Before Vanessa Nakate, there was Nassali and Ndyakiira

The world’s rulers are gathered in Glasgow, for the 26h UN Climate Change Conference (also known as the “Conference of Parties”, this being the 26th,  hence COP26).

The summiteers are outnumbered by climate change activists and protesters nearby or organised around the world and on the internet, who are very angry – rightly – at the state of the world and the failure of political leadership to deal meaningfully with the crisis.

Our own Vanessa Nakate, now a globally renowned climate justice activist, recently featured on the TIME magazine, among the world’s most prized media real estate.

 Broadly, Uganda’s environment is in the intensive care unit. On the extreme, some data says since the NRM government took power in 1986, the country has lost a staggering 63 percent of its forest cover due to tree-cutting.

 Wetlands cover about 11 percent of Uganda, and a study that came out last year reported that 50 percent of it has been converted to industry and residential areas, and urban agriculture. A recent study looking at the extent of wetlands lost in Wakiso and Kampala over a period of 30 years, found that 73 percent of it was gone. 

 Although they don’t put it in these terms, one of the messages from the study is that you think Kampala and Wakiso are becoming unliveable today when it rains with the roads, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Order that boat, and build your next house on robust stilts. It projected that at the rate the two areas were losing wetland, there would be none left by 2029 (the study was done by several clever Ugandans – we’ve no shortage of them - Stella Kabiri, Molly Allen, Juduth Toma Okuonzia, Beatrice Akello, Rebecca Ssabaganzi,  and Drake Mubiru).  Today we won’t dwell on the scary climate change scenarios that face us, and the small victories that have been won. Rather because of the work of folks like our researchers and our many Nakates, we will go back and look at some of those who came before them. Thirty-six years ago, when President Yoweri Museveni took power, there were hardly any environmentalists around and awareness was low. Perhaps no two organisations did the foundational work for what we have today than the now-defunct Weekly Topic and the early New Vision newspapers. And within these newspapers, two people will forever remain in the favour of the environmental gods.

 The first was Nassali Tamale. Nassali used to teach at Namasagali College in its glory days. The Weekly Topic, the last mainstream radical newspaper in Uganda, had been banned by the Milton Obote 2 government because of the membership and association of its publishers (Bidandi Ssali, Kintu Musoke, and Kirundi Kivenjinja) with the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM) that Museveni to the 1980 election, and later the National Resistance Army/Movement.

 After the Okello generals ousted Obote 2 in July 1985, the ban was lifted and Weekly Topic was reborn, and went on a good run in the first years of NRM rule. Nassali left Namasagali and came to work with Weekly Topic. She was the first full-blooded African environmentalist I met. She was also a fiery feminist, analysing and attacking patriarchy before the method became fashionable.

 She never tired; in almost every issue of Weekly Topic she wrote about the ravages of the charcoal trade, the wetlands, and the cost we would pay in future. It seemed too niche, and many people were puzzled by her obsession. But she never wavered.

 In late 1986, in cahoots with Wafula Oguttu and a handful of other people, she helped form the Uganda Consumer Society (or was it Association). Those were lean times, so it would meet in a shabby hall at Kampala City Council on the weekend, where it wouldn’t have to pay a fee for the privilege. On the first meeting, Nassali stood up and argued that consumption was an environmental issue, and so the environment should be one of the preoccupations of the society.  And so it was. The society didn’t last long.

 Looking at how the environment has become a big and existential issue, it’s remarkable how far ahead of the times Nassali was. As Nassali exited the stage, and the curtains came down on Weekly Topic, a new star arose - Ndyakiira Amooti, who had a short dalliance with The Monitor, but went on to ply most of his media trade with New Vision and later, naturally, the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

 Ndyakiira probably did the most consequential reporting on the environment ever in Uganda’s history and gathered a boxful of international prizes for his troubles. There were many times Ndyakiira dropped by my office and shed a cupful of tears and he spoke about wetland destruction and some animals that had lost their habit. Yes, there were once men like that in these lands.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. 

Twitter: @cobbo3