Ssegirinya: A radio caller who  had his sight on Parliament 

Muhammad Ssegirinya is among the 10 people vying for the Kawempe North parliamentary seat. PHOTO/ALEX ESAGALA 


How can a person from a deprived background and with no political connections make toddler steps into the murky crowded politics of Uganda’s capital, Kampala?   

To make his weight felt in the city’s politics, Muhammad Ssegirinya choose an interesting path: Make phone calls on radio political talk shows. That way people will come to know you, he believed. 
 
In 2006, when he started making the phone calls discussing the political events of the day therein tearing apart the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), Mr Ssegirinya was a Senior Three student at Pimba Secondary in Kyebando, Kawempe North constituency.
 
At first, whenever he would make a phone call, Mr Ssegirinya would introduce himself as the “eddoboozi lye Kyebando” (the voice of Kyebando).

Later when his ambition grew, he started signing in and singing off the radio calls by describing himself as the “MP to-be Kawempe North.”   

Few people took him seriously, according to those know him, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said his Achilles heel was that he couldn’t ably express himself in Uganda’s official language: English. 
Even now, they are still doubts if Mr Ssegirinya can sustain a conversation in English.  

“He used to tactically call into talk shows that are conducted in Luganda,” one of the people, who have known Mr Ssegirinya for quite some time, said. “English was a no-go area for him.”   
            
In a bid to get money to buy airtime such that he could make the phone calls on various radio stations, the youthful Ssegirinya had to part-time as cleaner at a restaurant downtown. 

“I have always been a hustler,” Mr Ssegirinya says. “People think that politicians used to buy me airtime but that was propaganda. I was making my money by cleaning a restaurant found on Luwum Street called Mariz Restaurant found in the City Centre Complex building.”  
Mr Ssegirinya’s dream has always been to be a leader, not anywhere else, but in Kampala and he has another opportunity to make his dream come true.  
Short and chubby, Mr Ssegirinya, a member of the National Unity Platform (NUP), no longer makes calls anymore on radio stations but he is embroiled in a dead heat race with 10 other candidates to represent Kawempe North. 

In this race, Mr Ssegirinya either through sheer hyperbole or reality claims his seat in Parliament is already secured. Nevertheless, the votes are yet to be cast, and he faces competition from the incumbent, Latif Sengendo Sebaggala, who has been a mainstay in Parliament for 19 years, Mahmood Mutazindwa of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), and former deputy Lord Mayor Sulaiman Kidandala, who Mr Ssegirinya surprisingly beat to the NUP ticket in the middle of this year and he subsequently stood as an Independent.  
This means in this race are three candidates that are affiliated to NUP: Ssegirinya, Kidandala and Sebaggala who for years belonged to the Democratic Party (DP).  
But Mr Ssegirinya’s victory during NUP’s selection process perhaps showed how far he has come as a bigtime political mobiliser and organiser.  

While Mr Sebaggala was still nursing the Lord Mayoral ambitions which bore no fruit, Mr Kidandala had presented himself as an outright favourite for the Kawempe North NUP ticket.  

Mr Kidandala’s advantages were clear: He was part of NUP’s committee which was vetting various prospective candidates across the country, so it was presumed that this process was already in his favour.  
Most importantly, Mr Kidandala claimed to be more eloquent than Mr Ssegirinya, which he thought would make him a better lawmaker. 
 
But as it is known now, he was wrong. The ticket was handed to Mr Ssegirinya on grounds that he was more popular.  

“I have been preparing myself for this for years,” Mr Ssegirinya explains his rather surprising victory. “The vetting committee found out that I’m very strong on [the] ground, so they had no option but to give the ticket.” 

Mr Ssegirinya’s surge in popularity isn’t easy to explain, but he insists that he is revered because in what he does, the common man’s agenda always guides him.  

He cites how he used his Facebook account, which has more than 22,000 followers, to fundraise for his constituents who were struggling to get food during the Covid-19 induced lockdown, early this year. 

“You don’t know how many people I bought food for as a result of the money I got through my Facebook account,” Mr Ssegirinya, who now goes by the moniker ‘Mr Updates’ due to his hunger to break stories online, says. “That’s why people like me. I’m always there for them.”   
In 2015, yet again, for the umpteenth time, Mr Ssegirinya deployed his antics when he demonstrated against the Uganda Communications Commission’s (UCC) move to migrate the country to digital platforms.  
He insisted that the move to digitise the TV industry was against the down-trodden since they couldn’t afford the fees he deemed ridiculous. 

