YONA WAPAKABULO: QUIETLY CONFIDENT, CONTENT TO LET HIS WORK SPEAK FOR HIM

It always bugged him when people did not apply themselves, “Monkeys!” he called them.

Born on 8^th January 1972, he was a Capricorn and had the characteristic self drive of his star sign. He needed little to no external impetus to achieve his ambitions and often succeeded in spite of the outside circumstances. Hence his impatience with “monkeys”.

After a life first in Tanzania, where his father worked at the East African Community secretariat in Arusha and then in Papua New Guinea, Yona returned to Uganda with his family in 1986.

He first came to the attention of his homeland through his exploits with bat and ball, first at Kings College Budo, then Makerere College School, during which times he moonlighted for local clubs, played for Uganda where he was the linchpin in the team that won East & Central Africa Council in 1991.

In a 1992 league match he left an indelible impression on the history of Ugandan cricket, swatting away the opposing team’s attack to put on 212 runs in a single innings for his club Wanderers, a performance that had never been bested before or since....

After his A-Level he took a gap year to further his cricket ambitions in England. But Yona had lost time and, by his own admission, could not be competitive in a way that he thought he should be at the highest level of the game.  With some prompting from his father he went back to school and got his degree in marketing before returning to Uganda.

Never one to dwell on past glories he left his cricket accolades in his past to pursue a career in sales, marketing and communications.

It is testament to his success in this field that in the biography in the order of service book at his funeral, his cricket success occupied only two lines of the whole narration.

He really came into his own when he joined fledgling PR firm WMC Africa Ltd in 2003. Following the death of the founding partner, the affable Andrew Wandera, two years after he joined the firm, Yona took over the reins and led the firm to the next level.

Unimpressed by big names, he managed to cobble together a formidable young team, that now represents such blue chip companies as Stanbic Bank, Multichoice, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but previously MTN Uganda, British Airways and Umeme.

His greatest legacy may still be that he built WMC ltd into a admirable business that, one of his contemporaries remarked, was growing when other industry players, squeezed by the economic downturn were cutting back on activities and staffing.

Given his achievements in his first and then second life, it would have been easy for Yona to be an insufferable braggart but he wasn’t. Gauged against where he wanted to be, he often said there was nothing to boast about, yet.

He was greatly ambitious for his business, spurning a juicy offer for the purchase of the business a few years ago; ambitious for his family, his children – Myles, Zora, Aurora, Diah and Shalom, who he was keen to give every opportunity to unlock their potential and he was ambitious for himself content to delay gratification to build a greater future.

Yona had no qualms denying himself for future progress, arguing that even if he passed on there would be someone else who would benefit from what he had laid down.

His worldview, shaped by his success at cricket and business, was that in order to do what one wanted to do, one first had to do what they had to do, the often unglamorous, grunge work and sacrifice, many are unwilling to do today.

"He was not flamboyant, by design, choosing to work his magic in the background, often spurning the praise and visibility that came with success, content in the knowledge that the ones who matter would notice...

Yona, averse to the limelight, took some convincing before he put up a signpost at his company’s recently acquired plot 101, Bukoto street, office block. He argued that he had no walk-in clients, laboring under the romantic notion that if his company was any good it wouldn’t need a sign post. He worked to that end.

Fiercely competitive and quick to voice his opinion if he needed to, no one who knew him thought he was a pushover or anyone’s fool.

A regular at the Lugogo Tennis Club, he often spent Sunday afternoons there with one eye on an ongoing cricket match. He was keen to support the club – supporting an interclub doubles competition and founding a Saturday morning children’s tennis clinic overseen by the legendary John Oduke.

He had his faults, not least of all that he did not suffer fools gladly, among friends or family, blacking them out with a dismissive waive of his hand. Prone to introspection, some thought he was proud and aloof.

Felled in his prime by infective endocarditis on August 6^th, some solace maybe gained from the Greek saying, “Those who the God’s love, die young”

Farewell Yona!