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.

He vied for the presidency on DP ticket in 2011 and came a distant third. The current political readings don’t seem to give him a good chance of challenging for power in 2016. His critics in DP say Mr Mao is only interested in the party as a vehicle to the presidency.

But Dr Lyomoki insists that Mr Mao is his former old self and is fit to be president except for three factors.
The first one is about the times. He sees Mr Mao as “a good politician in a bad season,” which has been “defiled” by the politics of President Museveni.

A person who wants to follow the law like Mr Mao, Dr Lyomoki says, is sure to get problems competing in the current environment of “political manipulation”. Dr Lyomoki is a member of the ruling party but every so often he quarrels with its leadership over various issues.

Media’s role

In the current politics, adds Dr Lyomoki, the media and the public pick on people who “play to the gallery” and it is difficult for people like Mr Mao to “pass through the sieve”.

The other issue Dr Lyomoki raises is that Mr Mao is weighed down by the baggage of DP, Uganda’s oldest political party, which has never held power save for the interim pre-independence period between 1961 and 1962. The party has been so demonised, according to Dr Lyomoki, that Mr Mao “needs extra-ordinary anointing” to launch a successful bid for the presidency through DP.

In the Bible, Dr Lyomoki says, David had to abandon the military armour with the sword, spear and shield and used stones, sling and sack to finish off the giant, Goliath. But in Mr Mao’s case, Dr Lyomoki says, “Mao has failed to craft his own armour fitting his ability and gifting and preferred to function using the unknown gear that appears not fit for him.”

Mr Mao himself sums up the current impasse in his party in the following way: “The battle lines have been drawn between the king and the king makers.”

On Tuesday, he told a press conference at the party’s headquarters that 20 members of DP and UYD would face disciplinary action over defying the party leadership and holding a delegates conference in which Luweero Woman MP Brenda Nabukenya was voted UYD president.

Those to face disciplinary action

Among the 20 is Kenneth Paul Kakande, the deputy publicity secretary, who has been speaking for DP since his boss, Mwaka Lutukumoi, crossed to the ruling NRM, and deputy secretary general Joseph Mayanja.

This is at least the second time the duo have disagreed publicly with Mr Mao’s leadership, the first time being when they opposed what they called Mao’s unilateral endorsement of legal adviser Fred Mukasa Mbidde as DP’s candidate for the East African Legislative Assembly seat. They too wanted to contest.

The duo, among others who are also in the firing line, staunchly supported the process leading to the controversial Mbale delegates’ conference of 2010 in which Mr Mao was voted DP president and they backed Mr Mao against former Kampala Mayor Nasser Ssebaggala.
With the benefit of hindsight, Mr Mao now wonders whether some members of DP (those he calls king makers) backed him in the hope that they would then blackmail him into doing whatever they wanted him to do.

“May be some of the members of my team don’t want me to lead,” he told us in his private office in Kampala. One time in 2010, Mr Mao says, some members of his team wanted him to skip a victory party for Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze, with whom they had quarrelled violently and had boycotted Mbale. Ms Nambooze was celebrating court victory over her then rival for the Mukono North seat, the Rev. Peter Bakaluba Mukasa.

Man of non-negotiable values

But if anyone thought of having Mr Mao as a puppet DP president, that person did not know him enough. According to Mr Awori, Mr Mao is difficult to change from what he believes in.

So what did Mr Mao do when he was asked not to attend Ms Nambooze’s party? He switched off his phone and drove to Ms Nambooze’s home in Mukono.

Mr Awori first saw Mr Mao closely in 1996 in the 6th Parliament and he found him “ambitious, hardworking, very articulate and absolutely clear on what he wanted to achieve.”

But as they worked together on their political projects, Mr Awori discovered that Mao “occasionally made the mistake of not being accommodative of other people’s ideas,” which Mr Awori suspects could be the cause of the current problem in DP.

Prof. Latigo takes it even further, saying Mr Mao “cannot participate in a cause unless he is leading it.” He says, for example, that Mr Mao stayed put in the DP when Prof. Latigo and MPs Reagan Okumu, Odonga Otto and Kasiano Wadri left and joined FDC. Prof. Latigo says Mr Mao might have stayed in the “depleted” DP for fear of competition for leadership positions in other parties.

Could Mao still become president?

So probably Mr Mao’s biggest challenge will be to mobilise support from other political players around his presidential bid. Prof. Latigo projects that there might be another exodus from NRM, comparable to what happened around 2004, and that those who will desert NRM could have a big say in who will eventually become president. In such a scenario, Prof. Latigo says, Mr Mao stands “very little chance” that he will be the candidate they will rally behind.

In the opposition, he has cast himself as anti-unity leader unless he is the one leading as the joint opposition flag bearer, making many supporters wonder whether he wants change or simply wants to be the change.

According to Mr Awori, Mr Mao made a mistake when he left Parliament in 2006 and became Gulu District chairperson. Mr Awori says Parliament provides one with a platform to maintain a national appeal and “keep in people’s faces,” which he deems important in politics. According to Mr Awori, it was partly due to former FDC president Kizza Besigye’s “shunning Parliament” in 2001 that his subsequent presidential bids failed. He fears Mao’s too will suffer a similar fate.

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UYD: Mao’s deal breaker?

Founded when political parties were still legally banned, the Uganda Young Democrats (UYD) was meant to breathe new life into DP.

