Mr Anthony Natif. Photo/Courtesy
On the afternoon of September 24, State House released news of the President Museveni’s sacking of three top Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) officials – Ms Dorothy Kisaka, the executive director, her deputy David Luyimbazi and Dr Daniel Okello, the director of Public Health – over what the President termed “a decisive response to the findings of the Inspector General of Government (IGG) report concerning the Kiteezi landfill disaster” where 35 city dwellers lost their lives under a hip of rubbish.
The news was received with a mix of surprise and excitement. Surprise because this is a government adept at sweeping ineptitude under the rag, in preference for political expediency. Excitement because it felt like action had been taken to hold to account the officials under whose direct supervision the Kiteezi landfill disaster happened. Charges of criminal negligence are being mooted. They are long overdue.
For years, KCCA has been run like a criminal enterprise that sacrifices city dwellers at the altar of administrative ineptitude. The case of Cissy Namukasa, a lady who on a rainy May 2020 afternoon drowned in an open manhole in Nakawa, illustrates this point. Following her death, Legal Brains Trust through Mr Isaac Ssemakadde sued KCCA on behalf of all Kampala dwellers and on behalf of Namukasa and “other similarly situated persons aggrieved by the loss of life, limb and property as a result of KCCA’s failure, jointly and severally, to protect them from unsafe and hazardous roads, drainage channels, sewers and related infrastructure”.
The case is Legal Brains Trust Ltd vs Kampala Capital City Authority and Attorney General of Uganda. It was before then head of the Civil Division of the High Court, Justice Michael Elubu. The court agreed with Mr. Ssemakadde that Namukasa’s life was violated and, among other things, ordered KCCA “to put in place and enforce a clear plan to protect city dwellers, especially pedestrians from potential loss of life, limb and property as a result of unsafe and hazardous roads, drainage channels, sewers, and related infrastructure”.
They were ordered to come up with this plan and report to Parliament within three months of the date of judgment; November 1, 2021. Four years and hundreds of citizens’ lives later, we are still in the same administrative doldrums. No plan, a city with roads that can put potato gardens in Kigezi to shame, sewerage competing with flood waters for whatever is left of roads plus all manner of crime and filth.
One hopes that the President’s move to sack some of the top KCCA leaders marks a turning point in the fortunes of a city brought to its knees by what can be described as dereliction of duty. There’s, however, a lingering fear that the Executive is only doing this to assuage the public’s anger, and score some political points, only to deploy them elsewhere as is usually the case.
One, however, hopes this is not the case because the street cleaners and other Kampalans who probably are still dancing in the streets at the news of the sackings will have had a premature celebration. Cissy Namukasa and other deaths will still collectively haunt us.
Mr Anthony Natif is a team head, Public Square, @TonyNatif
