For many years, many within the Opposition have accused Luweero voters of backing President Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) party cadres on sentimental grounds of the Luweero bush war that brought the regime to power. However, in 2021, Luweero voters used the general elections to end that claim when they voted against the regime’s candidates across levels, including, remarkably, presidential. Derrick Kiyonga explores whether the ruling party will suffer the same bloodbath next year.
As per tradition, in 2020, President Museveni kick-started his drive to secure his seventh term in Luweero District. Per Museveni, the logic of kick-starting the defence of his office in this district, found in the heart of the Buganda region, is that it was the epicentre of the guerrilla war that catapulted him to power in 1986.
Museveni, who launched this particular campaign at his farm in Kawumu Village, Makulubita Sub-County, was confident of winning this area, not least because he had won the previous contests, including the 2016 contest, where he beat his perennial rival and Luweero war veteran Dr Kizza Besigye with a difference of 18,298 votes.
Even at the parliamentary level, Museveni’s party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), continued its dominance of Luweero with Abraham Byandala defeating the Democratic Party’s (DP) Jasper Muwonge Aligaweesa with a difference of 10,841 votes to take Katikamu North; Edward Ssembatya defeated Alfred Muwanga, an Independent, with a difference of 9,574 votes to take Katikamu South; John Chrysostom Muyingo defeated DP’s Robert Sekitoleeko, who has since decamped to the National Unity Platform (NUP), with a difference of 27,510 votes to take Bamunaniika County; Lillian Nakate took the Luweero District Woman Representative (DWR) slot when she defeated Brenda Nabukenya, then of the DP, but has since crossed to NUP, with a difference of 3,113 votes.
At the Local government level, Ronald Ndawula, another NRM cadre, emerged victorious in the Luweero LC5 race when he obtained 35,535 votes, while his closest rival, DP’s Erasto Kibirango, emerged second with 6,618 votes.
With such a track record of winning, Museveni rolled out this campaign by repeating old promises-take that the Matugga-Ssemutto-Kapeeka road would be re-tarmacked. Museveni, who calls Luweero the NRM/NRA’s Mecca, also promised that the Kapeeka-Kitumwa-Butabangwa road would also be tarmacked and bragged that he was best placed to solve the problems of Luweero natives.
‘A good doctor diagnoses the patient and then prescribes the medicine of the country. A leader who cannot solve problems of the people should just go and rear goats,’ Museveni said.
Muntu clarion call
Yet there was a warning from Mugisha Muntu, another Luweero Bush War veteran, that Museveni and his political party had abused the emotional connection the Luweero people had with them.
‘The focus of the current regime is to focus people’s attention on building of roads, the power lines, the schools and completely, ignoring the issues that took us to the bush-justice, equal opportunities and zero tolerance to corruption. The bread-and-butter issues are important and we intend to do the things that will bring development to families and communities but we have to ensure that they both happen. It doesn’t make sense to tell people that they have got a good road but they can’t access justice when their land is taken,’ Mugisha Muntu said, further insisting that the regime in which he once served as the Chief of Defence Forces had failed the people of Luweero.
It seems in the 2021 elections, voters in Luweero, which is part of Bulemeezi County, as the Baganda call it, took seriously Muntu’s advice to drop the sentimental attachment they had with the regime. At the presidential level, NUP’s Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, alias Bobi Wine, became the first Opposition leader to rout Museveni in Luweero when he got 103,782 votes against the former guerrilla leader’s tally of 41,166 votes. The difference-62,616 votes-was astronomical by any measure.
In Bamunaniika, NUP’s Ssekitoleeko, at the second time of asking, ousted Muyingo with difference of 3,387 votes; in Katikamu South NUP’s Hassan Kirumira defeated Muwanga, who once again stood as an Independent, with a difference of 11,399 votes, with the NRM’s Patricia Magara placing third with 8,132 votes; in Katikamu South Denis Ssekabira, of NUP, defeated NRM’s Gaddafi Nassur with a difference of 79,945 votes; Nabukenya reclaimed her Luweero DWR slot when she defeated NRM’s Cissy Mulondo with a difference of 36,448 votes.
Bobi courts Bulemeezi
Having successfully turned Luweero into an Opposition stronghold by flushing out the NRM, Bobi Wine during a 2023 countrywide tour visited the district. While there, he made a speech in which he said: ‘I want to honour those who were killed between 1980 and 1986 when Museveni was trying to become President. I want to show respect to those who have been killed in recent years, including my driver Yasin Kawuma, who was killed by regime forces in Arua. They include: Ritah Nabukenya, Hakim Ssekamwa who was run over by a police vehicle in Bombo town.’
Bobi Wine added that he was happy to have received an opportunity to speak to his people in Buganda after the elections.
‘I am happy that I am speaking to you my fellow Ganda people here in Buganda. I am happy that whatever I am saying is your native language [Luganda] that you all understand. They say if you want to speak to the brains of the person, speak in the language that you understand, but if you want to speak to the soul of the person, speak in the language of his ancestors. I am happy to speak to you, the descendants of Kintu and Nambi.’
Here, Kyagulanyi was using Luweero to invoke the Ganda myth that all Baganda are descendants of Kintu and Nambi.
‘My role is to tell you the truth as it is, and your role is to listen to it. When I am in Luweero, I stand over the bones and flesh of our fathers and mothers who were killed such that Museveni gets to power. It’s us, the Baganda, who brought Museveni and it’s us the Baganda, who have aided Museveni to prolong his stay in power. And it’s us the Baganda, who have to kick him out of power. So even if I am in Bulemeezi, I want to speak to all the Baganda in the 18 counties that comprise Buganda,’ the NUP principal, who was about four years when Museveni shot his way to power in 1986, said.
NRM on the offensive
If Kyagulanyi believes Buganda and Bulemeezi are critical in getting rid of Museveni, the President, who once again started his rallies in Luweero, blamed the poor services in the area on the onslaught his party suffered in the 2021 elections. At his rally organised at Bukalasa Agricultural College playgrounds in Wobulenzi Town Council, Museveni accused the people of Bulemeezi of committing suicide when they elected Opposition leaders such as Nabukenya and the LCV chairperson Erastus Kibirango, whom he said lacked the capacity to push for services or confront the rising wave of criminality in the district.
Yet Nabukenya, in rebuttal, came short of calling Museveni an ingrate, asserting the Bulemeezi people had blindly supported him for over four decades with nothing to show for it. She pointed out that Bulemeezi people had supported NRM leaders in the past, including Abdul Nadduli, former Luweero District chairperson, the late Edward Khiddu Makubuya, who until 2016 represented Katikamu South in Parliament, and the late Wilberforce Kisamba Mugerwa, who represented Bamunaniika for several years yet little had changed.
Fool me twice.
Without mentioning names, Nabukenya further asserted that some of the land-grabbing crises facing the area, which Museveni claims to want to solve, are being fuelled by high-ranking officials in his government. Though Museveni and the NRM claim that they want to reclaim Bulemeezi, they have fallen out with Nadduli following the 2022 abduction and killing of his son, Jakana Sulaiman Nadduli, by security operatives.
When Jakana was abducted in September of 2022 by security agencies, who were in a van dubbed drone, Nadduli, who once served as Minister without Portfolio, was in a reflective mood; therein, he tried to summarise what had prompted his son to go hard on the ruling party via the Internet.
‘We didn’t go to the bush to look for titles and jobs,’ Nadduli, who was part of the NRA Bush War in the Luweero jungles, said.
‘We went to the bush to look for peace. That’s why they [ruling elite] have looted the country, and they have retarded it to such an extent that it can’t develop. Everything that they get their hands on, they just eat.’