In mid this year, President Museveni’s youngest brother, Godfrey Aine Kaguta, popularly known as Sodo, was confident of fulfilling his lifelong ambition of joining Parliament in 2026. Sodo’s brief moment of triumph came after Shartsi Musherure Kutesa, the daughter of former Foreign Affairs minister Sam Kutesa, who has been Mawogola North Member of Parliament (MP) since 2021, pulled out of the race to defend her seat.
She did this in a bid to avert the possibility of intra-violence among members of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party. Many of Musherure’s supporters within the NRM, whom this writer has spoken to, have insisted that they were caught flat-footed by her decision not to stand. With no time to front another candidate, Sodo sailed through the NRM primary unopposed.
Since Sembabule, the district where Mawogola North is situated, is considered a National Resistance Movement (NRM) stronghold, a seat in the House appeared to be a certainty for Museveni’s youngest brother. That was until Jet John Tumwebaze, a lawyer, joined the race this past week, albeit as an Independent.
Tumwebaze insists that he didn’t jump into the race immediately because he had counted on Musherure to run again. ‘She [Musherure] is the most competent MP in the entire country. She was good in terms of legislation and also monitoring government services,’ Tumwebaze, a partner at Kampala Associated Advocates (KAA), says of Musherure, whose slogan Goberera-loosely translated to following up on government programmes-struck a chord with many.
Unqualified?
Tumwebaze said he had entered into the Mawogola North race to avert the possibility of Mawogola being represented by the most unqualified person in history. ‘We are talking about a person who can’t read and write. So how can that person represent our people? How will that person participate in the law-making process and then explain such a complex process to our people in Mawogola North?’ Tumwebaze asked.
When he turned up at the NRM headquarters in early June to signal his intent in challenging fellow party member Musherure, Sodo explained that standing in the NRM primary had been greenlighted by Mr Museveni and other authorities whom he didn’t mention.
‘Last time when I tried to stand, something happened, and I didn’t finish. I dropped out of the race at the last minute. But this time I want to assure my supporters that I’m with them until the end,’ Sodo explained. In 2020, Sodo had positioned himself as the successor of long-term Mawogola North legislator, Sam Kutesa.
The relationship Kutesa shares with Museveni is historical as the pair started their rivalry in the 1980 General Election. Although for decades he has notoriously had a grip on the politics of the central district of Sembabule, in 1980, when he set out to participate in elective politics, Kutesa, who was 31 years old, stood in the western constituency of Mbarara North, presently known as Nyabushozi.
Historical perspective
Following a period of anarchy, the 1980 elections were the first elections to be organised in post-independent Uganda, and Kutesa, who stood as Democratic Party (DP) candidate, took on his main challenger, Museveni, the UPM candidate, who had fallen out with the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) government.
The elections, according to critics, were riddled with sectarianism and religious undertones, and the Mbarara North race wasn’t any different. One of the biggest accusations levelled against Mr Museveni by his opponents is gerrymandering constituencies and districts in the bid to give his NRM party an advantage in Parliament. In 1980, he was on the receiving end of gerrymandering, or so he claimed.
Once he lost, Museveni, an Anglican, pointed out how he had won in sub-counties in Nyabushozi, which were predominantly Anglican. But he had lost to Kuteesa, an Anglican, in sub-counties that had been carved from Ibanda into Mbarara North and that were populated by Catholics.
It’s not clear how Mr Museveni was serious about the case, but he hired Hunter and Greig, now known as Kateera and Kagumire advocates and filed a petition in the High Court in Kampala, therein listing 10 grounds of annulling Kutesa’s victory. Museveni alleged a plethora of electoral indiscretions, including that registered voters did not appear on the voters’ registers and that the registers were not displayed for inspection as required by law, inter alia. But in his memoirs, Sowing the Mustard Seed, Museveni intimated that, in the grand scheme of things, his group wasn’t serious about the elections.
