Those who steal streetlights are worse than Kampala’s potholes

But we must also shake the stick at the thieves and vandals. How about a whistle-blower name-and-shame campaign against people with stolen streetlights lighting up their backyards? Surely these can be identified?

You know you have spent a lot of time in Kampala when you find yourself driving down a smooth road and worry that there is something wrong. The penny often drops a few moments later when you realise that the potholes you expected, that sense of painful adventure as you cut a path through the pitiful roads of the urban jungle like one of the early explorers, is no more.

There have been some very impressive roads built across the country in recent years. The section from Masaka to Mbarara, for instance, or my personal favourite, from Mityana to Fort Portal, offer real driving pleasure.
Surely some credit is due to the government and the relevant agencies, even from notoriously critical columnists. Ahem!

Kampala City remains a laggard, but even here there are some exciting new developments overseen by the new city Authority. The recently completed Bukoto – Kisaasi road, for instance, has changed the face of that neighbourhood; the dust is gone, rents and property prices are up, and crime, I suspect, must be on the way down, thanks to the streetlights.
The question, though, is: for how long?

A few years ago Rotary Avenue (better known as Lugogo bypass) was done up very well and streetlights installed. Within three days – I counted – some of the streetlights had gone missing. Further inquiries established that some unscrupulous people had somehow climbed to the top of the poles and unscrewed the lights.

(I have always wondered how someone can climb that flimsy pole; either it is an organised racket that hires specialist cranes, or Uganda has some unexploited pole vault talent!).

A few months down the road, most of the streetlights were gone (some brought down by hapless motorists checking to see whether their airbags actually worked) and the road was dark again.

What kind of person steals a streetlight? Do they use them as reading lights at home? Use them to light up their compounds? Don’t their children wonder why daddy, whose known occupations do not include ‘KCCA electrician’, suddenly returns home one day with a green and yellow streetlight? And if you can spend Shs200 million on a mansion, you should be able to afford to buy your streetlights in a shop – unless of course you stole the Shs200 million in the first place.

Yet this is no isolated case. Road signs and rubbish skips are routinely sawn down and sold to scrap metal dealers. At the very least it becomes an inconvenience and a case of throwing good money down the garbage chute, if you can forgive the lazy pun. But who knows how many motorists have found themselves flying over the top of a speed hump whose uprooted warning sign is under the bed of a nearby resident?

How many pedestrians have broken their limbs when their feet miss the news of the theft of the manhole cover supposed to be under them?
The Uganda Railway, which once snaked across the country, has supported the growth of an illegal steel industry based on the theft and smelting of the railway tracks.

Electricity cables are sawn off and sold. Transformers are drained of their oil. Bridges are vandalised by people – some eminent! – looking for mercury and other rare metals!

How many days will it take before the streetlights and signposts on the Bukoto – Kisaasi road are relocated?
Something surely must be done about this petty theft. KCCA has tried, through one or two campaigns, to get Kampala residents interested in the city and its redevelopment. It probably needs to do some more radical things.

How about we resurrect the old neighbourhood associations and hand them ‘ownership’ of communal assets, like roads, streetlights, etc., as well as the responsibility of taking care of them? To do this you need to get people out of their walled fences and have them actually meet their neighbours and talk about their common gripes.

But we must also shake the stick at the thieves and vandals. How about a whistle-blower name-and-shame campaign against people with stolen streetlights lighting up their backyards? Surely these can be identified?
Regular raids through the scrap metal dealers and prosecution of those found with stolen poles, railway tracks, et cetera are unlikely to deter all thieves but surely will also help.

Without addressing this vandalism of public property we will keep going round in circles. In many ways our vandalism is a metaphor for our primitivism and narcissism.

We can tarmac roads and light up the streets but the biggest potholes we have are not on Kampala’s roads but in our values.
dkalinaki@ug.nationmedia.com
Twitter: @Kalinaki