How many women and children in the Kiteezi Landfill collapse

The population of Kampala is currently estimated at 4,051,000. In 2014, it was 2,453,000. In twenty years, the city has grown 165%. The city has one garbage dump, the Kiteezi Landfill. It is the largest garbage dump in Uganda and in all of East Africa. It is located in a densely populated, low-income area of Kampala. The Kiteezi Landfill was opened in 1996 and was meant to run until 1996. In 2021, Kampala Capital City Authority-KCCA “began” the process of closing Kiteezi Landfill with a study to inform safe closure. It stayed open. In June 2024, the KCCA Directorate of Public Health and Environment received a report stating that the conditions at the landfill were dangerous and life-threatening: “Significant cracks and waste slides were observed in the north-eastern section of the site, blocking the main drainage channel and causing leachate to flood nearby areas, including a neighborhood farm.Dr. Daniel Ayen Okello, Director of Public Health and Environment at KCCA, noted that the Kiteezi Landfill, a critical waste disposal site for Kampala, is facing severe operational challenges. The landfill, which has been operating beyond its capacity, has developed hazardous conditions threatening both waste management efficiency and community safety.” There was no response. On Friday, August 9, 2024, the Kiteezi Landfill collapsed. As of the latest count, 30 people were killed. That number is expected to rise. Numerous houses adjoining the landfill were submerged in trash. The landslide occurred late at night. Hundreds are missing, hundreds have been displaced. Yesterday, the government announced it was “moving to decommission the Kiteezi Landfill.”  Case closed.

Of course, this was a tragedy foretold. It’s also a tragedy that the world noted, for a blip, and then will move on. Remember the Koshe Landfill in Addis Ababa? Remember the Hulene Landfill in Maputo? “The Kiteezi landfill is on a steep slope in an impoverished part of the city. Women and children who scavenge plastic waste for income frequently gather there, and some homes have been built close to the landfill.” Who will remember; who will care?

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Travel Uganda)

Not just another murder, Brenda Namigadde

On February 4, 2006, almost five years ago, Zoliswa Nkonyana, “a young Khayelitsha lesbian”, was chased by a group of 20 or so young men. When they caught up with her, they clubbed, kicked and beat her to death. They tortured her to death for being lesbian, for being openly lesbian, for being a woman, for being.

It took two weeks for the news of her brutal murder to finally reach the media. The police didn’t make much of the death or its circumstances. The press in Khayelitsha, five years ago as today, is marked largely by its absence. It was `just another murder.’

Five years later, the case is still open, the trial is not yet finalized. Memorials will take place, no doubt, protests and commemorations.

Yesterday, January 26, 2011, gay rights activist David Kisule Kato was brutally murdered in Mukono, Kampala, Uganda. Kato was the advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda. Along with Julian Pepe Onziema and Kasha Jacqueline, Kato had recently won a case against Rolling Stone, restraining it from publishing photos and names of gay men and lesbian women. The High Court ruled that the tabloid violated the rights to privacy and safety. This time the news of the murder spread quickly. The Kampala police claimed, almost immediately, that they’re on the case.

In both instances, and so many others, the assault is on the right to public being, the right to access as gay men and lesbian women, to public spaces, to common and shared experiences, to mutual recognition.

Brenda Namigadde is a woman from Uganda. She fled Uganda in 2003 after her house was destroyed and her life was threatened … because her life partner was a woman. Namigadde fled to the United Kingdom, where she sought asylum. She was turned down, because of insufficient proof of `being lesbian’. Now Namigadde sits in Yarl’s Wood, and awaits, in terror, to be deported to Uganda.

One way to honor the memory of Zoliswa Nkonyana, of David Kato, of all the other gay men and lesbian women who have been brutalized, tortured, murdered, for the sin of being gay in public, for the sin of sharing their love in the common and shared spaces, is to make sure that Brenda Namigadde and other gay and lesbian asylum seekers are not transported back to the House of Death. If not, then Zoliswa Nkonyana, David Kato, and all the others, they’re just another murder.

 

(Mosaic of Zoliswa Nkonyana by Ziyanda Majozi. Thanks to inkanyiso.org)