Ugandans, where is this NRM relationship taking YOU

COMMENT | Olivia Nalubwama | Sometimes, it seems like Ugandan news headlines are stuck in a depressing loop – like a demented algorithm that constantly drones despair and discouragement into our ears, stoking our deep-seated grievances and insecurities.

The headlines blare dysfunction and regression – the good news stories cannot compete, tucked away safely in the inner pages where more mundane things reside. We are reeling from yet another tragedy that could have been prevented – death by garbage.

As we contemplate the ‘what ifs,’ one can barely resist the temptation to question how we can get our leaders to move beyond merely tolerating citizens to actually loving them, even loving the disagreeable ones who refuse to sing their praises.

What does love between the citizen and state look like? In my July 12, 2023 article, ‘The Kitalo Nnyo on our roads’ in which I decried the appalling carnage on our roads, I highlighted the irrefutable competence of the European state of Norway (disclaimer: no foreign funding was harmed in this anecdote).

In 2019, the capital city of Norway registered only one road fatality, according to the International Transport Forum’s Road Safety Annual Report. ONLY ONE fatality. See kilaavu! The standard of responsibility and responsiveness to citizens can be that high.

Does your government love you? When you interface with government services, do you feel the love? If love sounds too idyllic or perhaps murky, let’s simplify it further in case a five-year-old Ugandan is reading this with you – does your government like you?

In the echoes of the August 10 Kiteezi garbage disaster is the question: “When will we attain such a standard of responsibility, a reverence for the lives of Ugandans that even one such death is too much and, therefore, unacceptable?”

‘Death by garbage’! Imagine the indignity of dying because of garbage as if living in the shadow of mountainous garbage was not bad enough. Entire lives snuffed out by garbage! Garbage!! Even more appalling, our leaders, smoother than Micheal Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’ hit song, are passing the buck nonchalantly. There are no necks lined up for the chopping board. No one is responsible.

President Yoweri Museveni asked: “Who allowed people to live near such a potentially hazardous and dangerous heap?” The president further described how the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) head briefed him on the genesis of this disaster. In the president’s words, “…she (the KCCA head) told him the story…”

What a reckless story! Reckless and callous. The erudite executive director of the National Environment Management Authority knows his stuff. He commented expertly about the disaster, “Kiteezi exceeded its capacity many years ago, but the city continued to use it due to lack of an alternative. The tragedy was seen coming.”

Additionally, he emphasised that garbage landfills are an archaic method. Dear reader, this story is well-known. There were no plot spoilers. Media reports detail that KCCA has known for a while now as have the people of Kiteezi that disaster was stalking Kiteezi like a villain steadily rising from the garbage. Yet here we are, listening to reckless stories of who knew what, how much they knew, when they knew – as dead bodies are being retrieved from under the garbage.

While the government is quick to come in with condolences of Shs 5 million, what next? Are we learning from these disasters?

Even as the efforts continued to retrieve bodies, garbage collection chugs on relentlessly. Daily, throughout Uganda, we churn out tonnes of garbage. In Ugandan-speak, ‘what are we on’? Another landfill is not a solution. Another landfill is simply another disaster waiting to happen.

When the young people coalesced against corruption through the July 23 #March2Parliament, raising their grievances about the governance of our country, the government met them with derision and arrests, torture and wild accusations.

But something is afoot. While the March is yet to achieve its main objective – marching, the #March has ramped up public debate on the responsibility of government to its citizens. Dear reader, mere mortals especially those trifling dissenters and protesters, argue that the March is a statement about the dearth of our political leadership.

Returning to the cutesy prism of the ‘It’s complicated’ relationship between the ruling regime and Ugandans, there comes a time in this ‘situationship’ when one partner tires of coasting along like the stinking garbage trucks that dutifully collect Kampala’s garbage daily.

This partner will look around, take stock of the growing smelling mountain of rubbish, and ask their counterpart- “What are we? Where do you see us in 2026?” Depending on the gravity or brevity of the responses, and the balance of power in the relationship, the asking partner has two main options: keep coasting along amassing garbage upon garbage, or radically cut their losses and step away from the bloodied crime scene.

When my 11-year-old daughter asks, “Why are the streets dirty?”, I am surprised by how offensive the muzzukulu in me finds her statement. I oscillate between feeling attacked like I have somehow let her down by not keeping Kampala clean and being awed by the simplicity of her asking. The freedom to ask why and demand answers. And these ones are not Gen Z bazzukulu, they are Generation Alpha.

What a name – Alpha!

Since 1986, our relationship with the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime has evolved – we are now in a ‘situationship.’ Uganda will be here long after the NRM. However, what sort of Uganda will that be? Dear reader, be that partner in your moribund relationship, shake off the sleep of the liberators, smell the stinking garbage that refuses to stay hidden and is now pouring into your house to kill you and your children.

Like the president, ask yourself – Ba dia, who allowed you to live like this?

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Olivia Nalubwama is a “tayaad Muzukulu, tired of mediocrity and impunity” smugmountain@gmail.com

THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE OBSERVER