Namatende: Pastor’s wife who has unsettled the Opposition

Contender. Ms Eunice Namatende, the FDC flag bearer in the Bugiri Municipality MP race, addresses her supporters recently. COURTESY/FILE PHOTOS

What you need to know:

  • About Bugiri Municipality race: Five candidates have been nominated to contest in the Bugiri Municipality MP elections slated for July 10. The candidates are John Francis Oketcho (NRM), Eunice Namatende (FDC), Asuman Basalirwa (Jeema), former Bugiri district LC5 chairperson, Hajj Siraji Lyavala Samanya, and Joel Wamono, both Independents.
  • Bugiri Municipality race. In 2006, at only 21 years of age, Eunice Namatende decided to make an entry into the murky waters of politics. She has unsuccessfully contested thrice, but is banking on the urban centre where she has always worn, writes Isaac Mufumba.

A day after Eunice Namatende was nominated to contest in the Bugiri Municipality parliamentary race as the candidate for the Opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the party’s former president, Dr Kizza Besigye, addressed the media in Kampala where he expressed concern over the Opposition’s failure to form a united front against the ruling NRM party.
The Opposition Justice Forum’s (Jeema) Asuman Basalirwa is also in the running for the same seat.
“We were unable to have a unified voice to challenge the junta. Two of our prominent members have been nominated to contest, causing anxiety among the people who want to see change,” Dr Besigye said.

The anxiety that Dr Besigye alluded to has manifested in the form of a war of words between sections of the leadership of both FDC and Jeema.
Others have taken to social media to either attack or defend FDC whose officials Jeema’s spokesperson Abdnoor Kyamandu had already described as selfish and dishonest.
Members of the Opposition who in March worked in concert to deliver the Jinja Municipality East parliamentary seat to FDC’s Paul Mwiru have since gone separate ways.

Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, a host of officials from the Democratic Party (DP) and the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) are backing Mr Basalirwa, while Dr Besigye and the FDC officials are backing Eunice Namatende.
A line from British musician Phil Collins’ hit Both Sides of the Story is what best describes what is going on in the Opposition today, “neighbours once friendly now stand each side of the line that has been drawn”.

Who is Namatende?
The source of the strife in the Opposition is the candidature of Ms Eunice Namatende, but why has FDC stuck with her even at the risk of falling out with its peers?
“We never formed a party to give away our support. We formed a party to take power. We are building a strong party with structures. We are building a membership and leadership. You do not achieve that by unnecessary ceding ground,” FDC’s secretary general Nandala Mafabi told Sunday Monitor in a previous interview.
So who is this Namatende for whom the party will stand even in the face of a storm?
Ms Namatende was born on August 22, 1985, in Nankoma Sub-county, Bugiri, to Mr Christopher Bameka and his wife Sarah Naigaga.

Education
The mother of three and wife to Mr David Mukwaya, a teacher and Pastor attached to Miracle Centre Seeta, attended primary school at Buckley High School in Iganga from where she joined Iganga Secondary School, completing the Uganda Certificate of Education in 2001.
She then joined Budini Secondary School in Kaliro where she pursued the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) studies, leaving in 2003.
She later joined Ndejje University from where in 2006 she got a Bachelor’s Degree in Education. She was to later return to Ndejje where she pursued and obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Education and Institutional Management.

Introduction to politics
Much as she was born in the days of the Tito Okello military junta and grew up under the Movement’s no party democracy, it might not be farfetched to call this first born in a family of six a child of the Opposition FDC.
It was not possible to talk to her father Bameka about his politics and nobody could speak on his behalf, but it is known here that he was one of the first people in Bugiri, a rural district where District Internal Security Officers (DISOs) and other security personnel still wield a lot of power and very easily force people to conceal their political beliefs, to be identified as one of the supporters of FDC.

Challenger. The Opposition Justice Forum’s Asuman Basalirwa (centre) is also in the running for the same seat.

Mr Bameka was to later rise to become the party’s chairperson in Bugiri. Namayingo was at the time one of the counties of Bugiri.
It is also an open secret here that Mr Bameka is friends with the former MP for Bukooli Central and Leader of Opposition in Parliament, Mr Wafula Oguttu.

It was not possible to establish whether that friendship had anything to do with his decision to join FDC, but that is that the two were instrumental in turning Eunice into the FDC politician she is.
In 2006, at only 21 years of age, she decided to make an entry into the murky waters of politics. Luckily, her parents were supportive.
“My father was very excited about it. He took up the matter with Uncle Waf (Wafula Oguttu) and together they saw to it that I came up,” Ms Namatende recalls.

