How girlfriend sent Qute Kaye down the path to addiction, crime, near death

In a matter of months, Kaye, born Ivan Kawuma fell to rock bottom from being a beloved and top-selling artist of the late 2000s.

From having overbooked shows at Sheraton to owning three different music bands, Kaye was suddenly begging for money for lunch on the streets. 

In 2018, the country was thrown into shock when the melodious singer was arrested after being caught red-handed stealing a car light in Busega.

Looking back today, Kaye says, he still shudders at how low he had sunk due to drug addiction.

“This world is full of karma. I remember back in the day, I went to Kisenyi to have my car checked out and someone unscrewed my light and I was very upset. Now here I was years later, stealing other people’s lights,” Kaye told Doreen Nasasira and Bina Baby in an interview.

By the time of his arrest, Kaye says he had joined a gang of criminals who taught him how to steal car lights.

He had lost so much weight that he was using banana fibers to secure his pants.

“Remember I was not eating at all. Sometimes I could go a whole week without eating anything. What I would do is go to people who sell sugar cane and beg them to give me the husks, and that was my lunch!”

Falling from grace

Kaye had quickly risen to the summit of the music scene in the late 2000s, with his ballads such as ‘Jinkeese,’ ‘Nyumirwa Obulamu,’ and ‘Gwendota.’

With his music in great demand, he was hired to do weekly performances at the Kampala Sheraton. He was making over Shs. 2 million per show. He was also booked at several other hang-out places in the city.

With so many bookings coming, he was forced to buy three different musical instrument sets, to enable him to perform at different locations at the same time.

“I had to stop using my car and started using bodabodas. So I would run to Sheraton, perform like four songs, then go to Phase2, and then another venue. I also had many weekend bookings and private parties,” he says.

Feeling overstretched, his girlfriend advised him to start using recreational drugs to boost his energy.

At first, he rejected the advice, but she was insistent. Then one evening she came to where he was seated enjoying drinks and forcefully blew weed smoke in his mouth, and then another, and another.

It took him three days of smoking weed, and suddenly he was hooked. 

Kaye recalls that on the third day when the addition really set in; he woke up feeling very bad. He had a big headache, a runny nose, and stomach and muscle pain.

“I remember I even failed to take my daughter to school that day. When my girlfriend saw me, she said all I needed was some more drugs. So she put me in the car and we went to where they sell them.”

“I sniffed just one like and just like that, all the headache and pain was gone.”

From here, Kaye became heavily dependent on drugs, and he even started buying them for some of his band members who were using.

He became weaker and unable to attend any shows. Eventually, his Sheraton contract was terminated, and others followed suit.

With no income, he sold off his band instruments one by one to buy drugs.

His car was next. He sold it for only Shs 5 million and within two days, he was broke again.

At this point, he realized his situation and made the decision to leave home and rent a small house in Kisenyi, where his life turned for the worst.

Many times, he says he contemplated taking his own life. 

In 2017, he appeared at Pastor Robert Kayanja's church where he gave his life to God.

In hindsight today, Kaye says although drugs put him through the wringer, he is to an extent grateful that he got to experience the worst in order to learn key life lessons.

“Whoever can believe this should; I do believe my addiction journey to where I am now was divine; It had to happen because otherwise, I would not have learned what I have,” he says.