ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
KAMPALA
On a September 5th 2007 visit to Dwaniro, Kiboga District in central Uganda which hosted one of the rearguard bases for his vicious National Resistance Army, NRA insurgency against the UPC government (1981-85), President Yoweri Museveni let slip past his mouth a chilling revelation.
"If you had not elected us in 1996 and had not given us the mandate, we would have gone back to the bush to fight," Mr Museveni was quoted by national media on September 7 as telling the gathered peasants.
Perhaps it was tactical that Mr Museveni had chosen a rural setting, and an audience that could hardly perceive the extraordinary import of his statements to deliver what might be the most telling clue to the mindset and character of the NRA and its offspring, the UDPF.
Even if they had lost the election, Mr Museveni declared, they (him and his soldiers, the NRA) could never have allowed the "killers" who he said had backed DP's Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, to come to power.
The inference from Mr Museveni's revelation was that the army and its Commander-in-Chief were unwilling to cede power regardless of Ugandans' choice. That was only a year after Uganda had gotten a new Constitution with free and fair elections as one of its sacrosanct principles.
"In simple English: Mr Museveni would have overthrown the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda," Dr Muniini Mulera a regular commentator on Uganda's politics said.
And this is the possibility we seek to explore in the second part of our series which delves into whether the UPDF would ever allow a civilian to assume power in case the incumbent slipped into incapacitation.
In the formal and automated process of national governance, succession in such a scenario is pretty straightforward and clear: the Vice President (currently Prof. Gilbert Bukenya) would assume office. But in the cold and brutal realities of Ugandan politics, succession never seems to follow a standard path, as is much of Sub-Saharan Africa.
And so, it's never a given as our Constitution suggests that power would automatically flow where it's supposed to if the presidency suddenly falls vacant. It all really hinges on how the army, the single force that has historically directed the course of power in independent Uganda, will act or not act.
"Ours is to respect the rule of law," insisted UPDF spokesperson, Maj. Felix Kulayigye in an interview on December 11. "Subject to the Constitution, we'll submit to whoever is in power as long as he's there legally."
The genteel and thoughtful Internal Affairs Minister, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, too sees any suggestion of a possible UPDF interference in the succession process as mere conjecture.
But his optimism derives from a basic assumption. "The question of succession is a small point," he told Daily Monitor on December 12. "Because it has been well sorted out by the Constitution."
Still, beyond the assertions of Maj. Kulayigye and Dr Rugunda, there is a lot for Ugandans to fret about. The history of UPDF is not a history of virtue and patriotism.
Threats
In the heat of the 2001 presidential election campaigns, the current Coordinator of Intelligence Agencies in Uganda, Gen. David Tinyefuza, infamously declared that he would not submit to Dr Kiiza Besigye if the latter won the presidency.
And the former Director General of the Internal Security Organisation, Brig. Henry Tumukunde, reminded voters that whatever they did, Mr Museveni would still rule because they still had their guns.
Although such statements from serving (and senior) army officers would appear to carry a treasonable intent, there was never so much as a verbal reprimand from the army leadership then: corroborating what Mr Museveni implied later in Dwaniro - only the will of the army would really determine who rules Uganda.
Obviously, Gen. Tinyefuza's and Brig. Tumukunde's utterances are starkly incongruous with Maj. Kulayigye and Dr Rugunda's assertions of UPDF being a professional army, ready to submit to whichever Commander-in-Chief Ugandans (the people) may chose. Another incident, too, does undermine the glowing portrayals of UPDF.
On February 15, 2006, Lt. Ramathan Magara shot into a crowd of Dr Kiiza Besigye supporters at Bulange, Mengo, killing two people and permanently maiming a third. That tragedy, by a soldier during multiparty election campaigns, drew nationwide outrage and became a timeless stain on the UPDF.
But to the consternation of many, Lt. Magara was never court-martialled. The army instead disowned him and he was later charged in a civilian court and promptly granted bail, virtually leaving him a free man.
Lt. Magala killings
That a soldier could orchestrate such gruesome violence against an opponent of Mr Museveni, and he's even defended by elements in government (an RDC, Mr Fred Bamwine did) again underlines that faceless but decisive role of the army in determining Uganda's president.
