The immediate instinct was to get out to chase. But I remembered that I had a laptop in the backseat. Besides, the experience was not completely new. A friend had shared his own loss, and how he had been badly beaten while trying to run after the goons. He lost two teeth and still carries scars for the story.
It was rather careless of me not to close the windows completely, having known the reputation of our city. It is not easy for one’s guards to always be up in precaution against these crooks. On the unlucky occasion when you forget is when they pounce.
I tried to engage a police officer, whose contact I got from a friend, to track the phone. He asked for Shs 50,000 initially, explaining that it was facilitation for getting call print-outs from telecommunication companies. A week letter, he reported no success. Instead, he asked for more money to engage other companies.
At this point, I sensed that I could end up spending as much money to buy another phone, yet there was no guarantee of getting it. I had heard that sometimes the resellers alter serial numbers; and that at times the trackers catch the thieves, only to ‘eat’ from them too. I gave up the chase.
Many people I shared the experience with revealed that they had either been victims too or knew of a person that was. The mode of theft was basically the same, the spots too. In some cases, the thieves opened backseat doors to pick bags.
The more intriguing experiences are of those who lose their phones and, on advice, report to nearby police stations – only for officers to call ‘the boys’ giving them the specifics of the stolen phone and asking them to return it. I have been told that often the phones are returned, same thing with stolen car parts such as side mirrors and wheel caps.
I have been hearing these stories over and over again. Usually, such crime takes root in society when people get used to it and, instead of fighting for it to be rooted out, they concentrate on being cautious. It is some sort of admission that it can’t be gotten away with. With this way normalised, victims get blamed for not having been keen enough. Even a police officer will ask you why you had not closed your car windows – as though to say: ‘Don’t you know there are thieves there?’
Six years later, last week I was driving down the road that connects from Jinja road to Clock Tower. As is often the case in the evenings, traffic was very slow. I was with my little daughters in the car, who were insisting on lowering the windows so as to turn off the air conditioner. I told them the reason as to why we could not do that, but they seemed not to believe.
Soon, a young man confidently showed up in the middle of the road besides the car in front of us. Now I know their behaviour and can very easily tell who is one. Nothing changes that much about their tactics. I told the girls; ‘you see right there? That is a thief’.
They were just starting to ask how I knew when the guy grabbed the driver’s phone and ran around the car front, then upwards. The driver immediately jumped out chasing, leaving the car door open. Another fella that had been standing on the other side of the car followed them running. He could have been one of the thieves.
The girls were overwhelmed by shock from what they had just seen right before us. They held me tight, quietly shivering. Though it is a side of our city realities that I wouldn’t have wished them to see at their age, there it was! I told them that the driver had risked his life by running after the thief. Luckily, he soon came back intact, but without the phone.
That same week, I received a message from a friend who teaches at Makerere University. He only said that his phone had been snatched from him in traffic jam. I only learnt later that he had tried to chase and was very badly beaten by a gang, leaving him for dead in a trench. It was by chance that he didn’t lose his life.
One only wonders if there is will from police to fight this crime. Could this be a racket with police interests too? How could it be that this crime goes on for all these years, in the same way, at the same spots, and police is unable to purge it? Even with the benefit of CCTV cameras with which the patterns of such crime can be studied and combatted, no sustainable intervention! Isn’t this deliberate?
It would only take positioning a few committed policemen at the high-risk jam spots during peak hours to handle or prevent such crime. But one is robbed in open areas in the city centre where the gangs seem to be in full control!
Then dozens of policemen emerge when they hear that an opposition politician is meeting people! Is it simply because such theft and the associated suffering of Ugandans do not matter to the police or that these thieves are actually an income-generating wing of the force?
jsssentongo@gmail.com
The author is a teacher of philosophy.