Nandala Nafabi outside politics

His favourite food is mushrooms and matooke. He plays tennis when he gets free time, and he cannot stop calling his wife, ‘beautiful’. Meet Nathan Nandala Mafabi, the ordinary man when not in the limelight, and out of Parliamentary business.

You know him as the outspoken politician, Budadiri West Member of Parliament, the Leader of Opposition, and a force to reckon with in political circles. But who is Nandala Mafabi when he is not all these things? We sought out the man himself to establish this question.

“I love to eat matooke with meat or mushrooms. I have relatives who collect and send the mushrooms over. I am a simple guy really,” says Mafabi when I ask him to tell me about himself.

Certainly not the answer I was expecting but it is a start and we have still not gotten into the interview proper. Nandala is perched on an ottoman in what appears to be his second living room where he has just led me and my team. We found him just finishing up his lunch, a late one since it is almost 4pm and which he had gamely asked us to try. Incidentally, it is his beloved mushrooms and matooke.

Clad in a white shirt and grey pants, Mafabi is the very picture of ease. His usually intense look on TV and other platforms is replaced by a genial expression. In fact, if his face was not that recognisable as it is today, Mafabi would pass for any other man, relaxing at home on Sunday evening. Never mind that he has worked much of the day, only to drive home and find several callers all seeking his audience besides us. He will create time for everyone of them.

“I am a people person; my home is a people place and that is just my life. At my home in the village, we cook food like it is a school because people just keep coming,” he shares. The love of people, he says, is deep in his blood and is one of the fundamental values he seeks to inculcate in his five children. I teach them that they must respect mankind, other things are secondary really,” says the father of five.

When a teenage boy saunters into the room, Mafabi lights up and reaches for him. “This is my boy. I am going to circumcise him come 15th. You should come see,” he says playfully smacking the boy, who has just greeted us politely, on the back. The invite is to witness the Bugisu rite of passage. I note that that is the second invite to do something in the space of 15 minutes.

He looks serious as he tells of what he does that is not active politics, which is mainly charity work under Nandala Foundation which sees disadvantaged children taken to school. He also puts to use his accountancy skills (he is a certified public accountant) to good use by doing financial work for churches and mosques pro bono.

“The word gets around that I do these things and even if I may need a team to assist me, I always ensure a personal touch,” he says.

“My grandfather was a businessman and a coffee farmer. He had a lot of coffee and upon his death, I inherited it,” says Mafabi, the first born of nine children. He does not attach much value to material wealth.

“I am rich at heart,” he says, when I ask whether he considers himself a rich man. I know not to fight for everything, things like land and property, when the only thing you are sure of is six foot by three by four,” he says cryptically.

A tough childhood
One thing comes out during our interview; Mafabi is a good story teller. When he starts on a story, he sits back and engages us, and laughs raucously if the story is funny and most of them are. But besides entertaining us, we see glimpses of his character in those formative years, how he was always headstrong, the very thing that would see him grow up to be is a challenger of systems and of course, a formidable politician. Like the one of how he ended up staying in Uganda to be raised by his grandfather while his family were in exile in Kenya during President Idi Amin’s regime
“We were at the water fountain at the school where we had been enrolled when this Indian boy spat on me. I beat him up and obviously got into trouble,” he says. When the then 10-year-old Mafabi learnt that part of the disciplinary measure involved bringing his parents, he refused.

“Instead, I insisted I wanted to come back to Uganda and was sent back to Busamaga where I stayed with my grandfather. From that tender age I became his accountant,” narrates Mafabi who then went to Mbale SS and Busoga College, Mwiri, for his secondary education, and later he joined Makerere University.

A cheeky husband
His wife Florence, walks into the room, good-naturedly protesting about being put in “these press things”, when Stephen, our photographer, prepares to take her picture. Meanwhile, another side of her husband (yes, they just keep coming) emerges. Mafabi the charmer/ adoring husband who won’t hesitate to throw compliments like, “You are beautiful” and “You look cute” as he when his wife frets about not being camera ready.

They are in their 18th year of marriage and look every bit the happy couple. She matches his playful jibes with her own witty remarks, and then they both crack up. They met in Makerere University, he was studying a BSc in Statistics, and she was reading for her Bachelors of Education, but, it was their love for sport that actually brought them together.

“I used to play volleyball, basketball, and a little bit of hockey. He used play tennis. After the games, we would ‘chill’ in the Guild Canteen and one thing led to another,” she says, somewhat bashfully before falling into an exchange on which halls they were at in the university.