The Chairman who chose the Village

The chairman of Bamutakudde Village was sworn in on a Tuesday afternoon.

From a distance, you could hear the cheering. The celebrations drifted across the village as residents witnessed the official swearing-in of Solomon Serwanja, the man they had elected by the slimmest of margins. He had won by a single vote. One hundred and six votes to one hundred and five. For two months, that victory had been contested. The challenge wound its way through the system before finally being resolved. He had won fair and square.

But shortly after taking the oath, he slipped away, not for a meal with supporters or a photoshoot or victory celebration. A man who had died a week earlier was being buried that afternoon, and the chairman was expected there. It felt like an appropriate introduction to both the man and the office he had chosen. Before there would be plans and projects, speeches and ambitions, there was the work itself. Funerals, family and community disputes, meetings, celebrations, listening, showing up. The everyday business of being an LC1 chairman. Let us get the accolades out of the way and focus on the work at hand. Solomon is a journalist, an award-winning investigative reporter, a former CEO and a PhD holder. In another version of this story, those achievements would sit at the centre. They would explain why people are paying attention to him. But they do not explain why people are paying attention to Bamutakudde. The reason I am visiting this village.

For months, updates coming out of this village in Ddundu Parish, Kyampisi Sub-county in Mukono District have been attracting national attention. There had been medical camps. There had been school fees drives. Young people enrolling in skills training. Trees distributed to residents. Cleaning exercises. Farming initiatives. Community meetings that seemed unusually well organised and attended. Solomon was documenting all this progress on his X handle. I was following. And if I am honest, the first time I saw a campaign poster with Solomon's name on it, I laughed. The idea was not ridiculous, it was just unexpected. The village name also did not help matters. Solomon explained later that the name came from an incident that happened when a leopard scratched a native of the village. The idea was also unexpected because I thought Solomon to have too much going for and with him, with his investigative reporting, to take on this task. So I wanted to understand the why of this decision.

I arrived several hours before our appointment. Partly because I prefer arriving early and partly because William, (on camera), and I were afraid of traffic. Solomon's office was closed when we got there. We parked under a tree a few feet away and waited, observed. Bamutakudde is not a wealthy village at least not in any way that wealth immediately presents itself. It has a sense of order. The roads were relatively clean. Homesteads had been swept. You could see the familiar lines left behind by long grass brooms running across compounds. There was remarkably little litter. Nothing about it felt performative. It simply felt like people were paying attention to their surroundings. Solomon came by to say hullo before rushing off for the funeral. As we waited, we struck up a conversation with Wilson Ntulume, the media production specialist responsible for many of the photographs and videos through which much of Uganda has come to know Bamutakudde. "Elections were crazy," Wilson said with a laugh.Then he paused. "But I feel like people loved him from the beginning." That was not entirely true, of course. A one-vote victory tells you that nearly half the village wanted somebody else as chairman. Yet as Wilson continued talking, I began to understand what he meant. He was not talking about politics, he was talking about trust, the kind of trust that builds when people start to believe that somebody genuinely cares about them. He told us stories.

There had been a medical camp where around 58 medical professionals had volunteered their services. Nearly 700 people from seven surrounding villages came seeking treatment. One elderly woman arrived with severe tooth pain. "The doctors worked on her," Wilson recalled. "Then she told them her leg was also hurting. They helped with that too. She was at the swearing-in ceremony. She's in her seventies. She was dancing so vigorously!" He laughed as he told the story. "I saw her and many others today and realised something. We have a lot of elderly people in this village." There was another woman who had struggled with dental problems for years. Through one of the camps she received treatment and also got reading glasses. At another outreach, more than 300 pairs of glasses were distributed to community members.

We often describe development with statistics. Seven hundred people accessing medical services. Three hundred pairs of glasses distributed. Dozens of medical workers mobilised. But the members of a community look at what development does for them as individuals too. An elderly woman who can now chew her food without pain, others being able to read again, youth with skills to get competitive jobs, children now in school. In two months, Bamutakudde has seen: Twenty young people receive free culinary training. Families taught how to rear poultry, with an ambition that every household could eventually maintain at least thirty birds. Trees, hoes, and maize distributed. A tractor making its way through the village, helping clear land for cultivation. Resources mobilised to help children return to school. Medical camps reaching hundreds and more. Bamutakudde is not benefiting alone. "People are giving back to the community because of the leadership they are seeing," Wilson said.

