Manday Akol Amazima: Ibanda South – the constituency to watch come 2026

Every passing day, the political landscape in the country gets increasingly interesting and dynamic, with new players constantly emerging across the board. The year 2025 is the real year of political manoeuvres, with 2026 as the finish line. The declaration of Chrispus Welcome Asiimwe to contest the Ibanda South parliamentary seat brings a new dimension to the politics of Ibanda district and Greater Mbarara.

On the surface, Welcome Chrispus Asiimwe is seen as a lightweight, and Johnny is a come-lately. However, he represents a very solid and marginalised constituency or voting bloc that, if they all rally behind him, the incumbent Nkusiima John Paul Panadol and others will have a run for their money.

Welcome, Chrispus Asiimwe is a secondary school Kiswahili teacher and an alumnus of Makerere University, Kampala. Since his student days, he has been known for promoting Kiswahili as the lingua franca of the East African Community and also as the Pan African language for wider communication. This saw him crisscrossing the country with other student leaders drumming up support for the language.

Upon completion of his studies, he started the Star Swahili Link, an online initiative that promotes and teaches Kiswahili to Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. Star Swahili Link has created a platform through which Kiswahili teachers across the continent can be connected to potential institutions and individuals who wish to study Kiswahili.

Politically, Welcome Chrispus Asiimwe has been one of the youth in the MK Movement that later mutated to the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU). But what makes his candidature more significant is the fact that he represents two key groups that look to be marginalised yet very important and form a very big voting bloc.

Arigumaho John Paul, a renowned Kiswahili scholar and activist, says Uganda has over 30,000 Kiswahili teachers at both primary and secondary levels who are not fully employed. He adds that this is very ironic given that Kiswahili is a compulsory subject at lower secondary, yet most government schools have no Kiswahili teachers on the government payroll. Therefore, it is this group that seeks to support Chrispus’ candidature so that they can have one of their own in parliament to guide onthe  deployment of Kiswahili human resources locally and internationally.

Muhindo Johnson welcomes the candidature of Chrispus Asiimwe, saying that the arts teachers in the country have been turned into a laughing stock, and therefore, there is a need to have a group of arts teachers sponsored so that they can join parliament and push for the arts teachers’ agenda. Currently, arts teachers earn 30% of the earnings of their science counterparts.