Last week a video of the honorable Kato Lubwama aired where, in Luganda he said something to the effect that ““I have always told my people in Rubaga, I asked them to vote for me to ‘eat’. For now, I am asking them to vote for me and we ‘eat’ together.”
He went on to say that he was a brand in himself and didn’t have to ride on the coat tails of any party, if anything the parties should be lining up behind him.
I am sure Kato Lubwama had a lot more to tell the good people of Rubaga South to win in 2016, but the aforementioned soundbites are what he is remembered for.
People in polite society clicked their tongues and shook their heads in bewilderment, more so when he won the seat.
I have met the honourable member of parliament once, before he had ascended to the august house, jokes were popping out of his ears all through lunch.
His humour was not of the thigh-slapping brand but the kind that requires you pay attention and seat still for the punchline. I wondered at the time how he could be a hit in downtown Kampala, but then later it occurred to me that he had actually tailored his humour for the people we were dining with, corporate types from a leading beverages company.
It takes intelligence to do that. Tailoring the message to the audience is a thing any self respecting politician needs to get a grip of.
So while I laughed with everybody else when I heard his campaign pitch in 2016, I paused to think when he actually won the seat.
Have you ever been in front of an audience and tried to draw a laugh? It is not easy. Among other things you need to know the audience, sensitive to the times and be keenly aware of ebb and flow of its mood. Lubwama has been doing this for years in the theaters that his constituents patronise.
So you dismiss Lubwama as a politician to your own detriment.
But it says interesting things not only about the voters of Rubaga South, at least the ones who swept Lubwama into the house, but all voters in Uganda.
There are people mostly the elite who want our elections to be “issue based”. By this they mean it should be based on issues of service delivery, human rights, economics and all those high sounding terms you come into contact with at higher levels of schooling.
But for the majority of the population they are thinking at a very granular level their issues are teacher absenteeism, lack of medicines at the health center and the dust on their roads. And also,
I suspect, elections are also a chance to stick a finger in the eye of their nose-in-the-air cousins who went to school or are from Kampala, whichever applies...
The Lubwama story reminds me of an analogy of leadership I came across years ago.
It was a cartoon with two men looking down into the valley at a big mass of people walking, “There go my people. Let me go ask them where they are going so I can lead them there,” one of the onlookers told his friend.
I suspect Lubwama is the embodiment of this type of leadership and you cant argue with success.
The leadership gurus will argue that there are major shortcomings to this kind of leadership, that “What is popular is not always right and what is right is not always popular.”
"Leadership they argue is about understanding not only your people’s aspirations but also selling them better or higher alternatives, which may be at the cost of great patience and sacrifice and offering to help the reach the promised land...
Some of our finest leaders understand their responsibility in this way, but are realistic enough to know they need to play to the gallery and once in power push the greater good they have envisaged for their people.
The danger is always one of managing expectations.
While you are laying the foundation for the long term vision how do you respond to your constituents when you are not at every funeral or the road remains dusty or running water continues to be a pipe dream (pun intended)?
So spare a thought for our politicians – a group ordinarily difficult to sympathise with, at the hoops they are having to jump through to catch their constituents’ eye, while trying to hang on to the last of their principles.
Maybe they are better off laying their true motives on the table like Lubwama and hoping for the best.
