{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: It’s now official: Musisi must seek the political kingdom after all - Comment
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It's now official: Musisi must seek the political kingdom after all
Kampala Capital City Authority executive director Jennifer Musisi is a born again Christian who must believe in seeking first the kingdom of heaven. Now she will have to read the works of pragmatists who advocate seeking first the political kingdom.
Until February 18, Musisi was easily President Yoweri Museveni's favourite public official. A quick memory refresher on how she got there: Kampala city has never been pro-establishment.
During the 1981-86 war that brought Museveni's rebel NRM to power, things happened in Kampala that would make fantastic spy fiction. Rebel recruitment took place in city education institutions; injured rebels were treated in government hospitals that supplied medicines to the rebels before they returned to combat.
When NRM took power in 1986, they promised to rule for only four years, but the only opposition in the interim parliament to their intention of extending their rule for another five years came from Kampala Central representative Joseph Wasswa Ziritwawula. He resigned his seat rather than be party to the extension of NRM rule.
Ziritwawula started off as the first chairman of Kampala, equivalent to mayor, under the new local government elective system, before going to parliament and ceding the mayorship to Christopher Iga.
Iga tried to enforce orderly development and lost the mayorship in the next vote to a "dealer," known mostly for his inability to speak correct English. Even when he was arrested and convicted for fraud, Kampala kept voting for his anointees, waiting for him to finish his sentence, and then voted for him again.
Fed up with an uncooperative city leadership, the government enacted a law changing Kampala's status to an authority managed by an executive director. The Lord Mayor was expected to be ceremonial.
Kampala voted in a lawyer who had won their heart for defending Winnie Byanyima, wife of then exiled Dr Kizza Besigye, in her countless run-ins with the state.
Lord Mayor Elias Lukwago immediately became a thorn in the government's side. The ED, Jennifer Musisi, locked him out his office, cut off his salary and thoroughly humiliated him.
President Museveni victoriously declared that he had diluted the mayorship, reducing Lukwago to "wearing funny chains and padlocks" — a reference to the embroidery on the mayoral robes. Musisi continued her push to clean the city of rubbish and people who did not have licences to operate.
Lukwago insisted on defending them.
Come February 18, 2016, Kampala voted resoundingly against the president though he won countrywide, and against all NRM candidates for the city's nine parliamentary seats. And finally, Kampala voted Lukwago back.
President Museveni publicly attributed his loss in the city to Musisi's work methods of "doing the correct thing" without securing the people's buy-in or providing alternative for those thrown out.
Musisi's job is safe for now because Museveni complained about her in public. Those who know him say when Museveni gets tired of you he even "forgets" your name. But Musisi now knows that the political kingdom comes before clearing of road reserves and driving out of unlicensed traders.
Lukwago had consistently argued that you can't develop the city without developing its people, and is now being vindicated by Musisi's boss. Musisi will now have to learn politics before being a technocrat. She has had her first warning.
Joachim Buwembo is a social and political commentator based in Kampala. E-mail:buwembo@gmail.com
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