Muhammad Ssegirinya and Latif Ssebaggala Ssengendo. Photos | File
In 2006, Muhammad Ssegirinya started calling into live radio political talk shows. Then a Senior Three student at Pimba Secondary in Kyebando, Kawempe North constituency, Ssegirinya would refer to himself as “eddoboozi lye Kyebando” or the voice of Kyebando. Later, when his ambitions grew, he would sign in and sign off as “MP to be, Kawempe North.”
In truth, few people took Ssegirinya seriously for the most part because he struggled to articulate himself in English. Yet after beating Suleiman Kidandala to the National Unity Platform (NUP) flag in the primary for Kawempe North race, during the 2021 General Election, he would go on to poll 41,197 votes against the latter’s 7,512 votes. Kidandala had, contrary to NUP’s counsel, chosen to stand as an independent.
Yet barely months after his dominant win at the ballot, Ssegirinya and Allan Ssewanyana, a fellow NUP member and lawmaker for Makindye West, were arrested after being connected to the machete killings in greater Masaka districts. The two were granted bail on September 21, 2021 only to be rearrested shortly after at the outskirts of Kigo prison. Fresh murder charges were preferred against them, stemming from the Lwengo District machete killings where more than 20 people were killed.
For the one-and-half years, Ssegirinya and Ssewanyana spent on remand, rumours circulated that their imprisonment had nothing to do with the crimes they had allegedly committed. Conspiracy theories instead offered—without giving evidence—that the arrests were triggered by the lawmakers’ dealings with the powerful people within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.
Doubts galore
Even when Ssegirinya and Ssewanyana were released after spending one-and-half years on remand, the rumour mill was persistent in attributing their release less to a court process than a deal supposedly struck with President Museveni. Mathias Mpuuga, the Leader of Opposition in Parliament (LoP) at the time, who was at the forefront of having the lawmakers released, offered to resign from his LoP position if evidence was tabled pinning him in cutting a deal with the Museveni administration. Yet this didn’t stop the NUP top brass from reportedly ostracising both Ssegirinya and Ssewanyana. The silence that both lawmakers kept and continue to do so upon their release barely helped matters.
“These guys are behaving strangely. If indeed they were arrested for political reasons like we had thought, why have they spent more than a month without telling the country what happened? Maybe, they have shown them the evidence against them and it is solid enough to secure a conviction if they don’t keep quiet,” said a lawmaker, who belongs to the NUP.
Ssegirinya’s silence could of course be pegged to his health challenges that have pinned him to different hospital beds in Uganda, the Netherlands and Kenya. The 36-year-old politician has nevertheless indicated that he will throw his hat in the ring come 2026. As has Latif Ssebaggala Ssengendo. After representing Kawempe North from 2001 until 2021, Ssebaggala decided to have a crack at the Kampala Lord Mayorship during the 2021 General Election.
This pronouncement fitted the Machiavellian notion that in politics, there are no permanent friends or enemies but only permanent interests. By choosing to challenge Erias Lukwago, who has patented the mayorship position, Ssebaggala was seeking to confront his key ally in the 2016 General Election.
Both Ssebaggala and Lukwago fell out with the Democratic Party (DP) before Uganda went to the polls in 2016. They cited irreconcilable differences with Norbert Mao, the president general of DP, who they accused, among other things, of leading the party in a draconian manner. They decided to form a pressure group christened Truth and Justice (TJ) and both sailed through their elections as independents without much difficulty.
By 2018, unlike Lukwago, Ssebaggala had embraced the People Power movement led by the musician–turned–politician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, alias Bobi Wine. Heading into the 2021 poll, Bobi Wine’s popularity in Kampala convinced Ssebaggala that he could unseat Lukwago who had cantered to victory in the past two mayoral races.
Flip-flopper-in-chief
In 2020, Ssebaggala mastered the art of flip-flopping like no politician has ever done before. At the start of 2020, he had his eyes fully on the Lord Mayor's seat. Then for unknown reasons, he changed his mind and decided to talk about running again in Kawempe North. This unravelled plans within NUP since Ssegirinya and Kidandala had already registered interest and mobilised massively in the constituency. By the end of August 2020, Ssebaggala had made another U-turn. He picked nomination forms for the position of Lord Mayor from the NUP headquarters in Kamwokya. This set him on a collision course with musician Joseph Mayanja, alias Jose Chameleone, who had decamped to NUP from the DP.
