Ngabiirwe champions justice in mines, oil fields

But Namatovu attributes this liberation to Winfred Ngabiirwe, a social justice activist and entrepreneur for over 18 years.

Ngabiirwe is the founder and executive director of Global Rights Alert (GRA), a civil society organisation, which has since 2009 sought to ensure natural resources benefit the people.

GRA operates in mineral-rich areas like Mubende, Kassanda, Kakumiro, Buliisa, Moroto and largely the Albertine region and in the 10 districts: Hoima, Kikuube, Kakumiro, Kyankwanzi, Gomba, Mubende, Lwengo, Sembabule, Kyotera and Rakai, through which the East-African Crude Oil Pipeline will pass.

The making

Growing up, Ngabiirwe wanted to be a Grade Five teacher “because most educated women in Mitooma [Western Uganda] were teachers.” Then, during high school she considered being a lawyer. But her brother told her that he could not raise the money to pay for her law course if she missed out on government sponsorship.

That’s how she filled Social Sciences and Social Administration (Swasa) as her second choice, even though it was a new course she knew little about.

She even had the chance to switch to law after entry, but unfamiliar with the system, she didn’t bother. Interestingly, Swasa would turn out the best choice, one that would define her like theology defines a priest.

“I have no regrets choosing Swasa,” she says. “I think I made the right decision. I know how change happens. I am more connected to people and I am more fulfilled.” No wonder, when she wanted to upgrade, she got a Masters in Human Rights from Makerere University.

For a year or two after university, she volunteered with Student Partnership Worldwide, a charity in Jinja, where she saw “unprecedented poverty” in Busoga. She abandoned a better job in a big organisation because her new boss demanded for sex in return.

Later she became one of the pioneer staff at Action Group for Health Human Rights & HIV/ AIDS (AGHA Uganda), formed by a group of doctors. That five-year experience helped her found GRA in 2009, diving into the excitement and worries about Uganda’s new oil wells.

Ngabiirwe recalls the tasking early days when she was the only employee of the organisation, when her computer and her baby were competing for her laps. Consulting with other civil society organisations like Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), alongside a supportive family enabled her sail through.

Brokering justice

In 2017, security operatives brutally evicted thousands of artisanal and small-scale gold miners from the mines in Mubende and Kassanda. GRA brokered negotiations between the miners, the representatives of AUC Mining (U) Limited, local and central government. Eventually, the artisanal miners were allowed to operate in other locations in the two districts but after investing millions of Shillings, they became frustrated that the amount of gold in new locations like Kaabikoola was not worth their investment.

Fresh negotiations forced AUC, co-owned by a long time presidential advisor, to surrender the one square kilometre block in the productive Kamusenene, back to the artisanal miners after three years.

But it’s one of the most protracted negotiations Ngabiirwe has ever witnessed. “I would wonder why the two parties couldn’t agree on most basic things.”

She says the evictees and the Mubende local government perhaps didn’t know the actual owner they were negotiating with. “So the demands, feedback and positions kept changing every time we met. The politics were scary.”

But government’s involvement encouraged the advocates to press on. However, without reliable geological data, no one could tell which area had what volumes of gold. Hence, choosing places like Kaabikoola was just a gamble.

Also, the artisanal miners negotiated from a weak point because by then the law didn’t not recognise them. Ngabiirwe believes that if this happened today, with more information, better organisation and more resources they could have gotten a better deal.

Empowering women

While negotiating a fair and speedy compensation to project-affected persons was a mountainous task, ensuring that women are part of these negotiations was another.

Growing up, Ngabiirwe had seen poor and marginalised women, but in oil-rich Hoima during the land compensation it was worse.

“I wondered whether people understood what land meant to the survival of a woman, her children and her family,” she says. “How can you talk about taking land and the women are not involved? how can men start signing for compensation of crops they don’t grow?” That triggered a revolution in her.

Meanwhile, in Mubende, women like Namatovu had always been part of the mining workforce, but relegated to vending food, drinks, airtime, artisanal equipment such as sieves or crashing, panning, washing, sorting, transporting dirt, ores, among other peripheral roles.

Men got richer, as the women, who worked longer hours, and without protective gear, stayed poor.

Ngabiirwe wanted to help women break the cultural and institutional barriers and start actual mining, and access the most value-bearing places like pits and fair markets, like men.

And the 2017 evictions were a blessing for women. “We figured it was the right time to organise them and help them negotiate better with the male leadership to have women recognised and supported. Efforts to resolve the evictions provided space for women much faster than it would have been,” Ngabiirwe says.

“We engaged the men to allow women to work, and be more productive in their families, while encouraging women to remain obedient to their husbands,” Namatovu says.