True, Maj. Kulaigye's explanation initially sounds firm. "He's a civilian. He was retired from the army and so we couldn't try him."
But then it is Mr Museveni who invented a solution for civilians that use instruments that are a preserve of the army: court-martial. Lt. Magara used an AK 47 to murder the civilians, a weapon never licensed for civilian defence and only used by the security forces.
That is the government's justification to subject whoever handles an AK47 in Uganda to military law. How stupefying then that a 'retired' soldier could take up an AK 47, unleash a bloodbath and be spared a court-martial? Instead, since his release, Lt. Magara has claimed to be a representative of the President at one function.
Also telling is the army's feeling of entitlement to a major political role in Uganda. Even after constitutional amendments to suit the multiparty system, the army, about 50,000 strong, still maintains 10 seats in Parliament, even though all 10 are supposed to have only one view.
Clearly, the army sees itself as far more important than the rest of the population for at their ratio of parliamentary representation of 1:5000, Uganda's Parliament would have 6,000 MPs for a population of 30 million, if the civilian citizens were deemed to be equal to the soldiers in importance.
But to the leader of the Opposition, Prof Morris Ogenga Latigo, fears of UPDF hijacking power in case their current Commander-in-Chief got incapacitated in office are naïve. Coup d'états, he said on December 12, are anachronistic. "Time when soldiers used to do stupid things is over," he said.
In a Uganda where eccentric political actions are never in scarcity, many might find that assessment inaccurate.
Besides, that the leader of opposition can edit his own opinion to say what he does not believe shows how cowed politicians on both sides of the divide have become.
For the same Prof Latigo, on December 7, barely five days before, had indicated to a gathering of Uganda British Alumni Association that conditions prevailing in Uganda today are quite similar to those during the Chogm of 1971 when Idi Amin overthrew Milton Obote.
Addressing the UBAA dinner as guest of honour Prof Latigo said like the construction boom in Kampala today, Uganda's economy in 1971 was booming, the infrastructure excellent and the social services the envy of all Africa but that did not stop multitudes to pour into the streets to celebrate the toppling of the government by a soldier.
What is clearly hard to argue against therefore is that, for a typical Ugandan soldier power does not necessarily belong to the people, as the Constitution otherwise states in article 1.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Commonwealth Business Forum: Lofty Goals, Little Impact.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--Often when accomplished business leaders converge, as in the just concluded Commonwealth Business Forum, CBF at Sheraton Hotel the ideas and issues under discussion tend to be of the highbrow sort. And why not, after all it's business that makes the world grind on. It’s business that makes societies and nations more powerful than others.
Just as a clue to the grandiosity of this business gathering (November 20th-22nd); the marquee to accommodate the over 700 delegates was hired at $400,000 from Dubai.
But don't be deceived by that and feel a great loss in case you've been unable to attend. In fact if you have ever attended any or participated in the CBF, the sense of déjà vu that you feel as you sit in the sessions can be overwhelming.
The Forum opened at 10 AM on Tuesday, November 20th with a speech by President Museveni. Any Ugandan delegate in there could as well have slept through the president's speech, and then woken up and still accurately recounted what he had told the Forum.
Reuters's correspondent, Tim Cocks quoted Museveni as saying, "We have confined ourselves to the export of raw materials such as coffee, where we have been getting $1 per kg while Nestle in London is getting $20 per kg."
But Mr. Cocks could easily have been accused of plagiarism because that's the same exact line that has run in thousands of stories on Museveni and his economic views.
As is well known of what happens when Museveni meets business executives, somehow the talk has to invariably feature his standard themes: value addition; donation of value to Western nations; Western investors’ failure to recognise Africa’s potential; his wisdom in attracting processors of our commodities; Uganda having the best bananas in the world and suchlike.
That would not necessarily be a problem since, as a head of state, his glib musings will always have an audience. The problem is the precious time lost in such trite talk which would otherwise have been better devoted to exploration of more thoughtful and intellectually stimulating ideas.
