Kampala Citichat 22 March 2002

CITICHAT 11/2002 - 22 March 2002


Kampala – “The Hill of Antelopes” – Kasozi k’mpala

Early in the twentieth century, Winston Churchill described Uganda as the “Pearl of Africa”. Declared a British Protectorate in 1894, it eventually became independent from British colonial rule in 1962. After an initial period of relative stability and economic progress, the country was plunged into political chaos. In 1971, army chief Idi Amin seized power and the country descended into an orgy of ethnic violence, wholesale disregard for the rule of law and the sanctity of life and economic chaos. Even after Amin’s subsequent fall, the country was wracked with civil war as Milton Obote returned to power for the second time followed by some other short- lived regimes. It wasn’t until the National Resistance Movement (NRM) under the current President, Yoweri Museveni, took power and formed a government of national unity in 1986 that Uganda started the long, hard road back to constitutionalism and democracy.

In 1995 a new Constitution was promulgated. Under the Constitution, Parliament is the supreme organ of Government. Whilst political parties can register, multi party activity has been suspended and political participation in government is based on individual merit. Today, Uganda continues to be run under a government of National Unity and this approach has been upheld through a national referendum held in 1999. Once the new Constitution was crafted, Museveni called for nominations for presidential candidates in 1996 and then won the resultant election with 75% of the votes against two other candidates. At the end of his five-year term there were many more presidential hopefuls but he was again returned for a final five years this time garnering 69% of the vote. The elections were largely considered by both foreign and local observers to be free and fair.

The country has prospered under Museveni and the Government of National Unity. The economic growth rate over the past decade has averaged 6% per annum, inflation has been maintained below 10% for the past four years. There are no restrictions to foreign ownership of investments and no barriers to remittance of dividends. The country offers a highly competitive incentive regime for private investors. The government has made it clear that its recovery is based on a strong private sector and has seriously gone about creating an environment in which business can flourish. A recent United Nations publication records that the Government has pursued a steady policy of improving the investment climate by reducing bureaucracy, streamlining the legal framework, fighting corruption and stabilising the economy. Although the current government started from a low base following the years of anarchy, they have set about the recovery process in a progressive, deliberate and measurable way providing goals for each and every segment of their economy. Every indicator has shown positive growth over the past ten years, whether it be in education, water provision, telecommunications, agriculture, manufacture, privatisation, housing or health. Although the country must still be acknowledged as ‘poor’, its specific focus on poverty alleviation has resulted in a drop in poverty incidence of twelve percent between ’92 and ’98 – representing two million people. The Government Poverty Eradication Programme is based on:

• Creating a framework for economic growth and transfotrmation

• Promoting good governance and security

• Actions which directly increase the ability of the poor to raise their incomes and

• Actions which directly improve the quality of life of the poor.

Museveni is also credited with the country’s dramatic improvement in AIDS, from a prevalence of 30% ten years ago to 6% today, a period when most African countries have experienced growth in incidence. During that time the cost of AIDS drugs has dropped from $1000 a month to $40. The prevalence rate now is the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. Museveni has just received an international award as the most successful leader of any country in the fight against AIDS. (Telling is the fact that the Uganda AIDS campaign is based on a massive sensitisation campaign about safe sex, abstinence and faithfulness. Our own country bases its campaign by targeting teenagers with the message that sex is acceptable provided it is protected. The result is that our latest figures are that one fourteen year old in eight; two fifteen year olds in four and one sixteen year old in two are sexually active. The number of teenage boys using condoms is 15%, the same level as five years ago. All the tens of millions of rand spent have done has been to make us a nation of promiscuity with no dent in AIDS incidence.)

Last Saturday evening I sat on a terrace a couple of floors above street level in Kampala, capital city of Uganda, enjoying a meal with and chatting to Barnabas Tumwesigye, the Assistant Director of Land Development and some of his colleagues of the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA). Some time during the evening he looked down the road below us and told me about the city during the Amin era when this same street had been home to a tank regiment. He recounted how terrifying the occupying UNLA forces were – soldiers who had spent eight months in the bush advancing on Kampala, murdering everyone in their path.Eight months without a bath covered in lice and with an aura of death about them. “No one, and I mean no one, stayed in the city after six o’clock in the evening, if you did the chances of seeing the sunrise the next day were less than nil!” “We’ve seen some really bad times”, he mused, “but possibly you never appreciate the good times until you have suffered, really suffered.”

