Displacements in the name of (re)development: the contested rise and contested demise of colonial ‘African’ housing estates in Kampala and Jinja

Abstract

This paper examines historical and contemporary processes of urban (re-)development and displacement in Uganda. Particular focus concerns the often conflicting strategies employed by urban managers and residents to plan, govern and live in both the late-colonial and early twenty-first century city. Both eras can be considered significant, even momentous, for the prominence of strategic projects of socio-spatial urban reconfiguration that incorporate(d) powerful discourses fusing land and housing development with societal progress and national development. The former project putatively centred on orchestrating African development and welfare, the latter on the more ambiguous project of re-development. The ‘Good City’ and the ‘Good Citizen’ are used as heuristic devices to examine the planning ideals and rationalities that inform(ed) these projects and the conflict of rationalities they provoke(d), particularly in terms of competing visions of the good city and good citizen. The paper emphasizes that current projects of redevelopmentalism do not take place in politically inert or historically benign space. Rather, it is shown how historical and place-based specificities articulate with and mediate the process of redevelopmentalism in Kampala and Jinja.

Keywords:

• developmentalism
• redevelopmentalism
• Uganda
• colonial and post-colonial planning

Notes on contributor

Andrew Byerley is a researcher based at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala Sweden. His doctoral thesis entitled “Becoming Jinja. The Production of Space and Making of Place in an African Industrial Town” (2005) was awarded a prestigious Wallander Stipendium in 2006. The thesis, and much of his post-doctoral research examines the contested manner in which authoritarian colonial power endeavoured to regularize urban forms to encourage specific African social norms. His research focuses particularly on housing estates in Uganda and compounds in Walvis Bay, Namibia and on the trajectories of these spaces in the post-colonial era. He is currently conducting research on urban redevelopment in Uganda, particularly issues pertaining to competing ‘urban imaginaries’.

Notes

1. Executive Officer, Jinja Township Authority to Executive Officer, Kampala Township Authority. 28th May, 1942. Jinja Municipal Archive. File: ‘Native Locations Etc. to 1946’, in Box 592.

2. Letter from the Inspector General of Government to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government, Kampala, 21st December 2007.

3. See, ‘Bidding Process for Uganda Museum Redevelopment Starts’, New Vision, May 12, 2011.

4. On the increasing eviction and displacement of urban populations, particularly from slum and degraded urban areas, see United Nations. ‘Finding Solutions to Forced Evictions Worldwide: A Priority to Meet the MDGs and Implement the Habitat Agenda. Executive Summary Report of the Advisory Group on Forced Evictions (AGFE)’, April 2007.

5. Smith, The New Urban Frontier; Brenner, et al., “Cities for People, not for Profit”.

6. Watson, “The Planned City Sweeps the Poor Away,” 187; Simone, “A Town on its Knees?”.

7. Swanson, “Revanchist Urbanism Heads South”; see also Crossa, “Resisting the Entrepreneurial City”.

8. Van Eijk, ‘Exclusionary Policies are Not Just about the ‘Neoliberal City’”.

9. See Doshi, “The Politics of the Evicted”. For work on planning and displacement see Rankin, “Critical Development Studies and the Praxis of Planning”.

10. See especially Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment.

11. Simone, Spectral Selves: Practices in the Making of African Cities.

12. For a presentation of the research field see Watson (2009) in note 6 above.

13. This paper draws from ethnographic and archive-based fieldwork conducted in 1998–2002 and 2011. Much previously inaccessible archive material pertaining to the 1930–1980 period was accessed during the latter period of fieldwork following the recent reorganization of the Jinja Municipal Council archive.

