He also describes himself as a longtime friend of President Paul Kagame, dating back to the period when Kagame lived in Kampala.
Capt Mike Mukula, now 69, is widely known for his 28 investment companies under the Mukula Group of Companies. He is also a former pilot.
Between 1996 and 2016, he represented Soroti constituency in the Parliament of Uganda and currently remains a prominent figure within Uganda’s ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM).
Thirty-six years after the launch of the Rwandan liberation struggle and 32 years since the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi was stopped, Capt Mukula reflects on his close and personal ties with both President Paul Kagame and Maj Gen Fred Rwigema.
In an interview on The Long Form Podcast with Sanny Ntayombya, Mukula recalls meeting Rwigema in 1985, a moment that quickly evolved into a deep friendship.
Captain Mike Mukula still remembers the night of September 30, 1990, with painful clarity.
He was getting a haircut in Bugolobi when Major General Fred Rwigyema walked in.
“He came to me and said, ‘I just want to look at you. I wanted to see you and look at you,’” Mukula recalls. “That was the last time I saw him.”
The following day, Rwigema crossed into Rwanda to launch the Liberation Struggle. He was killed on the second day of fighting.
For Mukula, that quiet moment marked the end of a deep friendship that had grown over years—one shaped in Kampala’s social spaces, shared meals, and a shared revolutionary spirit.
Long before the Rwandan Patriotic Front launched the Liberation Struggle on October 1, 1990, Mukula and Rwigema moved in the same circles. At the time, Mukula, then a pilot and businessman, ran Bimbo Ice Cream, a popular hangout in Kampala.
“Fred loved to come to Bimbo,” Mukula says. “He used to come, order ice cream. He used to come home. I was very close to his mother—very, very close to his mother. Actually, we started speaking Kinyarwanda. She started teaching me Kinyarwanda because she didn’t know English, she didn’t know Luganda, she didn’t know Swahili.”
Their friendship grew so close that Mukula believed he would play a central role in Rwigema’s wedding.
“We had even bought suits,” he recalls with a smile. “I thought I was going to be his best man. But then the hierarchy wanted to make it a military wedding, so they got General Ivan Koreta to be the best man. But we had already bought the suits—for both the Kasiki and the wedding.”
A Kasiki in Uganda is a traditional, celebratory party held on the eve of a wedding at both the bride’s and groom’s homes, acting as a farewell to bachelorhood.
The Kasiki ceremony was held in Bugolobi, not far from Mukula’s home. As he said, President Kagame was responsible for security at the time.
“We coordinated together to make sure that the function went very well,” Mukula says.
Rwigema remained a frequent visitor to Bimbo, where he ate, drank, and interacted freely with Mukula.
“That’s how close we were,” he explains. “They would eat freely in my place, drink freely, and interact with me. That’s how free it was.”
Mukula also recalls a moment that revealed Rwigema’s calm bravery far from the battlefield. One evening, as they drove out of Bimbo along Jinja Road, they encountered an armed robber who had hijacked a vehicle and was exchanging fire with police officers who had frozen in place.
“Fred then took a brand new AK-47 from one of the policemen,” Mukula recounts. “He went into the corner—the act of bravery—fired I think two or three shots… As soon as [the robber] stopped, he entered in and fired rapidly. He had pinned where the man was. And the man was no more.”
Afterward, Rwigema calmly returned the gun to the policeman and drove away.
Mukula reflects on the moment with admiration: “General Salim Saleh and most of the soldiers of the NRA did not command from the rear. They breathed in engagement directly from the front.”
When news of Rwigema’s death reached him, Mukula says the pain was overwhelming. To this day, he marks October 2 as a personal day of remembrance.
“On the 2nd of October every year from the time he fell, I don’t work. I stay home… in memory of my brother,” he says. “It was very painful, very, very painful.”
