KAMPALA
Nearly two years after a mountain of garbage buried scores of people on the outskirts of Kampala, the courts have taken a decisive step toward assigning blame. On July 3, 2026, a magistrates court committed Dorothy Kisaka, the former Executive Director of the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), and her former deputy, Engineer David Luyimbazi Ssali, to the High Court to stand trial over the Kiteezi landfill disaster. The two former city bosses face charges connected to manslaughter and to causing death and bodily harm through negligent and rash acts — a case that has become one of the most closely watched accountability battles in Uganda’s recent public life.
What is happening
The committal is a procedural but significant milestone. Under Ugandan criminal procedure, a magistrate does not try serious offences such as manslaughter; instead the magistrate reviews the prosecution’s case and, if satisfied there is enough to answer, commits the accused to the High Court, where the substantive trial takes place. That is the threshold Kisaka and Luyimbazi have now crossed. Reports of the proceedings indicate the pair were committed on a lengthy set of charges — by some accounts as many as 57 counts — relating to the deaths, injuries and destruction caused when the Kiteezi landfill collapsed.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Jane Frances Abodo, is driving the case. Notably, charges against a third senior official, Dr. Daniel Okello, KCCA’s Director of Public Health, were withdrawn by the DPP before the committal proceedings concluded, narrowing the prosecution’s focus to the authority’s two most senior former administrators.
The disaster that started it
The case has its roots in the morning of August 9, 2024, when, during a heavy rainstorm, the unstable heap of refuse at Kiteezi — for years Kampala’s only official municipal dumpsite — gave way and cascaded downhill. The slide of waste engulfed homes, gardens, livestock and people living in the impoverished settlement that had grown up around the site. The death toll climbed over the following days as rescuers dug through the rubbish; by mid-August 2024 authorities had confirmed dozens dead, with figures reported in the mid-thirties, and many more injured or displaced. KCCA said several of those killed were children.
Kiteezi sat on a steep slope, and the community around it was defined by the landfill: an estimated 800 to 1,000 people scavenged there for recyclable plastic and metal to earn a living, and some families had built homes almost against the waste. When the slope failed, those closest paid the highest price. More than a hundred displaced survivors were sheltered in tents at a nearby school in the immediate aftermath, and dozens were reported missing.
The case against the former officials
Prosecutors argue that the disaster was foreseeable and, therefore, preventable. According to the evidence outlined in court reporting, Kisaka and Luyimbazi, as the top leaders of KCCA, were aware of the deteriorating state of the landfill. The prosecution says that between December 2023 and July 2024 both received internal and external technical reports warning of an imminent collapse. The DPP’s theory is that, despite those warnings, the officials allowed the site to keep operating — an unlicensed and structurally compromised facility — and thereby breached their statutory duty of care. In the prosecution’s framing, that inaction is what turned a known hazard into a fatal catastrophe.
The disaster had already cost Kisaka and Luyimbazi their jobs: both were removed from their KCCA posts in the fallout from the collapse. The pair had earlier been charged and were released on bail as the case wound through the lower court. The committal now moves the matter into the High Court, where the full weight of the evidence — and the defence’s response to it — will be tested at trial.
Who the main players are
Dorothy Kisaka was one of the most prominent technocrats running Uganda’s capital, appointed to lead KCCA — the central-government-controlled body that administers Kampala — and tasked with the sprawling challenge of managing services for a fast-growing city. David Luyimbazi Ssali, an engineer, served as her deputy and carried direct responsibility for the technical and infrastructural side of the authority’s work, including waste management. On the other side stands the DPP, Jane Frances Abodo, whose office decides which cases proceed and on what charges.
The case is also being pushed from outside the criminal courts. Civil-society and public-interest litigants, including the Center for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD), separately sued KCCA and the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) over alleged negligence linked to the landfill — a parallel track that keeps institutional responsibility, not just individual culpability, in the frame.
Why it matters
For a country where large-scale accountability for public-sector failures is rare, the prosecution of two former heads of the capital’s administration is unusual and symbolically heavy. Kiteezi was not a natural disaster in the ordinary sense; it was a waste-management failure at a facility the state had known for years was dangerous and overdue for decommissioning. If the trial establishes that senior officials ignored explicit warnings, it could set an important precedent about the personal legal exposure of Ugandan administrators who preside over foreseeable, preventable harm.
The case also lands amid a tense national political climate. Uganda held disputed general elections in January 2026 in which President Yoweri Museveni was declared the winner of a seventh term, and the period has been marked by concerns over human rights and the treatment of opposition figures and the press. Against that backdrop, a high-profile trial testing whether the state will hold its own officials to account carries added scrutiny — both from Ugandans who lost relatives at Kiteezi and from observers watching how the country’s justice institutions perform.
What to watch next
The immediate question is timing: High Court trials in Uganda can take considerable time to begin and to conclude, and the volume of charges suggests a complex evidentiary process. Watch for the arraignment and plea before the High Court, any further bail arguments, and how the defence contests the claim that the officials knew of and ignored collapse warnings. The withdrawal of charges against Dr. Okello may also feature, as the defence probes why responsibility was concentrated on two individuals.
Equally important is what happens beyond the courtroom. Kiteezi has been slated for decommissioning, and the disaster forced a rethink of how Kampala handles its waste. Whether the trial produces convictions or acquittals, the broader test is whether the tragedy translates into durable reforms — licensed and engineered disposal sites, functioning early-warning responses to technical reports, and protection for the vulnerable communities that live off the city’s garbage. For the families still grieving, the courtroom is only one part of the reckoning they are waiting for.
