Open letter to President Museveni: Normal Ugandans sleeping on the streets of Kampala

Op-Ed: Yesterday, I wrote to you a letter, and this is an edited version of that letter. I have since yesterday gathered even more information about the fact that this problem is not only in Kampala’s streets but nationwide. I’m reliably informed that “normal” Ugandans, the majority of whom have invaded all sorts of places at night and are sleeping in every possible empty valandah space in the cities, municipalities, towns, and trading centers,.

In the Mulago hospital complex plus other health centers, these people at night fill all the places that act as holding areas, forms, benches, corridors, etc., pausing as people who have patients in the wards whom they are attending to, and when it comes to early morning, they “kulumba” work or duty.

On Wednesday morning,I was in the capital city at 5:30 a.m., and I didn’t believe what I was seeing! And because it was still raining, these guys had not yet left. They were still sleeping.

Our people, very able-bodied Ugandans, have invaded the streets of Kampala at night. These Ugandans are not those with disabilities,not street children,not beggars,not mad people, but very able-bodied Ugandans who have invaded the streets in the capital city of Kampala and are sleeping on the verandahs of the streets. These people even own plots,apartments,and homes on the streets of Kampala. They even fight for ownership of these spaces, and in the process, they break the glass of shops, injure or harm one another, and are even detained in the cells of the police posts on these streets for several days over the same.

Some parents are there with some of their children. They sleep in polythene sacks that are water- and cold-proof. And the most luxurious and most fought-for plots are those spaces where the rainwater does not reach when it is raining at night.

Your Excellency, you might not believe it, but some of these people are business people or gentlemen and ladies who are very smart during the day in the capital city. Some go to the ordinary dry cleaners; they pick up their suits and ties in the morning and return them there in the evening for storage before they invade the streets to sleep.

There are all ages of people sleeping on the streets in the central city: the children, their parents, the youths, the middle-aged, the pensioners, and also the usual suspects, the gangsters.

Most of these people are good-character citizens, but a few are criminals who vandalize the city at night and steal the public and KCCA installations and gadgets in the city.

But there is a way these wrong elements are being dealt with by the good-character citizens so that the authorities don’t come to disrupt the nightlife of the street lords.

Your Excellence, if someone were to go at night on Luwum Street near Entebbe Road or Mengo Road near the New Taxi Park, among other places, and take videos of these street lodgers and circulate the videos, it would be a very bad embarrassment to our country.

These people also pose a security threat. In other countries, they could mobilize demonstrations and overthrow some governments at night because there are so many and they are able-bodied. They could even overpower a military brigade by virtue of their numbers.

Your Excellency, I spent some time today and found out why they are sleeping on the streets and the solution to this problem, and I want to find a way to feed you with the same. And I don’t want to be like those who want to tell you only what they think you want to hear; I want to tell you the reality on this subject and even several other issues that I feel people close to you or your intelligence people are not telling you about: “ebirumaabanayuganda.

Please kindly give me an audience, and when you are ready for what you have been missing to hear for the last 40 years, because some of our people are going through things you won’t be able to believe.

Your Excellency, I will end by thanking you for your wise advice that you gave me through a phone call while I was in Kigali, Rwanda, in late August 2004. Because of your advice, I have the freedom that I currently enjoy. I took your wise advice, and it worked for me.

Thank you for the conducive atmosphere that you have created, which has transformed our country.

May the Almighty God continue to bless your leadership and continue to keep you healthy, wealthy, strong, wise, and an admirer of the world.

The author is Patrick Kasulu, a concerned citizen and a resident of Seeta Mukono.

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