Kampala is not Africa’s ‘kidnap capital’ yet. But it could be

A friend finally blurted it out. “I think there are probably more kidnaps being reported in and around Kampala today, than even places elsewhere in Africa where there is armed conflict”, he said.
“At this rate,” he said, “Kampala will become Africa’s kidnap capital”.

I am not sure whether he was aware of how pregnant his use of the word “reported” was. For kidnaps have affected several families that, fearing for the safety of their loved ones, don’t take the story to the press. Your columnist has a close relative who endured an appalling ordeal at the hands of kidnappers.

I would never have thought it would come to this. In the early 1980s, as the Milton Obote faced a rebellion in Luweero led by Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army, and by more urban-focused groups like Andrew Kayiira’s Uganda Freedom Movement, Kampala was hell.

There were frequent rebel bomb attacks, and pandemonium would break out. People would scatter in all directions, with the UNLA soldiers often shooting wildly in the air – and sometimes directly at people. When the chaos ended, streets would be littered with women’s shoes, and items abandoned by Kampalans fleeing for their lives.

By 7pm, Kampala would be a dead city. There would be murders, rapes, and robberies by UNLA soldiers.

When Obote was overthrown in July 1985, little changed, as Kampala was carved out in “zones” controlled by the rebel groups and militias that congregated in the “Military Council”, a military junta that was formed as the government.

The fall of Obote led to the re-opening of the now defunct Weekly Topic, and the most exciting period in my journalism career. Bidandi Ssali, with former premier Kintu Musoke and Kirunda Kivejinja in absentia in exile, were the owners of Sapoba Press, the publishers of the paper.

Bidandi, together with people like Sam Kutesa, were appointed in the Military Commission government as it faced the NRA/NRM in the peace talks in Nairobi, and as the rebels rebuilt and slowly begun to encircle Kampala.

The hope by the military junta was that it would improve its negotiating position by having moderates, and politicians associated with Museveni and the Opposition in its ranks. In the end, though, the Bidandis and Kutesas functioned as a Fifth Column in the government.

Those were hard times, and conditions were primitive. Over the days we produced Weekly Topic, we slept at the printing press in Katwe, on benches because it was too dangerous to go home after 7pm. Except, of course, if Bidandi had something to do with.

He was/is an amazing fellow Bidandi, totally crazy in a cool way. Together with Wafula Oguttu, we would squeeze in his BMW coupe and whizz around Kampala looking for stories, and drive like bats out of hell back to Sapoba to hammer them out overnight. He didn’t have a guard.

On most times, it was just his BMW, drunken soldiers, and military Landrovers on the streets. Sometimes, at 2am, Bidandi would say, “let’s go”, and he would drop Wafula and I home.

This schedule was our lives for many more years after the NRA/NRM took over in January 1986 and Museveni became president. The one difference was that the streets were safe. We would go home when we finished.

And so it was that at 3am, 4am, as we headed home, on Jinja Road as we turned off to head to Ntinda, there would be groups of young women, students at Kyambogo, walking back laughing without a fear in the world, after an evening of clubbing.

I could never stop marvelling at it as a sign of how much life had changed (for the better) for people, especially in respect of personal security, under the Museveni government. For people in the northeast and north where there was war, it was a different story, of course, but the significance of this shift was profound.

Yet here we are today, and slowly those historic wins are being lost to kidnaps, and rampant crime – under the watch of the same people who ended it 32 years ago.

There are murmurs that some of the killings of women in Entebbe were instigated by rogue elements in the establishment as part of the war against the disagreeable Gen Kale Kayihura when he was police chief.

Experience from other countries where kidnaps happen outside a context of conflict, tells us that most times, it requires the collaboration of elements in the State security apparatus.

Economic difficulties often drive kidnap, yes, but for it to spread, requires some level of political decay and a dose of State failure. If Museveni doesn’t roll this and the wave of crime back, before long he could become an Obote or an Okello of the military junta. And Kampala’s reputation would be in the gutters.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3