Is it time to write Mao’s political obituary?

For future reference. In one or two months’ time, DP president Norbert Mao, hopes to release his prison diaries, which he has written under the working title Letters From Nakasongola. It embodies his “stories and reflections” when he was incarcerated in the Nakasongola Prison during the Walk-to-Work protests. Then in a year’s time, Mr Mao hopes to publish his life’s story under the title Tomorrow Will Come, writes Eriasa Mukiibi Sserunjogi.

In some cases politicians manage to kick-start or rejuvenate faltering careers through writing books and Mr Norbert Mao seems bent on effecting a revival of fortunes using this route.

“May be the book will make Ugandans understand some things they don’t know about me,” Mr Mao said in his private office in Kampala.

In another development, seen as an attempt at reaping sentimental dividend and mobilising the DP base, Mr Mao talks of efforts to find the remains of Benedicto Kiwanuka, former DP president-general and also chief justice, who was killed during Idi Amin’s regime in 1972. Kiwanuka who led the first internal self-government in 1961 ahead of independence, remains an emotional figure in the party.

The only clue Mr Mao has is that Kiwanuka could have been buried in a sports field in the Kampala suburb of Luzira or in Nakasongola, about 100km north of Kampala.

That a politician, who was for some time seen by many as a president-in-waiting seems to be searching for a revival of fortunes, begs a set of questions. Did anything go wrong in Mr Mao’s career? If so, what went wrong? At what time did it go wrong? Is it time to write Mao’s political obituary?

Smart politician

That Mr Mao is smart is something both his detractors and promoters don’t argue about. Workers MP Sam Lyomoki lost the guild presidency of Makerere University to Mr Mao in 1990 and later served with him closely in student leadership and in Parliament.

When there was a students’ strike over the introduction of cost-sharing in which two students were killed and President Museveni summoned Mr Mao for talks at State House, Dr Lyomoki was among the team Mr Mao chose to accompany him.

Dr Lyomoki did not understand why Mr Mao had picked him and left behind some members of his cabinet until the President started asking questions about calorie requirements for human beings. Mr Mao later told Dr Lyomoki that he needed to assemble a multi-disciplinary team going to meet the President, making Dr Lyomoki, then a medical student, an essential part of the team.

Dr Lyomoki says his failure in the guild race was due to Mr Mao’s last-minute alliance with another candidate, Charles Vuba. Dr Lyomoki says Vuba had first approached him but he didn’t consider him a vital factor in the election. The mood at the university then was anti-government and the vote was between Dr Lyomoki, an “independent” candidate and the DP-backed Mao against the late Brig. Noble Mayombo, who was backed by the government.

Dr Lyomoki’s experience with Mr Mao at Makerere University and later in Parliament convinced him, like it did many others, that Mr Mao would one day become president. Mr Mao says from the days he was head prefect at Namilyango College, he had a premonition that he would become president of Uganda, which became stronger when he became the students leader at Makerere University.

Mr Mao’s intention to become president was for over a decade since the mid-1990s one of the worst kept secrets in Uganda’s politics. Prof. Ogenga Latigo, the FDC deputy president for northern Uganda and former MP for Agago, was teaching at Makerere University when he first met Mr Mao. Mr Mao struck him as “a quick thinker, an exuberant fellow who was fearless.”

They would later meet and work closely together in Parliament in 2001, especially under the auspices of the Acholi Parliamentary Group in their quest to end the war in northern Uganda. But Prof. Latigo noted one thing; Mr Mao is involved in a “single-minded pursuit of leadership.”
And Mr Mao is quick to admit it, saying, “Everyone is free to choose what they want to be.”

In his pursuit for leadership, Mr Mao tried on two occasions to start political parties with former minister Aggrey Awori when he [Awori] was still in the opposition and also with Mr Chapaa Karuhanga, another opposition politician. He later started a pressure group called UB40 (Ugandans Below 40) to mobilise the youth behind his cause.

When Mr Mao lost to Mr John Ssebaana Kizito in a bid to replace Dr Paul Ssemogerere as leader of DP in 2005, he let out a tirade and later penned a newspaper article under the title “From Semo to Semo,” arguing that there had been no change. He even threatened to leave the party, saying DP was dominated by Baganda and it discriminated against people from northern Uganda, but later got back into the fold and worked with Ssebaana, who would later hand him the party in the 2010 Mbale delegates conference under acrimonious circumstances.