KBC to stage demo over sale of gym

KAMPALA

Kampala Boxing Club (KBC) executive and the boxing fraternity will stage a peaceful demonstration in a bid to solve the impasse behind the clandestine sale of the plot that houses their gym tomorrow.
“We will start our campaign here (Nakivubo), marching through Luwum Street, to the Ministry of Education and Sports offices (Legacy Towers),” gym controller Emmanuel Mwesigwa told Daily Monitor on Monday evening. “We will later deliver our document to the Speaker of Parliament.”

They will also close down Nakivubo Stadium on the same day.
“There will be no business this side of Nakivubo, we shall close all the gates and we will not allow anyone into the stadium,” KCB treasurer Maureen Mulangira said.
“We shall take our usual business (boxing) into the parking yard as a way of making our voices of dissent heard louder and clear,” she added.

The vow to fight
Last month, KBC members including boxers, promoters, coaches and fans alike, cut off traffic on Kafumbe Mukasa Road when they took to boxing in the middle of the road, carrying placards and shouting on top of their voices, protesting the supposed sale Uganda’s oldest and most prominent boxing gym.

They vowed to fight up to the ‘last man until justice is served’.
When we contacted Hajjat Missa Kabanda, an executive member of Nakivubo Stadium, she rubbished the allegations.
“No one, not even President Museveni is allowed to sale a state property like Nakivubo Stadium without the approval of Parliament,” Kabanda said last month.

“Let them show you the eviction notice. Those (KBC members) are just goons looking for money,” she added.
The club executive, however, says it is now an open secret that the horizontal strip on the eastern side of Nakivubo Stadium that houses KBC was sub-leased to city tycoon Bosco Muwonge for 20 years for redevelopment but they insist they would wish to develop their own facility.

“Because of the lack of transparency on the part of Nakivubo Board as per improving the image of the stadium, we have taken the initiative to be part of the developers,” a statement issued by the club to the press reads in part.
Ahmed Mbidde, the KBC chairman said that Nakivubo Board is using delaying tactics to keep them at bay. “If we go by their pace, we are in for a shock loss, we cannot not let that happen,” Mbidde said.
“Sometime back, we met Rogers Mulindwa, a Nakivubo Board member and Ivan Lubega, the stadium manager on orders of minister Bakkabulindi, but nothing has since been done,” he added..

BACKGROUND
In 1954, the colonial government constructed Nakivubo War Memorial Stadium as a sports complex and legendary Tom Kawere was given that space where KBC is situated. The gym has nurtured most if not all Uganda’s prominent boxers. Kawere is East Africa’s first Commonwealth medalist. Olympic medalist Eridad Mukwanga, Ayub Kalule,Vitalish Bege and Grace Sseruwagi, were also nurtured there.

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