The public and social media users have immensely rejected a new monument launched this week supposedly to replace the traditional “amahembe g’ente’ (cow horns) or Rusiina at the Airtel round about entrance of Mbarara Town.
The initial monument of a cow was knocked down in 2017 to build a clock tower sponsored by Airtel telecommunications limited but noise from the public required that the monument be replaced as it was vital to express culture of the area and ease directions.
It is alleged that a team of engineers from the district had to travel to Turkey to achieve the design of the new monument. Indeed, when they returned, they started the construction of the monument and the results were outrightly rejected by social media users and the public at large as soon as they launched.
A one Kwesiga Brian who took a picture of the new monument would later post on social media captioning: “This thing is ugly I swear”.
A number of people have also expressed themselves against the new cow monument;
Major towns in Uganda constructed monuments majorly on entry roundabouts to clearly spell out their culture or economic activity.
In Kabarole, Fort Portal town, there is a monument of a lion to represent Tooro Kingdom. In Insingiro, there is a banana farmer monument representing the ample supply of bananas/Matooke from the area.
Kabale is equipped with a gorillas monument as well as Kisoro to represent them as tourism hubs. Mbarara's cow monument represented cattle keeping as an agricultural practice.
JInja District also has a John Speke memorial monument to symbolise his importance in discovering the source of the Nile which is an asset in the district.