George William Nyombi Thembo was born in 1964, just two years after Uganda’s independence to the late Erisa Somongu- a political activist and a Kabaka Yekka die-hard, Eseza Nanyonga Ziribasanga in Kasanda Country, present-day Mubende District.
In his words, he was born “in a very humble family where the only thing we had that was relevant and a big asset was religion and the fear of God”.
“We had a few goats, which I remember we used to share the house with, and a few cows; about three,” he recently recounted to Flavia Tumusiime on Capital FM’s Desert Island Disc Programme in June 2023.
It was a grass-thatched house.
Very early in life, in 1968, the young Nyombi Thembo’s father got hit by a train and was incapacitated and spent much of his time at home making mats and evangelising.
It was Mama Esseza, that took up the mantle of running the home and became the “workhorse of the house”.
“I talk much more about my mother than about my father, that at one time people thought I didn’t have a father,” he quips.
He was born into a family of 13- all from one mother. He was the 8th. Only four are surviving. 5 of his siblings died during the Luwero bush war that brought the current NRM government to power while the others died young; of natural causes.
“Everything transformational that we saw in our family was because of my mother,” he recalls, adding that he and his family owe much of their transformation to religion and education, which both his parents luckily championed.
“With religion came hygiene and seeking for quality education,” he told Capital FM, adding: “When my father stopped having so many wives and when he stopped boozing he was able to give us (surviving siblings) a good education”.
“With a lot of income poverty surrounding us, but with enlightenment and religion, we couldn’t even feel that poverty because in my young age, much as there was poverty, we would drink boiled water, our pit latrine was steamed once a week, you wouldn’t see flies around, the compound was swept clean, every Sunday, and at least from the small savings we would get tea on Sunday,” he narrated.
“Even if we shared a house with goats, it would be very clean, because we plastered it with cow dung, to keep away jiggers,” he reiterates.
Nyombi Thembo is a Mukonzho by tribe. Bakhonzo hail from the Kasese and Bundibugyo districts on Uganda’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, his late grandfather came to Buganda Kingdom as a soldier about 150 years back during the Bunyoro Kitara wars and fought on the side of Kabaka Mwanga. He settled in Mubende, in Buganda thereafter.
That explains the origin of his mixed Nyombi Thembo name. Thembo is a Kikonzho name, while Nyombi is a Kiganda name. And he has made sure that all his children have at least one Kiganda and one Kikongo name.
At a young age, he learned how to fend for himself. He was a wild game hunter. His father had a hunting gun.
“I bought my first trousers from killing and selling a Uganda Kob,” he says, quickly adding, that hunting used to take place in the unprotected wild areas and not the national parks.
He and his family took advantage of being near the Kampala-Kasese railway line, to transport their game meat for sale at Kibuli in Kampala.
“I was strong and a hunter. I knew how to make all kinds of traps and that one also gave me a big name because I became a celebrity hunter, around our village,” he recounts.
He joined primary school at the age of 6. In primary two, his mother took him to live with his aunt in Semuto, present-day Nakaseke District, where he studied from P.2 to P.6.
From the village to Kampala City
Later he got to live with another family- the Kayembas, a musical family where he learned to play all kinds of traditional instruments. In 1974 he won a local Best Soloist award.
In 1979, he moved to Kampala to live with an uncle in Lungujja and completed his Primary 7 at Mengo Primary School, in 1979. He then joined Lubiri Secondary School for 6 years. However, during this time, he became interested in politics. He even joined what he calls the People’s Militia for local protection.
The period that followed the 1979 overthrow of President Idi Amin up to the 1986 takeover of the current National Resistance Movement (NRM), led by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in 1986 was characterised by a lot of political instability and government crackdown on known and suspected dissidents.
Even though he was politically charged, he never joined the 1981-1986 guerrilla war that eventually brought President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to power, mainly because of his uncle.
“I survived going with the Kayiiras, in the bush because of religion. My uncle was not comfortable with me and could not understand what I was doing,” he recalls.
Andrew Lutaakome Kayiira (30 January 1945 – 9 March 1987) was the leader of the Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM), a guerrilla organization that fought the governments of Milton Obote and Tito Okello between 1980 and 1986. Kayiira and the UFM were often seen as rivals to the NRM led by Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, which was also fighting a guerrilla war against the Obote and Okello governments. When the NRM took power in 1986, the two rebel forces united and Kayiira was appointed Minister for Energy by Museveni. Later that year, he was arrested for treason but later released. He was murdered by unknown gunmen on 9 March 1987.
