In their thousands, Kampala cleaners have implored the President to consider pardoning ex-KCCA Executive Director Dorothy Kisaka and the other two directors with whom she was fired and subsequently put on trial over the 35 lives that were lost because of the Kiteezi disaster.
Led by one Menton, the cleaners are scattered in the five divisions of Kampala, and they are grateful that Kisaka deliberately set out to give them a chance at life by rehabilitating them from the street life and criminal past they had been addicted to for years. It was her initiative to get them involved in the cleaning of their city and encouraged them to come together under an initiative called 7Hills to become responsible citizens and abandon their evil past.
The program began during the COVID lockdown as President Museveni locked down the whole country, with many people starving in their homes. It was then that Kisaka got in touch with Menton and others, who went on to mobilize hundreds of women and youths, who were crime-minded and idle as of that time, to begin cleaning their neighborhoods without having to go anywhere.
They initially cleaned the drainage channels and collected garbage as volunteers. After some time, they were guided to register 7Hills as an organization, which brings them together up to this day. Subsequently, with the approval of the President, these were regularized into KCCA service, joining them to other cleaners who had been on the job longer.
Kisaka considered 7Hills to be a big pillar in her Kampala Smart City initiative. This is something over which President Museveni publicly praised Kisaka while describing her as a visionary who had enabled thousands of former street children and criminals to transform themselves from Saul to Paul.
AND NOW:
When she got into problems over Kiteezi, it was natural that the 7Hills group became visible in putting up solidarity of some sort to stand up and be there for her. Indeed, they haven’t disappointed. Because many of them are NRM cadres and Museveni supporters, these cleaners don’t believe in staging protests. What they have done is to carry on with their work while praying for the former ED.
Over the weekend, the 7Hills leadership, leveraging their division-based offices, has come together and converged to have night prayers while beseeching God to plead Kisaka’s case.
On Friday, more than 1,000 cleaners from Kampala Central Division converged at Deliverance Church near Kiseka Market and spent the entire night weeping and praying for Kisaka so that God strengthens and sees her through her current adversity.
Even when a lot of people, including the top leadership of Busoga Kingdom, where she hails from, believe that Kisaka did nothing wrong and was merely a victim of circumstances, she continues to be locked up in Luzira prison, where she had never been in her entire life (she is in her late 40s, and this is the first time she gets locked up for whatever reason).
So, at the Deliverance Church, which is one of the worship places she frequented, the pastors led the cleaners to ask God, her creator, to be there for Kisaka through all the troubles she is currently going through—her perceived innocence notwithstanding.
Bashir Bugembe, one of the 7Hills leaders, explained to journalists what is motivating them to stand with Dorothy Kisaka.
“We thank God who guided the President to bring her to serve His people of Kampala. She was an ED with rare attributes. She had genuine love for us the downtrodden. We always had EDs and town clerks at City Hall who were Baganda like us, but they never cared for us the poor in Kampala, which is in Buganda, the way Kisaka deliberately reached out to us,” Bugembe explained as he struggled to hold back tears and conceal his emotions. “She is from Busoga but understood us the poor and treated us with more compassion than the previous EDs and town clerks who had been Baganda like us.”
Bugembe explained that Kisaka always prioritized engagement with the ordinary Kampalans, like the thousands in 7Hills, as opposed to unleashing enforcement on them. “She would have demanded that we go away as she sought to clear up the streets to implement the Smart City campaign, but instead she engaged and guided us into getting something to do, which is cleaning the city, which gradually got us into this employment that we have used to serve our Kampala and simultaneously get something for our families. She was inclusive and never tried to divide us along political lines, even when she was NRM. We are broken that she has had to go through all this, yet there isn’t much we can do.”
Bugembe says they are poor people who can’t hire a lawyer for her or secure an audience to plead with the President to give Dorothy Kisaka a second chance, which is why they have resorted to the power of the powerless, which is prayer. “This is all we can because she needs a lot of emotional strength in what she is currently going through. This is the reason these prayer sessions are going on in all five divisions of Kampala. Dorothy Kisaka was our person, and we have to stand with her through thick and thin. Weak as we are, it’s only prayer that we can offer her in the current circumstances. We are sure that because she did nothing wrong and served a faithful God, this will all come to an end some day, and it is our prayer that she emerges even stronger out of this current adversity,” Bugembe explained in his native Luganda.
Besides Bugembe’s Kampala Central, cleaners uniting under 7Hills are staging prayer sessions for Kisaka in the other four divisions of Kampala. For Rubaga Division, the Kisaka prayers were held this Sunday morning at the 7Hills offices’ compound in Kabusu near the street lights. More than 600 cleaners converged, prayed, and wept, calling on God to intervene in Dorothy Kisaka’s woes. Pastors were at hand to lead the prayers and weeping in the hope that would get God to intervene in some powerful way.
Many of them asserted that much as things might have gone wrong in the KCCA that she led, Dorothy Kisaka was an innocent actor who deliberately never set out to do anything wrong to the detriment of the people of Kampala, especially the 35 confirmed to have perished in the Kiteezi fiasco. Some reflected on the Parliament’s COSASE report, which squarely blamed the Kiteezi disaster on the Finance Ministry officials who, for years, refused to give KCCA the money required to decommission Kiteezi after City Hall officials raised a red flag.
In Parliament, some MPs have questioned why Kampala Ministers Kyofa Togabye Kabuye and Minsa Kabanda, who have the political platforms and are supposed to repeatedly have reminded the President about the impending Kiteezi debacle, didn’t use their powerful political offices to keep making the case during Cabinet meetings so that Kiteezi got the priority attention it deserved for all these years. The officials at City Hall always highlighted Kiteezi during the budgeting process, only for the thing to be treated as an unfunded priority because the country’s treasury is broke! This makes what happened a collective failure as opposed to merely sacrificing Kisaka and her two co-accused.
Cleaners in Nakawa Division will be staging their mass prayer gathering for Kisaka on Tuesday during the day, and 7Hills bosses estimate that not less than 700 will converge. Some have to be out cleaning and sweeping the streets as others represent them for the prayers. “Dorothy Kisaka taught us to be patriotic and to always take our KCCA work seriously, which is why we can’t totally abandon the cleaning work even when we are hurting over what she is going through,” explained another 7Hills boss in a bid to clarify why they have to balance work and praying for the former ED.
The Kawempe Division cleaners, under 7Hills, will be peacefully converging this Monday to pray for the same Dorothy Kisaka, and the venue will be Makerere Yellow Primary School, according to their leader Faruk Buliime. The prayers, at which some Kampala pastors will lead the intercession, are beginning at 9 a.m.
Similarly, cleaners from Makindye Division are also fasting and praying in the hope that God will surely intervene and Kisaka’s woes come to an end sooner than later. Their view is that even when one or two things may have gone wrong, Kisaka always acted in good faith and as such deserves to be forgiven by both the President and her God.
KABEGA GETS IN
In a related development, convinced that several other things might be inquired into and thereby making things even more complicated, former Deputy ED Eng David Ssali Luyimbazi has hired much-sought-after Kampala defense lawyer Mac Dusman Kabega to lead his defense team.
Already Kabega, renowned for winning much more complicated criminal cases for his past clients, has twice been to Luzira to speak with Luyimbazi as he prepares on how to go about the whole thing. And his view, as a lawyer, is that this isn’t a case about which his client has to be that worried about.
