Battle for Nakawa West: A clash of generations

Fourteen years later, this performance still ignites a sense of pride in Zziwa who represented Kampala women in the Constituent Assembly that mid-wifed the 1995 Ugandan Constitution through the 6th to the 7th Parliament. 
  
“My performance is well documented. You can see how I used to perform when I was still in Parliament. This is what the people of Kampala need,” Ms Zziwa said in a recent interview with the Sunday Monitor.  

Ms Zziwa who belongs to the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), was last in Parliament in 2006.  Her days in the house were ended by Nabilah Naggayi Sempala who rode on the wave of change prompted by the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), which turned out to be Uganda’s biggest opposition party. 

Zziwa’s loss, according to political analysts, was due to the fact that in 2006, the college system which was used both in 1996 and 2001 to vote for women representatives to Parliament, was discarded for the universal adult suffrage which favoured Naggayi since Kampala is an Opposition bastion against the NRM since it took over power in 1986. 

2006 was a bad year for Zziwa’s family. Her husband and NRM party member, Francis Babu also lost his Kampala Central seat in Parliament to Erias Lukwago then of the DP.  Mr Babu has since failed to win an elective seat despite trying on different fronts. Not that Ms Zziwa did not try again for the same seat.  She stood again in 2011 but still Naggayi, who recently under acrimonious circumstances, quit FDC for the newly formed National Unity Platform (NUP), shrugged off her challenge with ease.

Ms Zziwa’s political career, at least locally, seemed to have a hit its lowest mark until mid this year when she decided to take advantage the government’s controversial decision to split Nakawa constituency into two: Nakawa West and Nakawa East.  

With Fred Ruhindi, her party counterpart, naturally going for Nakawa East,  where he thinks he has strength, Zziwa went for Nakawa West, which has 13 parishes of Kyanja, Kiwatule, Bukoto 1&2, Ntinda, Kyambogo, Banda, Kulambiro, among others. 
 
It was not straightforward since she had to get involved in the NRM primaries which were littered with cases of malpractivce and sometimes violence where she polled 1, 991 votes to defeat businessman Mukesh Shuklah Babuhai, who came second with 1, 240 votes. Benjamin Kalumba Ssebuliba came third with 1,254 votes.
  
“If the constituency had not been divided,” Ms Zziwa said, “I would not have stood since Honourable Ruhindi, I believe would have gone to represent the people of Nakawa very well.”   

One of the many subplots of 2021 general election is going to play out in Nakawa where the NRM is going to bring to the fore every trick to regain the division which historically was the ruling party’s stronghold in a rather hostile Kampala. 

This situation was upended in 2016 when FDC’s Michael Andrew Kabaziguruka, at the second time of asking, defeated Ruhindi who had represented this multicultural constituency from 2001. Before Ruhindi took over, Nakawa had been represented by NRM historical Jaberi Bidandi Ssali from 1996 till 2001 when he retired from elective politics only to resurface in 2006 as a presidential candidate under the auspices of People’s Progressive Party (PPP). 

Following Kabaziguruka’s shock victory, the opposition figures fancy their chances in Nakawa but Ms Zziwa tends to have a different analysis of what caused Ruhindi’s defeat four years ago. 

“NRM is still strong in Nakawa but what caused the loss was the divisions within the party. One of the NRM party members stood as an Independent, which split our votes, “she said referring to Olga Rucogoza Ajiri an NRM member, who stood as an Independent and it’s said she carved off a huge chunk of Ruhindi’s votes.  
 
If in the past the only key rival Zziwa and the NRM has had to contend with was the FDC, this time round, she will also have to face off with NUP, which gained traction with the youth who form majority of the Ugandan population. By her own admission, Zziwa is of a different generation and perhaps her appreciation of issues of different from those of the younger people she is going to take on in February 2021.

While the youths think it is their time to take over leadership across the country, she thinks they must be patient as they learn from veterans like her. “You cannot come from nowhere and you say you want to go to Parliament,” Zziwa explained. “For example, I started with serving in the Resistance Councils in 1987 so by the time I went to Parliament I was able to comprehend everything about local government. People go to Parliament without knowing the rules of procedure. They should take time through Local Councils before going to Parliament.”    

Joel Ssenyonyi
One of those novices, who Zziwa might be indirectly alluding to is NUP’s publicist Joel Ssenyonyi. A former journalist, Ssenyonyi who is challenging Zziwa in Nakawa West, which has approximately 80, 000 voters is generally regarded as inexperienced since until last year he was a news anchor at NTV.