While at Lubiri S.S. the young Nyombi Thembo also joined the Music and Drama Club where he was trained by the famous Stephen Rwangyezi, the founder of the Ndere Cultural Centre and the Famous Ndere Troupe. It was while at Lubiri S.S. that the idea to form the present-day Ndere Troupe was hatched and brought to life. The year was 1985.
Nyombi Thembo knew how to play most instruments. But he was also a dancer. In 1985, he even won the Best Actor title while he acted with United Players.
“I used to do everything. In Ndere you must be a player, an actor, a singer, and an instrument player,” he reiterates.
He was also part of the Lungujja Dramatic Society group, which also gave him a perforce alibi to continue doing his political activism. He was the head of the local youth Democratic Party Chapter in the Kampala West Constituency. He was the head of Youth in Lungujja, Busega area.
He probably would never have joined activism if a few of his close personal and family friends weren’t arrested and or killed by the government of Milton Obote. He too in fact had to quit school for 5 months and hide in his village of Mubende, to escape arrest. It was then that he joined Kayiira’s UFM. When the UFM crumbled, Nyombi Thembo and his handlers joined Museveni’s NRM.
Although the young Nyombi Thembo didn’t practically fight, he was largely an errand boy, an informer or a spy if you like.
Regardless of all the political involvement, he remained in school, because in his words: “I’d been convinced that it was academics that would pull me out of poverty”.
And when Museveni’s NRM militarily captured power in January 1986, Nyombi Thembo joined the NRM body and soul.
“I was among the DP-UFM activists who joined 100%. We were taken for cadetship courses. I was among the first batch after 1986. We became real cadets by the time, I went to Makerere. Those days to be called a cadet was a privilege, and respectful. If they say, Cadet Thembo has called for a meeting the whole village would turn up,” he says.
Even when he joined Makerere University, where he was studying for a B.A., Social Sciences degree, he remained an active political mobiliser for the government. He specialised in Economics and Social Administration.
Life after school; joining active politics
From University, he joined Uganda Railways Corporation, the state-owned rail company as a Planning Officer.
He also in 1990, he married his high school sweetheart, Prisca Masengero Thembo who was at the time a journalist at Uganda Television. They had met while she was the head of of Literature Club at Lubiri S.S. He had also invited Prisca and Prisca had accepted to join him in Ndere Troupe, where their love grew stronger.
Prisca, unfortunately, passed away in 2012 in an accident. Together, they had had 3 children.
At the time, the government allowed its workers to join politics. So, he became a Local Council Councillor for the Kampala City Council from 1988 to 2001 and rose to become the Chairman of the Finance and Planning Committee. This is when he went to Bradford University in the United Kingdom for a Post-Graduate Diploma in Project Planning.
Netflix Strikes $82.7 Billion Deal to Take Over Warner Bros., Redefining the Global Entertainment LandscapeUpon return, he rose through the ranks to become a Principal Economist at URC. In May 1998, he was elected Chairman of the Movement for Kampala District.
As the Chairman of the November Party, he frequently met the President.
“By the way, I talked to the President when I was chairman movement in Kampala and I think, I met him more than when I was a minister for thirteen years,” he says, adding: “When you are an elected Movement Chairman in Kampala, you are working together (with the President) but when you become a minister, you are his worker. When you’re the minister, you have delegated powers of the president. When you’re a chairman of the movement in a place like Kampala you’re working with him”.
It is therefore not surprising that he was later appointed a Resident District Commissioner. He was just 34 years old.
He was elected to the Ugandan Parliament in 2001, representing his home constituency of Kassanda County South for over a decade (2001-2015).
In 2001 his father sadly passed on.
He later remarried, to one Angela Nyombi Thembo and together they have another two children. However, in total, he has eight children⏤ six girls and two boys.
He has also held several posts in the Ugandan Cabinet: State Minister for Primary Education in the Ministry of Education and Sports (2001-2009), State Minister; State Minister for Luwero Triangle in the Office of the Prime Minister between 2009 and 2011 and a State Minister for Information and Communications Technology between 2011 and 2015.
Losing political power, and rejoining civil service
In the cabinet reshuffle of March 2015, Nyombi Thembo was dropped from the Cabinet.
He was just about 50 years old.
In his view, he says this was expected since he had been called to leadership very early.
“I knew since I had started this one (leadership) early, I’d come back early. And really it came to pass when I had to leave cabinet at the age of 50,” he reflects.
