Jaberi Bidandi Ssali: The Strategist Who Helped Build—and Later Question—Museveni’s Uganda Rule

UgandaToday: Jaberi Bidandi Ssali: The Strategist Who Helped Build—and Later Question—Museveni’s Uganda Rule

By Uganda Today Political Desk

In Uganda’s political memory, few figures embody continuity across so many eras as Jaberi Bidandi Ssali.

He belongs to the generation that witnessed colonial rule, helped shape independence politics, navigated the upheavals of military dictatorship, participated in the reconstruction of the state after 1986, and later became one of the earliest senior insiders to openly challenge the trajectory of the ruling establishment.

Yet Bidandi’s place in history is not merely that of a veteran politician. He belongs to a formative political fraternity alongside Kintu Musoke and the late Ali Kirunda Kivejinja—a trio linked by shared intellectual formation, publishing activism, and early nationalist politics. Their network would later intersect with the political rise of Yoweri Museveni.

The India connection and the making of a political generation

The story of Bidandi, Kintu Musoke and Kirunda Kivejinja cannot be understood without South Asia.

For many East African nationalists in the late 1950s and early 1960s, India represented more than a destination for higher education. It was a living post-colonial classroom—fresh from anti-colonial struggle, alive with debates on nationalism, socialism, statehood and Pan-African solidarity.

Kintu Musoke

Kintu Musoke studied at University of Delhi, where he pursued political science, philosophy and journalism. His years in India exposed him to Pan-African thought and sharpened his ideological orientation toward broad-based nationalist politics rather than narrowly ethnic mobilisation.

Ali Kirunda Kivejinja

Kirunda Kivejinja first undertook pre-university studies at Madras Christian College before completing a zoology degree at University of Delhi. He later recalled that India’s anti-colonial environment and the ideas associated with Jawaharlal Nehru helped deepen his political consciousness.

Jaberi Bidandi Ssali

Bidandi’s educational path took him to Pakistan, where he pursued agricultural studies. Though different in geography, he remained part of the same wider generation of East African political minds shaped by South Asian post-colonial intellectual ferment.

Timeline box: The Bidandi political arc

The trio, Sapoba, and political journalism

Long before formal office, Bidandi, Kivejinja and Kintu Musoke were linked through a political-intellectual enterprise in Kampala.

They were shareholders in Sapoba Printing Press and Bookshop, an influential publishing and political discussion hub that later became associated with the broader world of activist journalism and political organising. Historical accounts describe them as “the trio” or “the troika.” Their publishing work helped create spaces where political education, nationalist discourse and journalism overlapped.

This connection is especially significant because Kintu Musoke also became associated with the founding culture of Ugandan political journalism and the wider intellectual tradition that later informed the Uganda Journalists Association.

In many respects, their political work was rooted in ideas before it was rooted in office.

Museveni, mentorship and political proximity

The rise of Yoweri Museveni did not emerge in an ideological vacuum.

He entered a political environment already populated by older organisers, nationalist thinkers, publishing activists and institutional tacticians.

Bidandi belonged to that environment.

He was part of the generation that preceded Museveni politically, and although he did not join the bush war directly, he remained linked to political actors who later formed the nucleus of the post-1986 state. After the National Resistance Movement took power, Bidandi joined government and became one of the most influential civilian figures in the new administration.

Kivejinja later became one of Museveni’s enduring ideological allies. Kintu Musoke rose to become Prime Minister. Together, the trio represented a bridge between pre-independence nationalist politics and the post-1986 NRM order.

The father of decentralisation

If there is one institutional legacy most closely associated with Bidandi, it is decentralisation.

As Minister of Local Government from 1989 to 2004, he became central to designing and expanding Uganda’s local government framework.

Districts, local councils and devolved administrative structures became defining features of the post-1986 state. His long tenure made him one of the most consequential civilian architects of local governance in modern Uganda.

Supporters viewed decentralisation as a democratic deepening of governance.

Critics later argued that proliferation of administrative units sometimes served political consolidation.

But few dispute that Bidandi helped lay the institutional architecture.

The 2001 slogan: “Olina kewekoledde…”

The 2001 presidential election would later become one of the most politically consequential chapters of Bidandi’s life. At the time, Bidandi campaigned energetically for Museveni’s re-election.

He did so believing that Museveni intended to respect constitutional term limits and that the 2001–2006 term would be his last. According to Bidandi’s later recollections, this understanding had been reflected in internal Movement discussions and in the political messaging of the period.

It was during that campaign season that Bidandi became associated with the now famous Luganda political line:

“Olina kewekoledde…”

Loosely rendered, the phrase appealed to citizens to reflect on what they themselves had gained, achieved or secured so that they reward Museveni with his last term in office.

In campaign politics, it became part of the persuasive emotional grammar of the 2001 election—an appeal grounded in continuity, gratitude and political closure.

For Bidandi, however, that slogan later acquired irony. When the political conversation shifted toward removal of presidential term limits, he increasingly felt that the understanding underpinning his support had been broken.

Archive box: 2001 and the turning point

Political significance of the slogan

• Bidandi publicly campaigned for Museveni’s re-election in 2001.
• He later said he had done so in good faith, believing it would be Museveni’s final constitutional term.
• When debate over extending tenure emerged, it marked the beginning of Bidandi’s rupture with the ruling establishment.

• The break with power

In 2004, Bidandi resigned from Cabinet.

His departure followed disagreement over constitutional change and the move towards removing presidential term limits. This was not a routine political disagreement.

It represented one of the earliest major public breaks by a senior insider of the NRM system. At a moment when many senior figures remained within the establishment, Bidandi chose separation.

He later founded the People’s Progressive Party, transforming himself from institutional insider into elder critic.

A politics of civility and restraint

Bidandi’s political style has always differed from that of many contemporaries.

He was rarely a politician of spectacle. He was more often a strategist, conciliator, organiser and institutional thinker.

That may partly explain why his historical weight often exceeds his daily visibility.

He belongs to the class of political actors whose influence is embedded not merely in speeches, but in systems.

Archival significance: understanding Uganda through Bidandi

Bidandi and Museveni during years of political partnership before their eventual split over constitutional term limits.

To study Bidandi is to study a wider political generation.

A generation:

• educated in the age of anti-colonial awakening,
• shaped by South Asian intellectual environments,
• rooted in publishing, journalism and political debate,
• and later drawn into the practical work of governing post-conflict Uganda.

In that story, Bidandi, Kivejinja and Kintu Musoke formed a durable bridge between the nationalist era and the NRM state.

And today, as Uganda continues to debate succession, institutional renewal and democratic continuity, Bidandi remains one of the important living custodians of that political memory.

Editorial note

Because the precise phrasing, distribution context and archival provenance of “Olina kewekoledde…” are often remembered through political memory and retrospective commentary rather than fully preserved campaign archives, Uganda Today may wish to present it as widely associated with Bidandi’s 2001 campaign messaging rather than as a formally documented official campaign slogan.

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