Is Mandela still the inevitable SC Villa presidential candidate?

2026-03-06 - 14:08

Farouk Meyiwa is hoping to become the seventh duly elected SC Villa supremo, when the club head to the polls on March 22. The possibility of being part of a cast that has had Patrick Kawooya (RIP), Franco Mugabe, Fred Muwema, Ben Misagga, William Nkemba, and Omar Mandela is perhaps too good to pass. The election process begins this week with the picking of nomination forms, something that Meyiwa has got to do. So far, he is the only individual that has shown intentions of going up against Mandela, for club’s presidency. But if Meyiwa were to be duly nominated, wouldn’t he be fighting against the inevitable? On Sunday, March 1, during the club’s first general assembly in four years, the members of the club passed a new law to guide on the elections: That whoever wanted to become SC Villa’s president, they were to deposit a non-refundable Shs 100 million onto the club’s account. To Mandela, a re-known businessman, that amount of money should be pocket change. But the fact that such an amount was set, and there was hardly any opposition to it, suggested that the electorate still want Mandela. Maybe it was orchestrated before the meeting as a tool to lock out any competition because Shs 100 million is a lot of money for any ordinary Ugandan? But according to Nkemba, the club’s CEO: “We had no involvement in it. It is the club’s members that proposed it and passed it on their own volition.” Notably, when Mandela took over from Nkemba in 2021, Villa were in such financial distress. The club was broken, and a real shadow of what they had been between 2014 and 2018, a period in which they won the Uganda Cup and duly challenged for the league under Misagga. With the fans disoriented, having seen their club smart with relegation, Villa as a brand, had become archaic. Yet, since the return of Mandela, a period which coincided with the club receiving Shs 3 billion from government, as compensation for their training ground in Nsambya, famously known as Villa Park, there has been a semblance of order. In the 2023/24 season, the Jogoos won a seventeenth record-extending league title. The sixteenth was won in 2004. But at the same time, there has been calm at the club, although for many of the current management’s critics, they remain disappointed by the fact that the club cannot keep its best players, let alone acquire those at other clubs, the way Villa used to 30 years ago, when they dominated Ugandan football. But Nkemba said: “When Mandela took power, his approach was that Villa should live within its means. Why pay over the top for one player, and fail to pay wages for the rest? We want to ensure the sustainability of this club. Yet, to do that, we must be smart about how we spend.” That said, Mandela’s first term officially ended last year. Yet, no elections were held, something the club never gave an explanation for then. To a section of the Villa fraternity, this looks like impunity, which does not put Mandela in good light. There is a sense that the people around him are afraid to correct him because he has the money. But the big-man syndrome is undoubtedly something this 51-year old club has been aiming to overcome. However, when the club’s constitution is broken, it brings into question Mandela’s ability to uphold good governance structures. That said, the club’s fans appear to have contributed to the club’s governance challenges. Since the establishment of the Villa Members Trust in 2020, after Mandela was elected in 2021, a host of them never returned to renew their annual membership subscription of Shs 50,000. Yet, it is those same people that are supposed to form the club’s assembly. With all said and done, Mandela’s rallying call last Sunday, was that all Villa fans should come back and be one. He emphasized that he is the man with the plan, to take Villa forward. Probably, he has the track-record seeing what a successful businessman he has been. While it is evident Mandela takes his time, the elephant in the room for many of his critics, is seeing the Shs 3 billion being invested in a club stadium soon. That should cool the tensions around the club.