Gerald Bareebe and Angelo Izama
12 November 2009
analysis
As classic as the biblical tale of Samson and Delilah- Lydia Draru, who has confessed to bludgeoning former Army Commander and veteran of many battles James Kazini, is a woman with a troubled personal history- Daily Monitor can reveal.
Sources tell a story of a party girl with big dreams whose life story was tied to the ups and downs of her dating diary. She was born in the mid eighties in Manibe Village, Ayivu County, about four kilometres north of Arua Town.
Some accounts, however, suggest she is from Maracha-Terego.
She left the village for the city to study as a 16-year-old and told her friends she had completed her A-levels at Old Kampala SS. She spoke fluent English and Luganda.
By the late 90's she surfaced at several bars - like Wilson-based DV8. Friends recall a darker skinned, curvaceous girl who loved music and partying, had a temper and appeared not to have any known income source or jobs.
At one point- a sign of desperate times and the direction her life had taken- her picture surfaced on an adult website featuring Ugandan girls most of who were ladies of the night.
Some friends say around 2004 she had a relationship with a Canadian national which ended when the expatriate left the country two years later.
It's unclear when she met Kazini but she has been spotted occasionally hanging in the city with officers of visiting military delegations to Uganda.
In 2007 Gen. Kazini asked the Wabigalo LC1 chairman, Mr Bosco Lule, to find a house for him. In August that year Ms Draru moved into the house on Wabigalo Road. She shared the house with her sister a student at Green Hill Academy and her brother a university student.
Kazini was said to be footing their bills.
"We only saw her coming in, sometimes with the General, or going out," says Peter Walusimbi, a boda boda rider at the stage directly opposite her house.
She frequented a hair salon for four years in Kisugu where she became friends with its proprietor. .
The friend said Draru had told her she had dropped her "white man for a General" and recognised Kazini's picture in the house when she visited her.
Talking love
She said the two had a good relationship and Draru often talked of her love for Kazini and that she was unbothered the General was a married man with children.
The friend said the two, however, disagreed on whether they should have children. She claimed Kazini did not want children but assisted Draru, who unsure whether she could bear children, had an operation last year. It confirmed she was fine.
"If she is not pregnant, then she was planning to get pregnant because she has been telling me that she wants to give birth before the end of next year," the hair dresser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said.
And so it happened that their relationship violently bust into the national limelight at the time Kazini was no longer alive.
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