contained in the will whose authenticity he (Yowasi) has lately been disputing.
The administrators, who are newly constituted and agreed upon through the Administrator General-facilitated estate administration process, recently moved to begin organizing meetings to be able to distribute the late Dr. Ivan Sajja Kadama’s property among supposed beneficiaries. Because all the Kadama siblings are well off, there was never a hurry to effect the distribution of property, but the curious keenness the Kituukas recently developed made each one of them restless.
As they organized the meeting to discuss distribution, the Kadama siblings, and more so the administrators, got into problems as they realized they had nowhere to hold meetings from. Ideally, the right venue would have been the Wairaka ancestral home, which unfortunately has since been made inaccessible to them.
They went to court in a bid to compel Dr. Patrick Yowasi, the heir, to allow them access, but this wasn’t successful. The will only allowed Yowasi exclusive access and ownership to the tile-roofed home in Kaliro and not the two-storied house at Wairaka.
So, the Kadama siblings and administrators have had to beg neighbors owning nearby bushes to allow them to meet from their property and not on their father’s Wairaka residence or burial grounds because Yowasi has decreed no.
The Kadama siblings’ wrangling hasn’t only disparaged Dr. Ivan Kadama’s good name but has also begun to be considered as a potential cause of instability in the Wairaka neighborhood by the Jinja City security architecture.
This has attracted security interest in keeping a watchful eye. The Yowasi faction had approached the Jinja RDC, imploring him to disperse the Friday 14th March meeting the other Kadama siblings intended to hold in Wairaka at a nearby bush with the administrators to discuss the distribution of property.
The RDC disregarded their request, saying everything intended to be done was legal, and went ahead to provide security for the property distribution meeting on Friday.
More than 150 people endured the pro-Yowasi/Kituuka harassment and attended. These included the Kadama siblings, the beneficiaries, and the LC1 officials. The others were the RDC, RPC Kiira East, Assistant RDC, Assistant CAO, ISO and ESO representatives, and elders from Gadumire.
Many of the leaders in attendance castigated Dr. Patrick Yowasi and the Kituukas, his allies, for acting in such a manner, which has ended up disreputing the good name and reputation Dr. Ivan Sajja Kadama worked so hard to establish.
The CAO’s representative at the meeting implored Dr. Yowasi and his backers, the Kituukas, to read and understand the succession laws of the country. He encouraged the new executors/administrators not to be intimidated because the law is on their side.
The RDC said there was no lawful justification for some of the Kadama siblings to be locked out of their father’s home. He cautioned Dr. Yowasi and his backers to deescalate and tame their appetite for property to avoid fermenting chaos and instability in the area, which has always been peaceful.
The administrators/executors clarified that from what they know, the Wairaka home is for all family members, as is the rest of the land and the Jaggery factory premises. That it’s only the Kaliro home that is the heir’s exclusively (indeed, this is what the late Ivan Kadama Sajja wrote in his will, which remains uncontested). Dr. Yowasi Kadama naturally stayed away and never attended the Friday meeting even when this would have been the ideal thing for him to do as heir.
His defiant absence didn’t stop some of the Kadama siblings from condemning him for several things, including allowing his son-in-law Nelson Kituuka unlimited access to their deceased father’s house and compound, yet they (as children) aren’t allowed to even have a glimpse at the same.
It was also threatened that stakeholders in the Card Pesa initiative risk financial and reputational losses if the Kituukas continue investing billions into a coffee-growing project that is being implemented on land whose ownership continues to be disputed both at Wairaka and Magamaga.
We were unable to get a comment from Dr. Patrick Yowasi Kadama and his backers, the Kituukas. Yet as the Friday meeting proceeded, the rival faction headed by Dr. Patrick Yowasi Kadama brought graders and tractors to do some excavation work on the burial grounds land, something the RDC and other security bosses present protested as being provocative and disruptive.