But may be we're being harsh on Museveni.
The droves of CEOs and economic policy directors at the CBF didn’t fair any better in terms of the freshness of debate and talking points. Almost all the subjects discussed at the CBF are the types on which you have probably attended half a dozen workshops or so. One such one was, "Leveraging ICT for Business Development." An even more stale one was, "enhancing intra-African trade," that was discussed by a seemingly powerful posse of business executives: Dr Yvonne Muthien, Director Special Projects, Coca-Cola, Africa; Jeremy Pike, Area Director, Sub Saharan Africa, BAT and Sir John Kaputin, ACP Secretary General. But the feeling one got after the debate session suggested that power was actually in titles not in their ideas.
In fact the only new element in the deliberations at the CBF was the personalities that tackled these subjects. But that didn’t necessarily make for a higher quality of debate. A Ugandan Journalist, Mr. Daniel Kalinaki of Kalinaki.blogspot.com derided the sessions as “boring,” and suggested that it was a great deal of pain to seat through any of them.
Nevertheless, some subjects that are new to global business discourses did generate a health and educative debate. The unfolding impact of climate change was such a one. A three-member panel—Mr. James Smith, Chairman of Shell, UK, Bobby Godsell, Director Anglo American, South Africa and Mr Reto Schwarwiler, Head of Global Government Relations, Swiss Re, Switzerland—delivered stimulating insights into this emerging threat to the economic prosperity of nations.
The recent floods that pummelled Uganda’s north, north-eastern and central regions in August and September displaced hundreds of thousands and destroyed infrastructure worth billions of shillings. Although debate about the link between global warming and extreme weather incidents is still continuing, there’s already a broad consensus among scientists that rising temperatures might be behind the increasingly frequent flooding ravaging tropical countries.
Hopefully Ugandan government officials at the CBF took this panel’s lessons to heart and will also possibly review some of the policies like allocating of forests to sugar cane and palm oil investors.
Kampala--Often when accomplished business leaders converge, as in the just concluded Commonwealth Business Forum, CBF at Sheraton Hotel the ideas and issues under discussion tend to be of the highbrow sort. And why not, after all it's business that makes the world grind on. It’s business that makes societies and nations more powerful than others.
Just as a clue to the grandiosity of this business gathering (November 20th-22nd); the marquee to accommodate the over 700 delegates was hired at $400,000 from Dubai.
But don't be deceived by that and feel a great loss in case you've been unable to attend. In fact if you have ever attended any or participated in the CBF, the sense of déjà vu that you feel as you sit in the sessions can be overwhelming.
The Forum opened at 10 AM on Tuesday, November 20th with a speech by President Museveni. Any Ugandan delegate in there could as well have slept through the president's speech, and then woken up and still accurately recounted what he had told the Forum.
Reuters's correspondent, Tim Cocks quoted Museveni as saying, "We have confined ourselves to the export of raw materials such as coffee, where we have been getting $1 per kg while Nestle in London is getting $20 per kg."
But Mr. Cocks could easily have been accused of plagiarism because that's the same exact line that has run in thousands of stories on Museveni and his economic views.
As is well known of what happens when Museveni meets business executives, somehow the talk has to invariably feature his standard themes: value addition; donation of value to Western nations; Western investors’ failure to recognise Africa’s potential; his wisdom in attracting processors of our commodities; Uganda having the best bananas in the world and suchlike.
That would not necessarily be a problem since, as a head of state, his glib musings will always have an audience. The problem is the precious time lost in such trite talk which would otherwise have been better devoted to exploration of more thoughtful and intellectually stimulating ideas.
But may be we're being harsh on Museveni.
The droves of CEOs and economic policy directors at the CBF didn’t fair any better in terms of the freshness of debate and talking points. Almost all the subjects discussed at the CBF are the types on which you have probably attended half a dozen workshops or so. One such one was, "Leveraging ICT for Business Development." An even more stale one was, "enhancing intra-African trade," that was discussed by a seemingly powerful posse of business executives: Dr Yvonne Muthien, Director Special Projects, Coca-Cola, Africa; Jeremy Pike, Area Director, Sub Saharan Africa, BAT and Sir John Kaputin, ACP Secretary General. But the feeling one got after the debate session suggested that power was actually in titles not in their ideas.
