Chris Kiwawulo, Robert Mutebi and Samuel Balagadde
25 October 2008
Kampala — TEAR gas would not disperse them. Nor would the firing of live ammunition by anti-riot Police. Armed with stones and other missiles, an angry mob of Nansana residents engaged anti-riot Police in running battles for over an hour, disrupting business in the busy roadside town.
The residents were protesting the death of a schoolboy killed in a hit-and-run accident. He was the fourth person to get killed by a speeding vehicle within a short period at the same spot found in Nansana's Yesu Amala Zone, in Wakiso District, seven kilometres on the recently resurfaced Kampala Hoima road.
Six-year-old Gordon Mwesigwa, a pupil at Glory Primary School in Nansana was hit by a speeding truck on Friday morning.
Following Mwesigwa's death, enraged residents staged an impromptu demonstration, criticising the works ministry for failing to install humps to check the speeding drivers.
What started as a peaceful demonstration turned rowdy and eventually degenerated into total chaos. Shouting at the top of their voices, angry residents dug up a section of the road near the black spot, lit bonfires and blocked it with tree branches and logs, prompting the Police to intervene.
Running battles ensued as enraged residents threw stones at the Police who retaliated by firing tear gas canisters at them. "We are tired of speeding drivers who kill innocent people," shouted the angry residents, as they resisted the Police's efforts to disperse them.
The young and the elderly fled, but a group of hardened youths continued to engage the anti-riot Police for almost an hour. On realising that tear gas had failed to work, Police resorted to firing live ammunition in the air, which did not also work.
It took the personal intervention of the Kampala Extra Police boss Edward Ochom, who ordered his men to stop shooting and calmed down the situation. He convinced the residents to surrender the body of the dead boy, to the Police so that they take it for a post-mortem at Mulago. The residents had vowed not hand over the body.
Ochom assured the residents that he would personally work hand in hand with the works ministry to settle the problem by installing speed humps.
The road was recently resurfaced by Zzimwe Construction Company, which led to an increase in accidents by speeding motorists.
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