When Robert Kyagulanyi , alias Bobi Wine, won the 2017 Kyaddondo East by-election, he vowed to bring the ghetto to Parliament.
Having grown up in Kamwokya, one of Kampala’s biggest ghettos, Bobi Wine’s statement was interpreted as a dig aimed at the parliamentary decorum wherein a legislator is expected to follow established rules and conventions that dictate proper behaviour, respectful conduct, and orderly conduct of debate to maintain the dignity and effectiveness of the House.
The parliamentary decorum that Bobi Wine seemed to despise includes adherence to a formal addressing protocol, avoiding personal remarks, maintaining silence when the Speaker is speaking, and wearing appropriate attire.
After being ushered into the marbled halls of Parliament, Bobi Wine found himself at the centre of the debate that resulted in the removal of presidential age limits from the Constitution. This allowed President Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, to rule forever.
In a sign that he meant it when he said he was bringing the ghetto to the House, during the chaotic debate, Bobi Wine joined other think-alike legislators like Francis Zaake (Mityana Municipality) to physically engage the elite Special Forces Command (SFC) soldiers, who had raided Parliament. It was the kind of chaos Bobi Wine had envisioned and ran counter to the decorum that, in his assessment, enabled Museveni to entrench himself in power.
‘Museveni should know that we are not going to massage him like other people have been doing. We shall run out of patience if he doesn’t handle us carefully because we want him out of power,’ Bobi Wine said at one of his initial rallies back in 2017.
Eight years on, the debate on whether so-called elites should continue to dominate Ugandan politics has emerged in the aftermath of the disclosure by Bobi Wine’s party of its flagbearers ahead of next year’s parliamentary poll. A can of worms was specifically opened after the National Unity Platform (NUP) party dumped Medard Lubega Sseggona (Busiro East), one of the best constitutional law lawyers in the country, for Mathia Walukagga, a Kadongo Kamu artiste who struggles to put together sentences in English. Since this is the language used in Parliament, an emotive debate has been ignited on which way to go: elitism or the subaltern.
Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, the Kira Municipality legislator who belongs to the Opposition People’s Front for Freedom (PPF) party, has led the way in castigating NUP for dropping Sseggona.
‘Parliament needs serious leaders; not wheelbarrow pushers. From December to May, you only do one thing-budgeting. Spend two months reading and understanding. That’s why when they are apportioning the Budget and I am not there, Parliament will miss me,’ he told NBS television.
Ssemujju, who has been in Parliament since 2011, didn’t restrict his criticism to Walukagga. He went back to 2020, saying if it were up to him, he wouldn’t have given Muhammad Sseggirinya the NUP party ticket for Kawempe North.
Like Walukagga, Sseggirinya, who has since died, wasn’t proficient in English. Still, NUP gave him the ticket ahead of so-called elite candidates like Suliaman Kidandala. NUP reasoned then that their choice was informed by the fact that Sseggirinya had overwhelming support ‘on the ground.’
Ssemujju’s critics have been quick to remind him that the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime has since time immemorial been dominated by elites who have reportedly only succeeded in leaving the country on a downward spiral.
They add that after emerging from a guerrilla war, President Museveni appointed Dr Samson Kisekka as vice president. Museveni replaced Kisekka with another medical doctor in Specioza Wandira Kazibwe. The first female to be appointed vice president on the continent, yet Kazibwe lurched from one corruption scandal to another.
Eventually, she was replaced by Prof Gilbert Balibaseka Bukenya, another medical doctor. Once Bukenya got entangled in various corruption scandals, Museveni replaced him with Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, a lawyer, who had served as House Speaker for a decade. Once Ssekandi was dumped by his Bukoto Central voters, following the NUP wave of 2021, Museveni replaced him with Jessica Alupo, a teacher.
A similar pattern can be traced when prime ministers under Museveni’s presidency are considered. Elites were at the front of the queue, starting with Kisekka, a medical doctor. He was replaced by George Cosmos Adyebo, an economist. Museveni then turned to Kintu-Musoke, a journalist.
Once Kintu-Musoke had served his role in the NRM regime, Museveni replaced him with Prof Apollo Nsibambi, an academic. Then there was Amama Mbabazi, a lawyer, and Ruhakana Rugunda, a medical doctor, in quick succession.