Inspiration
Ms Namatende explains that while Bugiri which had predominantly aligned to the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) and was the only county in Busoga that had sent two UPC MPs, Mr Patrick Mwondha and Romano Masiga, in the 1980 general elections, it had following the fall of the Obote and Okello junta governments thrown its weight behind the NRM.
However, by 2006, despite having stuck to chanting “No Change”, it had nothing to show in return for the chanting.

“I looked at the season of no change and the afflictions that my people were going through and decided to try and intervene,” she says.
She says while the introduction of Universal Primary and Secondary Education had resulted in an upsurge in enrolment figures, those have not been matched with requisite investment in the provision of among others education materials, classrooms and laboratories, accommodation for teachers, better remuneration. The result has been a decline in academic performance.

Other areas that she thought needed attention at the time were the pathetic state of roads, the poor state of health facilities and widespread poverty.
The first contest saw her take on then incumbent Justine Kasule Lumumba and Ms Rachel Kagoya. Ms Kasule Lumumba ran away with it having bagged 80,290 votes against Ms Namatende’s 35,621 and Ms Kagoya’s 3,050 votes.
Encouraged by the result and bothered that nothing had changed, she returned to challenge Lumumba in 2011, but came third with 17,072. Ms Lumumba won the seat with 34,544 votes while Ms Bateganya Ancillia Dick came second with 28,728.

While this was much lower than she had got in the previous election, it signified a drop in the numbers that all had garnered because by the time this election was held Namayingo had been carved off Bugiri and granted district status.
Like the old inspirational quote says, “It doesn’t matter how many times you fall. What matters is how many times you stand up, shake it off and move forward”. That fall did not dent her spirit. In 2016 she returned to the ring, but was beaten to second place garnering 40,817 votes while the winner, Ms Agnes Wejuli Taaka, of the NRM got 42,231 votes.

The declaration on February 19, 2016, of Ms Taaka Wejuli as the winner precipitated violent protests which compelled the police to use tear gas and live ammunition to chase her supporters off the streets. The violence left 11 people, including a Senior Four Student, Mr Stephen Ssekayu, injured.
Albert Einstein is believed to have argued that, “if you want different results, you have to try different approaches”. Ms Namatende seems to have borrowed a leaf here, but has added a dash of spice, by not only changing constituencies, but also changing the approach to the campaign.

Change of approach
“We now leave the vehicles at the campaign bureau and walk on foot to meet the people where they are. That helps us get up close and personal,” she says.
She is normally part of a group of between 30 and 50 people. Breaks for a quick meal happen in shifts, but not for her.
“I try to have a good breakfast. In between there it is either water or a soft drink. It is usually after I have retired in the evening that I have a meal,” she says.

Ms Eunice Namatende.

Message
Ms Namatende says nothing has changed over the years and that the reasons that spurred her to move into politics are still very much alive in Bugiri as they were 15 years ago.
“No interventions have occurred over the years. In March 2015, President Museveni commissioned Bukooli College, but enrolment there has gone down, the teachers are not motivated in any way and they have no accommodation. Academic performance in the district has generally deteriorated. We need someone to do something here,” she says.
Other areas that she has been promising to work on include providing effective representation in Parliament, lobbying to see to it that funding to Bugiri Municipality is increased from the Shs3 billion that it annually receives, working on addressing the lack of equipment and personnel in Bugiri Hospital and other health centres and addressing issues of poverty.

Strength
According to veteran journalist Musa Balikoowa, Ms Namatende whose base is mostly among women and the youth is banking on mostly the support that she got in the municipality during previous elections.
“She won in the Town Council in two out of the three previous elections that she participated in. If she keeps that support, she will definitely run away with the victory,” he says.
Former Bukooli North MP Abdul Balingirira Nakendo says Ms Namatende’s biggest support base is among the youth, but that she is also benefitting from the divisions in the ruling NRM.

“The Movement is very disorganised. Every time there is an election they prefer to deal with new people who have no historical perspective and that annoys the older cadres. Some of those supporting her are NRM people who got angry and disappointed with what is going on,” he says.
Businessman Hassan Kalende, who once represented Bugiri in the Iganga District LC5 Council before Bugiri became a district, says Namatende’s character is a very strong factor in the race.

This, he says, is likely to be backed up by sympathy arising out of the controversial circumstances under which she was declared to have lost the February 2016 elections.
“She is very social. She interacts with all classes of people and mostly she has the backing of the youth. Besides, she has been having very strong support in the municipality and there is a feeling that her victory was simply snatched from her. All that has put her in a very strong position,” Mr Kalende says.

Bugiri is, however, a very predominantly patriarchal society. Women are still considered inferior to men and therefore not fit to contest in a constituency deemed to be for men.
Mr Muhammad Kazito, who is chairperson of the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council in Bugiri, echoes those sentiments.
“The Basoga here still look down on women. Some of them have already asked why she came up to contest with men,” he says.
Beating that stereotype just might be the biggest hurdle that Namatende is faced with.