By Mulengera Reporters
In a Saturday interview with this news website, Edith Byanyima explained why she thinks that, having done 15 years as DP President, Norbert Mao must now be exhausted and its time for him to move on and let someone else with fresh ideas take over the office of President General for Uganda’s oldest party.
She says she has been in DP as a member longer than Mao or even any of the people he leads with in the National Executive Committee (NEC). That as of 1996, she was one of the leading youth leaders of DP and she had been part of the party’s youth leadership structure even before the advent of UYD in 1995.
Edith, oldest daughter to longest serving DP National Chairman Mzee Boniface Byanyima (now deceased), says that she became an active DP member in 1980. She says she actually is the one who recruited Mao into DP and led him to his father Mzee Boniface Byanyima (more than 20 years ago) who issued him with the DP membership card.
That she delivered him to her late father, who endured humiliation by Milton Obote for refusing to defect to UPC as an MP in the 1960s, and introduced Mao inside their living room at Ruti, outside Mbarara City. She says that she was originally attracted to Mao because he was like-minded, brilliant and committed to a better-governed Uganda. Also being a Northerner, she says, made him attractive at the time detractors portrayed DP as a Ganda party.
In 1996, she was actively and thickly involved in fundraising for and attending IPFC Presidential Candidate PK Semogerere’s rallies for Presidency. She says she was personally daily on the campaign trail and people in PK’s campaign offices used to call her the “DP Landlord” because of her role in paying rent for IPFC/DP campaign offices throughout the country.
In 1996, she famously led a group of young women who wailed and publicly cried at PK’s post-elections press conference at the IPFC national campaign offices in Kabusu. Her mother Gertrude Byanyima was DP women leader and spoke at many PK rallies in 1996 and caused a lot of damage to Candidate Museveni as a young man who partly grew up in her Ruti home. Mzee Boniface was still much younger and equally very outspoken throughout that IPFC campaign trail.
Edith says that’s the reason why many disgruntled DPs, having felt lost for direction following the 2020 exodus of DP MPs into NUP and following Mao’s cooperation agreement with NRM, began contacting her demanding to know what is going on. They expected her to know given her history in DP and her parents’ too. A lot of these people believed she is in touch with Mao and other DP national leaders in Kampala.
She says that, even when she isn’t interested in any leadership position in DP at whatever level beyond being just a proud life time member, she felt obliged to become part of grass root movement and ordinary members who were determined to engage with the party leadership while seeking to understand what exactly is happening.
She says, contrary to what many people think, there are lots of people in Western Ugandan districts of all ages who genuinely like DP. Some are old men who joined it as Catholics in the 1960s and others are children of such founding members. She says she felt charged and motivated to become part of the organic grass root movement she had confirmed to exist in favor of DP in all districts of Western Uganda.
She says she reached out and organized an informal retreat of a few leaders at her father’s home in Ruti where democrats chatted and discussed stuff to rejuvenate the party throughout the night of 29th December last year. She organized food and drinks and members had a good time as they discussed strategies to re-energize the party. Mao shunned it even when he had been expected.
She says that because she was acting in good faith while desiring to involve all DP leaders in Kampala, she notified and extended an invitation to Balintuma whose top official and Mao confidant Kennedy Mutenyo and Western Region Vice President Imam Makumbi attended. On 30th December, people emerged out of Ruti re-energized and, for coordination purposes, Mutenyo created a WhatsApp forum named “The Ruti Spirit.”
Lots of DPs were added on it including Mao and many other national leaders in Kampala. There was a lot of momentum originally but fractures emerged and some people became uneasy when Edith and other DPs from Western Uganda began asking the hard questions.
The Maos didn’t want questions disputing the cooperation agreement with NRM and their idea was that all was well and there was no crisis to discuss in DP. Members also complained about NEC being diluted in favor of the so-called Management Committee.
Gradually, Edith who was very outspoken about these issues, became isolated after Mutenyo added belligerent young ladies who would contradict everything she posted on the Ruto Spirit group. Some young ladies went as far as dismissing her as a fortune-hunter who had never been DP.
Some asked her to read the DP Constitution and acquaint herself with how one becomes a DP member and thereafter earn the right to ask the hard questions she was raising. Some advised her to talk to Secretary General Gerald Siranda well so that her enrollment as a member would be fast-tracked.
