Sunday August 21, 2016
Beti Kamya, president of the Uganda Federal Alliance political party and candidate in the 2011 presidential election, is one of the best analysts when it comes to explaining Uganda’s 50 years of political instability and discontent
Beti Kamya, president of the Uganda Federal Alliance political party and candidate in the 2011 presidential election, is one of the best analysts when it comes to explaining Uganda’s 50 years of political instability and discontent.
To her, it is not that there was or is an intrinsic problem or evil about Milton Obote, Idi Amin, Yusuf Lule, Godfrey Binaisa, Tito Okello and Yoweri Museveni.
Rather, it is the excessive power that was handed down to them as heads of state or which they managed to accumulate that is at the heart of Uganda’s political crisis.
If she were to become head of state and inherit similar powers, she would argue a few years ago, she could possibly end up abusing her position just as most of her predecessors have done.
Kamya, in her capacity as minister of Kampala, spent the last week on various radio and television talk shows trying to explain her viewpoint to Kampala City residents on the circumstances that led to her public wrangle with Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago.
The bitter differences of opinion that crept up in 2011 soon after Lukwago was elected Lord Mayor and Jennifer Musisi appointed executive director of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) quickly started to emerge soon after Kamya was named minister for Kampala.
On one hand, it might seem like Lukwago is the problem since he has clashed with Musisi, Kamya and Kamya’s predecessor Frank Tumwebaze.
But as Kamya explained on a local Luganda radio station on Saturday August 13, the problem is neither Lukwago nor the officials he is clashing with, but with the law that covers Kampala City.
In that sense, she remains the same rational Kamya whom many have come to admire. She does not reduce Ugandan politics to personalities and does not get into personal fights, choosing instead to insist on arguing that it is all down to a structural problem facing Uganda.
The question, then, is how all this gets resolved. How do we go about assessing and amending the law? Whose interests does it serve in its present form and whose would it serve if amended to iron out the conflicts it seems to create?
Before the Kampala City law or any other law can be considered, debated and revised, there must be people willing to want it revised.
There must be enough people or institutions with an interest in seeing the best for Kampala and Uganda. Once enough people are found who wish to see a better-planned and better-run city, then the next issue is with the details.
These politicians in Parliament and administrators of KCCA and the government who wish to see Kampala a better city must know what a law means. They must have enough understanding of what Kamya means by the law, not the personalities, being the problem.
They must understand what government, governing, delegation of powers and what power itself mean.
During the colonial decades leading up to independence in 1962, there were never reports of government officials clashing in the way they do today.
The only friction seemed to be that between the colonial government and the Buganda kingdom, Bunyoro kingdom, various independence activists and occasionally restless populations.The colonial governors were never as common in the news as our presidents and cabinet ministers. Most of us today would not recognise them if shown their photos.
The populism, the love of grand public speeches and gestures, none of this featured in Ugandan public life in the 1920s to 1950s.
Work plans were drawn up for the Owen Falls Dam, Entebbe airport, Mulago hospital, Makerere University, factories, schools, government ministries and departments and the work was simply down with no drama.
Today, almost everything in Ugandan policy and government work has taken on drama. Nothing seems to work quietly and systematically.
There is always that debate, that verbosity, that clashing between officials involved, the President stepping in to sort out the conflicts or to make them worse. Everybody in public life or holding political office seems to be crazy.
Given this kind of environment, can the law governing Kampala be amended without itself stirring up yet more friction and drama?
Who at KCCA or in the government will even understand that trimming some of their powers or re-drawing their duties is necessary for the running of the city, without feeling they are being undermined or persecuted?
It seems to me that at the heart of our historical political problems is not the absence of laws or there being wrong laws but rather a general lack of understanding in society.
There is not enough reading of international history by our politicians and government officials. There is barely any grasp of what government means. The top jobs at KCCA pay far above the Ugandan wage average.
In the meantime, despite the wrangles within government and KCCA, the city is starting to see improvements in its roads.
Chinese companies that at first built the main highways linking the major towns are now upgrading or repairing municipal roads in Kampala, Masaka, Gulu, Entebbe and Jinja.
Nalufenya Road entering Jinja Town from Kampala, the Airport Road in Entebbe leading to the airport, Yusuf Lule Road (formerly Kitante Road), the Kampala-Entebbe Expressway and others are under construction by Chinese equipment and supervisors.
The telecoms sector has seen a major improvement because of the input by private, foreign companies seeking a profit.
Could this be just what we need – not politicians running our country but foreigners with no vested political interests in Uganda and only driven by their need to turn a profit or conclude their contracts within schedule?
I shudder at how much I have recently come to learn through spending time researching Uganda’s economic history over the last 46 years.
The day government stepped into parastatals and nationalisd them marked the start of the economic decline of Uganda.
KCCA’s wrangles will not end any time soon. But the city could see an improvement in its infrastructure if somehow Chinese and other foreign companies take over the running of the city, which they are increasingly doing anyway.