KAMPALA IS THE MOST PEACEFUL AFRICAN CITY, DEVOID OF SPATE OF HOLD UPS, VIOLENCE ROBBERIES AND OUTBURST OF GUN-SHOTS BY THE NIGHT.

Writes Leo Odera Omolo, a Veteran Kenyan Journalist who was recently in Kampala.

KAMPALA CITY, previously a small African town, which is built between seven hills, and which was once described by the British war-time Prime Minister, the late Sir Winston Churchill as the “Pearl of Africa” in the real sense of the word, it now true to its nearly century old description.

Kampala‘s score-card as one of the most peaceful Cities in the turbulent African continent is the highest and unequaled. It has emerged as the most peaceful city in the Sub-Saharan Africa.

The City is devoid of gun-totting violence robberies, security hold-ups, carjacking, mugging and violent attacks, which are featuring in other African cities led by Johannesburg, South Africa followed by the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Here is a busy city where a visitor, who is booked in one of the posh hotels in the Central Business District {CBD}, can easily afford to venture into the night and stroll around the streets unmolested. The visitor can stroll around and return to his or her hotel room without encountering any problem or being accosted by anybody. In fact Kampala is very much alive by the night.

Those privy to information about this beautiful African City say, the prevailing atmosphere and peaceful circumstances, which has drastically changed the face of Kampala, could be attributed to good governance by the ruling NRM, under the political dynamism and magnanimity of President Yoweri Kiguta Muyeveni.

The NRM, they said, has instilled strict discipline on every Ugandan and made the people to double their efforts in development activities. This is very evident in the heavily stocked shops, heavy traffic around the City’s Central Business District {CBD}, the old and new taxi terminals {which are the equivalent of Bus Terminals in Kenya}.

Kampala City has gone under serious face-lift in the last twenty years or so to an extent that any visitor who paid a visit to this City in the early 1980 would be at a loss, and might not even find his or her way to the hotels.

The mode of transport differes significantly from “Special hires to Motorbike taxis”, which are relatively much cheaper compared with the same rates in Nairobi.

Places like Lugogo stadium, near Nagulu suburbs, where this writer lived in the late 1950s can now not be recognized. Nagulu, Nakawa and Kololo have linked together and twined up with the City centre as one entity. An ultra-modern National Stadium is in its advanced construction phase. Another modern taxi terminal is place in Nakawa for the services of passengers traveling to the eastern towns of Kamuli, Jinja, Tororo, and Busia.

Anyone traveling by road on the Jinja road can enjoy cheap, but delicious “Mugonja” lunch of roasted chicken and boiled or roasted banana at Mukono by the roadside, where food merchants sell roasted meat, kabaabs, and other food and soft drinks. And here, a traveler can quench his or her thirst with cold mineral water or soda after the sweet tasting roadside lunch.

In what looked as an achievement of a milestone development, Kampala City is almost linking up with Mukono town, and it won’t take long before the city is linked to Lugazi Sugar Work, which has now colored its development with tea plantations on the hilly right side of the main Kampala Jinja road.

There is true testimony that Uganda is a land of plenty, where tea, coffee, sugar cane, maize ,bananas and fruits and all other important cash crops can be grown along side each other without much efforts in soil research work as it happens elsewhere. There are obvious significant signs that this is an agriculturally rich country, which can generate wealth from its most arable and fertile soil.

Besides the ultra modern road network within the City centre and its environs, several intimidating skyscrapers have sprung. In addition, modern buildings housing shops and offices, all point symbolize booming trade and businesses all around.

And even the old slums of Namongo, Sambiya, Kibuli and Miyonga and Kyadondo have disappeared and replaced with new buildings, whose architectural beauty is an envy of anybody.

The nightly outburst of gun-shots, which were the order of the days in the early 198o’s are now history. The gun-totting soldiers-cum-beggars who dominated Kampala streets and major roads in Uganda during the reign of the despotic Idi Amin and the discredited second presidency of the late Apollo Milton Obote are now things of the past.

A visitor can hardly see a member of the UPDF walking aimlessly in the City streets. The streets are patrolled by highly disciplined police officers who are well trained not to harass civilians in anyway.

Another area of high discipline can be seen in the work of Traffic Police. These ladies and gentlemen ask very few questions. They are hardly seen loitering by the roadside asking for TKK, like their Kenyan counterparts, who go to the road not to control traffic or deter any law breaking drivers and conductors, but for the purpose of money collection.

Matatus or taxis as they are called in Uganda are under strict rule to carry only 14 passenger

There are no conductors or touts at the taxi-terminals, and the passengers pay for their services directly to the Nissan Matatu drivers. There are no noisy making Matatu touts. Carrying extra passenger is forbidden, and any taxi driver caught with the offense faces court fines, which are almost equivalent to the price of the vehicle itself, so nobody is willing to take a chance.

The passenger therefore travel in good comfort, with each and everyone sitting up-right, on his or her seat. The passenger transport sector is the most discipline. The few fatal road accident are usually related to high speeding drivers. The speed limits is strictly observed by the drivers, that is why it takes between three and four hours driver from Busia on the Kenya-Uganda border to Kampala City centre.

An old Kampala friend told this writer that the country was rapped by political parties that ruled the country in its early stage of political independence. There was rampant tribalism, sectionalism and nepotism, where by the ruling class were bent on seeing only their kin were appointed on top jobs in the government and paratatal organizations.

Ends.

leooderaomolo@yahoio.com
– – –
From: Leo Odera Omolo
Date: Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 7:06 AM
Subject: Kampala is the most peaceful city in Sub-Saharan Africa with no muggers and robbers