Mujib’s attempt to kick down door not as futile as it seems

What you need to know:

  • Backlash. The protests that followed when Mujib Kasule was ruled out of the Fufa presidency race were intimate and revealing.

Mujib Kasule is an ex-international footballer, and former Fufa vice president. He also owns Proline FC and is a Fifa registered agent.

To many, such achievements may come easily for someone of his privileged background. But it is one thing to have opportunities and quite another to make use of them.

He refused to accept that the doors remain firmly shut for those whose legs are gone. Instead, he has kicked down a few.

Through Proline he has built a collision of football and business, and if along the way he has contributed to local football, so be it. Proline has also had its fair share of falling apart and it’s not like football is running out of places to stow Proline graduates.

Still he has persevered and built a reputation that has carried him to the center of Ugandan football.

So, if his goal from the get-go was to inspire people to take on things that they would not otherwise take on, then he is a success. Yes, the flaws are many, and a lot remains as unfinished business.

Which begs the question, why would Mujib choose now to wade into the murky waters of the Fufa presidency?
Anyway, last Monday, as was expected, he was deemed ineligible to contest. The inevitable protests that followed are at once intimate and revealing.

Intimate, because he is being disowned by those he might have felt were close.

Revealing, because he has fallen victim to the very machinations he is partly responsible for creating.

In 2013, by commission or omission, he was part of those who ensured that only two people were eligible to contest for the Fufa presidency. How and why he thought this ring-fencing would never affect him, should he harbor presidential ambition, defeats me.

But in any case, the hens are coming home to roost and public sympathy is going to be an emotion in limited supply.
On this treatment by Fufa, he may be entitled to naivety, but he can’t claim ignorance. He knew it would be a notoriously massive venture to get into the core of Fufa. But, I still find it hard to believe that one can achieve what he has in football, by being green.

And I am thinking maybe he isn’t naïve at all. Maybe the method in the madness is to force errors on his opponents. After all, an insider like he has been, must know the weaknesses of the system - which switches would bath Mengo in panic.

I reckon Mujib has deliberately gone at Mengo with the one thing that would terrify them - playing the unfair-rules card. It makes him a man whose purpose is to take corrective action, which is why his threat to petition Fifa is dressed up as a demand for justice.

Justice. Now that is a noble platform on which to launch future ambitions. And to that extent the fracas hasn’t been an exercise in futility. So, for now Magogo will return unopposed, but you can bet this isn’t the last we have heard of Kasule’s ambitions.

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MBanturaki