Ironically, Mao never said a word. He would just read comments on the forum and move on. Many felt he should have guided his foot soldiers to address Edith Byanyima more courteously because of her family’s historical role in DP.
In the end, Edith Byanyima like-minded democrats agreed to leave the group and start another one. They named it “DP Western.” That’s where all the vibrant debate on the need for reforms, to ensure that DP is better-led by men and women who are more accountable, shifted to. Some of Mao’s people like Mutenyo, Imam Makumbi and others joined this forum too.
It’s on that forum, to which Mao was subsequently added, that consensus emerged that DP wasn’t ready to have the May 2025 National Delegates Conference (NDC) which Siranda is organizing to be held in Mbarara. Members are of the view that the party has actually got no credible voters’ register for the NDC.
It’s claimed that Siranda recently released an audio recording of himself saying that at Balintuma there is a register which indicates 1,400 delegates yet only 500 is being expected at the Mbarara NDC. The excess of 900 is supposed to be removed through voter register clean up exercise of some sort.
DP members on the Western forum became agitated even more when Balintuma refused to disclose to them who party leaders for the different districts are in Western Uganda. Edith says that they are doubting that DP has real delegates from majority of the districts in Western Uganda.
“This is how you end up with a party which can’t field candidates there because candidates have to be identified from the membership. As members and supporters, we contacted the Secretary General demanding for the contacts of for instance leaders of Kiruhura and Kazo districts. They are lots of young people who are DP supporters and they want to know these district leaders for DP so that they work under them to mobilize for the party.”
Edith says it’s from such members that delegates to the NDC have to be determined and now wonders who appears on Siranda’s register as delegates for the two districts of Kazo and Kiruhura. “Members legitimately want to know DP Chairpersons there to work with them to strengthen DP offices in those places or create them in case they are nonexistent. They even have messages to give to delegates representing them in the NDC but Balintuma doesn’t want to disclose who these delegates are.”
She adds that there is also need to postpone the NDC in order to harmonize on nomination fees for especially people wanting to run for DP Presidency. It has been raised from Shs5m to Shs10m, a thing that has raised uproar prompting the party’s Northern region VP Alitia to petition the SG. Mzee Deo Njoki, who wants to replace Mukasa Mbidde as National VP, also has concerns about this and much more.
Edith says that last weekend, they held a consultative meeting for a few leaders in Mbarara which regional VP Imam Makumbi stormed out of claiming he had been disrespected because there was no agenda to recognize him as the party’s most senior official in Western region. It was during that meeting that a decision was taken for DPs from Western Uganda to write to Balintuma formally demanding postponement of the Mbarara NDC.
Asked whether she regrets not becoming outspoken earlier, Edith Byanyima says that she greatly honors pioneers like Erias Lukwago, Betty Nambooze etc who began red-flagging fraud in DP as early as 2010 when they boycotted the Mbale NDC which ushered in Mao.
She says they are heroes who fought a good fight and inspired those trying to stand up to Mao today. She says she can’t blame leaders who quit DP for NUP in 2020 “because they had done their best but got overwhelmed and had to let go.”
Asked why she doesn’t reach out and talk to Mao directly and get to hear it from the horse’s own mouth, Edith Byanyima says she tried to have audience with her party President and Justice Minister until she gave up. That he refused to pick several of her phone calls and equally disregarded her WhatsApp messages.
She predicts a post-Mbale like split in what remains of DP after the upcoming NDC should the Mao group insist on their Mbarara meeting. She says there is a countrywide movement of genuine DP lovers who are determined to fight on demanding for more accountable and transparent leadership in DP beyond the forthcoming NDC. She is suggesting that Mao reads the writing on the wall and allows to let go so that a new leader with fresh ideas takes charge of DP.
“The truth is that President Mao might have come in with good intentions and has tried his best but after 15 years at the helm, he must be exhausted which is why he needs to let someone else lead because the intra DP conflicts have been very consuming in the last 15 years of his leadership,” says Edith Byanyima making it categorically clear that she personally isn’t interested in any DP leadership position now or even in the future. All she wants is being part of the organic grass root movement of DP supporters and members. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
