Renowned media personality, Karitas Karisimbi, says the events surrounding her sour relationship with the Ssalis (Bebe Cool and his wife Zuena) “threw me far”, adding that she and Zuena are no longer friends although at one point “I was a shoulder she could lean on”.
For over a decade, Zuena and Karitas, don’t see eye-to-eye. Yet they once were friends and at some point, Karitas employed Zuena out of good will.
She had been no stranger to Cool himself. The two knew each other from high school and they also each did a stint at Capital FM back in the day.
Asked while appearing on NTV’s Mwasuze Mutya show on Friday, what phases in her life she wishes could be erased in her mind and the minds of the public, Karitas cited her break-up with the celebrity couple.
“I don’t like talking about this, but my relationship with the Ssalis and what it turned into, what it portrayed me as, the misconception around it, all that happened, threw me far,” the radio and TV host responded.
Hesitant to discuss the issue, Karitas who is 47 added; “What happened happened, but it’s how everything happened, what was said, everything. For me, that was a lesson and it made me mature.”
She said her relationship with Zuena began at the time she (Zuena) was contesting for Miss Uganda in 2001. At the time, Karitas was hosting Showtime, an entertainment show on WBS TV. Karitas frequented the Miss Uganda camp in Munyonyo almost every day, covering the behind-the-scenes.
“In the process, we (her and Zuena) created a friendship. Unfortunately, it’s not there anymore. But when it was, at a certain point, I would like to believe, I was a shoulder she could lean on, and I think I was the friend she needed during that period. I respected our friendship but it ended,” she said.
What led to the bad blood between the three, which to this date has failed to be mended, goes back to 2008 when Bebe Cool was going through rough tides in his marriage with Zuena.
In 2008, Zuena abandoned Bebe Cool’s home with her two kids then and went to her home in Jinja. She was there for a whole 8 months. Cool’s infidelity and the fact that he had gotten drunk on stardom and lost respect for her, was behind Zuena’s marriage hiatus.
Zuena who now has 5 children with Cool has previously shared how the singer drove to Jinja almost every day to apologize to her and fix their problems but she often refused to even see him. The frustration would lead Cool to release about three songs, including Agenze and Bamugambe, in which he pleaded with her. She later accepted to give him a second chance after he swore he had reformed.
Zuena approached Karitas at the time she had separated with the husband, according to an account Karitas has previously shared. Karitas was touched by her plight at the time. A mother of two having no job yet going through an emotionally stressing phase of her life.
This is how Karitas onboarded Zuena to K-Files, a show that she was independently producing for East African TV (Channel 5) at the time.
“She came to me. She needed a friend. And I opened my big heart to her; I opened my doors to her…. We sat down and I decided to offer her a job with K-Files. She was paid monthly and was happy,” Karitas has told Daily Monitor previously.
In the same interview, she revealed that she remains oblivious to why Zuena suddenly cut ties with her.
“I swear, I don’t know up to today. I travelled to the UK and according to me, we were still friends. In fact, before I left, we had discussed amongst ourselves whether we would attend Bebe’s Agenze album launch or not. I kept asking her if she loved her man and wanted to go back to him.”
In the UK, she got a “very nasty text message” but which she ignored.
Since then, she has never heard from Zuena.
“I wasn’t in love with Zuena, but his (Bebe Cool’s) insecurity created imaginary beef. The way he handled things in a pretty immature way, especially in this life, you don’t know what to expect tomorrow,” Karitas is quoted as saying in the past.
She has also rubbished claims that she influenced Zuena to leave Cool for another man.
“Between me and the two (Zuena and Bebe Cool), they know what the truth is. I can’t influence someone’s wife to abandon her marriage. To what end? So i can marry her? If it was to get her other suitors, I was single myself. Wouldn’t I instead get that suitor for myself?” Karitas has commented in a separate interview previously.
The mother of twins (now 11) says she has had to keep quiet about the matter all these years because she respects Cool, but also because she is not the type that goes low by venting publicly.
“They (Zuena and Bebe Cool) hurt me so much, in fact it’s them that need to apologize to me. it’s them that created this beef and it’s them that wronged me.”
Are they friends? No, according to Karitas. But she wouldn’t fight any of them if she met them. She would say Hi.
