Kampala, the City I was born and raised in has morphed over the decades into the muddled investment destination that it boasts of today. A city where sanity took a backstep paving the way for insanity to reign.
Despite being managed by seemingly qualified individuals enjoying all sorts of benefits that accompany their job titles, you see a city that is daily heading towards higher levels of lunacy.
When one looks at the 1974 Kampala Masterplan that Hon. Moses Ali signed off during the regime of the much ostracized leader, Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada, you realise that all subsequent technocrats needed to do was follow that plan and improve upon it as opposed to subconsciously taking us back to the stone age era.
Roads like the Northern Bypass were catered for in that plan. The Kawempe and Kiruddu Hospitals were also envisaged in that plan and many other settlement considerations for both industrial and housing of citizens.
Then come the era where cash-rich but largely unintelligent humanoids came up and chose to take advantage of the gluttonous appetite of our technocrats and spiced up by clueless politicians ganged up to grab / sell off anything called land in the city forgetting that there is a reason certain settlements were not allowed in some areas.
These very insensible individuals also looked on as slums grew organically and probably profiteered from the same. All because they wanted to make hay while the sun was shining forgetting that the nature of hay being made was bound to be poisonous to the community.
The city becomes a traveler’s nightmare whenever it rains simply because green zones were doled out to investors to build factories while expecting the water to find its own way.
The beauty of all this is that you cannot cheat nature. It will patiently keep knocking until you cave in eventually.
The same technocrats guide the clueless political class to dispossess peasants of farmland in the East and Northern parts of Uganda under the guise of protecting wetlands while keeping a blind eye upon the abuse of the same resource in the urban areas.
Just look at the Kyambogo-Kinawataka area, Bwaise, Kalerwe, Opposite Seeta High where a so called Man of God drained the swamp and has set up a church and another Man of God also is busy encroaching on another green zone as you approach Seeta town from Kampala. To see so called Spirit filled individuals partaking of this abuse of nature angers me so much because they are abusing the authority God gave us through Adam.
Genesis 1:31 says, “Then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good…”
Genesis 2:15, “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.”
This is why I am happy every other day when I see the floods running riot in the city. I scream with joy. Why?
- It clearly shows the incompetence of our technocrats who have focused more on enriching themselves at the expense of society’s progress.
- It shows the denseness of our political class that is meant to be the watchdog for our society.
- It shows the inconsiderateness of the so called investors who only mind about making money with little regard to how it is made.
- It shows how emptyheaded most of our so-called elites are who choose to even build their homes in wetlands simply because the land has been got on the cheap.
With so much glee, I would like to make an addendum to the aforementioned reasons;
- The floods render the cars of those inward looking elites useless as many cannot navigate through the flood waters and muddy roads of the high end slums they live in.
- These floods cover the potholes of Kampala hence seemingly sanitizing the outlook of the city roads that temporarily look flat.
- The floods help KCCA to clean garbage and dusty roads hence removing the need to import dustbins as planned by the Government as well as reduce on the cost of paying garbage collectors and street cleaners.
- These floods bring swimming closer to the people. Many now have a chance to learn how to swim. The hard way though!!!
- These floods promote local tourism. Whenever cars get stuck, people gather to watch the ongoing activity as a few super heros volunteer to save the clueless inward looking mugagga seated inside.
- They give mechanics alot of business as numerous individuals have to take their cars for repair replacing significant car parts like engines as a result, while those flooded home owners have to call in repair guys for their electricals etc.
Now I know, someone will quickly remind me of how other cities are flooding world over. However, let us face it, even before the current El-Nino, we have always been facing similar issues with our city Kampala.
I celebrate the uplifting of cluelessness in Uganda’s Capital City, Kampala. Like body tissues, it is undergoing autolysis through self destruction.
God Bless Kampala
God Bless Uganda
James Wire
The Wire Perspective 