Combo (L-R): KCCA executive director Dorothy Kisaka, her deputy Eng David Luyimbazi and KCCA director of Public Health Dr Daniel Okello. PHOTOS/ FILE
First, it claimed the scalp of Jennifer Musisi, who at the time seemed to be permanent furniture at the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA).
After, Erias Lukwago, the City Lord Mayor, went lyrical, singing his heart out after the exit of his biggest nemesis at the City Hall. When Ms Musisi was the KCCA executive director, the two were always at loggerheads.
Then came the short-lived Mr Andrew Kitaka whose acting term ended when President Museveni appointed Ms Dorothy Kisaka. Until her appointment, Ms Kisaka had been heading the Covid-19 response secretariat. After jumping onto the saddle at City Hall, she too would be scorched. After only three years.
Amidst all this, the voters in Kampala have kept Mr Lukwago at the City Hall, in a political role that is largely ceremonial. When the central government effectively set the technical and political wings against each other by creating an Authority in 2011, Kampalans were told it would address problems such as the landfill disaster at Kiteezi that eventually cost Ms Kisaka her job.
Easy pickings?
While Lord Mayor Lukwago welcomed the sacking of some of KCCA’s top brass this past week, he hastened to urge the ombudsman to make public the report that called into question the handling of Kiteezi landfill.
He said Ugandans deserve to know the specific roles each individual played in the Kiteezi tragedy that resulted in the loss of life.
“The IGG must make the report public, the findings have to be known. Ugandans need to know who did what or who failed to do what and generally who is responsible for the catastrophe,” he said.
“We expected Gen Museveni to visit Kiteezi but he did not do so. Mr Museveni ought to apologise to Ugandans for the mess that has happened in the institution of KCCA because he never took this matter seriously from day one,” Mr Lukwago said of Uganda’s head of state.
The Kampala Lord Mayor said Ms Kisaka, her deputy David Luyimbazi, and the Director of Public Health, Dr Daniel Okello, are not the only individuals responsible. More people within KCCA, he added, should be held accountable and questioned.
The ombudsman’s report makes clear that the three were criminally negligent, with Ms Minsa Kabanda, the Kampala minister, saying at their handover of tools of trade on Friday that they should have done more to accentuate the scale of the crack at the landfill in Kiteezi. On his part, Mr Luyimbazi stopped short of saying they were easy pickings.
“To decommission Kiteezi we needed resources, to stop dumping we needed resources, to find a new site we needed resources, and all those three factors were not available. So the resources for the new site that was identified were not available,” he said.
Mr Luyimbazi also said they did what they could with the little resource envelope to address the crisis at Kiteezi, but given the magnitude of the landfill, they could not do much and had to pay the price for what happened.
Politics in the capital
For much of the time, since Museveni and his rag-tag rebels took power in 1986, the capital and its surrounding areas have always left him red-faced in their political choices.
Save for the earlier years, between 1986 and 1997, when Wasswa Ziritwala was at the helm at the City Hall from 1987 to 1989 and then later Christopher Yiga took the mantle of the city from 1989 to 1997, the capital has been in the hands of the Opposition.
The government after facing harsh realities from the voters in the city in 2010 introduced the KCCA Bill which was passed and became an Act of Parliament. This transitioned the former city council into an Authority, the Kampala Capital City Authority.
In 2011, the KCCA officially started operations, with Ms Musisi as its first executive director. The government also trimmed down the powers of the city's political side and made it a titular head with no political powers to make decisions. Two ministerial positions for both the Cabinet and the State minister have since been created.
Ms Musisi started with a budget of Shs103 billion, which in the 2012/2013 financial year rose to Shs162.6 billion. In 2013/2014, the Authority’s budget further shot up to Shs199 billion and in 2014/2015 soared to Shs433 billion.
In 2015/2016, the budget was cut down to Shs370 billion. During the next financial year, the projected budget shot up again to Shs561.33 billion. By the time Ms Musisi resigned in 2018, the KCCA budget had once again been reduced to Shs337.4 billion.
Downward spiral
In June 2020, President Museveni appointed Ms Kisaka as the executive director, replacing Mr Kitaka, who had been acting after Ms Musisi left. Ms Kisaka kicked off her era with a Shs441 billion budget.
However, while hopes were high, it was during her tenure that Kampala was christened by social media activists as the pothole capital city of the world. Ugandans took to Twitter and other social media sites to exhibit the potholes, attracting widespread attention. The Kiteezi landfill tragedy ended up being the final straw that broke the camel’s back.
As the junior Kampala minister, Mr Kabuye Kyofatogabye, is pretty much the political supervisor of KCCA technical and political wings that manage the affairs at the City Hall.
The minister had no kind words for Lord Mayor Lukwago, saying he spends a disproportionate part of his office hours on doing activism for the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party’s Katonga faction, which he heads
“He comes to pick up fuel and allowances and then drives back to Katonga. If only the Lord Mayor could spend just one week—five days—focused on his duties, perhaps he would accomplish a lot more,” Minister Kyofatogabye said, adding
“Lukwago should actually be the first person to resign as the Lord Mayor. I wonder where he finds the audacity to walk around with his head held high amidst all this chaos in the city. He should be grateful to all of us who have helped him maintain a good image despite him being a bad person.”
Slept on the job
Minister Kyofatogabye however admitted that officials at the City Hall led by Ms Kisaka slept on the jobs and had to take responsibility for what happened at Kiteezi.
“You are only noticing the garbage problem due to the Kiteezi crisis, but we have been grappling with the rubbish issue for the last two years. Each time, the executive director needed reminding about why the garbage was not being collected,” he told Sunday Monitor.
“The challenges we face in KCCA include rampant corruption and misuse of funds at the hands of the executive director, who had become something of a goddess. Maybe some people because of their line of duty wouldn't have been dismissed so that they could learn to do better. The firing of the KCCA officials was surprising to me, yet not entirely unexpected. It came at a time when we thought we could first find a way out of this mess, but it was also long overdue,” he added.
Mr Emmanuel Dombo, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party director for publicity, this past week blamed the events at the City Hall on politicking. He added that while the government would have loved to do better for the capital, the same has faced resistance from the city hall led by the Lord Mayor who is an Opposition figure.
“The city in itself has a structural problem because it is a city headed by the Opposition. The majority of the councillors are the Opposition. But he also has an executive which is appointed, and a technical team which is appointed by the President. Now these two different groups are ideologically apart,” Dombo said, adding, “You have seen the Honourable Lukwago in the past, when NRM has done roads, or the government has provided money to do roads, he took Dr [Kizza] Besigye to commission them as president of the people's government. Is this rational? Is it by common sense? So if you are the one in charge of the administration of the country and government, would you be amused and would you be happy?”
Mr Dombo said the current quagmire can only be sorted by Kampala voters who must discard the Opposition and allow the ruling party to manage the city both technically and politically.
“KCCA has got a fundamental problem which will have to be addressed by the voters if they understand or if not then which must be sorted out by the public service by identifying people who can deliver in the existing environment but I don't know how they would do it,” he said.
Mr Dombo said the two sides need to sit down and work as a team to avoid what is happening in the city.
He further reasoned that as long as the governance issue is not addressed the beat will go on.
“We need to harmonise politics and the technical arm of the city and once we do that, then we must urge for more funding as long as there is harmony on how the money is going to be supervised,” he concluded.