Leadership, at its best, does something interesting. It convinces people that their contribution matters, creates confidence that if they put in their time, money, expertise or energy, something worthwhile will happen. William and I arrived in Bamutakkude close to midday. In many villages, you will see children out and about playing along roadsides or gathered under trees. The first group of children we encountered was dressed in school uniform. They could not have been more than four or five years old. One little girl stopped beside our vehicle, knelt respectfully to greet us and continued on her way. The children of Bamutakudde are in school. Solomon finally joined us. Apologies came first. He still has that humility I knew him to have years ago in a newsroom in the basement of the Serena Conference Centre – leave alone his tough interviewer demeanor. Success has a way of changing some people. It had not seemed to alter him very much. We settled into conversation beneath the trees. His explanation for becoming an LC1 chairman did not begin with politics.

"One thing that disturbed me," he said, "is that many of us do not know the communities where we live." He described a life that felt very familiar. "People wake up at dawn. They prepare children for school. They travel to work. They spend the entire day trying to earn a living. By the time they return home, they are tired. The gate closes. The evening passes. The cycle begins again the next morning. You don't know your neighbour," he told me. "You don't know your chairman until you need a stamp. You don't know who is struggling. You don't know what is happening outside your fence." At some point, those realities started bothering him. Then one evening, something happened that transformed that discomfort into a seed. A neighbour began operating machinery late into the night, processing elephant grass for cattle feed. The noise made sleep impossible. Solomon walked to the home of the village chairman and reported the matter. The chairman effectively dismissed the complaint, explaining that the neighbour had money and influence. The door closed in his face. He was bothering the chairman. "I remember asking myself, why should I be led by somebody like that?" he said. "I felt I could make a better contribution to the village." Looking back, he sees that moment as a turning point. When village elections came around, he offered himself as a candidate. Many people assumed he was joking. He was not. What followed was an education.

"The ground does not know your celebrity status," he told me, smiling. Years of professional accomplishment counted for very little once he started walking door to door. People wanted to talk about their lives, their children, their farms, their struggles, their hopes. "People don't want to know who you are," he said. "They know their problems." So he listened. He listened to supporters, critics, people who dismissed him before he even opened his mouth. He humbled himself enough to accept that understanding the village mattered more than impressing it. When the election was eventually decided by a single vote, he understood that leadership would require bringing everyone along.

One of the first things he did as chairman was reach across political divides. People who had supported rival candidates were invited into conversations about the future. Ideas were gathered. Priorities identified. Discussions were held. From those conversations emerged a vision for what Bamutakudde could become. He ticks it off his hand. “A clean village, a green village, a village where children remain in school, a village where young people have opportunities, a village with better health outcomes, a village that planned for its future instead of simply reacting to its problems.” What appears to be unfolding in Bamutakudde today is, in many ways, a reflection of Solomon's professional background. He speaks often about systems. About governance. About accountability. About structures that outlive individuals. In Bamutakudde, there are committees, community cells (a concept he borrowed from Watoto church), a council of elders, a strategic plan, mechanisms for coordinating activities and mobilising residents. To some people, that may sound excessive for a rural village but to Solomon, it is simply applying lessons learned elsewhere to the place he calls home. I wondered loudly if a lot of the progress was courtesy of friends with deep pockets. "It is not my money or my friends money, people have seen hope," he told me. "Hope that villages can be transformed. Hope that when people organise themselves, things can happen." That hope has attracted volunteers, partners and supporters.

Eventually our conversation turned to the future. I asked what happens when the excitement fades. What happens when Solomon is no longer chairman? "The systems should continue. What we want to build is not dependency on a leader. It is ownership by a community.” An important distinction. We know how often personality-driven initiatives disappear when the personality leaves. But cultures, communities and values endure. I asked him what he hoped I would find if I returned in five years. “A greener village. A community park. Streetlights. A nursery school. A football pitch. Better health services. Young people earning a living. Children who are supported, disciplined and hopeful about their future.” A simple yet ambitious vision. Yet after spending a day in Bamutakudde, it did not sound impossible.

A journalist and CEO became an LC1 chairman. He challenged me and perhaps even you. “Whether you are a teacher, doctor, journalist, engineer, farmer, business owner or police officer, your community needs something you know how to do. You may not become chairman. you may never hold office, but you can contribute, you can give your time, you can share a skill, you can solve a problem in your village.”

Good things are happening in Bamutakudde.