Open Society Initiative for EastAfrica held a discussion on the right to cities. Find here the presentation made by Ronald Businge, a city rights expert.

1. The Right to the City and its
Implications for Kampala
Ronald Busiinge
Presentation at Golf Course Hotel
Wednesday, December 17, 2014

2. Structure of Presentation
• Preamble
• Study Objectives
• Findings
• Conclusions
• Recommendations

3. Preamble
• Study Commissioned by OSIEA
• An attempt to find a solution that city inhabitants
find themselves into
• Henri Lefebvre popularized the slogan in 1968
• First World Social Forum (held in the city of
Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001)
• World Urban Forum – Barcelona 2004
• World Urban Forum V in 2010
• Cross sectional survey conducted
• Study concentrated in Nakawa Division that has
the largest number of evictees

4. Study Objectives
• To conduct a desk research in order to assess
and analyse the conceptual grounding (theory,
Charter) of the Right to the City and its
implications for Kampala;
• To carry out field work in Kampala City with
emphasis on the recent evictions and the extent
to which the Right to the City was observed
• To convene Focus Group Discussions on the
ways and means to enshrine the Right to the
City in Kampala’s development processes at the
local and central government levels;

5. Findings
• Conceptual Grounding
• Why R2C
– R2C draws on the UN’s 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights
– A collective right where citizens are ‘active
agents of change
– Cities have fluid populations, many not
formally defined as citizens

6. Why R2C
– half the world population lives in cities and
predictions are that by 2005 the degree of
urbanization will have reached 65%.
– urbanization processes which contribute to
the depredation of the environment and the
privatisation of public spaces generating
social and physical segregation.

7. • What Right
– a cry and a demand
– the right to information, the rights to use of
multiple services, the right of users to make
known their ideas on the space and time of
their activities in urban areas
– The right to the city is a claim and a banner
under which to mobilize one side in the
conflict over who should have the benefit of
the city and what kind of city it should be.

8. – It is a moral claim, founded on fundamental
principles of justice, of ethics, of morality, of
virtue, of the good
– Intrinsic in the Right to the City is the right to
participation and to appropriation

9. • Whose Right
– is both a cry and a demand, a cry out of
necessity and a demand for something more.
– the demand for the Right to the City comes
from the directly oppressed; the aspiration
comes from the alienated
– Public space for debate and claim of
democratic rights, but also for those excluded
from the commodified private domain

10. • What City
– it is not the right to the existing city that is demanded,
but the right to a future city
– not necessarily a city in the conventional sense at all,
but a place in an urban society in which the
hierarchical distinction between the city and the
country has disappeared.
– ‘the city of heart’s desire’
– a city where material needs and aspirational needs
are met, the needs of the deprived and of the
alienated

11. • Recent Evictions and the R2C
– Railway evictions in Ndeba and Banda
– Demolitions
– Taxi operators
– Schools
– Street vendors and street buyers
– Boda Boda
– City Abattoir
– Urban Farming
– Kasokoso

16. Implications
• Urban militarism is the new way of managing
cities
• Kampala City as a site of conflict
• Kampala’s politics can be reduced to issues of
traffic, unplanned market vending and street
hawking and high rise hotels, this is done
through bargains between wealthy elites that
often violate planning and other regulations.
• The policy, legal and regulatory environment of
KCCA is weak right from the conceptualization,
contextualization and aspirations in relation to
R2C.

17. Implications contd
• KCCA is more dictatorial and does not consult
with the city inhabitants, only gives directives.
• The formal institutions for managing the city
particularly relating to land and planning have
been undermined by informal bargaining
between elites and urban interest groups
• The current political squabbles between Lord
Mayor Erias Lukwago and government (KCCA)
have denied the city inhabitants of the political
leadership

18. Implications Contd
• Under the KCCA Act 7 (i) a) the authority is mandated to
initiate and formulate policy. Unlike other authorities that
are created as a result of policy, it’s unique for Kampala.
• The R2C is in tandem with the Uganda National Urban
Policy (UNUP). Though, the KCCA Act seems not to
reflect the same ideals.
• Each year thousands upon thousands of individuals
make the move away from rural areas to seek a better
life in the city. But what waits in the city is no easy street
to riches, but rather a fight for limited space on land that
is scarce and valuable.
• Many city inhabitants in informal settlements are largely
excluded from the city’s formal systems and services.

