It is not every day that one would equate human beings to those geographic places where rivers begin, but not when you ask Kasambya County legislator, Mr Daudi Kabanda, about President Museveni and his son, the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
The legislator, who is also the former secretary general of the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU), describes the two as the “source”. The two, he says, are the “headwater” where whatever power, authority and influence he wields begins.
“There is what they call a source. The source where the river starts to flow. Now, my source is with Gen Muhoozi and President Museveni. Without them, I am finished,” the two-term legislator says in an interview.
The emphasis with which he speaks the final bit of that statement gives the impression that he had no doubt that anything that he considers a threat to Mr Museveni’s continued stay in power, as well as his son’s power and influence, has a knock-on effect. It essentially threatens Mr Kabanda’s own existence and aspirations.
How it started
In 2011, Mr Kabanda was elected chairman of the Youth Council of Sembabule District and secretary for publicity of the Youth League of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM). The following year, a steamy power struggle that pitted the NRM secretary general at the time, Mr John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, against the party’s national chairman, Yoweri Museveni, broke out in the party.
One of the party’s arms that Mr Mbabazi first penetrated was the Youth League. Leaders of the league, who included the chair, Mr Dennis Namara; the representative of central region, Mr Adam Ruzindana; the representative of northern Uganda, Mr Willy Omodo; Mr William Seluyinda and Ms Nora Akwi, were soon referred to as “pro-Mbabazi youth”.
Mr Kabanda decided to fight on the side of Mr Museveni. He moved to convene a meeting of the league that sought to have the “pro-Mbabazi” leaders booted.
Though the meeting never materialised, that attempt led to a chain of events that culminated in the issuance of a statement by Mr Namara in which the Youth League reaffirmed its support for Mr Museveni as “supreme leader, revolutionary president and sole party president come 2016”.
Mr Mbabazi was sacked as prime minister on September 18, 2014. The threat that he posed from within was snuffed out on December 14, 2014, when the party’s National Conference adopted and approved constitutional amendments that allowed for the chairman to appoint all officials of the party.
Mr Kabanda’s role in snuffing out the threat posed by Mr Mbabazi came with dividends. For one, it saw him relocate from Sembabule to Kampala. Most importantly, it turned his and his mother’s lives around.
“Who made me? When you go to a supermarket and buy meat and give a dog, would it not bite for you? The person who has made me, who gave me my first car, a Toyota Prado TX, an office in Kampala and money in cash was President Museveni. I built my mother a house when I was 23 because President Museveni directed that I be facilitated,” he says.
Mr Museveni and Gen Muhoozi had a lot to do with Mr Kabanda’s election in 2021 as a Member of Parliament (MP). Worth noting is the fact that the 2021 General Election was the first held after Parliament voted on December 20, 2018, to amend Article 102 (b) of the constitution and scrap the upper age limits for the President, thus giving Mr Museveni leeway to continue ruling if he wished.
Three hundred and seventeen MPs voted in favour, 97 against, while two MPs abstained. At the same time, 18 MPs did not participate in the vote. Six of them had earlier been suspended from the House, while two were arrested as they tried to provide their colleagues with legal help in fighting the suspensions.
Another two were reported sick, while the rest, eight mostly district MPs aligned to the ruling NRM, were conspicuously absent when the vote was called.
Mr Kabanda had two options in the run-up to the campaign. He could contest in Lwemiyaga County in Sembabule District, where he had been for most of his adult life or contest in Kasambya County in Mubende, the district of his paternity. That meant that he had to weigh up the candidates for the purpose of identifying where he stood a better chance of winning.
“Then I looked at the candidates. There was Louis Mbwatekamwa Gaffa in Kasambya and Theodore Ssekikubo in Lwemiyaga. With Ssekikubo, it was 50-50, but also when you have grown up among people, they sometimes do not respect you. I decided to contest against Mbwatekamwa in Mubende where people did not really know me, but where I thought that the candidate was manageable,” he said.
The fact that Mr Mbwatekamwa was one of the 29 NRM legislators out of the total of 97 legislators who had voted against lifting of the age limit played into Mr Kabanda’s hands. Mr Museveni reportedly told his people to ensure he was facilitated well enough to beat Mr Mbwatekamwa.
“During one of the meetings, he asked who was in Kasambya, and he was told that Kabanda was there. He said that, ‘make sure Kabanda gets everything he needs’”, Kabanda tells The Transcript.
At the same time, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba also offered moral and material support.
“The other people (besides President Museveni) who supported me to become an MP were Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba and Ms Justine Kasule Lumumba, who was the secretary general [of NRM]. We first met with Gen Muhoozi at the Serena Conference Centre, where he had an office. He kept supporting me all the way,” Mr Kabanda says.
First family’s pit bull?
Mr Kabanda appreciates that he would perhaps not have achieved as much as he has if it were not for the helping hands that President Museveni and Gen Muhoozi have rendered at various points in time.
And it shows. He has, as a result, been indefatigable when it comes to launching attacks against those he believes to be undermining the father and son.
“The people you have seen me fighting with sometimes try to antagonise my source of power,” he says.
Fellow legislators and government officials, including Cabinet ministers, have not been spared the incessant and often virulent attacks.
Early in February this year, for one, Dr Chris Baryomunsi, then the minister of ICT and National Guidance, disclosed while on Capital FM’s political talk show Capital Gang that Gen Muhoozi’s tweets did not represent official government positions.
“For the record, the CDF does not speak for the government. His tweets—often short and sometimes deleted—are not official positions but casual comments. I have raised this matter with the appointing authority, including the President, because they do make my work harder,” Minister Baryomunsi, who is now the Health minister, said.
Mr Kabanda went on the offensive, accusing the minister of opportunism and misconduct.
“With due respect, Dr Baryomunsi, a known opportunist who joined the government for political survival, has no moral authority to despise Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba,” he said.
Dr Baryomunsi hit back, describing Mr Kabanda as “a low calibre fellow” with limited levels of education. Mr Kabanda retaliated by claiming that Dr Baryomunsi was a mere nurse and that he belonged to a faction with the NRM that thrived on blackmail.
Mr Kabanda would go on to also have a run-in with Ms Justine Nameere before she was appointed the junior Local Government minister. Her crime was to speak out in defiance of a May 12 PLU statement that announced its withdrawal of support for Ms Anita Among’s bid to become the Speaker of the 12th Parliament.
So many are the fronts on which he has been fighting that a journalist friend of his recently told The Transcript that Mr Kabanda’s nickname is “Byantalo”, a Luganda word for a “man of wars”. Where does he draw the energy to fight on and on? The Transcript cannot help but wonder.
“People often underestimate the energy expended on protecting a source. Just look at how Egypt protects its interests in the Source of the Nile. They have a special office and even an attaché in Jinja to protect the source of the River Nile because their livelihood depends on it. They even give us conditions on how to use the waters. Like the Egyptians, I too have to protect my source, because my livelihood depends on it,” he says with finality.
