Kampala’s impending doom and why Prophet Mbonye need not prophesy

If there is a Ugandan crown for most ardent fans or followers – by whatever name called – then that should, hands down, go to the congregation of Prophet Elvis Mbonye, a quiet, soft-spoken fellow who has hit fame and fortune with his indulgence in the prophetic. 

His followers, and I kid you not, would gladly die for him at the first time of asking; for they are fully persuaded that he knows just about everything before it happens. He talks about many things under the sun and the day he delves into Premier League football predictions, the betting houses just might run broke.  

If a good rain poured down on the congregation in the midst of Elvis’ prophetic deliveries, I bet my left ear, they would neither notice a thing, nor bat an eyelid. Tired of being ignored, the wind and rain would simply huff and puff, run out of steam and eventually pack up and leave.

But there are issues where Prophet Mbonye need not bother.

Like, we do not need him to foretell that in a few years, Kampala will not have an inch of green space left and Uganda’s capital city will be one huge concrete slum-like jungle where even roads will have been built in. No need for a prophecy on that. The sheer foolishness with which this city is being run down speaks for itself.

Neither do we require the esteemed prophet to tell us that in a few years’ time, many of the children we have denied chance to grow up like normal kids with plenty of space to freely play, will end up maladjusted young adults, high on serious substances, and waiting to mug us on the streets or raid our homes in the night to rob and kill us and rape our wives and daughters. When you make playing fields a preserve of the middle class who fence off premium areas and install bright lights where only privileged kids, dropped off in posh cars, go to play, you are asking for trouble.

Over the last two decades, both the central government and Kampala Local Government have presided over the destruction of anything green around the city. Every open area has been quickly grabbed and gobbled up by the high and mighty.

Cities do not sprout like mushrooms; they are designed and intentionally planned. A city must have a blueprint.

It must have green spaces and whatever kind of open spaces for many reasons: environmental integrity, beauty, recreation and…sheer common sense. 

Heck, a city must breathe! You cannot build a concrete jungle and still claim to be educated and responsible and forward-looking.

Where are people supposed to play from? Where does one go when they need to simply sit down and relax and enjoy the city? Where do kids go to burn their energies? How can you eat up all the football fields in the name of “development”?

Look at the people who control Kampala directly: The President, the ministers for Kampala, the Lord Mayor and his executive council, then the Lord councillors, and most of all, the executive director of Kampala Capital City Authority and her team. 

And these all appear, at least from a distance, to be highly educated, right-thinking, forward-looking and very responsible people. 

But that is until you see how the green is being taken up. You wonder: what exactly are these people thinking? The man who’s cutting the branch on which he’s sitting doesn’t need Elvis Mbonye to prophesy that he’s going to fall down.

In his classic novel Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, in his analysis of the disastrous and contradictory Bolshevik Revolution in the Soviet Union, talks about the foolishness with which decisions are made as “thinking and acting on credit”. The untouchables may think they are being clever and they may sit smugly as they celebrate their destruction of the environment and the grabbing of State resources, but there will be payback time.

And those who will pay the price will not be only the fat cats that did grab these green spaces, but also the rest of us who saw what was going on, knew it was wrong, but we still sat back.

You don’t need Prophet Mbonye to prophesy that this society will collapse under the weight of its foolishness.

Mr Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda. [email protected]