‘This card of Baganda and tribe is a card that is played by most politicians when they are out of options of how to win their opponents. It’s cheap popularity. You don’t want to do what you have to do. So you play the card of ‘man, we are from the same clan. So you vote me because we are from the same clan even though I have nothing to offer.’ It’s a card every desperate politician plays, because you don’t want to invest yourself or prove yourself worthy so you look for what you have and your opponent can never acquire,’ says Joy Kirabo, an aspirant for the Nakawa East Member of Parliament seat.
‘Another thing is when people ask why people standing in Buganda do not look like Baganda. Buganda’s issue is different from all other areas. Buganda was blessed to have a capital city; everyone is headed there. I was born here in Buganda. My father entered Buganda at the age of nine. It is all he knows. That is all I know. I may not be a Muganda, but this is home. We are all here because we are looking for a better life. Even some Baganda are here in Kampala yet they are not indigenous to Kampala. They are looking for a better life. As some of us have been here all our lives, we can’t think of representing any other place other than here. I find it so ridiculous when somebody says you don’t belong here. What is the word ‘belonging’? How do you get to belong in a place? By knowing nothing else but that place.’
Identity politics in the shape of how candidates are identified instead of how they self-identify has riven Kampala’s politics where it could be centred.
Non-Baganda are thus being treated as ‘the other,’ a concept referring to anyone or anything perceived as distinct from how Buganda defines itself. It is the basis of identity formation and ethical misunderstanding.
Ms Kirabo is one of several candidates being viewed as ‘foreigners’ or Bafuruki, so to speak.
On the streets, there is disquietude surrounding why so many candidates in Kampala appear to be non-Baganda. Some think it’s a project by the central government to recapture Buganda after losing it in 2021 to the National Unity Platform (NUP) party. A party that is being likened to the 1960s royalist party, Kabaka Yekka (King Only), because its primary stronghold is Buganda.
NUP has been accused of stoking parochial thinking on Buganda and candidates such Ms Kirabo are sure to feel the sting in that tail. But she is not alone.
Another candidate with a far bigger constituency also has to go through the ringer on this question.
How we got here
In March 2025, Butambala County lawmaker Mohammed Muwanga-Kivumbi’s somewhat thin voice crackled to life on 89.2 FM CBS radio’s Kiriza Oba Gana programme.
Mr Muwanga-Kivumbi was trying to explain why he believes that ‘Gen Museveni’ disesteems Buganda and why the ‘Buganda for Museveni in 2026’ campaign run has no legs. Kivumbi, who is also the NUP deputy president for Buganda, said Museveni is a blackguard who has marginalised the region whose King, Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, the 36th Kabaka of the Kingdom of Buganda, was central to winning the 1981-1986 National Resistance Army (NRA) Bush War.
He added that the pro-Robert Kyagulanyi rejection Mr Museveni suffered in the 2021 General Election made Uganda’s ninth president return Buganda’s compliment by revealing his own distaste for politics in Buganda.
Things came to a head in May this year when the head of state specifically asked for pardon through prayer from the people of Buganda and restoration of the favour he had in Buganda when he first came to power four decades ago.
‘God restore the favour that we had with them (people) in the beginning; bring healing to their hearts, soften the hardened hearts, and reconnect us to the original vision of our national unity and unwavering commitment to social and economic transformation of our nation together,’ Museveni and his wife jointly read the prayer.
Keep off Buganda
Due to the rising hostilities in Buganda region ahead of the 2026 polls, the air is thick with the tension that you could cut with a knife.
Xenophobia in the central Uganda region is on the rise. Candidates for political office, who seem to be non-Baganda, are being decampaigned as carpetbaggers. They should return to their ‘home areas’ and stump for support there, radical NUP members demand. This fear in the form of unwelcome started long ago.
Milton Obote in the Uganda Argus of February 3, 1960, was reported as saying that ‘African nationalism hates small states because this is emergent Africa … It will crush Buganda.’
He was speaking as Secretary of the recently formed Elected Members Association of the Legislative Council. He was later to perpetrate an attack on Kabaka Edward Muteesa’s palace after abolishing kingdoms in Uganda, including Buganda, and declaring Uganda a republic. Buganda’s fears reflect a diminution of its region by encirclement and infiltration when it comes in contact with other regions. But Ms Kirabo believes such fears are unfounded.
‘[The] Baganda have been given the opportunity to interact with different tribes and different people. And that opportunity gives them a certain knowledge that other people do not have. That a person who is not from the same tribe as you might actually be of greater value to you than your own. So they should know better that a good leader might not necessarily be of the same tribe or the same religion but the same ideology and have the same values. I trust the people of Nakawa to see this because they have lived among different people of different tribes and they can attest to the fact that it is not by blood that we are united but values and ideology,’ she argues.
Making her bones
Ms Kirabo is an Independent candidate who began her campaign in 2024. She got herself known by giving calendars to at least one in every three households and organising activities like a football tournament for different parishes in her constituency.
There are 10 parishes. She has organised so far three parishes to take part in this competition known as the Kirabo Cup. She did this not only to entertain the youth, but bring people together and hear their views. As a Christian, this was her chance to tap into the ecumenical spirit of her constituency and cut across divisions sown by untoward religiosity.
She helped rebuild schools that were burnt to the ground such as St James Catholic Church-Biina, and provided health and safety wherewithal to them to guard against future fires.
‘I was called by somebody, the Nabakyala of my village. They belonged to a Sacco [Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations] that was created by the President to provide jobs to the vulnerable people. The President put this Sacco in place in order to get them jobs to sweep Kampala when Jennifer Musisi was still Executive Director of KCCA. These were jobs earmarked for only the vulnerable people. They had a problem where some people created a bidding process for these jobs. Yet it was under a certain scheme for people who are not able, the poor of the poorest,’ she told Monitor.
‘The bidding process lets another ‘vulnerable’ group compete with this vulnerable group. The Sacco was being threatened to be kicked out by the other vulnerable group that was created. Two, they had about eight months in arrears and their NSSF had not been deposited for two years. Most of these people were old and they wanted out. But because their NSSF was not being deposited they didn’t know how. They kept going to their jobs until their NSSF was deposited and they could stop doing that hectic work,’ she added.
The Sacco would also help the vulnerable to save. They were being ‘deducted Shs15,000 per worker’ to be put into that fund so they can borrow.
However, the administration for the circle in this regard was ‘eating’ their money until Ms Kirabo, using her skills as an investment banker, helped the sweeping fraternity of the KCCA Sacco to get their arrears and savings.
Issue
Due to the rising hostilities in Buganda region ahead of the 2026 polls, the air is thick with the tension that you could cut with a knife. Xenophobia in the central Uganda region is on the rise.
Candidates for political office, who seem to be non-Baganda, are being decampaigned as carpetbaggers. They should return to their ‘home areas’ and stump for support there, radical NUP members demand.