I am a Ugandan citizen who happens to love her country but I have to confess, I am loving it less each passing day.
It has been a week and three days since twin bombs went off in Kampala killing at least 76 people, majority of whom were youth.
People have since been traumatised, living in panic and calling every suspicious looking metal or bag a bomb! As we were still dealing with the after effects of the bomb and drooling over the muscular FBI agents that jetted in recently, then came the African Union Summit.
Uganda is playing host to the Africa Union summit, a 9-day affair which has attracted heads of state from Africa.
The 7/11 bomb blasts coupled with the summit has government deploying every man in uniform on every road and corner of the city to make sure everybody is safe, which is good news to everyone.
However, everything comes with disadvantages. Today afternoon, I witnessed a couple of men draped in yellow shirts and green trousers harassing a trader by the roadside in Bukoto, a Kampala suburb. These are the chaps who work under the Kampala City Council and are supposed to make sure the city looks good at all times. The trader is just one of the three guys who for the past many years, have been selling pineapples, sugar-cane and watermelon to residents of Bukoto, Ntinda, and anybody else who uses this route.
But to see the KCC officials tip over his cart of goods with no mercy and manhandling him onto one of their trucks in a bid to make the roads clear for the summit is appalling!!! There is the fancy Kabira Country Club where I am guessing some guests are sleeping, but God forbid they see a man selling pineapples by the roadside as they go back to their luxurious hotels rooms.
Just the other day, the traffic police chiefs advised us not to use the roads that will be used by the delegates, and that we should use alternative routes. The roads the delegates for the summit are using have been dusted and cleaned and potholes fixed. Now we have been diverted to the mega-potholed routes. This is just sad. Don’t we as Ugandans deserve clean, dusted roads??? Must we always fix everything for only the visitors and when they leave, its back to the usual business.
I do not remember the last time KCC and government joined hands to clean up the city, trim the over grown roadside flowers and cut the roadside grass with all intention of pleasing the out-comers rather than those who pay taxes for all this. The last time this happened, was when we were hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November 2007.
On top of all this, you have the people driving the delegate at 120kph with no care for other road users. As I was driving along Entebbe Road, I was brushed aside rudely by police cars escorting delegates more than 4 times!!! Must we give up everything for the new guys in town? I saw a bodaboda man almost in tears when a police car escorting more than four cars carrying delegates used the wrong side of the road along Jinja Road junction with the traffic lights. The speed at which the drivers of these cars drive is enough to scare a traffic officer off the road scampering for safety. No traffic rules apply to the visitors.
Didn’t anybody suggest that they hire several minibuses to transport more at one point than one delegate per car in some cases??? But being the Africans that we are, we love to show off and ‘arrive in style’ so I doubt anyone would want to ride with more than 2 people in the same car.
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