The appointment of Beti Olive Namisango Kamya in June 2016 as minister for Kampala Affairs might have hastened the exit of Kampala Capital City Authority executive director, Jennifer Ssemakula Musisi.
Musisi announced mid this month that she was resigning her position – an announcement, which insiders at the authority said did not come as a surprise at all. The city authority is going through some tough times. Already, most of its top directors have resigned despite the handsome pay.
Morrison Rwakakamba, a former presidential assistant for research, said on the Capital Gang radio show at the weekend that Kamya's appointment informed Musisi's need to leave.
"I think for the past two years, she [Musisi] realised that without the president's direct support, there was no way she was going to navigate all these contradictions [at City Hall]," Rwakakamba said.
"When Kamya came on board, she was brought to try and bring back the people into the fold of how Kampala is run. To bring back people into supporting the government of the day. That contradiction and contestation happened and you will realise that since Kamya came as a minister for Kampala, Musisi's visibility [diminished]… you could see that things at City Hall were not moving in the right direction," he added.
He said Frank Tumwebaze, now the minister for ICT, and former minister for Kampala, had "allowed [enough] bandwidth for Musisi to take charge and be able to do a lot of things and she really had done a lot of things."
Kamya's appointment came just months after President Museveni had been badly trounced in Kampala in the 2016 polls. On giving the diagnosis of the results at his Rwakitura home, Museveni said Musisi's actions, which included eviction of city vendors, had led to his party's terrible performance in Kampala.
Kamya hit the ground running, promising Museveni that she would "deliver Kampala with 80%" of the vote in 2021. This meant undoing some of the things Musisi had done. It also meant alienating her.
This quickly developed into a fierce feud between Musisi and Kamya. It reached fever peak in May last year when Kamya described the former as "a populist" and "poor manager" while on a radio talk show at CBS hosted by Meddie Nsereko.
"Musisi has become a populist; you discuss something and then she rushes to leak it to the media," Kamya said.
"We meet every Monday. Us the two ministers, the undersecretary, Musisi and her team. There is always an opportunity for her to ask anything she wants but when you bypass those channels and instead run to do your work from the media, then you've become a politician."
"That populism can't take us anywhere; I don't fight petty wars but what I don't want is populism," she added.
Kamya then went on to accuse Musisi of being responsible for the high turn-over of workers at the authority, asserting that something was wrong.
"Whenever there is a high staff turnover in an organisation, just know there is a problem with management. The main role of a manager is to create a conducive/favourable working environment for your workers. That's when you can get the best out of them," Kamya said.
The minister accused Musisi of intrigue.
"All the issues I have dealt with like removing vendors from the streets, demolishing Park Yard [market], streamlining taxi and boda operations, it was Musisi who invited me to handle them, saying they were too heavy for her because they involved police and politics," Kamya said.
The feuding deepened towards the end of last year when Kamya sought to lure city councillors, most of whom are opposition members, to the ruling party side by ordering Musisi to increase their salaries by 30%.
This proposal was trashed by Musisi who argued that the authority did not have money. For Kamya, according to one worker at the authority, this was equivalent to stepping on her plan to win Kampala for Museveni.
Asked last week to comment about Musisi's exit during a press conference she convened at her office in Kampala, Kamya was careful not to say much. She simply acknowledged that she had differences with Musisi but saluted her as a great performer.
The infighting and intrigue made Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, an official whose run-ins with Musisi are legendary, look like the understanding party at the authority. In fact, Lukwago told journalists in his office last November that the new salary structure as proposed by Kamya had stalled "because the two could not work with each other".
To Lukwago, the Kampala minister had powers to increase salaries for political leaders of the city. These accusations, which sprung up daily in the media, broke Musisi, intimated a top official at City Hall.
"Someone accuses you of going to the media but is herself using the media to attack you…How do you comfortably work together?" the official told The Observer on Monday.
In her resignation letter, Musisi cited political interference and inadequate funds as factors that led to her exit.
Analysts said the deep cuts in the authority's budget this financial year, now down to slightly over Shs 382 billion from Shs 477bn, was seen as a final blow.
Museveni, her biggest cheerleader when she took office in 2011, had started visiting different groups in Kampala dishing out money. He carried Kamya along. The executive director, formerly 'daddy's little girl', was apparently not invited.
This, according to those familiar with politics at City Hall, showed where president's favour fell: to the minister who knew what the next election meant and not the technocrat who cared less about polls.
As at Tuesday evening, President Museveni had not responded to Musisi's letter amid growing speculation that he might reject her resignation.
amwesigwa@observer.ug
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