New Lord Mayor says he won’t beg Museveni for funds

After five years as Member of Parliament, why did you choose to seek election to the mayoral seat?
As a representative for Kampala Central, I realised that people were getting disgusted both with the NRM and the City Council. They were also disappointed with the leadership of Hajj Nasser Ssebagala (outgoing mayor) who, until recently, was undoubtedly opposition. He mismanaged the city and I had to rise up to restore hope in the opposition leadership and offer a new dimension. I made a statement and I have no regret about it that ‘KCC had been turned into a den of thieves’ just as you see this government. It was just money and cutting deals between some of the councillors from the opposition and the ruling party. Actually, you would hardly draw a line between the opposition and NRM councillors.
They all talked the same language when it came to “eating”. They had even ganged up against me because they looked at me as a threat. So, as far as activism and advocacy is concerned, I think I did enough as MP to address the challenges we are facing but I thought my impact was not getting felt.

What is your strategy to resolve the challenges facing KCC?
I have been addressing some of the challenges of KCC in terms of influencing decision making in this country. We (Parliament) appropriate funds to KCC. The funds are misappropriated and there is no service delivery.
Then the auditors come, raise audit queries and the audit queries come to us in Parliament. The parliamentary Committee on Local Government - where I sit - makes recommendations that action should be taken against the culprits who are responsible for the mess in the city. No action is taken and the report is shelved. Another financial year comes and we appropriate funds again. This is the vicious cycle of theft. I want to break that vicious cycle so that we can enforce these reports. When we manage to curb corruption we shall save enough funds to solve Kampala’s problems.

Kampala has diverse social groups each with different interests. How are you going to address their demands which are sometimes conflicting?
I believe in the doctrine of equitable development. Equity is a virtue. Equity presupposes treating everybody justly and fairly. But you find that the current government has institutionalised a system which is oppressive to a particular class of people in the name of championing development in the city. The leadership of KCC in collusion with the central government had started a system where land would be allocated to a handful of individuals, including markets. Uganda is not a welfare state. It’s purely capitalistic where everybody survives for himself. There are no social security measures.
If you go with that, what happens is that you condemn a particular class of people to death. You chase them away from streets because you want to clean up the city. For example, street vendors, they all go to the market.
Therefore, if you visit all markets in the city, they are extremely congested because these traders cannot manage to rent shopping arcades.
What you can do to these people is that you preserve these facilities for them but construct them to acceptable standards. You can get a social intervention from the government to address the imbalances as you let the middle class do their business in the most affluent positions.
I also take reservation of the current tax system which is very unfair to lower income earners. You give tax holidays to the so called investors and impose a heavy tax on those in the informal sector. This is very unfortunate. That’s why I put a suggestion in Parliament in 2009 to put a halt on the enforcement of Trade Licensing Act pending resolution of a number of issues surrounding its applicability and its fairness, Parliament luckily enough agreed with me. I am told a new instrument has been developed by the Trade Minister which imposes a heavy tax regime. When I am sworn in, I will address it again.

What do you see as your biggest hurdle now?
Fighting corruption is not an easy task. I will find resistance and threats from the perpetuators. These are mafias. I am fighting a mafia group and you know what it means. They will impose threats to me, including death threats, they will put up resistance but we must tackle it if we are to change the status quo in the city. We must take the bull by its horns and I am ready for that.

You have an icy relationship with the President; won’t this undermine your performance?
If the president respects the Constitution, then it will be treason on his part if he attempts to frustrate my efforts. I have not gone to the bush to fight him much as I doubt his victory. Most Ugandans know that his win is not legitimate. I know he worked around the clock to frustrate all my efforts but finally I won. I would expect him to respect the will of people. One thing I am not going to do is to beg him for funding.
If he expects me to go and kneel before him in State House, I will not. There are mechanisms enshrined in the Constitution and other relevant laws on how we should work towards a common cause as far as the de
velopment of Kampala is concerned. I will demand for appropriation of a special vote to fund activities in Kampala.

From you own scale of preference, what are the three things that you will tackle first in your first three months in office?
I will start by carrying out baseline survey standards in all the contracts we have in KCC like garbage collections, fixing potholes and street lights. I want to carry out a survey to establish the service delivery standards and the viability of the existing contract we have between KCC and the private service providers. I want to see the viability of those transactions because funds are appropriated, disbursed and contracts are executed but the status quo remains the same.
I want to freeze all the transactions related to allocation of public facilities to private individuals as we carry out the review of these proprieties. You can’t imagine that playgrounds, greenbelts and walkways are up for grabs.

Finally, if you are not leading demonstrations in Kampala, or in parliament making laws, what do you do?
I have very little time to go out socialising but I get some time to interact with my family largely at home, especially during weekends. As you can see I have a very young family. My first born is just eight years and my twins are making four years this month. Occasionally, I attend social events where I am invited. I don’t go clubbing, I don’t go to the beach but I watch soccer quite a lot.