The bitter family dispute surrounding the late businessman, politician and philanthropist Dr James Musinguzi Garuga has taken a dramatic and deeply personal turn after his son, Alwyn Carl Garuga, publicly accused his own mother of contributing to his father’s death and subsequently attempting to take control of his multibillion-shilling business empire.
In a lengthy video statement circulated after a memorial service, Alwyn rejected what he described as a version of events presented by his biological mother, Dr Peace Kesiime Musinguzi, and laid out what he called the “factual record” surrounding his father’s final months, medical treatment, death and the subsequent struggle over his estate.
The allegations are explosive.
Alwyn alleges that his father was subjected to a premature medical procedure against medical advice, prevented from accessing specialised treatment abroad, and later subjected to an operation at Nakasero Hospital which, he claims, resulted in his death.
He further alleges that transactions involving his father’s property and companies were undertaken while the businessman was critically ill, and accuses his mother and other unnamed individuals of attempting to take control of the estate.
At the centre of the dispute is an estate that court records and subsequent litigation show to be exceptionally substantial, comprising real estate, agricultural holdings, tea interests, tourism businesses and stakes in several companies.
But there is an important legal caveat: no court has found Peace Kesiime Musinguzi guilty of killing James Garuga, and Alwyn’s allegations of murder remain allegations.
The legal proceedings so far have largely concerned administration of the estate and control of companies, rather than a criminal prosecution over Garuga’s death.
A death that initially appeared straightforward
James Garuga died on August 6, 2025, at Nakasero Hospital in Kampala, aged about 72.
At the time, public reports described him as a prominent businessman, philanthropist and former major financier of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC).
His death was announced as he was receiving treatment at Nakasero Hospital. Family members told the media that arrangements had been underway to take him abroad for specialised treatment.
The FDC subsequently paid tribute to Garuga as one of the party’s founding figures and a major pillar of its early political and financial mobilisation. The party said he had played a significant role in the Reform Agenda and the formation of the FDC.
His death therefore initially generated the familiar tributes associated with the passing of a prominent Ugandan businessman.
But beneath the mourning, a family and corporate battle was already taking shape.
Alwyn’s account of the final months
In his video, Alwyn says he personally took his father to Nakasero Hospital on February 28, 2025, after the older man developed a hip problem.
According to Alwyn, doctors diagnosed a condition requiring hip replacement surgery but also discovered that Garuga had diabetes which had previously gone undiagnosed.
The son says his father’s blood-sugar-related medical indicators were dangerously high and that he subsequently began arrangements to have him treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States.
Alwyn claims his mother opposed the plan and instead insisted that the hip procedure be carried out in Uganda.
He portrays this as the first major disagreement over his father’s treatment.
According to his account, the hip operation proceeded despite what he says were concerns about his father’s diabetic condition.
Alwyn then makes a much more serious allegation: that the operation compromised his father’s immune system and was followed by the discovery of cancer.
He says doctors in the United Kingdom subsequently reviewed his father’s medical records and concluded that the cancer was different from the disease Garuga had previously battled around 2016.
These claims, however, require independent verification through the medical records Alwyn says he possesses.
No publicly available court judgment reviewed for this story has made a finding that the surgery caused Garuga’s cancer or that any doctor acted negligently.
The disputed attempt to take Garuga abroad
The family disagreement allegedly intensified when doctors sought specialised treatment abroad.
Alwyn says his father eventually obtained a UK medical visa after an earlier application had been rejected.
He alleges that the first visa application contained inaccurate information about his father’s occupation and finances.
According to Alwyn, the application described Garuga as a farmer despite his extensive business background.
He says that after the first rejection, he became involved in a fresh application which was approved within days.
Alwyn claims two British hospitals—the Royal Marsden and Cromwell Hospital—were prepared to receive his father and that a medical evacuation company was ready to fly him from Uganda.
It is at this point that his allegations become particularly explosive.
He claims that his father’s passport, containing the newly issued UK medical visa, was instead submitted to a Turkish visa-handling office together with other applications.
According to Alwyn, that action effectively delayed his father’s evacuation at a time when he was critically ill.
He says he even attempted to use legal proceedings to force the evacuation.
These claims have not, from the material reviewed for this story, been determined by a court.
The August 5 operation
Alwyn’s most serious allegation concerns what happened one day before his father’s death.
He claims that on August 5, 2025, while Garuga was in intensive care, an open-chest operation was ordered.
