Kampala — Kampala City Mayor John Ssebaana Kizito has revealed his plans to retire from active politics in 2006.

Mr Ssebaana Kizito told Daily Monitor in an exclusive interview in his chambers at City Hall on Friday that he would neither contest in the mayoral race nor next year's presidential elections, but would remain in politics at an "advisory" level.

"I am not interested in being the next mayor; I am interested in resting," he said. "I have got quite a few businesses I can retire to."

Ssebaana added: "But I will be around, and as a good citizen I can even serve without any money at all...I could be active, but as an advisor."

Ssebaana swept the mayoral by-elections in 1999 after Kampala Mayor Nasser Ntege Sebaggala was convicted on charges of fraud in the United States.

Ssebaana was re-elected mayor in February 2002. His current four-year term ends in 2006. He said he had done his share of service to society and was now interested in taking a much-deserved rest.

"I am very comfortable as far as money issues are concerned," he said. "I have educated all my children. They are all well off except one who is at the university, but she too will be well off."

The mayor owns a sizeable chunk of real estate in Kampala, including Sure House on Bombo Road. He also owns Statewide Insurance Company, one of the oldest insurers in the country.

Ssebaana, the Treasurer General of the Democratic Party, dismissed earlier reports that he was eyeing next year's presidential elections on the party's ticket. "People in my party think so but I think it will be a lot of bother," he said. "This country, I want to tell you, has been ruined so much that to get it out it will be very, very difficult."

Throwing his arms in the air, Ssebaana added: "Yeah, this country has lost direction, although the people in power don't think so."

He said the economy had been so badly ruined and castigated the current government for killing the coffee business, which was hitherto Uganda's major export and foreign exchange earner.

He blamed this on the dissolution of the Coffee Marketing Board, the death of co-operative unions and the introduction of clonal coffee. "When I was Minister for Co-operatives and Marketing, we used to be the second largest coffee exporter in Africa after Ivory Coast," he said. "We used to get between $400-500 million from coffee; now we get $120 million annually and that is a problem."

Ssebaana served in the early years of Yoweri Museveni's broad-based government.

"Apart from the fact that the prices (of coffee) have come down, even the quantities have," he said.

Ssebaana challenged politicians to address issues of the economy over politics, saying a country is an economic unit whose development depended not on politics but on good economic policies. "You live mainly because you must earn money to live, you don't have to vote to live," he said. "But you must earn money to live."

Ssebaana also discussed a wide range of issues, among them his assessment of his tenure at City Hall, including the issues of garbage disposal and potholes in the city, which are viewed by many as his biggest failure. "My performance has been good...," he said. "Look at where we found the city and where it is today in terms of administration, institution building, attracting donors, infrastructure development and maintenance and special projects like the Nakivubo Channel."

The mayor also revealed that KCC planned to obtain a full-time road maintenance unit that will monitor city roads and carry out maintenance works.