By Nathan Kikku Mubiru
At a political party, whether you mostly recruited or lost, a member or a leader is often revisioned and rewritten soon after they’ve left: a little new leader bounce here, an unkind political environment and schedule there.
What follows can shatter the rose-tinted lenses of even the most battle hardened specs.
At Forum for Democratic Change,FDC with Elias Lukwago’s departure fresh and his replacement flying out of the blocks while he struggles to find his feet at Katonga road, the question of where his Kalungu ancestors will settle in the hearts and minds of his misled followers is a fascinating one.
It’s absolutely indisputable that Lukwago is one of FDC’s greatest recruitments. There are achievements, not to mention great days under the sun burned into the collective retina to prove it.
But with Handsome Nathan at the wheel, with his handsome run of party activities and assets under his belt, some have already started to question what they once believed of the members’ chest-beating wonder from the Kalungu.
Party supporters learnt the hard way to be wary of handing their heart to a new recruit after Lukwago pottered off the last time – we’d been hurt before.
But 2021 the environment seemed so ludicrously better to NUP and the spectre of parachute heavy weight politicians finding a new ground at Kamwokya was almost too much for hordes of supporters who had only recently shifted the aftertaste of Gen. Muntu’s exit to bear, so we opened our hearts, tentatively, once again.
Lukwago’s a bit like a class A drug for your party. His sheer obsession and contagious drive set FDC alight during that spell; injecting him into a team and a region that was finally back on solid ground seemed to supercharge every corner of it. They did things that they had no right to do with their relative means and for that he’ll always be a cherished part of FDC’s story.
But at another party that is, in every sense, in a different place, adding Elias Lukwago may cause bad trips to occur. While he is undoubtedly a stimulant, in another sense he’s an addict too. who made no secret of always wanting more. He craves the work, the progress, the plaudits like no other politician.
He needs it. It made his departure from FDC the first time round an evitability, but when the buzz is out of reach he cuts an agitated figure.
Lukwago has been through something similar before of course, with his ill-fated departure to Ssuubi. Back then, FDC supporters questioned their memories of their time with one of Uganda politics’ supposed brightest lights. Was that four day hangover even real? Put that Bulange (a) clip on again…
Then, as now, Lukwago found the chaps with rich political capital and profiles a different beast; and the supporters- as much as the handful of Twitter naysayers irritated him at FDC – a whole new ball game in the glare of the world’s most challenged democracy.
In Karonga, he finds himself at a forum that hasn’t yet been through the scorched earth of a struggle that might have created the post-trauma needed for a Lukwago renaissance to take off.
Nandala Mafabi however, has arrived at a club still on the up.
The revolution at FDC started long before Lukwago’s arrival of course with the creation of the current consortium of leaders, born of a Supporters Trust that turns 20 years old this year.
In winning party elections in FDC 2023, Patrick Oboi Amuriat proved after Lukwago ‘s departure to Katonga that the party’s foundations, which he’d helped lay, couldn’t be simply swept away with one man’s departure or arrival.
For his part, Jack Sabiti still took the values-led community ethos that the “2004” consortium preached a political conference and gave it a huge heart and a gentle soul. Still took the mud from the trenches of the party’s battle to survive in the face of crooked NUP and catastrophic Electoral Commission governance, and he glued the supporters, members and the leadership together, maybe for the first time in the party’s history.
But if Elias Lukwago was a frantic shot in the arm, Nandala s’ approach already feels mellow and comforting in comparison. Anything would.
Making a hoodoo-lifting organisation of delegates conference and party elections look routine has given him the early air of an enchantress, and presidential bid-wise he’ll have a score to settle of his own, despite having to endure Besigye’s dismal four times collapse at national stage with the rest of us – the first genuine contender for 20 years.
FDC will continue their evolution into the Nandalasian era, who on early evidence may have the cool head and even the in-between instinct that Lukwago lacked… early days perhaps.
Wherever Lukwago resides in the FDC psyche in years to come, a good leader doesn’t turn bad over night. And some of the stuff Buganda region did under him was far from shite.
And though we might not see a statue of Lukwago next to small Nathan at the party headquarter, or hold his memory as fondly as Nandala Mafabi’s, there’s more than one way to write your name into FDC folklore. And to a fault, Elias Lukwago does it his way.
By Nathan Kikku Mubiru