Flip-flopping was the least thing expected from Ssebaggala. For 19 years, he was a mainstay in Uganda’s Parliament. He was first elected to the House in the 2001 when he got the better of Jamada Luzinda, the father of singer Desire Luzinda. Abdu Katuntu (Bugweri County), Nandala Mafabi (Budadiri West), Reagan Okumu (Aswa County) and Samuel Odonga Otto (Aruu County) are the other Opposition politicians who made their debuts in Parliament in 2001. Okumu and Otto, just like Ssebaggala, have since been ousted from the House.
Dr Kizza Besigye first challenged President Museveni in 2001 during a time when political parties, at least on paper, weren’t legally permitted. Every Ugandan was co-opted in what was called the movement system until 2005 when political space was opened and political parties were allowed to operate albeit with pre-2005 challenges still just as punishing.
Though Kawempe Division generally is known for being populated with regime malcontents, over the years, Ssebaggala has moulded himself as a moderate who didn’t shy away from seeking compromises. He is also known to be passionate about Buganda issues, education, and human rights and Muslim-themed issues.
Standing as an independent in 2016, Ssebaggala easily cruised to victory when he polled 3,116 votes. John Kyambadde of the NRM could only muster 1,787 votes, while Kidandala who at that time stood on the DP ticket got 845 votes.
Five years later, Ssebaggala chose to eye the Kampala mayorship because per some observers, he had lost grip over the politics of his constituency.
“I don’t believe that he wanted to stand for mayorship. It’s NUP guys who were telling him to stand but he never had that conviction,” a lawyer, who is working with NUP, told the Saturday Monitor on condition of anonymity, so that he could speak freely.
Sources within NUP say no sooner had Ssebaggala appeared before the NUP’s elections management committee for vetting than he wrote a letter indicating he was no longer interested in the mayoral seat.
“All those NUP people knew he was no longer interested in that position but they went ahead to give him that ticket because they wanted to get back at Chameleone,” a source familiar with NUP operations said. On September, 22, 2020, at a hastily organised press conference, Ssebaggala claimed that he wasn’t going to stand for the mayoral seat in the interest of his party and the Opposition in general.
“I have taken this decision in the best interest of the wider Opposition and also given the fact that we have conflicting interests as NUP [...] I apologise to all Ugandans and to all those who have put their interest in me,” Ssebaggala, a younger brother of Nasser Ntege Ssebaggala, a former Kampala mayor, said.
Old habits
But maybe the flip-flopping ought not to have come as a surprise. In the 2016 elections, Ssebaggala was among the Opposition politicians who backed Former prime minister Amama Mbabazi’s presidential bid. Within days, having witnessed the sheer number of crowds that had attended Besigye’s rallies across the country, Ssebaggala had a change of heart.
The flip-flopping ahead of the 2021 General Election was on a different scale, though. Lukwago’s allies in NUP such as MPs Medard Lubega Sseggona (Busiro East), Betty Nambooze Bakireke (Mukono Municipality) and Muhammad Muwanga Kivumbi (Butambala county) had held meetings with Kyagulanyi making it clear to him that they would not support anybody within their party who would confront Lukwago.
Initially, Kyagulanyi is said to have been hesitant but Lukwago’s allies with whom he formed the pressure group Suubi in 2011 didn’t budge. In fact, they invited former Buganda Katikkiro Joseph Mulwanyamuli Ssemwogerere to mediate the talks.
“Before the talks could be completed, Ssebaggala had called a press conference declaring how he had stood down,” a source said.
Ssebaggala’s efforts to defend his Kawempe North Seat, as an independent, ended in disaster as he not only lost to Ssegirinya, who he had characterised as a comedian, but he came a distant fourth with 3,919 votes. Ssebaggala, 56, is yet to retire from elective politics and he has been participating in political shows on various media houses. With Ssegirinya’s health in decline, associates say the 56-year-old still fancies his chances to make a comeback.
Also fancying his chances in Kawempe North come 2026 is Elias Luyimbazi Nalukoola. The lawyer recently severed ties with DP, citing Mao’s alliance with the NRM. He was previously the chief advisor of Uganda’s oldest political party.
Many have questioned Nalukoola’s decision to resign years after Mao signed the deal with the NRM.
“You know politics is dynamic. Right now, the status is I resigned from being the national legal advisor of the Democratic Party. I’m at liberty to stand as an independent. I’m at liberty to join any other political party. I’m also at liberty to join any other political formation of my choice. Nominations are not yet, therefore, I will decide at the right time,” Nalukoola, who made it clear that he won’t stand on the DP ticket, told the Monitor.
By the time Ssegirinya was sent to prison his victory had been challenged by Kidandala, who insisted that Ssegirinya had forged academic papers. But as 2026 approaches, it is widely believed that if Ssegirinya, despite being ill, insists and stands, he will be the beneficiary of a sympathy vote.