In fact the only new element in the deliberations at the CBF was the personalities that tackled these subjects. But that didn’t necessarily make for a higher quality of debate. A Ugandan Journalist, Mr. Daniel Kalinaki of Kalinaki.blogspot.com derided the sessions as “boring,” and suggested that it was a great deal of pain to seat through any of them.
Nevertheless, some subjects that are new to global business discourses did generate a health and educative debate. The unfolding impact of climate change was such a one. A three-member panel—Mr. James Smith, Chairman of Shell, UK, Bobby Godsell, Director Anglo American, South Africa and Mr Reto Schwarwiler, Head of Global Government Relations, Swiss Re, Switzerland—delivered stimulating insights into this emerging threat to the economic prosperity of nations.
The recent floods that pummelled Uganda’s north, north-eastern and central regions in August and September displaced hundreds of thousands and destroyed infrastructure worth billions of shillings. Although debate about the link between global warming and extreme weather incidents is still continuing, there’s already a broad consensus among scientists that rising temperatures might be behind the increasingly frequent flooding ravaging tropical countries.
Hopefully Ugandan government officials at the CBF took this panel’s lessons to heart and will also possibly review some of the policies like allocating of forests to sugar cane and palm oil investors.
At a C’wealth Gathering, Kutesa’s Diplomatic Flair is Seen as Phoney.
At a C’wealth Gathering, Kutesa’s Diplomatic Flair is Seen as Phoney.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--The Commonwealth Business Forum, CBF, one of the prominent meetings that precede the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Chogm, opened on November 20th, 2007 at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala.
A number of officials both from the Ugandan government and the Commonwealth gave speeches before the final one by President Museveni who flagged off the Forum. Among them was Uganda’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Sam Kutesa known widely as one of the most powerful and influential (and wealthiest) ministers in Museveni’s government.
His speech was, unsurprisingly, low on substance: just about the kind that you would expect from any minister in the NRM government: they typically feature simplistic, generic remarks, shallowness of thought and frequent interjections with Dear-Leader-style praises of President Museveni.
So there was nothing remarkable in Kutesa’s speech and no body had a problem with that because no body expected anything better.
What shocked most Ugandans and the foreign delegates in attendance alike was the sudden trembling of Kutesa’s voice with the wavering worsening toward the end of his speech. There was total silence in the Grand Marquee where the CBF was hosted and so Kutesa’s wavy voice quickly caught the attention of many.
If a CEO of a small concern in Uganda or elsewhere had been intimidated by the powerful gathering (there were two presidents, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame being the second) and started shaking or losing control of himself, it would have been perfectly understandable.
But this was Sam Kutesa; a lawyer, a former Attorney General and one of the longest serving ministers in Museveni’s government. And most important: he’s Uganda’s top diplomat. He has met and talked with presidents, he’s travelled the globe and he has stood before and addressed some of most awesome audiences. On September 20th, 2006 for instance he addressed a gathering of world leaders at the UN headquarters in New York justifying Uganda’s granting of amnesty to the LRA leaders indicted by the ICC. So why did his diplomatic skills and composure fall apart at his most hour need?
Perhaps one would possibly sympathise with him if he was talking off the top of his head. But Kutesa was reading a prepared text.
I have since been asking myself why Kutesa cowered before an audience and I don’t seem to have hit an answer yet. But other questions, too, started popping up in mind: how then is Kutesa able to for instance square off with other foreign ministers or governments when conducting Uganda’s diplomatic business?
A foreign policy, for any nation, is one of the cardinal pillars of statehood. Foreign Ministers (or Secretaries) are typically the standard-bearers of nations’ foreign policies. Unmistakably common among them is their erudition, impeccable eloquence and finesse of personality.
Kutesa’s performance at the CBF showed an astonishing lack of any of these, casting his ability to steward Uganda’s Foreign Policy in deep doubt. One clue though may help us gain some understanding of Kutesa’s personality and why he didn’t shine at a moment he was supposed to.
