Why Kajwengye ended Col Mwesigye’s dominance in Nyabushozi MP chase

A black Mercedes Benz, MSL model, glides into Nyabushozi County, Kiruhura District, from Lyatonde District, which neighbours this western district from the east.  

As the car approaches, Kaguta Road, the boulevard, that leads to President Museveni’s country home in Rwakitura, a crowd constituting mainly charcoal traders extemporaneously swells on the other side of the road.  

While cheering, they demand, Wilson Kajwengye, the owner of the vehicle, to address them, even if it is for a couple of only minutes. 

Mr Kajwengye, who is outdone by the euphoria, obliges to address this throng, which comprises mainly women.    

It has been weeks ever since Mr Kajwengye annihilated Col Fred Mwesigye in the redone NRM primaries for Nyabushozi County parliamentary seat, thus upending the historical’s eight-year reign in Parliament. But the public here is still in a triumphant mood.

The battle-hardened colonel is among the illustrious 27 National Resistance Army (NRA) guerrillas that kick-started the Luweero Bush War with reported 27 guns that catapulted President Museveni to power in 1986. 

Besides Museveni, whose number in the NRA, which morphed into the UPDF, is RO1 and Mwesigye whose number is RO27, Nyabushozi is home to a number of legendary NRA fighters, including Uganda’s defence attaché to Tanzania Maj Gen Stephen Kashaka and the late Maj Gen James Kazini who was born in Kasese but his parents migrated to Ssanga Sub-County where he was buried in 2009.  

Granted, NRA commanders are revered in Nyabushozi than in another part of the country and this is shown in how much they support the NRM in general, Museveni, specifically, the general consensus is that Mr Mwesigye, who greatly prides in being number RO27,has not used his alleged connections to State House to improve his constituents’ livelihoods. 
For example, at Nyakashashara Sub-County, bordering with Lyantonde, Ms Shamim Nantale, a charcoal trader, had no kinds for Mr Mwesigye, accusing him of doing nothing to present their needs to the Mr Museveni despite Kiruhura being what she termed as “number one district” supposedly because it hosts the President’s country home. 

“Colonel has always told us that he does not need to knock [the door] to enter State House like other people do,” Nantale said. “But look, we have no hospital here so we have to go to Lyantonde. We have no good schools here. We still have to send our children to Lyantonde.  So, of what use was Mwesigye to us?       

Others interviewed went as far as accusing Mr Mwesigye of being aloof. “For the 10 years, he has been in Parliament, he has never come here to meet us,” Edison Arinaitwe, a blue-collar worker we found at Ssanga Town Council, a Kajwengye stronghold, said. 

“What colonel would do is just come to give some opinion leaders money and they will instruct us to vote for him because he is NRM and also number 27.”  

Though the constituency is now full of elations, what is not going to be forgotten any time soon is how the battle for Nyabushozi has been protracted and acrimonious since the winner of the NRM primary in this ‘yellow’ constituency, is considered the winner of the eventual elections. 

Though the race attracted three individuals, it went down to two:  lawyer Kajwengye, who was ridiculed as an outsider, and Mwesigye, who presented himself as an aristocrat. Mwesigye’s campaigns were commanded by Shadrack Nzeire, Museveni’s brother.  

In fact, Mr Kajwengye realized that Mr Mwesigye was disconnected from the downtrodden populace and decided to form Kajwengye Foundation in 2019, which he used a vessel of skilling women and the young people.  

Thus he put together a coalition of blue-collar workers, who included boda-boda riders, taxi drivers, charcoal traders and women associations to run his campaign in the primaries.

“We have been training people skills like how to make bar and liquid soap, books, petroleum jelly, adding value to milk by making things like yoghurt. These are things that easily create jobs such that people stop looking at Kampala,” Mr Kajwengye, who until recently was Director of Peace and Security, International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), said.

The campaign that was later characterised by audio recordings from either camp that were shared on various social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook, Mr Nzeire drew first blood when he openly told Mr Kajwengye and his supporters, “Whatever fire you will put up; we shall put down.”    

“We couldn’t believe what we heard,” Lucky Natukunda, a voter at Nyakashashara said. “Can you imagine they were saying they will go through no matter what we were doing?”

In an effort to make the process more transparent, the NRM had dropped the ballot box system preferring lining up behind candidates, which is considered as obsolete, as anticipated, the primaries in Nyabushozi like those in several other parts of the country, were shrouded in controversy with claims of electoral fraud and violence. 

On September 5, the Election Day, emerging results had showed that Mr Kajwengye was in a commanding lead but David Agom Andiinda, the NRM Kiruhura District registrar, who was later on the directions of President Museveni arrested on charges of forgery, declared Col Mwesigye the winner.  

Mr Kajwengye who says he has been preparing to contest in Nyabushozi since 2014, rejected the results declaring himself the winner via social media.

“I had put up different teams,” Mr Kajwengye said, “We had our own tally centre and we had our results which showed that I had won.” 

With Col Mwesigye declared winner, Kajwengye took the matter directly to Mr Museveni. The President, who never wants anybody to mess around in his backyard, responded by putting together a team of informants, detectives and spies, whom he charged with investigating what had happened. 

