I am suing the Kampala City Council (KCC) and this is why.
Section 114 of the Penal Code Act of Uganda:
Every person who … commits any trespass in any place set apart for the performance of funeral rites or as a depository for the remains of the dead, or offers any indignity to any human corpse or causes disturbance to any persons assembled for the purpose of funeral ceremonies is guilty of a misdemeanor.
In April this year, The Daily Monitor reported that Lugogo Bypass Cemetery was sold to Ham-Kag Limited, a Ugandan company owned by businessman Humphrey Nsereko. According to the Kampala Town Clerk James Sseggane (who has since been sacked for fraud) Ham-Kag offered 100 acres of land at Maya on the Kampala-Masaka Road where the bodies will be relocated. Ham-Kag intended to replace the cemetery with residential apartments.
The article in The Daily Monitor caused such an uproar that the Mayor of Kampala, Nasser Ntege Ssebagala (a convicted felon who served 15 months in U.S. prison for bank fraud) reversed the decision, announcing instead that the City Council would beautify the cemeteries and maintain them as tourist attractions.
Now barely a year later, several media houses are reporting again that the exhumation of human remains is being conducted quietly at the Lugogo By-pass cemetery.
I visited the cemetery this morning and found this claim to be true. A huge wall, about two meters high, was constructed around the cemetery, which is located opposite City High School. Access to the cemetery is blocked throughout the day, which a big black gate chained and padlocked, preventing the inquisitive from asking questions. The only way I could see what was inside the wall was by parking right next to the wall and standing on the bonnet of my van. Since I am height challenged these are the best pictures I could get.
According to the Kampala City Council spokesperson, Simon Muhumuza, the Asian Zoroastian community, which allegedly owns the cemetery, agreed to move the bodies to Kitigoma in Mukono district to allow the development of the plot. He said, “I think they want to change use of the plot, when they come to us with all the relevant documents we shall consider their proposal.”
UNO PROBLEMO – The story has changed too many times for it to be believable. Who owns the cemetery? To whom is it being sold? Where exactly are the bodies being taken? Why is the exhumation done only under the cover of darkness?
PROBLEM DEUX – All manner of people, not only members of the Zoroastian community, are buried in Lugogo.
See that large tree in the back? That’s where my Aunt Enid is buried in 1997. Her sister, Aunt Patience (beloved Aunty Ssenga) visits the cemetery every year to take flowers to the grave. You cannot imagine how incensed Aunt Patience was when I showed her the pictures today. She was never contacted about the exhumation and the desecration of the grave has brought back all the grief surrounding her sister’s death.
SHIDA TATU – The rules of universal human decency dictate that death is sacred. It is a taboo, and not only for the old or superstitious, for graves to be desecrated and the dead to be disturbed. Who and what gave the Kampala City Council the right to mess with my ancestors?
KCC is known as a den of thieves. It is the place to which the corrupt are elected to get first-hand lessons on how to become even more corrupt. I have had enough of this amorphous, rotten, useless institution and I am taking it to court.