Though Namatovu was rebuked for preaching defiance among women, she says some men were more positive than women.

Interacting with GRA gave Namatovu exposure and confidence, and in 2019, she was selected by the government for a benchmarking tour into Geita Gold Mine in Tanzania.

Namatovu saved part of her allowance for the tour to pay for her mining licence and buying mining equipment.

“Now the Jalia who sold water and food in mines became a self-employed miner.”

Agali Awamu Women’s Group, which united women in catering, poultry and serving in mines, became Mubende Women Gold Miners Association (MUGMA), with Namatovu the chairperson, and one of the two women on the nine-member board of Mubende United Miners Assembly, an umbrella body of 22 organisations. 

As women entered actual mining, Namatovu says, many prioritised saving, more children went to school, and access better healthcare.

Sometimes women are not paid for their labour, sometimes men ask for sex when women ask them to go down in the pits, but Namatovu says such cases are fewer nowadays, thanks to the Police Mineral Protection Unit, and even the few cases are reported more than before, because women know their rights. But also because men are learning to respect those rights. Such is the level of empowerment that Namatovu dreams of representing Kassanda District in the next parliament.

Challenges

When GRA started out, there were few organisations advocating for the rights of project-affected communities in mineral-rich areas. Worse still, none was fighting for women’s rights. Awareness levels were equally discouraging.

“The work was just too much,” Ngabiirwe remembers.

Then the insecurity. “You couldn’t tell whose car is following you; some people could attend our meetings just to intimidate us.”

She was also summoned to the State House, for inciting the public. “There was too much harassment.”

Then inconsistency and betrayal, when the people she was helping seek justice could pull out.

Then slow justice. In 2015, the Masindi High Court ruled that the brutal eviction of 250 families of Rwamutonga village in Hoima was illegal. American waste management firm McAlester, abandoned the oil waste treatment plant project on the land, but for more months the evictees endured heavy rains and biting cold at night in makeshift shelters in a resettlement camp.

And to date the court is yet to determine the real owner of the land. Those residents could lose their land, and become homeless again.

Fearing oil curse

Venezuela, Angola, DR Congo and Nigeria mismanaged their oil due to gross corruption and neglecting non-oil sectors.

The first 13 years of gold mining in Geita, where Namatovu went for benchmarking, were a mess. Despite reaping about $100 million dollars in taxes each year, Geita endured poverty, with just few tarmacked roads, an acute shortage of clean water, with many water sources contaminated by the hazardous components like mercury and cyanide used by miners.

Experts attributed Tanzania’s resource curse to bad laws and the practices of mining companies.

Matters only improved recently with the implementation of the amended Mining Act that requires mining companies to have a local content plan. Now AngloGold Ashanti, the sole miner in since 1999, hires local transportation companies and invests billions of shillings in corporate social responsibility to bring better markets, hospitals, schools and universities closer to Geita.

But barely two years before the first oil barrel is extracted in Hoima, Ngabiirwe and others, who pushed for the progressive Mining and Minerals Act 2022, worry about its implementation.

“Our problem is not legislation, it is implementation. We have prepared too long and it will be meaningless if all our efforts don’t yield results,” Ngabiirwe said, emphasising that it all depends on political will.

And in a country used to corruption scandals, such worries cannot be exaggerated. Yet from the hopeful view, Norway and Canada may be distant, but Tanzania and Botswana are close examples.

NGOs future bleak

Benard Barugahara, the District Community Development officer, Buliisa, says NGOs like Action Aid, GRA, etc. have done enough.

But Onesmus Mugyenyi, the deputy executive director, ACODE, says CSOs still have the job of ensuring policies are implemented and further empowering women.

Yet the future seems bleak. The Democratic Governance Facility, which was the biggest funder of GRA and most NGOs, closed shop under government pressure. 

“Now we (NGOs) have to look for alternative sources of funding,” Ngabiirwe says.

Mugyenyi agrees. “With civic space narrowing and funding dwindling, we’re encouraging citizens to carry on the advocacy and in some community baraza’s they have been asking some tough questions, a sign of the civic competence we have created.”

Ngabiirwe adds that great community systems have allowed GRA work remotely from Kampala, which is important, especially now with little funding since Covid.

But all pray that the government appreciates them as agents of change and not enemies of progress.  “We hope for the best,” Namatovu says.

Recognition

Through its programmes like human and community resource rights; gender and inclusiveness; corporate accountability and transparency, GRA has tasked government, investors and communities for fair practices in mineral exploration.

Ngabiirwe sits on the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global initiative that promotes accountable management of oil, gas and mineral resources. In 2020, Uganda became the 54th member country of the EITI.