Indeed, sources say, that the information Museveni got, tallied with the results that Kajwengye’s team had given him.  This prompted Museveni to write a letter on September 18, 2020, to Tanga Odoi, the NRM’s Electoral Commission chairperson spelling out the rigging that he had discovered. 

The NRM election officials, for instance, announced that Col Mwesigye had bettered his opponents with 54,996 votes, Mr. Kajwengye was second with 13,248 votes while Christopher Bakashaba, who got 36,147 votes came third and that total of those who voted was 54,996. 

Museveni noted that results for Nyabushozi County were “obviously inflated” because those who on the same day voted for Kiruhura District woman MP were 41,629 and yet the voters were both from Nyabushozi County and Kashongi County.  

Then Museveni, who was in 1980 defeated by his future foreign affairs minister  Sam Kutesa,  then of the Democratic Party  in the battle for this  constituency, said that having verified the scores, he had come to the conclusion that Mwesigye had obtained 16,317, Kajwengye had got 15,258 with Bakashaba 5,759 votes.   

Mr Museveni, consequently, guided that voting should be done in 28 villages which were contested. But this drew protests from Mr Kajwengye who threatened to stand as an Independent on grounds that it did not make sense for him to participate in an election organised by the same people who had rigged the first round.

“How could I do that?” Mr Kajwengye asked in an interview with Daily Monitor, “The same people who had rigged were now in charge of the same elections.” This meant that going into the nomination week, Col Mwesigye was having an upper hand but this was upended when on October 8, 2020, NRM’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) removed the flag from Mr Mwesigye and ordered the election to be repeated at 84 polling stations.  

This, too, was a day later revised when the CEC turned around and ordered the entire election to be repeated and this was music to Mr Kajwengye’s ears.  To make matters interesting, Mr Andiida was arrested.

On top of that Museveni dispatched NRM historicals including NRM Vice Chairman Moses Kigongo and Ali Kirunda Kivejinja, the second Deputy Prime Minister, to take charge of the polls. Richard Todwong, the NRM’s Secretary General, supplemented the team and by the end of the day,

Mr Kajwengye had bested his competitors having got 36,417 votes while Mr Mwesigye had got 13,248 votes. 

“This election was a victory of President Museveni and the NRM,” Mr.  Kajwengye said. “If the election had not been reorganised under new officers there would have been mass defections to other parties.

Now people believe that their voices matter. They are really happy with the President”   
While Mwesigye decided not to stand as Independent, he has declared on a local radio how he is going to support Mr Bakashaba, who decided to stand as an Independent. Despite various calls from Sunday Monitor Mr Mwesigye has not responded but on his verified Facebook page he attributed his defeat to what he called the mafia.                                     

“Dearest members allow me to thank you greatly for your passionate support and let me assure you what separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life,” Mr Mwesigye posted on October 25, 2020. 

“It takes powerful mental toughness to come out of difficulties not weakened but strengthened and apply the lessons learnt from experience. My NRM flag was snatched at gunpoint in a bloody coup where the mafias tried to politically assassinate me but failed.

I am very strong, trying to evaluate and will soon come out with a way forward. But one thing is that the flag is not cast in stone. It can be withdrawn at any time. Thank you once again and God bless you all.”

While Mwesigye accusing “the mafia” of taking away his victory, his opponents insist he had outlived his welcome. The argument is that Nyabushozi, which is arguably the biggest constituency in the country with 12 Sub-Counties and 200 villages, has always given its MPs only two terms ever since Museveni captured power., the voters reckoned Mwesigye wanted to violate this unwritten rule. 

In the 1989 National Resistance Council (NRC), which was headed by Museveni, the equivalent of today’s Parliament, Nyabushozi was represented by Elly Karuhanga, is a senior partner at Kampala Associated Advocates.

Mr Karuhanga, who also the chairman of Uganda Private Sector Foundation, was again voted in 1994 to represent Nyabushozi in the Constituent Assembly (CA), which midwifed the current constitution. He ended his political career in 2001 having represented Nyabushozi in the sixth Parliament. 

Mary Mugenyi, who defeated Mr Mwesigye in 2001 polls, was in Parliament until 2011. After Mugenyi, it wasCol Mwesigye’s time. He won the 2011 polls before going through unopposed in the 2016. By that time, Kashongi County, which was giving Mr Mwesigye a headache, had been made a separate constituency.  

“That has been the unwritten rule here for a long time,” Mr Kajwengye, who traces his leadership skills from 1994 to 1996 when he was the Chairman Nyabushozi County Youth Council to being a Speaker, National Youth Delegates Conference of Uganda from 1998 to 2000.  

With the NRM ticket in the bag, Mr Kajwengye is now looking at winning the real election where he faces Bakashaba and Apollo Tumusiime of the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT).

Mr Kajwengye is looking forward to tackling the existential threats facing Nyabushozi.  Key among them is the unabated charcoal burning and tree cutting which compromises the environment. “We need to provide people with alternatives if we are persuading them from charcoal burning. For example, we need to train them on making briquettes.”  

Being number 27 means that Mwesigye, 66, who was part of the group that sat in Mathew Rukikaire’s home, in Makindye, in early 1981 to plan the first attack on Kabamba Military Barracks that essentially launched the war, bows to a generational takeover.

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