In the aftermath of the deadly collapse of the garbage mountain at Kiteezi near Kampala, President Yoweri Museveni asked: “Who allowed people to live near such a potentially hazardous and dangerous heap?” I believe that the president asked this question in good faith. It was another reminder that his dream to modernize Kampala had become a nightmare.
Not that the president needed the Kiteezi disaster to tell him that millions of Ugandans were living in dangerous physical environments, a phenomenon that will be a major part of his legacy. Our president, who has crisscrossed the country numerous times in his four decades in power, has watched citizens and foreigners invade wetlands, rivers, lakes, hillsides, roadsides, forests, nature’s drainage systems, game reserves, and so much else.
Our president has watched the progressive uglification of Kampala, Entebbe and nearly all our country’s previously planned towns. He has watched Kampala’s drainage channels blocked by “developers” that have placed their personal wealth above public health. Anarchy masquerading as development has become the norm in a country that the British colonial rulers had left on a good path to become one of the best planned and organized in the region. Why, even the once beautiful junction where the road from the president’s home at Rwakitura joins the Masaka-Mburara Highway has become an unplanned eyesore that will soon become a town, without safe sanitation and solid waste management.
To his credit, Museveni once had a dream of a modernized, beautiful and efficiently managed Kampala. Whereas he was driven by a desire to wrest control of Kampala from his political opponents, Museveni’s decision to create a well-funded and professionally led administration of Kampala was one of his most admirable measures. The Kampala Capital City Act, 2010 formalized the creation of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) in 2011. He appointed a dream team of Jennifer Semakula Musisi and Dr. Judith Tukahiirwa Tumusiime as Executive Director and Deputy Executive Director of KCCA, respectively. He supported and encouraged them, complete with visiting them at their work.
Jennifer and Judith hired professionals to staff different departments and applied scientific management methods to develop an efficiently run city. Dr. Tumusiime, a world-class expert in her field, embarked on a plan to reverse Kampala’s legendary filth and achieve an effective and financially profitable solid waste management system. Excellent evidence-based blueprints were prepared, and public-private partnerships were sought. The immediately visible transformation of Kampala under the leadership of these two women earned them local and international approbation. For example, folks from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, came calling, in search of ideas about solid waste management.
However, President Museveni destroyed his own dream by politicising the leadership of Kampala. First, he appointed a minister for Kampala, and attempted to sideline the mayor, deputy mayor and councillors who were the elected political leaders of the city. Second, he watched Jennifer and Judith being harassed, threatened and disempowered by his political and security cadres who preferred a chaotic, and corrupt Kampala that would sustain their lucrative deal-making.
The 2016 presidential elections gave these NRM political and security cadres an opportunity to break Museveni’s support for his dream team at KCAA. The Mafia quietly campaigned again Museveni, using his campaign funds to ensure that Kampala would vote for the president’s opponents. They knew that if Museveni lost Kampala again, he would sacrifice Jennifer Musisi and her team.
In the event, Museveni’s share of the Kampala votes in 2016 was 37 percent lower than he had received in 2011. Kizza Besigye, his main opponent, increased his votes in Kampala by 50 percent. Incensed by his poor standing in Kampala, Museveni did exactly what the Mafia had hoped to achieve. He turned against Jennifer Musisi, and declared that her attempts to clean, organize and modernise Kampala had cost him support at the ballot box. He pulled the rug from under the two women.
The Mafia intensified their efforts to render the KCCA leaders ineffective, complete with threats that helped break their spirits. Dr. Judith Tumusiime resigned from her well-remunerated position as deputy executive director of KCCA on October 15, 2016. In her resignation letter to President Museveni, Judith informed him that her team’s efforts to do their work had been curtailed by political, social and economic challenges that affected her physical and mental health. She soon fled to the United States, without a pre-arranged job, but with confidence that her life would be safe. Today, Judith Tumusiime is a highly regarded leader in her field in the United States. Jennifer Musisi soldiered on a while, but eventually resigned on October 28, 2018. She joined her colleague in the United States.
Tumusiime and Musisi’s departure seems to have stalled the actualization of the city’s plans for professional waste management. The plans to abandon garbage disposal at Kiteezi, which had been used for that purposed since 1996 and had reached maximum capacity, were suspended. More than 800,000 tonnes of garbage continued to be dumped at Kiteezi every year. This represented about half of the garbage produced in Kampala. The other half continued to be improperly disposed, with obvious health and environmental consequences.
Meanwhile, the stringent measures that the Musisi/Tumusiime team had implemented were relaxed, to the pleasure of Kampala’s less fastidious residents. However, this relaxation of rules did not help Museveni’s political fortunes. In the 2021 elections, Museveni and his NRM lost Kampala completely. More importantly, Kampala continued to regress, even as its solid waste continued to raise the elevation of the garbage dump at Kiteezi, worsening its steep unstable slopes, surrounded by poor drainage channels, and producing dangerous malodourous landfill gas. It was a deadly accident waiting to happen.
The answer to Museveni’s question is simple. It is the wrong question. The question should be: “Who allowed Kiteezi to continue to grow next to people’s homes?” The dump at Kiteezi should have been turned into a very safe landfill site many years ago. It is Mr. Museveni who created conditions that led to the disaster at Kiteezi. He took charge of the city, including garbage management and disposal, through a cabinet minister reporting to him, and an autonomous corporate management organ that neutered the city’s elected political leadership.
Then Museveni neutered his KCCA dream team because of his personal political disappointment. Along with this, our president created a corruption-friendly environment that threatened excellent professionals that had the ability and passion for safe and effective management of garbage in Kampala. Kiteezi was a consequence of failed governance. And the buck stops at the president’s desk.
©️Muniini K. Mulera