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Kampala city, the untold story
The Operation Dark Matters report has therefore exposed a deeper question beyond Kampala’s waste crisis: who owns the responsibility for keeping the city clean? With landlords controlling much of the city’s land and collecting substantial revenue from it, stakeholders now argue that solving Kampala’s sanitation and waste problem requires all landowners and government agencies to take collective responsibility, rather than leaving KCCA to carry the burden alone.
Dusman Okee. (Courtesy)
By: Admin ., Journalist @New Vision
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OPINION
By Dusman Okee
By nature, humans are created in such a way that nobody wants to take blame for any societal vice, and by reflex action, they deflect it to a third party, in what we call blame games. This is the current impasse among key stakeholders and landlords, who collect revenue from Kampala City in many forms, but turn a blind eye when it comes to waste management generated (both solid and human) by the same people they collect money from; instead, they leave waste to whom it may concern. The question is. “Who is that to whom it may concern”?
When Gen. Salim Saleh (Caleb Akandwando), known for taking high risk ventures, including staking himself at times, and in most cases, for others, decided to celebrate his 66th birthday in an unthinkable and unpalatable style by emptying and cleaning all the overflowing pit latrines of the disadvantaged slam dwellers in the five divisions of Kampala, in what he termed Operation Dark Matters, little did many know that what seemed to be a cleaning exercise would unearth many underlying problems that had been right in the eyes of the very leaders that claimed Kampala to be their very own and, therefore, a no-go zone for others but, not for Gen. Saleh, whose colleagues describe as very quiet, but lethal when he points in some direction. He took action!
Receiving the Dark Matter report at the Kirema School of Research last week from the leaders of Operation Dark Matters, Gen. Saleh invited a few stakeholders in the city to witness its content. These were the executive director (ED) of National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC), Dr Silver Mugisha; the ED of National Environment Authority (NEMA), Dr Barirega Akankwasa; and Kampala City Council Authority. What was unveiled in the report put the guests in shock, because it unearthed many secondary results hitherto unknown.
Whereas Operation Dark Matters set off to address waste cleanup, along the way, they found residents in all those slums were living under the constant terror of vampires in the name of bedbugs. The team quickly assembled another specialised team to handle this problem alongside the main objectives. What, however, came up in this report is that Kampala’s problem is bigger than waste and bedbugs — but who owns what in Kampala and who are these passive landlords that should equally take responsibility in the Kampala city question, since they even get more revenue in Kampala than KCCA.
Whereas all eyes may be on KCCA when it comes to the vice, actually, KCCA is the smallest landlord in Kampala, with only 15% of public land. A quick glimpse of the report shows that 2,500 tonnes of solid waste are produced daily in the city and only 1,200 is collected by KCCA, while the balance ends up in drainage channels. The report also showed that 78% of the 2.3 million that live in Kampala live in informal settlements and that Dark Matters only covered 772,546 residents in the five divisions of Kampala. The report further noted that poor sanitation and waste management cost Uganda approximately sh4 trillion through health-related impacts, water contamination and associated public expenditure. There is also human waste called “flying toilets”, where people use polythene bags and, at night, dump them in the same water which people drink.
The bigger question is, who should do what in Kampala, given that the city has a consortium of landlords who collect revenue in land rates, markets, premises with businesses far bigger than the government agency, but leave the entire waste management to KCCA. The landlords are: Buganda Kingdom land, the Namasole’s land being the “juicy” one, Kampala district land board, Kampala Dioceses Land board, Uganda Property holdings Uganda limited, Uganda Land Commission, Kampala Archdioceses, and a small chunk going to National Housing and Construction Company Ltd. These landlords are interwoven in a lot of land complexities, but Gen. Saleh, as a scholar and researcher at the Kirema School of Research, has unlocked this puzzle with his fully-compiled book to detail, titled Who Owns Kampala, subtitled who owns what (wow). The book is as big as the traditional students’ mabati go-back-to-school suitcase.
During an interaction with the three stakeholders, KCCA’s director of public health and environment, Dr Zalwango Sarah, said all the goodwill and actionable points to manage waste in the city are stagnated at the point where the numerous landlords lack the will to operationalise this intervention or even to allow access roads. Furthermore, they don’t have a system to control who builds what on the land they own. Any attempt to intervene gets answered with lawyers’ letters. This is why Prof. John Kigula, an expert on land matters and officer in charge of Matuga Land Management Centre, in a paper, Urban Land Tenure, Law and Policy in the Development of the Greater Kampala City (2026), says the state through its agencies cannot rely on mere evolution and the evolutionary winds of change to direct the course of events and urban development, but rather revolutionary or semi-revolutionary state interventions must be made to avoid or reverse the informalities that are usually rooted in urban land tenure and land relations.
He suggests a need to establish a semi-autonomous Uganda Land Development Authority (ULDA) to co-ordinate all rural and urban land development policies, laws, regulations and matters away from the orthodox ministry bureaucracies. To the surprise of many, as reported by Operation Dark Matters, none of the landlords has a forum where they could synergise to manage Kampala’s challenges as the biggest beneficiaries.
Whereas Operation Dark Matters set off to address waste cleanup, along the way, they found residents in all those slums were living under the constant terror of vampires in the name of bedbugs. The team quickly assembled another specialised team to handle this problem alongside the main objectives. What, however, came up in this report is that Kampala’s problem is bigger than waste and bedbugs — but who owns what in Kampala and who are these passive landlords that should equally take responsibility in the Kampala city question, since they even get more revenue in Kampala than KCCA.
