Miria Mutuwa was propped up in a hospital bed when openDemocracy visited, her head supported by a backpack, a portion of her face, neck and left ear raw from burn injuries and her chest, left arm and leg wrapped in thick bandages. She spoke in short breaths and painful whispers.
Less than a month earlier, Mutuwa said, she had been a healthy street food vendor in downtown Mukasa Kafumbe road selling cassava chips, fried chicken gizzards and tea, and making between 12,000 and 20,000 Ugandan shillings (up to 10% of Uganda’s average monthly income) a day to support her young family.
Then, on the morning of 30 January, all of that changed. She says she got into a scuffle with a Kampala City Council Authority (KCCA) enforcement officer who wanted to confiscate the food she was selling, causing her to slip and fall in a pan of hot cooking oil. The officer was there to enforce the Trade Licensing Act passed by the Ugandan Parliament in 1969, which criminalises illegal trading and hawking without a licence.
