By John Banalya
The Exposure Uganda (TEU) Preamble.
There comes a time in the life of every great family when the children it raised to defend its name become the very ones who auction its dignity in the market square, and when the throne they once built together becomes the stone they throw at each other for the amusement of strangers. That time has come for Busoga.
This week, The Exposure Uganda (TEU) presents a special analytical column by John Banalya, a journalist and a politician, a well-travelled and exposed son of Busoga whose work has taken him across the continent and beyond — and it is precisely because of that exposure that he suffers when he sees a society refuse to examine itself.
In this reflection on the bitter fallout between two principal monarchists, Rt. Hon. Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for EAC Affairs, and Dr. Joseph Muvawala, Executive Director of the National Planning Authority and Premier of Busoga Kingdom, Banalya returns to Socrates’ timeless warning: “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Busoga today, the former The New Vision bureau chief argues, is living an unexamined political life — shouting loudly in the market but refusing to ask why it is shouting, who profits from the noise, and what image it creates before the stranger passing by who reads us in newspapers, hears us on audios, and watches us on videos streaming and TV screens.
What began as a legitimate debate about what a 21st century university should look like has degenerated into a bitter, personal and profoundly un-Busoga spectacle between two architects of modern ObwaKyabazinga Bwa Busoga who once tarmacked roads so the Kyabazinga would not travel in dust, yet who now throw dust at each other on open radio.
It is also precisely this pain that the Anglican Bishop of Busoga Diocese, Rt. Rev. Prof. Dr. Grace Lubaale, saw when he warned that we have allowed the market quarrel of brothers to become the definition of a four-and-a-half-million-strong nation. Drawing from personal history, from the pulpit, and from Francis Imbuga’s prophetic play Betrayal in the City (East African Educational Publishers, 1976), Banalya argues this feud is not about two individuals, but about what happens when a region that refuses to examine itself replaces kinship with kingpins and replaces journalism with Press jackets.
Read on: The Full Analytical Article.
The bitter fallout of monarchists, Muvawala vs Kadaga, is now the talk of every trading centre from Bugabula to Butembe. The once inseparable are at each other’s throats, and no one can tell the end game.
Social media is having a field day over whether Dr. Joseph Muvawala is right or whether the all-powerful Rebecca Kadaga is righteous over Busoga University. For neutrals it looked like a healthy debate. Unfortunately, it has turned up a can of worms that has shaken the Busoga social fabric — which I consider an absurdity.
I have known Joseph Muvawala from childhood. His mother, Clare Ntalo, was senior woman teacher at our Kivubuka Primary School. Muvawala is two years younger than me. He has been a man of great ambition through Busoga College Mwiri and Namilyango despite hard economic times.
He arrived at Makerere University ahead of me and destiny put us in Livingstone Hall, then the best hall — its landscaping, clean rooms, excellent diet and student leadership defined for us what University life should be. A year later we were joined by his brother Paul Mubiwa studying Commerce. Muvawala was studying Economics and I was studying Political Science. It was a high moment for three Namulesa boys.
That benchmark matters. When Muvawala criticised the quality of buildings at Busoga University, he was not the first. Hon. Proscovia Salaam Musumba had alarmed us and I personally visited and was not impressed. We are in the twenty-first century and should not be fooled on the demands of a modern university.
Unfortunately, the battle has gone away from the University into personalities and land grabbing, which is wrong.
I have no problem with Rt. Hon. Kadaga’s development agenda. I have met her only once, in 1996, when I was an aide to Hon. Daudi Migereko. Both had just won elections and looked relieved. They shared a wound. In 1994 Kadaga had suffered brutal defeat in Buzaya when she sought to represent the people in the Constituent Assembly, denying her chance to be part of history writing the 1995 Constitution. She was Assistant Chairman of the National Resistance Council where Moses Kigongo was Vice Chairman and Museveni Chairman. Migereko too had lost to Lady Justice Faith Mwondha in Butembe.
We rushed to meet her as State Minister for Works. From that talk and her works today, I discern one thing. She is a woman of resolute — where willingness is great, difficulties cannot be great. On her tongue then was modernizing Kimaka airstrip into a modern airport.
