Controversy as family of the late singer Kafeero run to court over property

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The rift in the late Kadongo Kamu Singer, Paul Job Kafeero’s family has ended up in court as his children battle over the property.

Court documents before the Family Division of High Court indicate that ten of the children believed to have been mothered by Kafeero’s many wives and concubines have sued four others including the administrator general.

The ten applicants through their lawyers of Luzige, Lubega and Kavuma and Company Advocates allege that the four children from Kafeero’s first wife interfered with his estate when they purportedly sold off some property without letters of administration.

The ten children applicants state that when their  father died in 2007, the late Vincent Ssalongo Nanganga Waswa also known as Umar commenced the process of obtaining letters of administration for the late Kafeero. However, he also died before he could complete the entire process.

The documents indicate that the Administrator General remained in charge of the estate and to date, his chambers has convened various family meetings to administer and iron out disagreements among the children of the deceased in vain.

The applicants contend that the faction of four children refused to heed to the Administrator General’s counsel and started selling the property without accounting for the proceeds to them and denying them access to any documents regarding transactions.

Part of the property that was reportedly sold includes a family home in Kajjansi, land at Kyagwe measuring 27 acres, land at Busansula village in Buikwe district measuring 12 acres and a Kibanja at Masaba village.

‘”It shall be submitted that all attempts to amicably resolve this matter were rendered futile by the defendants but they chose to tarnish the plaintiffs/applicants in various media platforms as being greedy”, reads the documents in part.

The applicants now want court to order for the cancellation of sale agreements for the deceased property and also declare that they are also entitled to their share of the property for their late father.

They also want court to issue an order directing a paternity test on all the known children of the late Paul Kafeero after disagreeing with the DNA results by MBN Clinical Laboratories in Nakesero.

However, the defendants in this case through their lawyer Nalukoola Luyimbazi, contend that the applicants do not have the capacity or right to sue them because they are not Kafeero’s children.

They say that in the process of acquiring the letters of administration, there was pressure mounting from the applicants together with their mothers demanding that the property at Lwezza-Kajjansi be sold to have the proceeds distributed among the children of the late Paul Kafeero.

The defendants say that since Kafeero was living a celebrity life and fathered most children with different mothers whom he never introduced to his family members, it was unanimously agreed that they do a DNA test to confirm if they are his biological children.

The documents indicate that the test was conducted by collecting samples from all those claiming to be Kafeero’s children and matched them against each other.

However, results revealed that save for the first applicant (Martin Kafeero) who absconded at the last hour of the activity for reasons well known to him, the others were excluded from paternity of the deceased, save for the four defendants.

The four however say that part of the Nkokonjeru Kibanja was sold with the consent of applicants and other family members to facilitate DNA test plus other incidental costs and part of the proceeds was used to refurbish Kaefeero’s grave yard.

They add that since the DNA revealed that the applicants were not biological children of the deceased, they were not entitled to anything and their case should be dismissed with costs.

Last month, Kafeero’s family was in the media over disagreements to exhume his body.

However, Uganda Police’s lead Pathologist Dr Moses Byaruhanga says that it is impossible to exhume Kafeero’s remains unless the wrangles have fully been resolved by all the courts most especially the last appeal court.

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