19. Conclusions
• Kampala is yet to become a signatory city for the World Charter on
the Right to the City.
– First, there is no legal mandate to compel KCCA to implement
the provisions of the said charter.
– Second, there is a moral case for KCCA to implement the
provision of the charter in order to fit in their newly found vision
of a “Vibrant, Attractive and Sustainable City. It, also, tallies with
KCCA Mission “To Deliver Quality Services to the City” and
KCCA core values of excellence, integrity, innovativeness,
teamwork and client care.
– Third, there is will on the part of government to pursue the Right
to the City as exemplified by governments (President Museveni)
presentations at the WUF5.
– Most provisions of the 1995 constitution, the Draft National
Urban Policy 2010, National Development Plan, Land Policy
2012, and other frameworks are in tandem with the provisions of
the World Charter on the Right to the City.

20. Conclusions contd
• Kampala City as it is cannot deliver rights.
– While a great deal of planning work has been done in both the colonial and
postcolonial eras, the postcolonial era experienced little application and
implementation of the planning ideas and plans
– This is attributed to governance issues, lack of financial resources and
manpower, the complicated land tenure systems emerging from 1900 Buganda
agreement, lack of political commitment, and importation of foreign models
without reorienting them to the local context, and so forth. He further observes
that there is an existence of dualism in Kampala dating back from colonial days;
Mengo for the Native Baganda peoples and Kampala for the Europeans, a
dualism that existed for much of the period before 1968. Modern town planning
was particularly applied to the colonial city while the native city grew with little
attempts to planning.

21. Conclusions contd
– The 1900 Buganda Agreement complicated the land
tenure in Uganda to such an extent that in Kampala
alone, there exists multiple land tenure systems
including that makes is hard to plan for the city’s
development.
– The 1995 constitution augments the situation as it
emphasizes that lands recent abolition belongs to the
people coupled with the recent abolition of Land
Acquisition Act.
– ‘Racially’ grounded, the city fails to celebrate it
cultural diversity. Instead of Kifumbira being a basis of
celebrating “Kifumbira” culture, it is often associated
with slums and low cadre of citizens as is with
Kitooro.

22. Recommendations
• A new policy, legal and regulatory framework for the
governance and service delivery in the city is suggested,
one that espouses notions and provisions of the World
Charter on the Right to the City akin to Law no. 388/1997 in
Colombia and Law no. 10.257/2001 in Brazil.
• City inhabitants ought to be at the helm in determining the
kind of city they want not one in the minds of KCCA. There
is need to build a new ‘Kampala’ that can be planned well
in advance, one that can deliver rights to city inhabitants.
Ideologically, this should be a city in the peoples heart; one
where the city inhabitants are partners with city
management and work together to build a city.
• There is need for a monitoring mechanism that would
monitor compliance of KCCA with the provisions of the
World Charter on the Right to the City. A multi-stakeholder
initiative is proposed one that would work under a Public
Private Partnership.

23. Recommendations Contd
• Civil society ought to take one advisory, educative and community
roles; advocacy, research roles and legal roles pertaining to R2C.
• KCCA ought to grass root the right to the City in all policies,
strategic plan and programs and projects.
• Government of Uganda takes up her commitment as enshrined
under the World Charter for the Rights to the City and World Urban
V report. International Agencies are called upon to open
participatory spaces for the consultative and decision-making bodies
of the United Nations that facilitate the discussion with respect this
initiative.
• Further research is recommended on legal implications of the Right
to City with particular reference to Kampala; delivering the Right to
the City under multiple land tenure systems in Kampala; implications
of the Draft Urbanisation Policy 2010 and delivering the Right to the
City as well as designing and developing a monitoring framework to
monitor implementation of the provisions of the World Charter on the
Right to the City.

24. END
Thank you