On August 23rd this year, the Weekly Observer in a lead story, “US Firm Paid 2bn To Edit Museveni, Kutesa Letters,” reported that US’s ex Assistant Trade Representative for Africa, Ms Rosa Whitaker had earned thousands of dollars for assignments that included one where her firm edited Kutesa’s letter to the Editor of a US magazine, Foreign Policy. The letter was rebutting scorching charges by former UN Special Representative for children in armed conflict Mr. Olara Otunnu carried in an article “The Secret Genocide,” that was published around the world.
Any person with a reasonable command of English can read any article in any of our daily English newspapers and if he/she has any issues to raise or communicate regarding that article he can instantly write a letter to the editor. This is what ordinary Ugandans do on a daily basis to the letters’ editors of all our newspapers and that’s standard practice across the globe.
There’s absolutely no need for intermediaries and even if you hired one, it’s no guarantee that your letter will be given any priority over others. Selection of Letters for publication is done on merit.
But what then are we to make of the revelation that a whole minister, Mr. Sam Kutesa with such a “weighty” profile was incapable of personally composing a simple letter to the editor of Foreign Policy magazine?
That could be an important indicator of the level of sophistication of Mr. Kutesa and all these Professors and PhD ministers that populate Mr. Museveni’s cabinet.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--The Commonwealth Business Forum, CBF, one of the prominent meetings that precede the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Chogm, opened on November 20th, 2007 at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala.
A number of officials both from the Ugandan government and the Commonwealth gave speeches before the final one by President Museveni who flagged off the Forum. Among them was Uganda’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Sam Kutesa known widely as one of the most powerful and influential (and wealthiest) ministers in Museveni’s government.
His speech was, unsurprisingly, low on substance: just about the kind that you would expect from any minister in the NRM government: they typically feature simplistic, generic remarks, shallowness of thought and frequent interjections with Dear-Leader-style praises of President Museveni.
So there was nothing remarkable in Kutesa’s speech and no body had a problem with that because no body expected anything better.
What shocked most Ugandans and the foreign delegates in attendance alike was the sudden trembling of Kutesa’s voice with the wavering worsening toward the end of his speech. There was total silence in the Grand Marquee where the CBF was hosted and so Kutesa’s wavy voice quickly caught the attention of many.
If a CEO of a small concern in Uganda or elsewhere had been intimidated by the powerful gathering (there were two presidents, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame being the second) and started shaking or losing control of himself, it would have been perfectly understandable.
But this was Sam Kutesa; a lawyer, a former Attorney General and one of the longest serving ministers in Museveni’s government. And most important: he’s Uganda’s top diplomat. He has met and talked with presidents, he’s travelled the globe and he has stood before and addressed some of most awesome audiences. On September 20th, 2006 for instance he addressed a gathering of world leaders at the UN headquarters in New York justifying Uganda’s granting of amnesty to the LRA leaders indicted by the ICC. So why did his diplomatic skills and composure fall apart at his most hour need?
Perhaps one would possibly sympathise with him if he was talking off the top of his head. But Kutesa was reading a prepared text.
I have since been asking myself why Kutesa cowered before an audience and I don’t seem to have hit an answer yet. But other questions, too, started popping up in mind: how then is Kutesa able to for instance square off with other foreign ministers or governments when conducting Uganda’s diplomatic business?
A foreign policy, for any nation, is one of the cardinal pillars of statehood. Foreign Ministers (or Secretaries) are typically the standard-bearers of nations’ foreign policies. Unmistakably common among them is their erudition, impeccable eloquence and finesse of personality.
Kutesa’s performance at the CBF showed an astonishing lack of any of these, casting his ability to steward Uganda’s Foreign Policy in deep doubt. One clue though may help us gain some understanding of Kutesa’s personality and why he didn’t shine at a moment he was supposed to.
