Months after the 2016 elections Anderson Burora met Norman Tumuhimbise, the coordinator of the Jobless Brotherhood, a pressure group that was advocating for good governance in the country.
The Sunday meeting, which took place at Sabrina’s Pub on Bombo Road, followed numerous calls from Burora pleading to join the group and further the cause of justice.
It had been long in the making.
During the 2016 election campaigns, Burora intitially supported Amama Mbabazi and mobilised for him. Later as it became clear that Mbabazi’s prospects of winning the election were dim, Burora decamped to Museveni’s camp and was warmly received by Molly Kamukama, the then head of the NRM chairman office based in Bugolobi.
After the election, Kamukama organised an ideological training for Burora and other NRM youth at the National Leadership Institute in Kyakwanzi.
In Kyakwanzi, Kamukama, who had now been appointed the principal private secretary to the president, assured the group that after the course they would be appointed RDCs or Assistant RDCs.
As he headed home, Burora was excited. Bigger things were on the way, he thought to himself.
Two, three, four, five months later, the promised jobs had not yet materialised.
Running out patience and desperate to be noticed, Burora htached a cynical plan: He would join Tumuhimbise’s group, known for dumping yellow pigs at public institutions.
This was the main agenda of the Sabrina Pub meeting. Tumuhimbise did not trust Burora due to his NRM links so on the day of the meeting, he arrived an hour early to ascertain whether this was a set up.
“I took cover to see which other people would come with Anderson since I knew that Museveni’s security agents were capable of using him to kidnap me. Luckily he arrived alone. I saw him calling me as I took more minutes to ascertain if indeed he was alone. Minutes later I called him back and directed him to where I was seated. At first his smile seemed genuine, he narrated to me how he was was a disgruntled NRM youth who admired our group’s activism,” Tumhumbise recollected in a piece that he wrote on one of the online blogs.
After the meeting, Burora was officially recruited into the brotherhood but there were still suspicions about his intentions.
When the group launched the “Citizens Campaign against Corruption” where they planned to dump yellow painted pigs on the door steps of some of the institutions they considered corrupt, Tumhumbise decided to test whether Burora was a genuine activist or spy.
A day before the real action, he revealed to Burora the places where the pigs would be dumped.
By 6.00 am on the day the execution, Tumuhimbise says there was military and police presence around the places where the pigs would be dumped.
When he tried to get through to Burora, his phones were off. They changed tact, selected another place to dump the pigs.
Later Burora apologised and said he had gotten a problem. He relunctantly agreed to join them at Parliament where they had planned to throw pigs to show their opposition to the lifting of the presidential age limit.
Yet what was confounding, according to Tumuhimbise, was the way Burora was fraternising with the police officers after they had been arrested.
His true colours came out when Burora joined the pressure group “Kick Age Limit out of Constitution” which was led by Ibrahim Kitatta, the Lwengo LCV chairman.
The group mobilised for Museveni in the 2021 elections and a year later, Burora was appointed deputy Resident City Commissioner for Rubaga.
But his restlessness came to the fore early this year when he started criticising senior public officers notably Speaker Anita Among.
He resigned as RCC and formed a pressure group, NRM-In-Resistance. He instantnly became a national sensation and many of his critics started labelling him as a “hero.”
Today, he is battling charges of spreading malicious information and the national media is at attention.
His political capital has grown tremendously.
