Mr Nicholas Sengoba
Sizable sections of Kampala were elated when news broke of the firing of the ED of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA,) Ms Dorothy Kisakka, her deputy David Luyimbazi and the Director of Health Daniel Okello.
Things have not been going too well for too long at KCCA; the institution that is tasked with the running of Uganda’s capital city. The roads have developed huge gullies prompting a new name for the city ‘Kampothole’ where garage bills for cars are on the rise. When it rains the roads become muddy and flooding takes over leading to loss of lives and property. This is despite millions of dollars spent in correcting the drainage over the years.
When it shines almost everything including cars, office equipment, paintwork, food, and merchandise is covered in dust. Those who treat and sell medicines for eye diseases, flu and cough are in business. So are the hair dressers. Report after report puts KCCA at the top of the corruption tree in all the local governments in the country. This prompted the Inspector General of Government to moot setting up a special desk at City Hall to sort out the mess.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the collapse on the August 10 of part of the 34-acre Kiteezi landfill killing more than 30 people with an estimated 50 still missing. Kiteezi is where the garbage generated by Kampala’s four million residents has been dumped since 1996 as a temporary measure. Unfortunately, it became a permanent solution even beyond its proposed date of closure in 2005 – almost 20 years ago.
That Kiteezi disaster finally led to its closure and then began another problem that KCCA had seemingly not anticipated. Without an alternative, the city and its suburbs filled with filthy uncollected garbage for days to add to the challenges the residents of Kampala faced. By the time President Museveni swung the axe, the people had had more than their fair share and breathed a sigh of relief for what many claimed was good riddance. A new team led by Frank Rusa Nyakaana is now in place and as usual new beginnings stir hope. I have nothing against Rusa and his deputy Robert Nowere but I am afraid for Kampala’s residents. They will soon discover that even if you appointed the Pope or Elon Musk to run Kampala, under the watch of Museveni, they will still fail.
Some have claimed it stems from the Kampala Capital City Act of 2011. That Museveni, tired of staying and working in a capital that perennially rejects him at the polls, ‘took over’ its management. He created a multiplicity of conflicting power centres. These include politically appointed ministers, the powerful ED to head the technical wing. Their competence in running cities is not very obvious.
The elected Lord Mayor who leads a political side full of councillors; many of whom were born and bred in the slums and are now tasked with transforming Kampala into a modern city. The two groups make more news by conflicting over everything. Then you have RCCs. Presidential Advisors a lot of whom are grateful to earn and pay school fees for their children. In the new arrangement the president borrowed a leaf from the late Zairean dictator, Mobutu Sese Sekko, where the latter centralized all resources including electricity in the capital Kinshasa. If a far-flung province angered him, he simply switched it off. All the money KCCA collects goes directly to the consolidated fund. Government releases funds at its own convenience. Corruption and incompetence notwithstanding, KCCA has been acutely underfunded for a long time to be judged fairly.
To really know when Kampala started getting wet, one has to look back to 1986 when the NRM rain started falling. The first step it took was to replace the old order and key to this was creating a moneyed or middle class that could be relied upon to fund the government. If such classes are to grow organically, they may take even a century. So, there was need for a ‘crash course’ to create one as an emergency. Corruption became its mainstay. The justification was that the new thieves of government funds were investing their money in Uganda and creating jobs plus widening the tax base.
The other was that it was cheaper to have satisfied thieves in the country than rebels in exile fighting the government. Corruption has depleted most public assets over the last 38 years. Sadly it has created a class of people with a misguided sense of entitlement and understanding of work is to unscrupulously and forcefully partake of government resources.
The number of such people keeps growing and they are preying on all government ministries, departments and authorities. All they do is to smell for opportunities wherever there is huge government money flowing and then find ways of taking a share. The recent arrest of MPs for allegedly trying to extort money to approve the budget of the Uganda Human Rights Commission is case in point. KCCA is in the eye of the storm simply because of its centrality and the focus placed on it as the capital city and the centre or Uganda’s economy.
In places like KCCA most (not all) tenders to build roads, collect garbage, billboards and advertising; anything with money percolates through various hands. It leaves a trail that ends up in the laps of protected, privileged and often untouchable people called the ‘Mafia’. The Mafia act as commission agents through proxies. The latter, who because of this protection, may deliver shoddy work and walk off unscathed. The blame is then put on the executive director and KCCA. If the mafia fails to penetrate any organisation because the gaffer refuses to cooperate in their corrupt schemes, they will use propaganda in the media and fabricate intelligence reports to taint them and move them out of the job.
Why we have to look to future with trepidation is that fact that the predatory middle class that the NRM has built is not going away soon. They are digging in and becoming more vicious as public resources to loot become harder to come by. They are like the carnivorous wild animals that stray from the wild and taste human flesh, which is more tender and easier to hunt. It is difficult for such animals to go back into the tedious and uncertain hunting in the wild.
The solution for such animals it to hunt them down and kill them. If the looting middle class is not put out of action then we shall change EDs at KCCA, reshuffle cabinets and RDCs but still remain with failed institutions. Unfortunately, Museveni can’t take such drastic action; for many of this class are his supporters or part of the wider web that forms his government. Even if he did, to teach the ethos of hard, honest work to people who for almost 40 years have been accustomed to easy ‘deal making’ is next to impossible.
Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues.
X: @nsengoba