At 50, Nyombi Thembo says he still felt useful, especially with his experience and qualifications, so he started job-hunting.
“I felt I still had some strength in me. I am a highly educated man, with a Master’s degree, and a lot of professional qualifications. At 50 I still had some 10 years to do something,” he recalls.
Then he started job hunting, including the United Nations where he sat for two interviews. He also applied for the role of Director for the Rural Development Fund, at the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) which he eventually got. As soon as he had landed the UCC job, even the UN reverted with a job offer which he declined.
“I had to go to work in Addis Ababa, so, I opted to stay (and work) at home,” he says.
The UCC job, he says came with very many questions, especially from his friends. This is because UCC was previously under his political supervision as a Minister, and now he had to submit to his former subordinates.
“I said I don’t see any problem with that,” he shot back.
In his view, he says, taking up the UCC job which was a technical position, was a continuation of where he had stopped as a Principal Economist at the Uganda Railways Corporation, because the other jobs⏤ Resident District Commissioner, Member of Parliament and Minister, were all political jobs.
“I told them, that I’m going back to where I stopped,” he insists, adding: “People think that maybe I was appointed where I’m working now (UCC, Director role), but where I am working now, I was not appointed, I looked for a job like any other person, I saw the advertisement in newspapers.”
“I was shortlisted, I did the interviews and beat everybody in the interview. I got my three-year contract. The organisation (UCC) found that I was doing well, they renewed my contract for another five years. Of course, next year I’m turning 60, so I’ll be retiring in December next year,” he told Flavia Tumusiime.
But that was before the UCC Executive Director role fell vacant and he applied for, sat the interviews and passed.
Everybody doubted how he was going to fit into the new ‘smaller’ role at UCC, but Nyombi Thembo boils it all down to knowing your present circumstances as well as knowing how organisations work and behaving accordingly.
“I fit very well because I know how organisations work. I know that as the Director, I have my boss who is the Executive Director and that I have the board members who are also my bosses. I also have my ministers, who even if they could have been below me so many years back, that doesn’t count now. He is now your minister and you are his director and you have to respect them so much,” he advises.
Preparing for retirement, starting and running family businesses
Nyombi Thembo has always been enterprising. In childhood, he had learnt how to hunt and sell game meat. While at University, he ran a shop in Lungujja, Kampala selling scarce commodities like sugar and salt and even made his first one million from this shop. By the time he finished University, he had even bought his first plot of land in Lungujja.
This marked entry into the real estate business.
But if he didn’t want to go into mainstream business, his resolve was shaped the day, he was dropped from Cabinet and he arrived home only to find that his bodyguards at home had been withdrawn without even notifying him.
It is then that he knew, he needed to prepare for his retirement because psychologically, he hadn’t been prepared.
“That’s life, you come back to Earth. People do get those big positions and you behave like you have left us to go to another planet. I just want to tell you that the only thing that happens after you have risen up there. If you are lucky and you don’t die there, you will have to come down either slightly or sometimes it can be spectacular,” he advises.
When it came to preparing for his retirement, business came as a natural choice.
“My major business has been planting trees, I am a tree farmer and some basic real estate. We decided as a family that let’s go into tourism some 5 years back. So we’ve put up three lodges. We have Munyanyange Caves in Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP), in Katwe Kabatooro; Kikorongo Safari Lodge, again around QENP and we also have the one we have just opened, Tilenga Safari Lodge in Murchison Falls National Park. They are startups,” he discloses. They are just starting. We are grateful to the people that have started supporting us, ” he told Flavia Tumusiime in the tell-it-all interview.
And as part of succession planning, he has decided to co-opt his children into the business.
“One of my daughters is the CEO, in one of the lodges and another daughter, is the COO in that very facility. In another facility, my son is the CEO, my other daughter is the COO, then another of my daughters is the head of digital marketing. I told them that if this does well, we may not need to look for jobs but COVID disrupted us a lot. I don’t know how much I’ll have to convince them to stay, because things are not easy as we talk now but everything will be okay”.
As a backup plan, he has also emphasised and invested in the education of his children.
“I think I have emphasised education, and I’ve tried my level best to give my children the best education. I have given all of them and told them, so long as I leave, you have an open cheque to study as much as you can, and I will look for the school fees, even when you’re working. I’d rather sell a few assets and pay for your school so long as you want to study. Quite a number of them are doing Masters degrees or professional courses. I believe that is very important”.
Looking back, Nyombi Thembo attributes his success to God.
“God has been great to me. Everything that comes my way I say I look to Him,” he concludes.
