Emmanuel Luswata, 45, grew up in Namulanda in Wakiso district formerly part of Mpigi, a typical Ugandan village whose life rotated around the family, neighbourhood, and the community.
There was little or no distinction in the lifestyle of families and the entire community as neighbours believed in similar values, which they upheld communally. But structural development and urbanization have changed the social life of the areas.
Luswata, whose village has been eaten up by the Kampala Metropolitan area, recalls the good old days when every resident was known to each other and raised children communally as one big family among other values.
“When we were growing up, I knew children and homes from our village and the one from the next one. Of course, there are those whose names I didn’t know but you could tell that I have ever seen this face here or there. Nowadays, I can hardly tell five of my neighbours. Our village has completely changed,” says Luswata.
Luswata says the old seem to have been lost in the wind as a new tide of adaptation to urban life indirectly blots out the priceless values of their communities.
When Luswata talks about the new changes, it’s not just the increasing population or the development of structures. He reflects on the social values that kept them together, which are disappearing as the tide of urbanizations sweeps through Uganda.
United Nations Population Division’s World Urbanization Prospects indicates that Uganda is urbanizing at 5.7 percent, which is far above the world urbanization rate currently at 1.8 percent.
Uganda is envisaged to have 15 regional cities strategically located in different parts of the country driving different aspects of the development agenda. Besides cities, more municipalities and town councils are also being created.
In its development plan, as envisioned in Vision 2040, Uganda looks at urbanization as one of the pillars for achieving the upper-middle-income status by 2040. A 2020 World Bank report indicates that close to 25 percent of Uganda’s population lives in urban areas. It is estimated that by 2050 Uganda would be one of the most urbanized countries in Africa.
Writing a preface to a paper titled “urbanization and values”, Professor F. McLean noted that urbanization comes with a heavy and usually neglected price. For instance, McLean states that traditional patterns, which had been stable and well-articulated in a village environment, often become confused as people of diverse cultural backgrounds gather in new urban settlements.
Ismail Nsamba, a teacher and resident in the newly created Masaka city has witnessed urbanization piling influence on the community. The father of three says that communalism, trust, and helping one another in urban areas are unheard of as every person is fending for his or her own. This, he says, is also dismantling society and has far-reaching consequences.
“Those values upheld the community; helped us in linking, they were also a source of security in our communities. But right now, in an area where one has never seen the face of his neighbour, even if he finds thieves coming out your house how will he tell that this is the thief and not the real owner of the house?” Nsamba wondered.
He says that before being greatly urbanized, neighbours were like families and whenever the need arose in one home they could rush to the other for help nearly for everything including but not limited to fire, food, salt, and other utilities. He however adds that this can no longer happen in urbanized areas “where every man is for himself and God is for them all.”
Luswata also narrates a story of his friend who lived in an estate for two years but didn’t know any of his neighbours not until recently when the country was placed under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He adds that even trust is being lost as no person in the community can trust and be compassionate to the other even over little issues. He points out possibilities where people even strangers could be hosted, which is no longer the case today.
Peter Atekyereza, a Professor of Sociology at Makerere University largely agrees that inorganic urbanization is uprooting the garden of values from the community. He, however, hastens to add that this is done with other factors including cross-cultures and technological advances among others.
Atekyereza, who is the President of the Association of Sociology and Anthropology Professionals in Uganda-USAA, says that in most circumstances when people are exposed to new ideas, they begin to modify parts of their beliefs.
The sociologist concurs with some observations made by Luswata and Nsamba noting that as the tide of urbanization takes on Uganda, many social values are already lost. He adds that the urban dwellers are increasingly individual-centred and no longer give any damn to the values that are used to make communities.
Prof Atekyereza adds that the old values are slowly replaced by new Socio-cultural perceptions. For instance, he points out that instead of the geographically bound communities, urbanites are creating socialization cycles like clubs but with a prior motive of using them to enrich their selfish objectives.
Nuwa Nyanzi, a former culture minister in Buganda kingdom and a strong enthusiast of traditional values, notes that the possibly unfavourable results of urbanization are coming with cultural and external influences that have led people into abandoning the seemingly small practices and norms that wound communities.
Nyanzi and Atekyereza both believe that the urbanization tendencies are expeditiously extending to rural areas. They stress that the advancement of technology and the settlement of people in different places have exposed the local population to new cultures to which they have adopted.
Some of the cultures, Nyanzi says are copied without thinking about the consequences of their actions. He says some of the new values are of low class but they are being held in high esteem by urban dwellers.
FOR MORE CLICK HERE
