RSSThe Good and the ugly about the Nakivubo inferno, Part 1
26 Feb 2009 97 Comments
Posted in Uncategorized
Kampala was on fire yesterday. The parking yard for Nakivubo war memorial Stadium caught fire in the wee hours of yesterday morning and raged for six hours. According to press reports, millions worth of goods and more millions in cash was lost in the inferno. The government has now instituted a cabinet subcommittee to look into the cause of the fire. They will await the police report after investigations into the causes of the fire.
When we awoke to TV news of this fire, the anguish on the faces of the traders was to much to bear. Lost livelihood is what ringed loudly. The risks to our economy, our country when finally computed, will ring in to billions of lost revenues, but the ramification is skin deep.
Lost Livelihoods …and Revenue
With close to 1000 people out of jobs, in this era of the credit crunch, the country stands to loose billions in revenues. Many of the traders lived out of Uganda and contibuted significanlty to their local economies. Therefore, the risk to educatFire disaster ill-preparedness
This fire comes two weeks after Nakumatt and Molo fires killed more than 150 Kenyans. The The EastAfrican joint report on the region’s ability to fight fires makes a sombre reading. Uganda is not prepared for an inferno. Woe betides us if any fires flared in our city. Well, the story was vindicated as the Nakivubo fire as affirmed.
The head quarters of the fire fighting institution, the police fire brigade happens to be a stone’s throw away from the Nakivubo scene. They arrived at the scene 90 minutes late according to press reports. At the snail pace of 5 centimeters per second the fire truck took forever to arrive. Yet when they did, there was no water or foam or both, and the trucks were too few to be of any importance to put out the fire. So they called for reinforcement. Firefighters were to be the knight in shining armour. Unfortunately, the fire company could only look angazi in the face of a fire out of control. There is no access road, there is no water, too many crowds, the fire fighters claimed. Like the police, they were toothless as the fire was beyond their control. According to the police spokeswoman, speaking to CBS radio, some action took place and some goods were salvaged. The looters were stopped from having a field day. That response came a little too late to stop the fire.
Conspiracy theorising
So what caused the fire? Tongues begun to wag. A bus company has been given the Kirussia side of Nakivubo stadium to redevelop into a terminal, in a four year UGX 12,000,000 a month deal by the stadium management committee. Having no access to the parking yard, some people are now claiming that the bus company could have started the fire to rid the place of the traders and create the important entrance. The bus company deny this claim. A picture in the New Vision showed a police officer pointing at a hole in concrete, suspected to be the point where the fire was introduced. It was a blackened hole, apparently recently blasted through the concrete walls of Nakivubo stadium. Was this arson? Who could have done it? Then the claims that a blust was heard before the fire begun. Could it have been a grenade lobed through the hole? Kampala does not go o sleep these days. The night life around the city is alive 24hrs, again with improved security around the country, buses travel aroun the clock. It is therefore possible to hear a loud bang at night. But the explosion could also have been the result of power outage. Enough said.
We have to go back in time to understand the suspicions of the traders. A decade ago, I used to shop for my wardrobe at a shop on Luwum Street. Maurice, the shop owner one day told me of the threat to his business. The landlord had asked them to vacate the building. However, the shop owners needed more time to relocate. One Monday morning, the traders awoke to a grim sight. The building was razing to the ground; and there was nothing to do to save the merchandize. Maurice had luckily, taken the threat seriously and had got a shop on Wilson road. A short while later, trucks ferried materials on the sight and construction work commenced in earnest. Alarmingly, there was no police investigation as to cause of this fire, well, at least no reports were published.
In the years that followed, many dilapidated buildings on the street met the same fate; tenants asked to leave then an inferno. Does that ring a bell? The police will investigate the causes of the Owino fire, if to assuage the public anger, but as the traders are licking their wounds, we will wait for the report.
In the wrong place at the wrong time
In the late 30’s, the British Colonial government gazetted a swamp at the foot of Old Kampala, Nakasero confluence into a National Stadium, to welcome the veterans of the first world war. It was called Nakivubo war memorial Stadium. It was the only one of its kind in Uganda and would offer the avenue for the locals to cool off their steam.
The stadium sat on five acres of wetland and would comprise the complex and the parking areas around it; for the population of the city estimated at 10,000 at the time, would fit in nicely and the upper class would not have trouble parking their cars. When Idi Amin Dada took power, the area around the stadium was an inviting place for hawkers and vendors of merchandise.
An idea was then mooted in 1972 to turn it into a market. An obscure Adhola man, common at the place gave it the name; Owino market. So Owino as we fondly called it grew into an amorphous establishment that came to define the life on the fringes; a microcosm of the national character of Uganda.
An unplanned business settlement where the rules of the jungle reigned supreme over establishment. Pickpockets, vagrants, hawkers and vendors and prostitutes and… a kaleidoscope of cultures and character, all seeking a livelihood thrived. But people were happy as everyone got something in this market. The pick pocket, the bargain seeker, the discount seller. Anything from agricultural produce, clothings, upholstery to electronic goods mostly second, pirated and stolen found a ready market.
(coming soon, why burning the market is a blessing in disguise)
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