On August 23rd this year, the Weekly Observer in a lead story, “US Firm Paid 2bn To Edit Museveni, Kutesa Letters,” reported that US’s ex Assistant Trade Representative for Africa, Ms Rosa Whitaker had earned thousands of dollars for assignments that included one where her firm edited Kutesa’s letter to the Editor of a US magazine, Foreign Policy. The letter was rebutting scorching charges by former UN Special Representative for children in armed conflict Mr. Olara Otunnu carried in an article “The Secret Genocide,” that was published around the world.
Any person with a reasonable command of English can read any article in any of our daily English newspapers and if he/she has any issues to raise or communicate regarding that article he can instantly write a letter to the editor. This is what ordinary Ugandans do on a daily basis to the letters’ editors of all our newspapers and that’s standard practice across the globe.
There’s absolutely no need for intermediaries and even if you hired one, it’s no guarantee that your letter will be given any priority over others. Selection of Letters for publication is done on merit.
But what then are we to make of the revelation that a whole minister, Mr. Sam Kutesa with such a “weighty” profile was incapable of personally composing a simple letter to the editor of Foreign Policy magazine?
That could be an important indicator of the level of sophistication of Mr. Kutesa and all these Professors and PhD ministers that populate Mr. Museveni’s cabinet.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Chogm2007: International Media Picks the "Wrong Story!".
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA.
Kampala--Kampalans are agog! After all, haven’t their city been transformed over night into a World Class metropolis. Well, at least that’s the impression of many across central Uganda where the Chogm bonanza has impacted most.
It’s been a breathtaking makeover: roads have been smoothened, pavements laid. Medians have been planted with grass. Garbage mounds have disappeared. Messy intersections have been rebuilt and traffic lights fixed. Cameras are recording, and deterring crime, SPCs are roaming the city to the point of over-policing. Streets are lit. Five-Star hotel towers are shooting through the city’s skyline.
Entebbe airport is dazzling, abuzz with activity.
The world is descending on Kampala.
For once, President Museveni seems to have succeeded in putting Uganda in a global spotlight, right?
So why isn’t the international media picking up this great story unfolding in our city? This is the tale that is even more amazing to watch than the proceedings in the hallowed conference rooms in Munyonyo and Serena Hotels this week.
If president Museveni thought he and his NRM government would somehow harvest some political capital from the global media coverage of Chogm, he will be disappointed that the scribes have their eyes and ears on something else. In fact if the Western media’s disinterest in the ongoing Kampala Chogm2007 fever is a reflection of their disenchantment with Museveni and his government, then it’s pretty worrying indeed.
When the Commonwealth Youth Forum, the first of the major meetings that preceded Chogm got underway last week in Entebbe, it didn’t generate a world headline. Instead the French newswire AFP hollered to the world on Saturday, November17th; “Floods Deluge Uganda Capital, Kill Four.”
The online edition of BBC, the western media house with the broadest coverage of African news and supposedly with the keenest interest in the Commonwealth affairs has largely ignored the chogm frenzy in Kampala. And as if to demonstrate the triviality of the chogm euphoria in Kampala or even their loathing for the organiser-in-chief, they quickly picked up a gutter story run in local papers on November 14th, “Love Zones Set up in Kampala,” in reference to the restricting of whores to Kabalagala and Bukoto suburbs.
But if the BBC was mean, the Sunday Telegraph of UK gave Museveni a generous early Chogm gift. From Lira, their correspondent, Mr Mike Pflanz reported on November 18th, “Uganda’s £70 million Conference, £7 million Flood Relief.” The reporter sounded out the agonies of half a dozen starving flood victims slamming their government for spending so profligately on a useless meeting while its citizens were collapsing from hunger in sordid camps.
The report described Uganda as “poverty-wracked.”
For the whole of this year, president Museveni and his ministers have been quick to dismiss those criticising the splurging of vast amounts of money on a seemingly inconsequential meeting as blind.
Chogm, they have claimed, will “showcase Uganda’s rich potential to the World,” and draw in investors in their droves.
But the world’s businessmen and women reading the cries of the dying in the Sunday Telegraph story will probably first ponder the wisdom (or lack of it) of those of ruling the country before they inquire about the investment opportunities in Uganda, if they ever will.
