Kasumba: You say Obote and Amin were bad. How come we have disorder and chaos?

This nation has simply way too many people who have grown up around disorder and chaos that they think we have always been this way as a nation.

Even during the past regimes we were not this way. We have just gotten a group of selfish, disorganised people inside offices where chaos and disorder is supposed to be thwarted.

We are not orderly enough to fire them. You have to understand that I was born and raised in Kampala and so was the editor of this paper. We know and miss the good old Kampala.

Look, in Kansanga where I grew up, no one ever sent the water from their roofs into the public roads. How could you? Not Mr. Kiggundu, Mr. Musoke, Mr. Nadula, Mr. Kizito, or Shaban the Nubian who was the Pilau expert on the Village.

Who could? Even when Mr. Baketunga joined the neighbourhood he was a huge value addition to the community everyone loved him. People cared about the common good. One day some wrong elements of Obote came to the village and took one of the neighbours in.

The neighbourhood raised the money these social misfits wanted and Mr. Ndaula,now late, was released.

I also know for example that when things got really bad after Mr. Kizito was gunned down after he was responding to an alarm at the neighbour, my father flew back from one of his foreign trips with so many whistles. They were distributed to the whole neighbourhood.

Everyone would blow their whistle upon hearing that one was in distress. It was a thinking of we are stronger than our individual abilities. There was a time we took turns going round the village in the night. Every home had their turn and these things were done. I do not remember many wall fences then. I also don’t remember razor wire and armed guards.

I remember the bow and arrow for security. These things you see of so many armed guards moving around every evening to guard homes are very NRM.

I am speaking about the so called very bad days. In the good days, we have more armed guards at homes than we did in very bad days.

Anyways what I am saying is that there was order. Plastic bags were not all over the place. We bought groceries and everything else in paper bags and the ‘Bikapu’. Then Kikuyu bags also came in. We then saw the coming of very uncontrolled use of plastic with no attendant education on disposal. Sad!

The NRM government has done so many good things but one thing you have to give it to them is they have superintended over the massive happening of disorder in this nation. You just have to look at our driving to know.

And believe me this disorder in driving is not about security. It is just 'arrivalism' and selfishness which is all over the place. I know an orderly and organized member of the first family who stayed home because they did not have a sticker for their car since their category had been excluded!

Of course they could have chosen to beat the system and get as many stickers as they wanted, they did not! Juxtapose that with these people who keep bullying everyone on the streets before they ask if we know who they are…Do we care?

Good people calm down. I do not think you will ever be as powerful as those Obote chaps. Those chaps would come to a village and without saying anything we gave them what they wanted. I saw a kid solder at a roadblock ask for watches and everyone removed them willingly like they did not own the time pieces.

The disorganisation in Kampala and other places has happened because too many have slept on their jobs.

There was a time when Owino market was a parking lot for cars going to watch football matches. Then that parking lot moved from that to a market. Then someone thought is it a brilliant idea to make the whole thing a shopping mall.  Now they tell you they are building a world class stadium. Tell me where in the world you have stadia that have no parking lot and no train to ferry football lovers! Go see stadia being built elsewhere. You are cheaply throwing around the idea of world class. World class? My foot!

Sadly so many don’t know order. All they know is chaos. Unlike the few of us who have context and know what things were, they don’t. They think wrong is right. Let us brace ourselves for the worst before we get better. I am not very hopeful that order will return.

Those thinking and talking of changing things are themselves are also disorderly. It does not help that now we have made disorder cool by calling it ghetto. That makes it normative and on we go. Were we are now, you do the right things people find you odd.

Can you imagine where we are? You cannot superintend over the restoration of order when you are very disorganised and bending rules at every turn to fit your conveniences.

I am just gutted…God day