14. Rabinow, French Modern.

15. Foucault, “Governmentality.”

16. Agamben, Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life.

17. See, Cunningham Bissell, Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar; Rabinow, French Modern.

18. On authoritarian governmentality, see Dean, Governmentality. Power and Rule in Modern Society.

19. Mirams, Kampala: Report on the Town Planning and Development of Kampala.

20. Mirams (1930), in note 18 above: p. 92. Emphasis in the original.

21. Mirams (1930) in note 18 above: Chapter XII, and p. 90.

22. On the shift to ‘developmentalism’ see Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa; Kelemen, “Planning for Africa”.

23. Byerley, Becoming Jinja; Omolo-Okalebo et al., “Planning of Kampala City 1903–1962”.

24. For an example of this debate see for example: Molohan, Detribalisation. A Study of the Areas of Tanganyika.

25. Pearce (1982) in note 22 above; Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society.

26. See, Hall, “Some Aspects of Economic Development in Uganda”; Larimore, The Alien Town, 125.

27. Somol, One or Several Masters?

28. Byerley, “Mind the Gap!”. See, for example, Foucault, “Lives of Infamous Men”.

29. Senior Health Officer, Busoga, to the Executive Officer, Jinja. 1933. Box 592. JMC Archive.

30. Jinja Township Authority Meeting. 9 August 1935. Box 592. JMC Archive.

31. Chief Secretary's Office, Entebbe to Provincial Commissioner, Buganda. 23 February 1937. JMC Archive.

32. Senior Medical Officer, Eastern Province to District Commissioner, Busoga. 12 July 1937. Box 592. JMC Archive.

33. See note 32.

34. Ibid.

35. See, for example, letter from the District Commissioners Office, Busoga District. 13 July 1937. Box 592. JMC Archive.

36. See, Colonial Office, General Aspects of the Housing Problem; Atkinson, “African Housing”.

37. Public Records Office. Kew. CO536/214 Uganda Protectorate.Entebbe. 1944.

38. Jinja Township Authority. Minutes of meeting held on 20 December 1943. Box 612. JMC Archive.

39. Vidler, The Scenes of the Street and Other Essays, 245.

40. May, Report on the Kampala Extension Scheme.

41. On the Walukuba ‘Neighbourhood Unit’ see File SWD/SER 13. Jinja Municipal Council: Housing. JMC Archive. On Abercrombie's ‘neighbourhood unit’ see Clapson, Invinsible Green Suburbs, 39–40.

42. District Commissioner Busoga to Land Officer Entebbe, 27 January 1949. JMC Public Health Committee Minutes File. JMC Archive. Walukuba Housing Estate Jinja. Memo 1. Box 612. JMC Archive.

43. Secretariate, Entebbe to Chairman of the Town and Country Planning Board, 26 May 1950. File: Town and Country Planning (Minutes, etc.) JMC Archive. Loose file.

44. Jinja Township Authority. Summary of a discussion on African Housing 30 September 1955. Convened by the Town Clerk. Box 47. JMC Archive.

45. Byerley (2005) in note 23.

46. Uganda Protectorate, Annual Report of the African Housing Department, para. 5.

47. Senior Labour Officer, Eastern Province, to Labour Commissioner, Kampala, 12 February 1951. Box 612. JMC Archive.

48. Public Health Committee, 11 May 1955. Box 612. JMC Archive.

49. Visit of Ministry of Housing and Labour (Confidential) 3 December 1964. Box 43. JMC Archive.

50. Town Clerk to Town Engineer, Jinja, 28 October 1958. Box 47 JMC Archive.

51. Jinja Township Authority. Summary of a discussion on African Housing 3 September 1955. Convened by the Town Clerk. Box 47. JMC Archive.

52. J.M.C. Housing Section. November 1984.

53. May, E. see note 40.

54. Byerley (2005) in note 23.

55. Public Records Office. Kew. CO892/15/11. ‘Urban Social Welfare Services in Uganda’. J.C. Dakin. Commissioner for Community Development, 1952

56. Byerley 2005 in note 23; Byerley, “Ambivalent inheritance”.

57. Simone (2002) in note 11 above; Perera, “People's Spaces”.

58. Deleuze, Foucault, 44, 95.

59. Director of African Housing to Jinja Town Clerk, 25 June 1956. Box 612. Newspaper clipping. Uganda Argus, 9 December 1961. Box 612. JMC Archive.

