By Mulengera Reporters
In a 149 pages’ book, titled “Lead the Shift: The 7Hills City Model,” ex-KCCA Executive Director Dorothy Kisaka tells her story. It chiefly focusses on her professional working life before and after becoming KCCA ED.
Kisaka narrates getting exposed to shouldering huge responsibility at the work place just 28 years when duty called and required her to take over management of the law firm, her first place of work after campus, following the death of her boss.
She runs through her days and times as a lawyer in the private legal practice, to working at the NRM Secretariat all the way to the OPM where she served as a top bureaucrat under Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda’s office.
At the OPM, she also headed the Secretariat that coordinated COVID19 donations that were being made to the GoU by the private sector. Kisaka narrates the euphoria her appointment as KCCA ED naturally created among her children, family members, church-mates and friends’ circle.
She recalls the celebrations that rocked her home as well wishers filed in to register their congratulations. She did 4 years as KCCA ED, a tour of duty that was unexpectedly cut short in the aftermath of the Kiteezi disaster that cost lives and property.
The President got angry, following the IGG report that claimed negligence, and fired top KCCA officials including Kisaka herself. She writes about all that too in her book and reflects on lessons learned through jail experience and much more.
Kisaka also writes about the initial apprehension she and her husband (with whom she mothers twins) had about having to work with a combative person like the Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago.
She recalls their very first meeting and generally stuff they were able to accomplish at the City Hall where she inevitably had to work with Erias Lukwago being the elected political leader.
She doesn’t write much about him but the few jokes she hints upon creates the impression that the working relationship with Erias Lukwago was in the end less complicated than had originally been anticipated. She makes reference to jokes relating to how City Hall came to embrace former Bayayes who she mobilized into a formidable group called 7Hills.
These started out as volunteers cleaning the city and yet the same group morphed into a formidable group whose cleaning and mindset change operations impressed State House to the extent that President Museveni came to Kololo to commission them and publicly praised Kisaka for successfully transforming what he called former Sauls into Pauls.
Through the 7Hills initiative, Kisaka was able to transform thousands of former street Bayayes into responsible Kampalans overseeing the cleaning of neighborhoods and communities in all Kampala’s five Divisions. She created gainful employment for them.
They earned something to transform their lives while at the same time delivering a cleaner, more sustainable and more livable City.
She makes reference to former street gangs leaders/Bayayes who led others into reciprocating her approach to inclusively work with such downtrodden groups while giving them platform to make their contribution. These include Menton Bashir Bakyenga, Bashir Bugembe and Faizal Kabugo. These have since transitioned into effective leaders shepherding their fellow former Bayayes. It’s a transformation Kisaka is very much proud to have enabled and contributed to.
The story of 7Hills is just one of the key accomplishments Kisaka references upon in her beautifully narrated story and experience at City Hall.
The former Executive Director, who appropriately doesn’t make much reference to her predecessors, also gives hints here and there about the work place intrigue that would be inevitable to experience in a big place like KCCA.
In a full page review of the book, the New Vision board of editors recommends Kisaka’s literal work as a must read for contemporary Uganda managers seeking to know how to learn more about inclusiveness and how to run their organizations better. We couldn’t agree more. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