She has an excellent mantra of developing Busoga and people believe she will do it.
When I visited Kiige Village in Kamuli, where my father descends from, I was told this is Kadaga’s village. Remote, yet they told me they are regular visitors of Kamuli town and have seen it expand from three kilometers of tarmac to twenty under Kadaga and hope after beautifying Kamuli, she will descend on Kiige. Such is her power that many believe she single-handedly restored the pride of Bugabula and brought back Kyabazingaship.
Few know that whatever work RAK did, Muvawala was the youth winger, the mobiliser and strategist. By 1994 Muvawala was organising against us Republicans who were not amused with the return of cultural institutions.
Muvawala and Mbago Amza became active in Basoga Nsete, their guests were RAK and Musumba. Apollo Kazungu became Guild President and Muvawala Minister for Culture. When Dr. Specioza Kazibwe Wandira ascended, fearing she would back Kiregeya for Kyabazingaship, Kadaga, Kazungu and Muvawala strategically backed Henry Waako Muloki to buy time for William Wilberforce Nadiope Gabula IV to grow.
When some people wanted to make ObwaKyabazinga hereditary, they led the Nadiope camp into fights that culminated in his coronation. They are inseparable in monarchy.
The two tarmacked Namulesa-Butiki-Ivunamba roads so the Kyabazinga would travel dust-free — the Kyabazinga’s maternal grandparents lived in Wakalenge on this road. They also tarmacked Wakitaka-Bugembe road so the Kyabazinga arrives at his office dustless. That is the closeness that makes it bitter to hear them tear each other on radio.
As the Bible warns, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” — Mark 3:25.
When Kadaga raises issues of land grabbing pointing at Muvawala. She may have a point. But Muvawala should not be dismissed when he calls for better buildings at the newly gazetted public university. He is better placed as an intellectual and National Planner. It is good government renamed it Iganga University, lifting the burden off these monarchists.
What Betrayal in the City Tells Us.
There is a scene every Musoga knows: two brothers from the same womb quarrel in the middle of the market, voices loud, chests puffed, traders stop selling and children stop playing. In the village it was once an embarrassment elders resolved under a mango tree. Now it is permanent spectacle because thousands watch from afar through gadgets that never sleep.
It is this transformation that the Anglican Bishop of Busoga Diocese Rt Rev Prof Dr Grace Lubaale addressed when he downplayed the view that Busoga is synonymous with conflict. Shouting is not the family; it is merely a moment in a family century old, now amplified by an adulterated media that thrives on noise.
The bishop understands: the market is no longer just Iganga or Jinja, but also the newspaper read in Kampala, the WhatsApp audio, the Facebook and TikTok video, the TV screen in a lodge in Bugembe. When brothers quarrel, they quarrel before strangers.
A stranger passing by — scrolling a headline, watching a thirty-second clip of insults, hearing leaked audio — will conclude such a family cannot live together. He has not seen them tilling, building, mourning together.
Yet the old woman selling potatoes,cassava or nakati, forty years in that market, shakes her head and says let them shout, they will eat together tonight. This wisdom is what Bishop Lubaale is trying to restore.
Busoga is not a quarrelling household but a vast family of 4.5 million, eleven districts, centuries-old ObwaKyabazinga, a lake that feeds a nation, a language binding a farmer in Buyende to a fisherman in Namayingo. To define it by a press conference today and rebuttal tomorrow is to define a mighty river by foam that will be gone by morning.
The Invasion of Press Jackets.
This has been worsened by an adulterated media where every smartphone holder is now a self-styled journalist invading funerals, church services, clan meetings, with jackets marked PRESS, as if a jacket confers ethics. They do not report; they incite, because conflict sells.
Each radio presenter now thinks he owns truth. One who never studied land law presides over land debates. One who never read the ObwaKyabazinga constitution declares legitimacy. The confidence is louder than competence.
Then TikTokers, who built an economy of influence without accountability, comment with energy on matters they never researched, packaging history into sixty seconds of dramatic music.