Today Kampala, (it takes its name from Kasozi k’mpala, ‘the hill of antelopes’ - its origins from 1891 when the Kabaka of Buganda had his court on Rubaga and Mego Hills) spread over some twenty-one hills, is a hive of energy and activity. The city built for 400 000 now houses well in excess of a million people, could be as many as two million says the Mayor. And you become aware of the resultant over-stretched infrastructure very quickly. The traffic is horrendous, worse than I have experienced anywhere. Streets, hopelessly underdesigned for current traffic levels are inadequate and, exacerbating the problem are an abundance of large British colonial-style traffic circles. I saw only one traffic light and it was the only intersection that coped with the traffic flow reasonably well. Add to the design difficulties, the streets are crowded with thousands of mini-bus taxis, “mutatus” as they are known locally and masses of scooter motorbikes. Driving techniques are more relevant to Hochenheim or Silverstone and traffic is forced to constantly weave around and from side to side to avoid destroying springs and tyres on the liberally potholed road surfaces. Punctuated with the hooting and shouting of taxi fare ‘soliciters’ and pedestrians who dodge the traffic anywhere and everywhere, the result is chaos. An American friend of mine once remarked that all cities are characterised by chaos, the better ones have learnt how to manage it! Kampala is not currently numbered amongst those!

On the other hand the city exudes an energy that is quite amazing. The hilly roads leading to and from the city are lined with buildings, mostly illegal, the city’s Chief Planner confessed, which sell anything you can think of and then some. In some instances, above ground floor retail space, which spills onto pavements where there are any, is some residential accommodation. Instead of the umbrellas, garden furniture, mirrors and curios alongside some of our local roads such as William Nichol, here steel doors, windows, shutters fences, burglar bars, wooden furniture including ornately upholstered chairs and double beds, coffins, bricks, plastic and cement pipes, blocks and everything else that one can think of as a saleable item (I saw a huge pile of plastic ducks!) line the streets. As opposed to our ‘passive’ roadside sales here, there it is very much ‘active’ for the goods for sale provide a backdrop to their open-air manufacture. Everywhere people are making, creating, selling. Amazing energy. Railway containers double up as informal shops stacked with pockets of cement standing cheek by jowl with one another, the owners of each vying with their neighbours to clinch a sale. A whole street just informally selling motor spares.

In the city, retail appears to be generally of poor quality but restaurants are great. Street crime is low and one sees a great many private security guards on the pavements outside the many financial institutions. They are all armed, mostly with what looked like ancient Lee Enfields - I did see one quite vicious looking home made rifle. I encountered little begging, informal pavement traders are not particularly prolific, I understand they have to be licensed , but the city has a number of informal trading markets. I visited two. The first focused on foodstuff, meat. fish, fruit and vegetables, was hugely busy and bustling and enveloped in the sounds and smells unique to the African market. The second was huge and, like the strip markets lining the streets into and out of the city, sells every conceivable goods and service. Combi taxis are serviced next to stacks of pots and pans and colourful plastic goods. The mayor says that this market houses 30 000 informal businesses and, on Sunday when I was driven through its centre, it was certainly jumping, a hive of activity.

I asked a local architect to show me typical Ugandan architecture. He smiled wryly and confessed that there wasn’t a local style – the buildings generally are pastiches of almost everything worst in international design. There are some examples of colonial architecture but nothing over-exciting. The City Council building was evidently funded by the Italian Government and succeeds in hiding the more interesting Governor General offices of a previous era. Now it is the office of the Mayor, Ssebaana Kizito, with whom we met for an interesting discussion regarding the problems being experienced by his local government.

There is very little open public or ‘green’ space in the city. To some extent this is softened by the fact that this is an intensely green and lush area, the equatorial climate ameliorated by altitude. Good quality clay is obviously in abundance and nearly all middle to upper income housing is roofed in locally produced red clay tiles. Such housing appropriates the many hilltops that comprise the suburbs so one does have a pleasing visual effect of bright red roofs dotting the green promontories of the city. The poor, as with so many developing countries, are generally in the valleys in the corrugated iron shacks that characterise the no or very low income.

South African firms are quite in evidence. Amongst Stannic, Steers, Nando’s, Shoprite and others, the most prominent is MTN whose bright yellow kiosks are on every street corner and who are responsible for adding to the chaos by digging up half the city streets to lay their cables.

Tourism appears to be fairly underdeveloped but with huge potential. Little seems to be in progress in physically recording the country’s turbulent and, at times, quite terrifying past. Outside of Kampala itself however, the country offers 10 National Parks with many tropical forests with an abundance of birds, primates and other mammals and reptiles. I believe the bird-watching is amongst the best in the world and there are great hikes and safaris. The Nile River, the source of which is in Uganda, is by all accounts spectacular offering wonderful scenery, white river rafting and the largest fresh water fish in the world, the Nile Perch.

One of these days I hope to get the time to explore areas outside of cities and not have to rely on hearsay, in the meantime I did find Kampala a fascinating African city and its people extremely friendly and pleasant at all levels.

Regards, neil