Whereas all eyes may be on KCCA when it comes to the vice, actually, KCCA is the smallest landlord in Kampala, with only 15% of public land. A quick glimpse of the report shows that 2,500 tonnes of solid waste are produced daily in the city and only 1,200 is collected by KCCA, while the balance ends up in drainage channels. The report also showed that 78% of the 2.3 million that live in Kampala live in informal settlements and that Dark Matters only covered 772,546 residents in the five divisions of Kampala. The report further noted that poor sanitation and waste management cost Uganda approximately sh4 trillion through health-related impacts, water contamination and associated public expenditure. There is also human waste called “flying toilets”, where people use polythene bags and, at night, dump them in the same water which people drink.
The bigger question is, who should do what in Kampala, given that the city has a consortium of landlords who collect revenue in land rates, markets, premises with businesses far bigger than the government agency, but leave the entire waste management to KCCA. The landlords are: Buganda Kingdom land, the Namasole’s land being the “juicy” one, Kampala district land board, Kampala Dioceses Land board, Uganda Property holdings Uganda limited, Uganda Land Commission, Kampala Archdioceses, and a small chunk going to National Housing and Construction Company Ltd. These landlords are interwoven in a lot of land complexities, but Gen. Saleh, as a scholar and researcher at the Kirema School of Research, has unlocked this puzzle with his fully-compiled book to detail, titled Who Owns Kampala, subtitled who owns what (wow). The book is as big as the traditional students’ mabati go-back-to-school suitcase.
During an interaction with the three stakeholders, KCCA’s director of public health and environment, Dr Zalwango Sarah, said all the goodwill and actionable points to manage waste in the city are stagnated at the point where the numerous landlords lack the will to operationalise this intervention or even to allow access roads. Furthermore, they don’t have a system to control who builds what on the land they own. Any attempt to intervene gets answered with lawyers’ letters. This is why Prof. John Kigula, an expert on land matters and officer in charge of Matuga Land Management Centre, in a paper, Urban Land Tenure, Law and Policy in the Development of the Greater Kampala City (2026), says the state through its agencies cannot rely on mere evolution and the evolutionary winds of change to direct the course of events and urban development, but rather revolutionary or semi-revolutionary state interventions must be made to avoid or reverse the informalities that are usually rooted in urban land tenure and land relations.
He suggests a need to establish a semi-autonomous Uganda Land Development Authority (ULDA) to co-ordinate all rural and urban land development policies, laws, regulations and matters away from the orthodox ministry bureaucracies. To the surprise of many, as reported by Operation Dark Matters, none of the landlords has a forum where they could synergise to manage Kampala’s challenges as the biggest beneficiaries.
Zalwango says KCCA has acquired land to put up an automated, modern, integrated waste management facility, but has limited or no access to these slums, where people have built all sorts of houses in every space available, like on the land owned by Uganda Railways Corporation. She says that with 122 cost-recovery toilets (charged) built, 22 free-of-charge, and now 29 approved across the five divisions, still, getting that land was an uphill task.
To Gen. Saleh, who has long cautioned all about land as a non-military threat if not timely addressed, believes the Kampala questions will only be answered through a properly planned expansion of Kampala city beyond its current geographical administrative scope.
The managing director of NWSC, Dr Silver Mugisha, contends that even where NWSC can offer support to keep Dark Matters in continuity, supplementing KCCA’s efforts and using its corporate social responsibility budget, somehow, somewhere, someone may be preparing to challenge its legality in helping. Therefore, it needs to be legally binding.
In the same vein, the ED NEMA, Dr Akankwasa, says the answer may be found in looking at both solid and human wastes as a source of income, as well as a job-creating tool, given that 80%-90% of the Kampala waste is organic, the greatest and best grade in making fertilisers. He believes that if NWSC, KCCA and NEMA created strong linkages to harvest these wastes, his work as an enforcer would even be lightened, because part of the problems why people are invading swamps is because of the infertile lands that have reduced output per acreage over time. To him, if soak pits can be reconnected to one another to harvest this resource, it could partly answer the problem, although Dr Zalwango says people have already built over these sewer lines, while others build complex buildings with deep hidden underground pipes, and at night open human waste into drainage systems.
Therefore, the only available solution appears to be Gen. Saleh’s take of expanding Kampala beyond what it is today as the population continues to expand, adding to the existing challenges. The three bodies agreed to put a strong linkage body of all stakeholders in Kampala, especially landlords, to answer the Kampala city waste management question.
The writer works in the Office of Gen. Salim Saleh
To Gen. Saleh, who has long cautioned all about land as a non-military threat if not timely addressed, believes the Kampala questions will only be answered through a properly planned expansion of Kampala city beyond its current geographical administrative scope.
The managing director of NWSC, Dr Silver Mugisha, contends that even where NWSC can offer support to keep Dark Matters in continuity, supplementing KCCA’s efforts and using its corporate social responsibility budget, somehow, somewhere, someone may be preparing to challenge its legality in helping. Therefore, it needs to be legally binding.
In the same vein, the ED NEMA, Dr Akankwasa, says the answer may be found in looking at both solid and human wastes as a source of income, as well as a job-creating tool, given that 80%-90% of the Kampala waste is organic, the greatest and best grade in making fertilisers. He believes that if NWSC, KCCA and NEMA created strong linkages to harvest these wastes, his work as an enforcer would even be lightened, because part of the problems why people are invading swamps is because of the infertile lands that have reduced output per acreage over time. To him, if soak pits can be reconnected to one another to harvest this resource, it could partly answer the problem, although Dr Zalwango says people have already built over these sewer lines, while others build complex buildings with deep hidden underground pipes, and at night open human waste into drainage systems.
Therefore, the only available solution appears to be Gen. Saleh’s take of expanding Kampala beyond what it is today as the population continues to expand, adding to the existing challenges. The three bodies agreed to put a strong linkage body of all stakeholders in Kampala, especially landlords, to answer the Kampala city waste management question.
The writer works in the Office of Gen. Salim Saleh