Kibwetere Rejected By Own Family

Africa News Online, New Vision (Kampala), April 2, 2000

Kampala - Millenium doomsday cult leader, Yozefu Kibweteere passionately pleaded with his family to allow him return home after they rejected him because of his "faith". But the family, including his wife, refused to have him back.

Kibwetweere lamented that his family even installed an heir to replace him when he was still alive.

"I requested you that I stay with you as well as with God and you all refused. You held a meeting that if I don't leave God I should go away. But God also refused saying that I should stay. He told me that I should keep my home and keep God as well. But that changed your attitude towards me and you blamed me for it," he wrote in a two-page letter in Runyankore dated April 24, 1997.

The letter is addressed to his wife Theresa, his children Muhanguzi, Karambuzi, Stella, Rugambwa, Giles, Maria Kamugisha, Charles Lwanga "and all my other children wherever you are." He copied the letter to the LC 1 chairman, Ponsiano Mpamba. It bears an address: Ishayuuriro Rya Maria, P.O. Box 19, Karuhinda-Rukungiri.

More than 500 followers of Kibwetere's Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments died in an inferno while others are still being recovered by police from mass graves.