He alleges that the lead doctor at Nakasero Hospital opposed the procedure but that his mother, whom he describes as both Garuga’s wife and a medical doctor, insisted that it proceed.
According to Alwyn, the operation was performed on the evening of August 5 and his father died that same day.
He therefore concludes that his father was deliberately killed.
“I know her better than all of you,” Alwyn says in the video, before accusing his mother of murdering his father.
Those are extraordinary allegations.
But legally, they remain allegations.
Public reports at the time of Garuga’s death said he had been battling illness and had been receiving treatment at Nakasero Hospital. The FDC later stated that he had battled cancer for more than a year and that the disease had spread to his liver.
The public record therefore contains competing accounts of Garuga’s medical decline, but no criminal judgment establishing that his death was caused by intentional wrongdoing.
Then came the estate war
The dispute quickly moved from the hospital to the courtroom.
In September 2025, Alwyn lodged a caveat in the High Court Family Division seeking to prevent his mother from obtaining sole control over his father’s estate.
The case was registered under Administration Cause No. 1046 of 2025.
Court-related reports said Peace Kesiime had petitioned for letters of administration, while Alwyn challenged her fitness to administer the estate.
Alwyn claimed the estate was worth more than Shs1 trillion and accused his mother of substantially under-declaring its value.
Among the assets identified in the dispute were prime properties in Kampala, a large country home in Rugyeyo, extensive land holdings, ranches, tea interests, tourism businesses and shares in companies connected to the Garuga business empire.
His mother disputed those claims.
She argued, among other things, that some of the businesses Alwyn was treating as part of the estate were separate legal entities and therefore could not simply be treated as personal property of the deceased.
That distinction is legally crucial.
The wealth of a deceased shareholder is not automatically identical to the assets owned by a company in which that person held shares.
The High Court refuses to put the family in charge
The succession dispute reached an important stage in February 2026.
In Musinguzi Alwyn Garuga v Musinguzi Peace Kesiime and Others, Justice John Eudes Keitirima considered Alwyn’s application for temporary joint letters of administration pendente lite.
The court declined to place the estate in the hands of the family members.
Instead, it appointed the Administrator General as the interim administrator pending determination of Civil Suit No. 0346 of 2025. The decision was based largely on the extraordinary level of hostility between the beneficiaries.
The judge found that the close relatives were unable to work together harmoniously and that putting them in joint control risked further disruption and acrimony.
That ruling is significant because it means the court itself recognised that the family conflict had become sufficiently serious to make neutral administration necessary.
The estate was therefore removed, at least temporarily, from direct control of the warring family members.
The corporate battle gets even uglier
The succession dispute has also spilled into Garuga’s companies.
Among the corporations at the centre of the fight are Garuga Properties Limited, Incafex Limited and Kinkizi Development Company Limited.
URSB records show that Garuga Properties was incorporated in 1980, Incafex in 1982 and Kinkizi Development Company in 1984.
According to evidence placed before the Assistant Registrar of Companies, Garuga personally held 9,897,000 shares—approximately 49.49 percent—in Garuga Properties Limited and 40 million shares, representing 20 percent, in Incafex Limited. Garuga Properties itself held majority interests in the other companies.
This corporate structure explains why control of the estate is so important.
Whoever lawfully represents Garuga’s estate potentially has a major role in protecting and exercising the deceased’s shareholder interests.
Alwyn subsequently accused lawyer Agaba Maguru of unlawfully becoming a director in the three companies following his father’s death.
Maguru denied wrongdoing and maintained that he had been properly appointed following company meetings.
May ruling: Alwyn suffers a setback
In May 2026, Assistant Registrar of Companies Daniel Nasasira dismissed consolidated petitions brought by Alwyn challenging Maguru’s appointments.
The Registrar held, among other things, that Alwyn lacked the necessary legal standing to bring the petitions in the circumstances before the registry and that the registry could not proceed where related matters were pending before court.
This was a significant setback for Alwyn.
But it was not the end of the corporate battle.
July ruling turns the tables
On July 24, 2026, the dispute produced another major development.
URSB ruled in a case brought by Mathew Rukikaire, a shareholder in Garuga Properties Limited.
Rukikaire challenged the process through which Agaba Maguru had been appointed to directorship positions in the Garuga-linked companies.
The July ruling found that Rukikaire had a legally recognisable interest because of his shareholding in Garuga Properties, which controlled interests in the other companies.
