Even before the 12th Parliament gets down to the real business, there are real question marks over the political future of Ms Shamim Malende, the Kampala District Woman Representative (DWR). The uneasiness in the relationship between Ms Malende and the leaders of her party, the National Unity Platform (NUP), was on display when she made a rare appearance at the party’s headquarters during the unveiling of Jinja South East legislator, Mr Paul Mwiru, as their candidate in the speakership race. When Ms Flavia Nabagabe Kalule, emcee of the function, was introducing Ms Malende, she said they hoped that the Kampala DWR would remain a permanent fixture in NUP activities.
‘We hope she will remain with us in the coming days,’ Ms Kalule, who lost the Kassanda DWR seat in January, said. Ever since Ms Malende was retained as the Kampala DWR, she has neither appeared at any NUP activity nor issued any statement explaining her absence. Ms Malende, it is said, jetted out of the country as soon as she secured a second term in Parliament to get specialised treatment. Still, she kept silent until the week of her swearing-in function.
Sources within NUP said as much as Ms Malende has claimed that she has been sick, her disappearance has angered foot soldiers. ‘We are not convinced that she is just sick,’ a foot soldier said on condition of anonymity.
Feebleness
The relationship between Ms Malende and the party had sunk so low that those within NUP had expected that she would be one of the lawmakers who would defy the party’s position and attend President Museveni’s swearing-in ceremony at Kololo Independence Grounds in Kampala last month. ‘We had got information that she would join those celebrations, but she eventually didn’t attend. We don’t plan with her for the future,’ a NUP member said on condition of anonymity, adding that the party is not short of worthy replacements for Ms Malende, including Ms Shamim Nambassa, the former Makerere University guild president, who has just been elected to represent Kawempe South as the Woman LC5 Councillor at Kampala Capital City Council Authority (KCCA)
By the end of last term, sources said NUP leaders were ready to move on from Ms Malende.
This was shown when NUP leadership asked Ms Zahara Maala Luyirika to first set aside her ambitions to represent Makindye West and take an interest in the Kampala DWR slot. ‘We are in a democratic country, and NUP is a democratic party. I’m not standing against my sister Shamim Malende. I saw a vacuum, and I’m stepping up to fill it,’ Ms Luyirika said at the time. She added: ‘I recognised my strength and believe I have served well as KCCA speaker alongside my fellow councillors. Now, I want to take the next step and serve the people of Kampala. I am a loyal person who respects my party’s procedures.’
Once Ms Luyirika showed interest in replacing her, Ms Malende, who was seeking specialised treatment in Nairobi, Kenya, had her posters put up in every corner of Kampala with the NUP election slogan: protest vote. This was a message of defiance in the context that she realised that NUP’s honchos had been reconsidering the party’s position on who should be its flag-bearer in the Kampala DWR race. Ms Malende, who, like several NUP legislators, was a debutant in the 11th Parliament, spent most of her tenure bedridden either in Kampala or Nairobi.
Despite her inconsistent health situation, Ms Malende insisted on standing in the 2026 polls, forcing her to send political messages from her hospital bed as a way of keeping in touch with the electorate. For instance, when the government moved to make amendments to the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) Act that would reintroduce the trial of civilians in military courts, in complete defiance of a Supreme Court judgment, a visibly frail Ms Malende sent a political message from her hospital bed.
‘I concur with the Supreme Court that civilians shouldn’t be tried in the Court Martial. If the State suspects that civilians have done something wrong, they should be taken to a civilian court. We know that many people, including the president, [Robert] Kyagulanyi, have been threatened with being taken to the basement to learn Runyankore,’ Ms Malende said. With Ms Malende insisting that she was strong enough to go through another gruelling campaign, NUP leadership was resigned to having her on the ballot. ‘It would look insensitive if you dumped her right now. How can a party dump a party member just because she is sick?’ one of the NUP honchos told this publication late 2025, on condition of anonymity.
The catch-22 for NUP was that Ms Malende framed her hospitalisation through the lens of violence inflicted on her by the State as she engaged in the political struggle. ‘I was beaten during the standoff in Parliament as we rejected the Coffee Bill. I have had operations here in Nairobi, and I think I will recover,’ Ms Malende said. Ms Malende jumped out of her hospital bed last year to join Ms Luyirika in picking forms from NUP’s headquarters, asking to represent Kampala women. This left the party in a fix. If the flag was to be handed to Ms Malende, as it eventually was, a solution around the Makindye West constituency had to be found.
