Rape galore on Jinja streets and cities that do not work

After a couple of decades living outside Uganda, a friend’s father returned for a visit a few years ago. A day’s drive-about led him to declare Kampala a hostile place. The chaos messed with his head.

And a journalist friend — who for nearly 15 years reported for Reuters and was at different times based in Abidjan, Nairobi, and Johannesburg, with several work visits to just about every major city in Africa — once said this to me while in Kampala: I think someone should teach African officials how to run cities.

Apart from Gaborone, Windhoek, Kigali and possibly a couple of other places, the chaos in many an African city is bewildering. Big African cities are centres of commerce, politics and government and generate a good chunk of GDP for the countries. (Kampala accounts for a third of Uganda’s GDP, according to a World Bank report released in March). Their neglect is something I have never understood.

Kampala need not become a Hamburg, Curitiba, or Singapore overnight, but, boy, we can at least fill the potholes. What is so hard? Even when there is an attempt, the approach sometimes is confusing.
One day, work starts to fix the potholed edge of Ggaba Road in Kampala. Work is done covering 100 metres and it stops. Just like that. Incomplete. No explanation.

Take Nsambya Road. The other day someone came and filled probably 90 per cent of the potholes. Of the filled ones, about 10 per cent were tarred; the others were left with bare earth. Whoever it was, the fellow disappeared in thin dust.
Of course, we can’t keep the streetlights on. Why do we even bother to erect them? Vandals are everywhere in the world, how come our vandals are so good the entire State machinery that takes our tax shillings can’t fix the problem?

In Jinja, Daily Monitor reported on Wednesday, darkness is bringing pain and tears. Women are being raped on the dark streets of Uganda’s second largest town. I suspect this happens regularly on the dark streets of our dark towns across the country.
The paper reported: “Ms Sharon Nairubi, a resident of Jinja municipality, said her colleague was a few weeks ago gang-raped in the middle of the road and left unconscious by unknown thugs.
“Several others have been raped but end up not reporting to the police as they prefer to be silent and only seek medical attention,” she said.
I don’t know whether President Museveni’s street cameras will help, but what is certain is that the quality of life in Uganda’s towns is CRAP.

Clueless leadership, ever crying of shortage of money, is the big problem. The other problem is a less demanding population. Maybe it is because most Ugandans who have grown up in our towns know them only as disordered places. We don’t know better and, therefore, can’t demand better. The longstanding chaos is catching up with us as the news from Jinja shows.
In 2015, the World Bank released a report titled The Growth Challenge: Can Ugandan Cities get to Work? wherein we are told that more than 20 million of us will be living in towns in 2040, a steep jump from six million in 2013. Kampala alone will house 10 million happy or unhappy souls by about 2035.

The kavuyo path we are on means we will continue to have cities that are uncompetitive and ‘unlivable’.
To turn things around, the World Bank helpfully advises (as if we didn’t know), will “require a comprehensive set of actions that will establish the necessary business environment required to create productive jobs; to provide a conducive working environment for workers; to develop good quality buildings for housing; to improve the quality of infrastructure; and to ensure good access to social services, particularly health and education services.

“Failure to unlock the potential of cities may result in a deceleration of growth and the emergence of dysfunctional slum cities in which people live in appalling conditions”.
Jinja’s politicians and citizens have a chance to lead the rest. They should start by harnessing the municipality’s location and make money from tourism and pay their way. They should not want Jinja to be known as the rape capital of Uganda.

Bernard Tabaire is a media trainer and commentator on public affairs based in Kampala.
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Twitter:@btabaire