Whatever the case, while Kutesa was taking up his position in Parliament, Museveni went to the bush where he would emerge victorious and mend fences with Kutesa, who had been appointed Attorney General by the Junta regime of Tito Okello Lutwa. Appointed a minister, Kutesa didn’t return to Nyabushozi, where the chances of defeating Elly Karuhanga were simply minimal. He instead stood against NRM’s Secretary-General Jaberi Bidandi Ssali in Nakawa. There, he was soundly beaten.
The National Resistance Council (NRC), which Kutesa wasn’t part of, passed a resolution which was to the effect that there would be a Constituent Assembly (CA) that would debate and pass the envisaged Constitution. By and large, members who would constitute the CA were to be elected via the universal adult suffrage, and Kutesa once again shifted constituencies. He dumped Nakawa and found refuge in Mawogola. It’s said that Luweero Bush War hero David Tinyefuza was the only person who could have beaten Kutesa in Mawogola, but the maverick General decided to go to the CA via the slots given to the army.
King maker
From that time, Kutesa came to define the politics of not just Mawogola but also Sembabule. Kutesa’s relationship with Museveni was strengthened when, in 1999, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the President’s son, married his daughter, Charlotte Nankunda. It’s this marriage that complicated Sodo’s political ambitions in Mawogola North because, as Kutesa set his eyes on retiring from politics in 2020, his daughter Musherure sought to replace him.
For instance, Muhoozi, the Chief Defence Forces (CDF), who is positioning to replace his ageing father, would have to choose whether to support his paternal uncle, Sodo, or his sister-in-law, Musherure.
In the run to the 2021 elections, Sodo trounced Musherure in an NRM primary, but Museveni sensed danger and sought not to declare his brother as the Mawogola North flag-bearer. Sodo and Musherure were told to run as Independents. With the bus symbol not available, Sodo had chosen the bicycle as his symbol. Musherure went with a ball. Both candidates continued to wear the NRM colour-yellow-and the party symbols on their T-shirts and posters.
Rise of Musherure
Sodo didn’t mind running as an Independent until Museveni called for a family meeting at State House, Entebbe, to resolve the impasse. Besides Museveni and the warring parties, Sodo and Musherure, the meeting was attended by the President’s brothers, Salim Saleh, Michael Nuwagira, alias Toyota, and Sedrack Nowomugisha Nzeire. Others who attended were Gen Muhoozi, Kutesa, Nankunda (Muhoozi’s wife) and Isaac Kutesa (Kutesa’s son). It is Sodo who revealed the results of the meeting, saying there were fears that a confrontation between the first family members would increase violence in Sembabule.
‘There were allegations from Kutesa that our supporters were attacking each other. Mzee [Museveni] decided that I should pull out because if we were fighting, there was nothing we were going to do for the people of Mawogola North Constituency,’ he said.
‘Mzee then decided to call 30 people from Mawogola, and after consultation, he told me that I should step down. I should come back in 2026. The President is the chairman of the party [NRM] and the head of the family. He is like my father. I don’t want to disagree with him. If the head of the family decides, then what else can I do?’
Even as he was quitting the race, Sodo didn’t commit to supporting Musherure. ‘For the President, I support Museveni. The rest, I leave people to choose the best choices,’ he said. While these contestations were going on, Gen Muhoozi had already hit the campaign trail, canvassing votes for his sister-in-law, Musherure.
‘I’m an army officer, not a politician. Ms Musherure is my in-law. She is a twin sister to my wife, and what I know about her is that she is religious, trustworthy and not a thief,’ Gen Muhoozi told the people of Mawogola. With Sodo out of the way, Musherure easily won the elections with 17,274 votes. Salim Kisekka, an Independent, came second with 2,544 votes, and NUP’s Henry Mawejje Nyanzi came third with 2,346. From 2019, when Kutesa introduced her to the crowd as his successor, Musherure was been christened as a leader, not a politician.
‘What the people of Mawogola North need now, more than ever, are leaders, not politicians. Great leaders set aside their differences and focus on collectively working with others towards a common good for the benefit of the people. This is the kind of leadership I would like to offer to the people of Mawogola North,’ Musherure said.