Mr Ali Nganda Kasirye, alias Mulyannyama, and Mr Allan Ssewanyana, the then incumbent, looked set to lock horns. To solve this impasse, NUP leaders gave Mr Mulyannyama the Makindye East slot, though he had not applied for it. As a result, Ms Luyirika was given Makindye West, though she hadn’t formally applied for it, and then Ms Malende retained the Kampala DWR slot. Lady luck smiled on NUP in the sense that, despite this clearly dangerous political game of changing candidates from one constituency to another, as if they were playing chess, Mr Mulyanyama, Ms Luyirika, and Ms Malende all emerged victorious in the January 15 elections.
History repeats self
Ms Malende isn’t the first Kampala woman legislator to come under pressure after falling out with her party. Her predecessor, Ms Nabilah Naggayi Sempala, who got three terms, was also accused of not effectively representing the women in Kampala. Politically, Ms Naggayi’s downfall came after her fallout with the Opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party top brass that accused her of being a mole. By 2015, it was apparent that Ms Naggayi had fallen out with FDC leaders, that she placed adverts on radio stations calling people of Kampala to turn up in big numbers as former Prime Minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, who had fallen out with his boss President Museveni, was being nominated to run for President in 2016.
Yet days later, when then FDC’s presidential flagbearer Dr Kizza Besigye was being nominated at Namboole stadium, Ms Naggayi showed up at the Electoral Commission offices and sat next to Dr Besigye. The seat had been reserved for Dr Besigye’s wife, Ms Winnie Byanyima, who wasn’t in the country. Mr Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, then Kira Municipality lawmaker, would later disclose that he wanted to dislodge Ms Naggayi from the seat, but he was stopped by Dr Besigye. Internally, though Ms Naggayi had been nominated as an FDC candidate, the party had resolved to support Ms Shifrah Lukwago, then a close ally of the then Lord Mayor of Kampala,Mr Erias Lukwago, but she has since retired from elective politics after Mr Museveni appointed her a commissioner at the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC).
During the final stretch of the campaigns, Dr Besigye, a crowd puller, stormed Kampala, and this is when Ms Naggayi muscled her way to get a vantage seat from which she was able to often stand alongside Dr Besigye on his car’s rooftop and wave to the crowd. With Kampala voters voting mainly for candidates that had the key-FDC’s symbol-Ms Naggayi retained her seat after garnering 174,125 votes. The Democratic Party’s Florence Nakiwala Kiyingyi-who had the backing of the Mengo establishment-came second with 101,763 votes. Elsewhere, NRM’s Asia Kinaabi Nabisere came third, and Ms Lukwago placed fourth with 84,574 votes.
Having won the race, Ms Naggayi would go on to disappear when FDC launched what it termed the defiance campaign against Mr Museveni’s government after another contested poll. Ms Naggayi would also disappear when the Opposition tussled with NRM party over eliminating presidential age limits from the Constitution, something that ensured Mr Museveni would effectively rule Uganda for eternity. ‘Why didn’t you die?’ Mr Nathan Nandala Mafabi, FDC’s secretary general, [in]famously pushed back against Ms Naggayi’s claim that she missed the age limit showdown because she was sick during a talkshow on NTV Uganda, this publication’s sister TV station.
With that, FDC tapped Mr Museveni’s virulent government critic on social media and researcher Dr Stella Nyanzi, but she wasn’t able to overcome the umbrella wave as Ms Malende stormed to victory with 314,865 votes in 2021. If Ms Malende then represented a new crop of Opposition leaders, the start of her new term in Parliament kind of represents an end since she hasn’t been appointed to the Shadow cabinet and/or to lead or deputise any leader of the parliamentary committees. In January 2023, Ms Malende was appointed Shadow minister for human rights.
‘We assign responsibilities to people who are available and are committed to the struggle; not those who are just interested in parliamentary positions,’ one of NUP’s leaders explained why Ms Malende wasn’t assigned any responsibility in the shadow cabinet. Her future looks bleak. But Mr David Lewis Rubongoya, NUP’s secretary general, on Thursday gave this publication a general comment, saying: ‘ We are looking at all our members to see how they will perform in this term. The party is interested in strong performers.’