The Registrar further found that the extraordinary general meeting of Garuga Properties had been convened without giving Rukikaire the notice to which he was entitled as a shareholder.
As a result, Maguru’s appointment as a director of Garuga Properties was declared unlawful and ordered expunged from the company’s records.
That ruling is particularly important because it demonstrates that the corporate fight is not simply a matter of Alwyn versus his mother.
Other shareholders and corporate actors have become involved, and the validity of post-death changes to company leadership is now being scrutinised through Uganda’s corporate regulatory system.
The Garuga empire behind the fight
The magnitude of the dispute becomes clearer from the assets disclosed during the succession litigation.
Court reporting has identified a three-storey mansion in Mbuya, a substantial country home in Rugyeyo, large land holdings, ranches, tea interests, the Savannah Resort Hotel in Kanungu and stakes connected to companies including Garuga Properties, Incafex and Kinkizi Development Company.
Garuga also had a long association with the tea industry.
Kayonza Growers Tea Factory, for example, remains an established player in Uganda’s tea sector and is listed by the Uganda Tea Association among its members.
His business interests extended into broadcasting. Kanungu Broadcasting Services, popularly known as KBS 95.4 FM, continues to identify itself as a community radio station serving Kanungu and surrounding areas.
The station was itself involved in a regulatory dispute years before Garuga’s death, when the Uganda Communications Commission ordered it to cease operations in 2017 over alleged breaches of broadcasting standards.
These interests demonstrate why the succession dispute has consequences far beyond a family disagreement.
It involves corporate governance, shareholder rights, land, agriculture, hospitality, broadcasting and potentially hundreds of billions of shillings in business interests.
A family split now impossible to hide
Alwyn’s latest video shows just how far the family relationship has deteriorated.
He accuses his mother of excluding family members from the estate, including his grandmother, and alleges that several companies and properties were omitted from her application for letters of administration.
He also alleges that land in Ngoma, Nakaseke, measuring about 2,000 acres, was transferred while his father was critically ill.
These claims require documentary verification and judicial determination.
Indeed, the court and regulatory records reviewed for this story do not establish that Peace Kesiime personally fraudulently transferred 2,000 acres, nor do they establish that she participated in any killing.
What they do establish is that the estate and companies have been the subject of serious and continuing legal disputes.
And the courts have already taken extraordinary measures to prevent the family conflict from paralysing or compromising the estate.
The unanswered questions
The Garuga saga now raises questions that cannot be settled through competing statements at church services or social-media videos.
What exactly caused James Garuga’s death?
Were all medical decisions made in accordance with accepted medical practice?
Was he medically fit for the procedures performed on him?
Was there an attempt to prevent his evacuation for specialised treatment?
Were his passport and visa deliberately withheld from the medical evacuation process?
Were any assets transferred while he was incapacitated?
Who authorised those transactions?
Were company meetings properly convened?
Were all shareholders given the legally required notices?
And, most importantly, what was the true extent of Garuga’s estate at the time of his death?
Those questions belong in medical investigations, company records, succession proceedings and, where evidence of criminal conduct exists, the criminal justice system.
A legacy now overshadowed by litigation
Garuga’s death was initially mourned as the loss of one of Kigezi’s most influential sons.
He was remembered as a businessman, philanthropist, politician, tea investor and major supporter of opposition politics. FDC described him as one of the people whose financial and organisational support helped establish the party.
But a year after his death, his legacy is increasingly being defined by a bitter succession battle.
His son is accusing his mother of wrongdoing surrounding his father’s final days.
His mother rejects the accusations.
The courts have so far made no finding that she murdered her husband.
At the same time, the courts have found the family too divided to jointly manage the estate and have entrusted temporary administration to a neutral state official.
The corporate regulator has also intervened, with the latest July decision finding that the appointment of a director to one of Garuga’s companies was unlawful and ordering the register corrected.
The result is a remarkable contradiction.
The family that stood together around Garuga’s coffin is now fighting over the companies, properties and wealth he left behind.
And while Alwyn’s accusation of “murder” is perhaps the most explosive allegation yet to emerge, the documented court record shows that the deeper battle is already firmly established: who has the legal right to protect, control and ultimately administer the business empire James Garuga spent decades building?
Until the pending succession litigation and related corporate disputes are finally resolved, that question remains open.
So does the full truth surrounding the businessman’s final months.
For now, one thing is beyond dispute: James Garuga’s death did not end the fight over his empire.
It started one.