“I might not have succeeded in stopping, it but people understood that I was on their side. Why do you make Ugandans pay for television every month?” he asked.   

Prodded if he doesn’t fear that his antics have led people to not take him seriously and consequently be labelled as “comedian”; Mr. Ssegirinya seems not to give a hoot. 

“Everybody has his or her own style,” he says defiantly. “That’s my style and I believe it has delivered results. That’s why I’m going to win.”

Mr Ssegirinya’s political journey has been the embodiment of doggedness mixed-up with shrewdness, if not opportunism, to the extent that it would prompt interest from political scientists looking for a case study on the volatility of politics in Uganda. 
  
Though he is now a subject to media attention largely because of his jocular style of politics, Mr Ssegirinya’s first attempt at elective politics ended in defeat. 
 
During the 2011 elections the rather impatient Mr Ssegirinya who was at the time a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) had decided to go for the jugular by going after his dreams.  

He took on Mr Sebaggala for the Kawempe North seat, but the veteran politician easily shrugged off the novice’s effort. 

“I was young but I came second during my first attempt,” Mr Ssegirinya said in an interview with this newspaper. “But that showed me that I can really go far.” 

In the intervening years, Mr Ssegirinya had jumped ship, quitting SDP which had failed to get traction as its members had anticipated. 
 
He had noticed that Opposition politics around Kampala rotated around the alliance formed by FDC founding president Kizza Besigye and Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago and he consequently joined.  

He became a permanent fixture at all press conferences called by the two positions, always seen calculatedly standing behind Dr Besigye, in particular. 

“They were leading the cause that I have always believed in,” he explains his association with Dr Besigye and Mr Lukwago. “Though we have now gone separate ways, it wasn’t in bad spirit.”  

As the 2016 general elections were approaching, Mr Ssegirinya had joined FDC and consequently contested the party’s primaries for Kawempe North parliamentary seat, a race he lost to Asadullah Semmindi under what he calls “debatable circumstances.” 

As he was nursing his wounds, it’s said that FDC members came up with other ideas. They advised him that instead of insisting to stand as an Independent for the parliamentary race, he should console himself by standing as a councillor representing Kawempe North at City Hall. 
Mr Ssegirinya’s advisors believed that unlike the MP seat he stood a greater chance of winning the councillor race which would give him more experience. 

“They said being councillor would enable me understand roles of procedures better,” Mr Ssegirinya, a diploma holder in Journalism from Datamine Technical Business School who eventually won the race, says. 
“I have no regrets over that decision, it has enabled me serve my people of Kawempe North,” he says.  

Just like any other politician, Mr Ssegirinya says he has effectively represented Kawempe North at City Hall and in the process improved his voter’s livelihoods. 

“From salary of about Shs3 million per month, I deduct off Shs500,000 which I give to my voters as capital,” he boosts.” I bought for them an ambulance, got young people blue collar jobs at KCCA and many other things.”

In 2017, the Court of Appeal declared the Kyadondo East seat vacant after it kicked out FDC’s Apollo Kantinti and yet in a way this proved to be another turning point in Mr Ssegirinya’s political career.  
 
In the ensuing by-election, Dr Besigye and the Lord Mayor insisted on supporting Kantinti, but Mr Ssegirinya broke ranks with them and supported one Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, alias Bobi Wine, who was making baby steps in Uganda’s politics.  

“From Kyadondo [East] I remained with honourable Kyagulanyi and we formed People Power and now have a party, NUP. So this is where I belong, but I have no problem with the Lord Mayor or Dr Besigye. But I departed from them in Kyadondo East.” 
 
As warms up for the January elections – which he certainly believes he will win – which will make him strut in the marbled corridors of Parliament and rub shoulders with many of the Opposition MPs that he has been campaigning for, Mr Ssegirinya can’t help reminisce how far he has come. 

“Very many radio callers we started out with have been compromised and they joined NRM,” Ssegirinya, 33, says. “But here I’m, I have remained steady in criticising the NRM regime and President Museveni.”