Bobi was a boxer, Kalembe missed 2004 Olympics and Museveni scores goals

Despite the cold reception it receives among politicians, sport still has a place in the lives of Ugandan society.
Even at the height of the politics ahead with the presidential polls set for Thursday, nearly all the 11 candidates seeking the top most seat in the land have either kicked a ball, hit a run, thrown jabs in a ring or even gone over a horizontal high jump bar.

And even Members of Parliament and aspirants for the August House have staged or even organised tournaments that end nowhere in order to woo voters.

So if it were football, the 11 presidential candidates already present a line-up. But one could as well split out the group into two basketball sides with an umpire on offer.

But what sports disciplines have the candidates taken part in before? Let’s take a look.

Nancy Kalembe

We’ll go ladies first. The only woman in the race has perhaps been the most active in sports of them all.
“I have always done sports all the time because my father and mother were sportsmen and introduced us to many of them,” she told SCORE.

While at Budo Junior School in the ‘90s, Kalembe played cricket, hockey, netball and athletics and became a captain in the latter three.
By Primary Six, Kalembe was already competing at the National Trials and Championships over the sprints – 100m, 200m and 400m – to middle-distance events 800m and 1500m. 

When she joined St Mary’s College Namagunga for O-Level, Kalembe played volleyball and lawn tennis at national level. She was ladies’ singles seed number two in 1995 and with her doubles partner Clara Wekesa, they were the best duo in the country at the time at U-18 level.

She was also netball captain and on track. At Makerere University, she was the athletics’ captain in 2004 and a year later captained the swimming team where she concentrated on the breaststroke, backstroke and front crawl as well as freestyle styles over the 50m and 100m.

She captained the swimming team that scooped 24 gold medals among other silver and bronze medals at the 2005 East Africa University Games.

“I never did butterfly because you have to have a very strong chest to do that event. But because I was an athlete, it gave me an added advantage to do breaststroke and backstroke because my lower limbs were strong,” she added.

In athletics, Kalembe qualified for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, over the 100m, 200m and 400m.

“I remember for 100m, I qualified with 12.73 seconds at the time Marion Jones, who was the best in the world, was doing 11.73 sec. So I was exactly a second behind her,” she notes.
But why didn’t she travel? “We did the procedure, they took our passports but we were later told that there was no money.” 

Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine 

The self-styled Ghetto president is an avid boxer with an unscathed 1-0 record. He regularly does morning sparring sessions, sometimes in the company of his wife Barbie. 
On December 19, 2008, Bobi Wine took his boxing love a notch higher by knocking out Sudanese Mohammed Swalley inside 56 seconds. This was an undercard fight at Lugogo Indoor Arena on a night Peter ‘Boyz Boyz’ Semo and Abdu ‘The Cobra’ Tebazalwa retained their Universal Boxing Organisation crowns. 
The pop politician has also previously told of how he used to play football before and in the early stages of his teenage days.

Yoweri Kaguta Museveni 

Whenever he has hosted sportsmen or teams or federations, Museveni has often spoken he was an active sportsman back in his heyday at Ntare School. 

During his presidency, he has publicly played football, most times juggling a ball whenever he gets an opportunity. One of the most common pictures of him with a ball is when he scored for the NRM team against a Fufa squad under the late Denis Obua at Namboole Stadium on October 16, 1999. 

The match was a precursor for the Uganda Kobs versus Zimbabwe. Kobs lost 3-0. Ahead of a conference reviewing the progress of the International Criminal Court, Museveni also featured alongside then UN chief Ban Ki-moon in a match to highlight the plight of war crime victims at Namboole on May 31, 2010.

Museveni loves showing off his juggling skills and will not hesitate to do it in the middle of the street.

Joseph Kabuleta

For those who know him, Kabuleta is most known for his work in sports journalism before he displayed a quest for presidency. 
His journalism career spanned over ten years where he was sports editor at New Vision from 2002 to 2006 and a pundit on radio and TV shows for years, notably, Radio One’s historic The Locker Room and later Sport On on the now defunct WBS television. 

The independent presidential candidate also served as president of the Uganda Sports Press Association.

Mugisha Muntu 

Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu used to play basketball, cricket and volleyball in his youth days. He says he played cricket during his O-Level studies at Makerere College School. And now at 62, the  Alliance for National Transformation leader no longer plays but does exercises to keep fit.

Willy Mayambala 
He used to play football until around the turn of the century. “I stopped playing it when I got a problem with my legs,” Mayambala told this paper. But he then got another favourite sport: high jump. “It is my favourite sport. But as you know, as you progress and grow older, you stop playing. So I stopped in 2006 but I still follow it passionately,” he adds. 

Other presidential candidates

• Norbert Mao: Has recently been taking golf lessons at Uganda Golf Club.
• John Katumba: Has no known sports history.
• Henry Tumukunde: Handlers say he has no significant history with sport.
• Patrick Amuriat: Nothing available to show his active involvement.
• Fred Mwesigye: Doesn’t have any known sports history.

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