In fact the Sunday Telegraph story mirrors the sort of questions and ideas that will run through the minds of the thousands of scribes jetting into the country this week. From the comfort of their hotels they will stroll around in the vicinity and see Nile Avenue, Garden City, Jinja Road intersection, Kampala Road: it’s a decent city.
But they know that’s not Kampala. Before they came they read up on Uganda’s online country profiles. They know Uganda’s GDP is a miniscule $8 billion and income per capita, a humiliating $230. They know Museveni bribed parliament to lift term limits so he could stay in power. They know Kampala is home to hordes of poor. They will look for them in Katwe, in Namuwongo, Kibuli and other slums. IDPs in northern Uganda will cry out and they will grab better headlines than the banquets and political rhetoric in Kampala.
That will be Museveni’s chogm media publicity harvest.
In the Western media; it will be the IDPs that that Museveni has betrayed, the dying flood victims in North East and the foolishness of the chogm extravagance that will run in banner headlines, not his taking of the Commonwealth chairmanship.
Kampala--Kampalans are agog! After all, haven’t their city been transformed over night into a World Class metropolis. Well, at least that’s the impression of many across central Uganda where the Chogm bonanza has impacted most.
It’s been a breathtaking makeover: roads have been smoothened, pavements laid. Medians have been planted with grass. Garbage mounds have disappeared. Messy intersections have been rebuilt and traffic lights fixed. Cameras are recording, and deterring crime, SPCs are roaming the city to the point of over-policing. Streets are lit. Five-Star hotel towers are shooting through the city’s skyline.
Entebbe airport is dazzling, abuzz with activity.
The world is descending on Kampala.
For once, President Museveni seems to have succeeded in putting Uganda in a global spotlight, right?
So why isn’t the international media picking up this great story unfolding in our city? This is the tale that is even more amazing to watch than the proceedings in the hallowed conference rooms in Munyonyo and Serena Hotels this week.
If president Museveni thought he and his NRM government would somehow harvest some political capital from the global media coverage of Chogm, he will be disappointed that the scribes have their eyes and ears on something else. In fact if the Western media’s disinterest in the ongoing Kampala Chogm2007 fever is a reflection of their disenchantment with Museveni and his government, then it’s pretty worrying indeed.
When the Commonwealth Youth Forum, the first of the major meetings that preceded Chogm got underway last week in Entebbe, it didn’t generate a world headline. Instead the French newswire AFP hollered to the world on Saturday, November17th; “Floods Deluge Uganda Capital, Kill Four.”
The online edition of BBC, the western media house with the broadest coverage of African news and supposedly with the keenest interest in the Commonwealth affairs has largely ignored the chogm frenzy in Kampala. And as if to demonstrate the triviality of the chogm euphoria in Kampala or even their loathing for the organiser-in-chief, they quickly picked up a gutter story run in local papers on November 14th, “Love Zones Set up in Kampala,” in reference to the restricting of whores to Kabalagala and Bukoto suburbs.
But if the BBC was mean, the Sunday Telegraph of UK gave Museveni a generous early Chogm gift. From Lira, their correspondent, Mr Mike Pflanz reported on November 18th, “Uganda’s £70 million Conference, £7 million Flood Relief.” The reporter sounded out the agonies of half a dozen starving flood victims slamming their government for spending so profligately on a useless meeting while its citizens were collapsing from hunger in sordid camps.
The report described Uganda as “poverty-wracked.”
For the whole of this year, president Museveni and his ministers have been quick to dismiss those criticising the splurging of vast amounts of money on a seemingly inconsequential meeting as blind.
Chogm, they have claimed, will “showcase Uganda’s rich potential to the World,” and draw in investors in their droves.
But the world’s businessmen and women reading the cries of the dying in the Sunday Telegraph story will probably first ponder the wisdom (or lack of it) of those of ruling the country before they inquire about the investment opportunities in Uganda, if they ever will.
In fact the Sunday Telegraph story mirrors the sort of questions and ideas that will run through the minds of the thousands of scribes jetting into the country this week. From the comfort of their hotels they will stroll around in the vicinity and see Nile Avenue, Garden City, Jinja Road intersection, Kampala Road: it’s a decent city.
