By Our Reporters
Kampala Minister Beti Kamya has named three powerful Generals in President Museveni’s government stating that her research shows they are part of the cause of the wrangles in the city Boda-Boda industry resulting into the impunity and violence that the detained Abdul Kitata and his Boda 2010 operatives are accused of orchestrating. In a three page letter to the Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, and copied to several other top officials, Kamya discloses how she had been having many consultative meetings encompassing all rival Boda associations and from what they have told her, her conclusion is that the three powerful generals are complicit. These are cited (by their titles) as Salim Saleh, Kale Kayihura and Henry Tumukunde. The letter is entitled “RE: BODA-BODA MANAGEMENT” and Kamya authored it after taking months meeting the different rival groups with an intention to persuade them to embrace registration which KCCA had started but was frustrated by Kitata’s Boda 2010 men backed by Police. Credible information Mulengera news has obtained from KCCA officials shows that the registration exercise was expected or targeted to register over 200,000 boda riders but Kitata’s men made the exercise impossible after only 54,393 had been registered. Kitata’s argument was that many of these riders are doing security work and registration would expose their identities and thereby making their work difficult. This actually happened before Kamya became Kampala Minister and when she took office, backed by Security Minister Henry Tumukunde, she made it her a top priority to fix the Boda industry once and for all. And the starting point had to be mass registration which riders had embraced until Kitata disrupted everything and had IGP Gen Kale Kayihura’s active backing. Siraje Mutyaba the chairman of Century Riders Association, whose members have always endured violence by Kitata’s men, says it was a major weakness for the central government not to back Jennifer Musisi’s efforts to register the riders. Kitata one time told President Museveni that it wasn’t him frustrating registration but the fact is the riders don’t trust KCCA. Kamya in her letter makes it clear that registration was to be the starting point for KCCA to determine tax liability each rider would shoulder annually. “I’m sure it is not lost on anybody that by not paying taxes, the boda-boda sector is hurting service delivery, ” writes Kamya on page three of her letter assuring Lukwago she wouldn’t hesitate to invoke her powers under Section 82 of the KCCA Act that empowers her to weigh in and do work directly in case KCCA fails.
NAMES THE GENERALS:
Kamya’s letter, which reliable sources say the minister now regrets authoring given that a lot has changed since its authorship, names the three generals in the following paragraph: “As you [Lukwago] know, I have engaged with all factions of Boda Bodas on several occasions and listened keenly to their issues. Broadly speaking, many believe that each Boda Boda faction has a godfather [she puts this word in inverted comas] in either the IGP [Gen Kale Kayihura for the case of 2010], the Coordinator of OWC [who is General Salim Saleh], KCCA and to some extent, the Minister for Security [who is Gen Henry Tumukunde].” Kamya believes this information is factual because its representative of the detailed findings she personally gathered from Boda factions she has been meeting. Kamya adds that: “Factions suspicious of KCCA believe that the institution had a hand in the creation of a certain faction and therefore has some partisan interests in management of the boda boda sector. There are also those [factions] that have no problems with KCCA.”
GENERALS DEFENDED:
However, Mulengera news spoke to two veteran elected leaders with a long history of service in the city. One of these is NRM’s John Ssimbwa who until 2016 was the MP for Makindye East. He defended Gen Saleh saying his involvement in the boda-boda issues came after they (leaders) asked for his hand after failing to reconcile rival factions. Ssimbwa recalls several meetings Gen Saleh held with Boda factions at Mutundwe Serene Suites but he too failed to resolve the problem and gave up. Ssimbwa says Gen Saleh assigned him to use his expertise as a long serving ISO operative to write a paper guiding the President on how to streamline the boda industry in Kampala. “But to be frank with you I failed in that assignment because there is clearly no way those guys can reconcile and that makes them susceptible to being manipulated by big people in government who have nothing to do with Boda riding,” says Ssimbwa adding that Kitata and his Boda 2010 is just a symptom of a much bigger problem.
Ssimbwa is a staunch NRM whose views were as well partly corroborated by veteran journalist and also DP diehard Siraje Lubwama who until a few years ago was Mayor Makindye Division. He says there is no way Generals as influential as the trio (Kamya names in her letter) can avoid being interested in the Boda industry. “Those guys are very many, energetic and therefore potentially good allies for security. Those Generals and many others she doesn’t name have a legitimate security interest to work with Boda. That is the general rule as we know it but it’s also true some generals become selfish and use them to serve business interests and political ones as well,” Siraje Lubwama says explaining that Gen Kayihura for instance has for long been using Boda 2010 to do political mobilization work than even security. Siraje Lubwama, an avid critic of the NRM, says President Museveni is partly to blame “because we [KCC leaders] used to co-exist very well with Boda Bodas and they submitted to our authority as KCC but when State House felt they were politically biased in favor of the opposition, the President started interfering and for instance abolished the Shs9,000 they each used to willingly pay to KCC annually.” Lubwama says this fee was mandatory, small enough to be convenient and it’s what KCC would use to generate records as to the identity of the boda riders in the entire 5 city Divisions (namely Kampala Central, Makindye, Nakawa, Rubaga & Kawempe).
BACK TO LETTER:
Kamya’s letter also stresses the importance of Lord Mayor and his KCCA team ensuring that credible elections are urgently organized to ensure there is a leadership that all riders can fully embrace and accept as legitimate. She proposes involving the EC since the riders don’t seem to trust KCCA or anybody else to be a neutral arbiter between the different warring riders’ factions. Dependable sources say that this aspect of the letter that faults the three generals has lately made Kamya very uncomfortable fearing the resultant scrutiny the ongoing Kitata debate might cause to the three generals who might politically occasion reprisals against her in return. Sources say that, on realizing this letter was going to become quotable authority for some people as the Kitata debate rages, Kamya last week (Tuesday January 23rd to be exact) wrote a two page letter (we have a copy) showing discomfort with Lukwago’s Authority meetings which she implies are becoming too many. This letter, sources say, was meant to attract angry reaction from Lukwago and his supportive councilors so that the letter implicating the three Generals somehow gets lost in the confusion and isn’t thoroughly discussed. We were unable to get comment from Kamya but at least her letter (hereby reproduced) speaks for itself.