60. JMC Housing Committee. Meeting, 11 January 1966. Box 598. JMC Archive.

61. Jinja Town Clerk to Chief Planner, Kampala, 15 August 1966. Box 43. Permanent Secretary, Min. of Regional Administrations, Kampala, to Jinja Town Clerk, 28 January 1967. Box 43. JMC Archive.

62. Jinja Town Clerk to The Permanent Secretary, Min. of Local Government, Kampala, 23 April 1983. Box 43. JMC Archive.

63. See note 62.

64. JMC Housing Section, 26 November 1984. Box 43. JMC Public Health Committee. Meeting, 31 October 1978. JMC Public Health Committee Minutes. Loose File. JMC Archive.

65. Focus Group Discussion held by Byerley, Walukuba West Estate, January 2000.

66. Interview with L.C.III, Walukuba-Masese Division. November 1998. In my survey of Walukuba residents of carried out in 1998, 30% of household heads had formal sector jobs.

67. Simone (2002) in note 11 above.

68. The term ‘mailo’ derives from parcels of land measured in square miles. Article 15 of the 1900 Uganda Agreement granted land large tracts of allodial land (mailo land) to a thousand or so members of the Buganda power hierarchy in perpetuity. Jorgensen, Uganda. A Modern History, 49–53. On how traditional land holding intersects with urban housing issues, see Abdulai and Ndekugri, “‘Customary landholding institutions”.

69. Giddings, The Land Market in Kampala, 15–16.

70. Nyakana et al., Population, Urban Development and the Environment in Uganda.

71. Interview with Commissioner of Urban Development, Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development. Kampala, 29 September 2011.

72. Accessed September 11, 2011. http://in2eastafrica.net/.

73. See Goodfellow, The Bastard Child of Nobody?

74. Interview with Commissioner of Urban Development, Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Kampala, 29 September 2011.

75. Republic of Uganda. High Court of Uganda, Kampala. Land Division. Civil Suit No. 146 of 2011: 3.

76. New Vision, 13 June 2008

77. All information is obtained from correspondence held by NNERA.

78. The Walukuba West Estate plots are to be sold to bona fide sitting-tenants for approx 1m shillings, but have a market value of approximately 8m shillings (Interview with Assistant Town Clerk, Walukuba–Masese Division, October 2011). One informant related that he had purchased a relatively large residential plot of land in Walukuba–Masese Division for 400,000 shillings in 1999, and that it was now worth approximately 40m shillings.

79. Interview with the head of the Jinja Land Office. J.M.C. 3 October 2011.

80. Discussion with George Serwanga. Jinja, September 22 2011. The plots, which are to be sold for ca. 1m shillings (ca. $300), have a re-sale value on the open market of ca. 8m shillings.

81. Email correspondence with Balbinder Gill Singh 25-10-99.

82. The benefits owed to workers was 29 million shillings. Interview with Allied Workers Union at Namalanda – Entebbe, 26 July 1999.

83. Discussion with Timothy Ojambo in 1999. Patel referes to the small labour quarters that forms a contiguous area with Babu Quarters. Together they comprise Babu-Patel Village.

84. Interview with Timothy Ojambo, 23 September 2011.

85. Interview with head of Land Office, JMC, 3 October 2011.

86. See for example Murray Li, The Will to Improve.

87. Conversation with former Naguru tenant outside Commercial Court, Kampala, 19 September 2011.

88. Li, T.M (2007) in note 86 above: 9.

89. Kamete, “Interrogating Planning's Power in an African City”.

90. Goodfellow, “The Institutionalisation of ‘Noise’ and ‘Silence’ in Urban Politics”.

91. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 32.

92. Fanon (1963) in note 91: 31.

93. Simone (2010) in note 6.