Kampala to rename streets and roads

Ms. Zahara Maala Luyirika, the Speaker of KCCA, said that this signage overhaul will begin in January. 

“That matter was brought before the council but we referred it to the physical planning committee. The committee has been working with the Directorate of Physical Planning and they will be tabling a report before council on January 13, 20022, on renaming city streets and roads,” Ms Luyirika said. 

She added that the council backs the decolonizing of streets and roads in favor of renaming those streets and roads after Ugandan natives who have made patriotic contributions to the country. 

This effort is also backed by law as the KCCA Act mandates the council to “initiate, formulate and enact legislation” towards the management of Kampala city. 

The nomenclature or the devising or choosing of names for the streets and roads came in the wake of a meeting between the KCCA speaker and the special advisor to the Kabaka Ronald Mutebi II, counsel Apollo Makubuya. The latter had petitioned KCCA’s top leaders on the renaming of the streets and roads.

KCCA’s acting spokesperson, Ms Juliet Bukirwa, confirmed the meeting and said the Executive Director of KCCA would fully address the matter to the public in the following days. 

Mr. Makubuya’s petition requested Parliament to remove symbols, street names and monuments as well as other geographical features which point to a colonial legacy instead of national heritage. 

The petition reads, in part: “The petitioners strongly believe that the continued public display of colonial iconography which glorifies individuals responsible for the brutalization, subjugation and humiliation of colonial people’s in Uganda is a slap in the face of the many brave people that fought for the political independence of Africa from the 15th century until the late 1960s…remove street names and monuments that celebrate and immortalise colonial subjugators such as Brig. Gen. Trevor Ternan, Lord Frederick Lugard, Maj. Gen Henry Colville, Commissioner Harry George Galt and the Kings African Rifles who were notorious in their inhumane and degrading treatment of the colonised peoples in the Uganda protectorate.”