But that could simply not be accurate because in 2011 Ssenyonyi, who was working with state-owned Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), competed for the slot of National Youth MP on the FDC ticket but lost and sources say in order to get back his job at the television he had to pen an apology. This time Ssenyonyi has positioned himself as key cog in NUP, which until mid this year was known as People Power.

While Ssenyonyi is counting on the vibrancy of the youth in areas such as Kyambogo and Naguru, whose passion he says has been triggered by the People Power wave to lead him over the line, Zziwa will be mainly counting on senior citizens and the middle class that dominates Nakawa West. 
 
“Nakawa West is a residential area with people who are interested in service delivery,” Zziwa says. “I know we have a number of young people who are unemployed and I want to work with them but we should know in Nakawa West we have many senior citizens and I have connections with them.”

Kenneth Paul Kakande
Ssenyonyi’s hamstring, which is an opportunity to Ms Zziwa, is the multiple candidates the opposition is presenting. Kenneth Paul Kakande, a NUP member, has rejected his party’s decision that Mr Ssenyonyi is their candidate.

Mr Kakande who will now stand as an Independent has been contesting in Nakawa on the Democratic Party (DP) ticket since 2006 with no victory but he sees himself as more experienced than Ssenyonyi who he says he only recently shifted to the division. 

As if that’s not enough, Mr Kakande had accused his party of favouring Ssenyonyi for no good reason during the vetting process NUP adopted to select their various candidates.  
 
“I have more experience in the struggle than him [Ssenyonyi],” Mr Kakande said. “The voters will have to decide.”

FDC party headache
Even FDC has not done any better as it now two candidates. Robert Asiimwe, who was fronted by the FDC leadership in Nakawa while Wilberforce Kyambadde was fronted by FDC Leadership in Najjankumbi.

Asiimwe, the FDC chairman in Nakawa, has since dashed to the High Court asking it to quash Najjanakumbi’s decision on grounds that Kyambadde, who was third according to the rankings by FDC’s Nakawa executive committee, was instead given the party’s ticket by the party’s leadership.  

He accuses Najjanakumbi of denying him an opportunity to be heard, among other things. Both Asiimwe and Kyambadde have since littered the constituency with posters having FDC symbols.

Zziwa’s advantage
As the Opposition is still bickering, Ms Zziwa is not having such problems as she hopes NRM will unite around her. Unlike other parts of the country, in Kampala generally, the NRM party primaries were largely peaceful.  

Some argue that this does not really show that NRM is more organised but rather it is candidates do not fight for seats in Kampala because winning the eventual elections is not guaranteed as in other parts of the country.  

For instance, NRM candidates for parliamentary seats in Kawempe North, Kawempe South, Lubaga South, Makindye East and Makindye West are virtually unknown. 

Be that as it may, Ms Zziwa tends to think with the opposition in disarray, at least in her constituency, her experience, Nakawa historically being an NRM stronghold will enable her return to Parliament after 14 years.

“Nakawa West is an urban centre. Nakawa west is a residential area,” she said during the interview. “They need a person like me he can work with the central government to get services.”

But before she ventures into the murky campaigns, there is an issue on her Curriculum Vitae (CV).  In 2014, Ms Zziwa was the speaker of the East African Legislative Assembly but was impeached on grounds that she had issued a decree to the assembly’s clerk not to pay EALA legislators their full allowances.  

Kenya’s Peter Mathuki and Uganda’s Dorah Byamukama, then EALA members, led the way in impeaching Ms Zziwa.  
The East African Court of Justice has since ruled that her ouster was a violation of the treaty for the establishment of the East African Community awarding her Shs649m. 
But in evaluating what she learnt from the debacle, Ms Zziwa tends to focus on the positives. 

“I learnt how to work with people from other regions. I have more experience now because I was in charge of that assembly. This is the sort of experience I want to use when representing my people of Nakawa West,” she says.
 

2016
Swing District
Nakawa Division was historically NRM’s stronghold in a rather hostile Kampala until 2016 when FDC’s Michael Andrew abaziguruka, at the second time of asking, defeated Fred Ruhindi who had represented this multicultural constituency from 2001. Before Ruhindi took over, Nakawa had been represented by NRM historical Jaberi Bidandi Ssali from 1996 till 2001 when he retired from elective politics only to resurface in 2006 as a Presidential candidate.