Dr Rugunda’s replacement, Robinah Nabbanja, has incidentally been used by Ssemujju as an example of how Museveni has now moved to weaken statutory positions by appointing non-elites.
‘Now we have a lot of comedians in Parliament who turn up in Parliament to just vote without even knowing what exactly they are voting on. Those comedians are mainly in NRM. We have a person like Nabbanja, who can’t even be an executive director of a garbage collecting company, as the prime minister,’ Ssemujju once said.
Indeed, in 2018, when he was campaigning for an NRM candidate, Nathan Igeme Nabeta, in the Jinja East by-election, Museveni said the competence of an MP didn’t matter.
‘Even if the NRM MP was sick and sleeping, he is still better than a very active Opposition MP. When an NRM MP is sleeping and it is time for passing a resolution in Parliament, he wakes up and votes for NRM. He can be weak at other issues, but when he/she votes for government policies, he is putting a brick of peace on our country. We need enough MPs to support government programmes,’ Museveni said at a rally at Masese-Walukuba Division in Jinja on March 14, 2018.
Defenders of the non-elites have moved to remind Ssemujju that it’s during the NRM elite era that the Constitution was de-toothed to remove the presidential term limits.
In fact, at the time term limits were removed from the Constitution, Prof Edward Khiddu Makubuya, who has since died, was the Attorney General.
Although Makubuya was a decorated professor of Law, he not only supported the removal of term limits but also gave a legal opinion in 2005 that Opposition doyen Dr Kizza Besigye couldn’t stand for the presidency just because he had been criminally charged.
Prof Makubuya would later resign from the Cabinet for his role in the irregular compensation of more than Shs150b to city businessmen Hassan Basajjabalaba and Col John Mugyenyi, who are linked to the NRM party.
Anti-intellectualism
In his book Wretched of the Earth, decolonial scholar Frantz Fanon insisted that urban elites in the post-colonial context had internalised colonial values, becoming a new form of oppression that perpetuated, rather than dismantled, colonial power structures and perpetuated exploitation of rural areas and the urban poor.
Fanon critiqued their focus on self-enrichment, their mimicry of Western lifestyles, and their role in centralising development and resources in the city, thus failing to achieve true national liberation and instead creating a new form of class division within the newly independent nation.
Critics of elites in Uganda have knowingly or unknowingly borrowed from Fanon to assert that elites from the ruling NRM and the Opposition have become complacent and have got entangled in corruption instead of trying to uproot the regime.
They point a finger of blame at elites like Thomas Tayebwa, who quit the Opposition to join the NRM, and he has been rewarded as the Deputy Speaker of Parliament.
Also in the crosshairs is Norbert Mao, the president general of the Democratic Party, who is now campaigning for Museveni after he was appointed Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister.
Yet the debate of elitism is also within NUP where Bobi Wine, for instance, had to drop his dreadlocks once he entered into elective politics. He, however, retained his ghetto walking style (Okugooma). Notwithstanding, what appears to have a spring in its step currently is the question of whether NUP should cast its lot with elites or not. The debate started over who was to replace Mathias Mpuuga, seen then-as now-as being part of the elites.
This was during his reign as the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament (LoP). Bobi Wine is said to have toyed with the idea of appointing Zaake as Mpuuga replacement before his hand was forced and he had to settle with Joel Ssenyonyi, who is depicted as an elite.
‘We asked Zaake to be the LoP such that he can cause chaos. They gave us Ssenyonyi, who speaks English. Yet now they have kicked out a seasoned advocate who speaks English. It’s confusing,’ Dr Yusuf Serunkuma (PhD), a social-political commentator, observed.
NUP faced the same conundrum on who to replace Sseggirinya in Kawempe. NUP paid no heed to its foot soldiers who were advocating for Umar Magala. Instead, the party ended up choosing an elite in Elias Luyimbazi Nalukoola, a seasoned lawyer. This was much to the chagrin of its foot soldiers.
Dr Serunkuma insists those who want to burnish the elites entirely are inadvertently playing into the hands of Museveni.
‘Museveni’s anti-intellectualism has really eaten deep. While ‘school fees week’ is a serious thing, we are now saying educational excellence is useless at the top. While Parliament indeed ought to have very educated people, Museveni has so cheapened education that it makes no difference whether one is educated or not. We are now arguing in favour of Museveni’s way,’ Dr Serunkuma said.