OPINION: The Day We Bulldozed The Money Economy

By Kyeswa Hakim

I have spent the better part of my life defending the NRM. I have walked village paths, sat under trees, and explained to my people why they should trust the Movement. I told them about the Parish Development Model. I told them that the government finally understood that the only way out of poverty is to bring every Ugandan into the money economy nobey, as we call it. I said it with pride because I believed it.

Then, in the last few weeks, I watched the bulldozers roll into our municipalities, and I felt my own words turn bitter in my mouth.

From Jinja to Mbarara, from Gulu to Mbale, the scene has been the same: men and women standing in the dust, staring at the wreckage of their businesses, their hands trembling. In Jinja, I met a woman named Nalongo Grace. She had just taken a PDM loa eight hundred thousand shillings to expand her vegetable stall. She had built a small wooden structure, painted it in the colors of the NRM flag out of gratitude. Last Thursday, it was gone. Her stock of tomatoes, onions, and cabbages lay crushed under iron sheets. She was not crying; she was beyond tears. She kept repeating, “But I paid my taxes. I was trying to follow the money economy.”

That is what haunts me. We are demolishing the very people we promised to uplift.

The directive came from the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government. I do not doubt that he wants order we all want order. But order imposed from Kampala without understanding the soul of each municipality is not order; it is violence disguised as administration. In Kampala, there is negotiation, phased redevelopment, and alternative spaces. In the upcountry towns, the bulldozers come first, and questions come later. This double standard is not lost on our people. They ask me, “Cadre, are we not citizens too?”

The numbers behind this chaos are staggering, but numbers alone cannot capture the pain. Still, we must look at them because they tell a story of economic sabotage. Sixty percent of Ugandans outside agriculture depend on the informal sector kiosks, markets, small workshops. These are not just “illegal structures”; they are the engines of the money economy. In Mbarara, over two thousand businesses were demolished in one week. Each business, on average, supports four dependents. That means nearly ten thousand people children, elderly parents, relatives were suddenly cut off from their lifeline. In Jinja, five thousand vendors were displaced. Their annual turnover was estimated at three hundred billion shillings. That money is not some abstract figure; it is school fees, medical bills, meals, and reinvestment into the economy.

And then there is the Parish Development Model. How do I explain this to the people? The PDM was supposed to be our flagship program, the legacy of this government. We disbursed one hundred million shillings per parish to move households from subsistence to business. Many of those demolished stalls were built with PDM funds. The traders took the loans, they invested, they were trying to repay. Now the asset is gone, but the debt remains. What will happen to repayment rates? What will happen to the SACCOs? We are strangling our own child.

I am not against trade order. I know the frustrations of congested streets, of haphazard stalls blocking emergency vehicles, of unregulated construction. We need proper markets, designated zones, and dignified spaces for our people to trade. But order cannot come at the cost of livelihoods. It cannot come through the shock and awe of bulldozers in the dead of night. We are the NRM; we have structures. We have LCs from the village to the district. We have RDCs. We have mayors and councillors. Why were these structures bypassed? Why was there no dialogue? A simple meeting at the parish level could have identified which traders needed relocation, which structures were genuinely dangerous, and which could be regularized. Instead, we chose a blanket demolition that swept away the lawful and the unlawful together.

Politically, this is a gift to our opponents. I say this not as a fearmonger but as someone who knocks on doors. People are angry. They feel betrayed. They trusted us with the promise of the money economy, and they feel we have pushed them out of the economy entirely. When a mother whose stall was demolished asks me, “Where is the NRM now?” I have no easy answer. I can only say that we made a mistake, and we must correct it.

The instruction from the Permanent Secretary should never have been executed without first assessing the dynamics of each urban center. A municipality like Fort Portal is not the same as Gulu; a market in Masaka is not the same as one in Lira. The people know their towns. They know where the markets have stood for generations. They know which traders are genuine and which are encroachers. But they were never asked.

I am calling on my party, my government, to stop and reflect. Let us suspend these operations immediately. Let us go back to the parishes, the municipalities, and the divisions, and let us sit with the people. Let us map out the traders, verify their PDM status, and find solutions that do not involve the wrecking ball. If we need to relocate, let us provide alternative sites before the demolition. If we need to regularize, let us give timelines and affordable fees. Let us treat our people not as obstacles to order but as partners in building our towns.

We promised to embrace Ugandans in the money economy. That promise cannot be fulfilled by destroying their livelihoods. The NRM was founded on the principle that people matter that development must be felt by the ordinary person in the village and the trading centre. I still believe in that principle. But we are losing our way if we think that a circular from a Permanent Secretary, executed by bulldozers, is the same as governance.

Trade order is necessary. But let it come with a human face. Let it come with dialogue. Let it come with respect for the hardworking men and women who are trying, against all odds, to find their place in the money economy. Because if we continue this way, we will not just be demolishing kiosks we will be demolishing the trust that holds this Movement together.

The author is an NRM cadre and NRM Publicity Secretary Mukono District.

Email:hakimkim255@gmail.com