Mr Joseph Luzige, its founding leader, says DP youth like him “wanted to move at a faster pace than the largely old DP leaders who would take about 30 minutes to climb up the stairs of a building.”

It is a paradox that 20 years later, Mr Luzige thinks that the same UYD could sink DP even deeper into its woes. “The DP leadership has to be careful how they handle UYD otherwise the party could be in trouble,” says Mr Luzige.
The DP leadership has been shaken up recently by disagreements over UYD holding a delegates conference to elect a new leadership. Addressing the press at DP headquarters on Tuesday, Mr Mao announced that 20 members of DP and UYD, including DP’s deputy publicity secretary Paul Kakande, would face disciplinary action over defying the party to hold the UYD elections.

Mr Mao, in a move that has already attracted reactions from the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), accused FDC’s former leader, Dr Kizza Besigye, of funding the UYD youth to foment disharmony in DP.

But Mr Kakande maintains that it was critical for UYD to hold elections, lest it risks dying.
Mr Kakande “stepped aside” as leader of UYD in 2010 when he became more active in DP politics and his position had not been filled because the UYD delegates’ conference had not been held since then.

Whereas Mr Mao says there was a DP National Executive Committee (NEC) resolution that UYD should postpone its elections, Mr Kakande argues that it was not actually a resolution of NEC but a ruling by the chairman.
In any case, Mr Kakande adds, the UYD NEC is “the only body which can decide on UYD matters.”
But what was so urgent that they even had to defy the party’s leadership?

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How Christianity gave raise to young democrats

A student leader at Makerere University then, Mr Luzige was inspired by an encounter with the European Young Christian Democrats when he attended a conference in Brussels in 1993 on the recommendation of the then DP leader Paul Ssemogerere.

On return, he teamed up with friends to found what they originally called the Uganda Youth Christian Democrats, which changed to UYD soon afterwards to accommodate non-Christians like the current Butambala MP Muwanga Kivumbi.
John Ssebaana Kizito, who was acting as DP treasurer then even if political parties were officially banned, became the patron of the organisation, a position he has held to-date.

But even at that early stage, leadership wrangles within UYD were not uncommon. In fact, Luzige would himself later be sacked from UYD, accused of “working for the ruling NRM”. He denies the charge to this day, although he later joined the ruling party and is currently a legal officer in the Office of the President. Another prominent founding member of the UYD who has since joined the ruling NRM is its vice president, Rose Namayanja, who is currently minister of state for Luwero Triangle and Woman MP for Nakaseke District. Social Democratic Party President Michael Mabikke who was one of the early members of UYD also quit DP.

But the bulk of UYD products still identify with DP and occupy important positions in the party and national politics, albeit split up in different factions. Samuel Lubega, who contested the national presidency in 2011 as an independent, having pulled out of the race for DP presidency which Norbert Mao eventually won in 2010, was also a member of UYD. Mao, DP Publicity Secretary Kenneth Kakande, Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, and Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze were also bred in UYD.

Although the founders of UYD had a DP background, the organisation was formed as autonomous from DP, with its own constitution. Even when DP regained legal status as a national party in 2005, Kakande says, it wrote a constitution that does not even mention UYD.

This means, at least in Kakande’s view, that DP can advise but not direct UYD on what to do. On two previous occasions, Kakande adds, UYD had taken advice from DP to postpone its elections until this third time when they decided to go on regardless of the advice to the contrary from DP. But Mao says that if UYD don’t want to be members of DP, “they should put it in writing.” Mao says that the “de facto” situation is that UYD has always been a part of DP, using DP’s headed paper and Post Office box number, for example.

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Mao’s early life

Born to an Acholi father and a Munyankole mother 46 years ago, Mao lived in Gulu with his paternal grandmother and aunt until he was 12. Under the care of people he calls “strict disciplinarians”, he was required to wake up early and do some digging before going to school.

He later joined Wairaka College in Jinja District for the first two years of his secondary education before joining Namilyango College. Of Namilyango College Mao speaks most fondly and the first born of his two sons, Nicholas, 13, must be proud to attend the same school of which his father was once head prefect.

On joining Makerere University in 1988, Mao was sure he wanted to build a career in politics. His father always supported the Uganda Peoples Congress but he was willing to help when Mao asked for support to be linked to DP politicians. His father accordingly wrote for him chits which he presented to prominent DP politicians by way of introduction.

This gave Mao licence to meet up with DP leaders at a then popular restaurant called Kentucky on Johnson Street in Kampala, in the process getting particularly close to the late Ojok Mulozi, who was then the party’s publicity secretary. Mao says Mulozi mentored him “in terms of the intellectual orientation of the party.”

Mao would later launch a shot at the Makerere University guild presidency, which he won in April 1990 after fighting out a grueling battle with the then state-backed Lt Noble Mayombo. Dr Sam Lyomoki, currently an MP representing workers, also contested the guild presidency. On the other hand, Deputy Speaker of Parliament Jacob Oulanyah and another candidate, Charles Vuba, pulled out in Mao’s favour.

During the one year when Mao led Makerere University students, he cut his teeth as an anti-establishment figure, especially when he led a students’ strike against Structural Adjustment Programmes, particularly against cost sharing. University students protested against the abolition of allowances to themselves for things like books and transport.

Two students were killed during the strike, others were roughed up and the university was closed for six months, torching off criticism against Mao. Even some members of Mao’s cabinet accused him of being “used by anti-government forces”. Mao responded by sacking four of them.