Add WhatsApp admins acting as editors of falsehoods, Facebook bloggers turning defamation into business, YouTubers discovering abusing a leader garners more views than praising a farmer. The media is no longer a mirror but a magnifier of wounds.
Not One Kingpin, But Many.
We talk as if there is one kingpin in Busoga, yet kingpin syndrome has multiplied. Kingpins in politics who think no rally succeeds without them; in civil service who think no file moves without their signature; in business who think no cultural function happens without their money; in culture who think no one is a true Musoga without their blessing; in academia and religion who think no wisdom is valid without their title. Each now has his own media entourage.
The term kingpin — the bolt holding wheel to axle — suggests without one bolt the wheel collapses, suggesting 4.5 million people cease without one individual, which is false and culturally alien. Busoga has always been a chorus, not a solo.
The Mirror of Kafira — Imbuga’s Prophecy
If you want to understand how this illusion destroys a family, open Francis Imbuga’s Betrayal in the City. Imbuga wrote about Kafira, a fictional state whose new leaders fell in love with power. Read in Jinja today as Muvawala and Kadaga quarrel on radio while self-styled journalists stream it live, you swear he was writing about Busoga.
Imbuga warned: “It was better while we waited. Now we have nothing to look forward to. We have killed our past and are busy killing our future.”
In Kafira there is Boss, who means well but cannot tolerate correction. Around Boss is Mulili — not educated, not bright, but very loyal, whose loud loyalty kills a man and says he did it for Boss.
Boss never orders it, never punishes Mulili, so Mulili grows bigger than the office. In Busoga, every smartphone journalist has become a Mulili for some kingpin, ready to abuse and defame on behalf of a master who will never be held responsible.
Then there is Tumbo and Nicodemo, who turn every occasion into performance, organizing a play competition not to love theatre but to show they are working. In Busoga, funerals become rallies, cultural functions become power contests, graduation ceremonies become arenas for proving who is the real kingpin, all filmed by Press jackets for the stranger watching.
Finally, Mosese and Jere, principled soldiers who love Kafira, tell truth, and are imprisoned for treason, while ordinary citizens watch tired and hungry, wondering when leaders will talk about roads and schools. In Busoga we have our own Mosese and Jere — clergy like Bishop Lubaale, elders, teachers, health workers — who dare to say this path is dangerous and are labelled traitors and saboteurs.
From Kingpins to Kinship.
Bishop Lubaale does not just diagnose; he prescribes. Some issues, he noted, can be settled in closed-door meetings without cameras where one person issues a communique, preventing the stranger from turning internal family discussion into international spectacle.
Other issues require media to behave not as football commentators who make noise even when the ball went wide, but as custodians of public memory who give more airtime to the farmer who succeeded and the student who excelled than to the leader abusing another for likes.
Busoga needs genuine recognition — an annual Busoga Honours List by ObwaKyabazinga celebrating teachers, farmers, health workers, artists, elders from all eras — so the desperate need to declare oneself indispensable loses power.
Sustainable peace is never built by two big men shaking hands for cameras, but by the middle layer — religious leaders like Bishop Lubaale, the Kadhi, clan leaders, women leaders, genuine journalists — who refuse to be mobilized for kingpin wars and declare they will always take the side of Busoga as a whole. That is the core mandate of Busoga Elders Forum.
Traditional leadership was collective: Kyabazinga with Lukiiko, clan head with elders..
Busoga will not be built by kingpins or by those who invaded media with Press jackets and TikTok accounts, because no matter how loud one shouts in the market, the market does not belong to him.
Busoga will be built when we remember Imbuga’s warning and choose to examine ourselves, so that the stranger passing by, whether reading newspaper, listening to audio, watching video streaming or TV screen, eventually sees not a family that quarrels for influencers, but a family that, despite quarrels, knows how to return home and eat together.
About the writer:
John Banalya is a Busoga based veteran journalist, Politician, Regular Contributor, The Exposure Uganda (TEU) and Member, (Busoga Elders Forum (BEF).