But they know that’s not Kampala. Before they came they read up on Uganda’s online country profiles. They know Uganda’s GDP is a miniscule $8 billion and income per capita, a humiliating $230. They know Museveni bribed parliament to lift term limits so he could stay in power. They know Kampala is home to hordes of poor. They will look for them in Katwe, in Namuwongo, Kibuli and other slums. IDPs in northern Uganda will cry out and they will grab better headlines than the banquets and political rhetoric in Kampala.
That will be Museveni’s chogm media publicity harvest.
In the Western media; it will be the IDPs that that Museveni has betrayed, the dying flood victims in North East and the foolishness of the chogm extravagance that will run in banner headlines, not his taking of the Commonwealth chairmanship.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
A Wrenching Quandary: Can Black People Build Prosperous Societies?
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--Mr. Yoweri Museveni has a background of good education. A calm and well exposed man. Straight thinking and intelligent, his grasp of contemporary world affairs, including some quite complex stuff, is commendably firm.
For years he burned his young energies battling vile governments. Narrowly escaping death on occasions, he showed resolve, sacrifice, devotion to his people and a deep abhorrence for oppressive leadership. Sure. This man had no shortage of good qualities.
And yet, to the astonishment of history, Mr Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has still failed us. Twenty years at nation building have produced incompetence so shocking that some think a psychopathic illiterate, Idi Amin, did better work.
Uganda has been fairly stable long enough. The conditions for an economic takeoff have been there for 20 years. Mr. Museveni has enjoyed generous goodwill from nearly all the world’s rich governments. Their largesse has poured in ceaselessly and in hefty amounts.
Uganda should have taken off. We haven’t. We’re stuck. And so is Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Eritrea, Malawi, Congo Republic and pretty much all of Black Africa, excluding the region’s sole economic power, South Africa. This led me to pose a question to myself: can Black people build prosperous societies?
Just about every reason-from slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism to inequitable world trade rules-cited for the backwardness of Black African nations has been so debunked by time that it has now become necessary to look beyond the realm of such contemporary explanations. The maddening inertia of Black people and the mystical forces that keep tramping down our nations, in fact, seem to have their roots deep within us, not from without as has been argued for decades.
Just about everywhere you look, evidence abounds. Vietnam suffered a war of colonial conquest and it was eventually subdued by France in 1884. For almost a decade, it again fought a devastating independence war until France was vanquished in 1954. And then came the epic battle of 1965 to 1973 with US military and its allies, seeking to squelch the North Vietnamese communists.
When the guns fell silent with the withdrawal of US troops in 1973 and the eventual fall of Saigon in 1975, the Vietnamese [death] toll stood at a horrifying three to four million. Diplomatically isolated, its economy shredded and its population maimed and traumatized on a scale unparalleled in any Black African nation (except DR Congo), Vietnam would seem to have no chance at success.
But just two and a half decades later, Vietnam is storming the world stage as an economic powerhouse. Its exports are flooding western nations; heavy and advanced manufacturing is thriving at a rapid pace. Its GDP, $258 billion, is having an average growth rate of 8%, the second highest in Asia after China. Europe had to put curbs on the country’s shoe exports after they nearly sunk much of the continent’s manufacturers.
According to a news report in New York Times on October 25, 2006, Vietnam now sells “nine times as much to Americans as it buys from there.” Since 1990, a space of 15 short years, Vietnam has pulled off one of the most stunning economic feats: reducing absolute poverty-World Bank standard: subsisting on $1 a day-from 51 to 8% of its population.
Back home here (Uganda), the sort of wars and the scale of devastation that Uganda has suffered since independence can hardly be said to be as crippling as the cataclysm that struck Vietnam.
This is true for many of the Black African nations. But the difference is staggering. Vietnam’s economy is roaring. Sub Saharan Africa is dead stuck known more for: constant disease outbreaks, emergency food relief appeals, civil strive, genocide, chronic corruption, flimsy or nonexistent infrastructure, constitution breaches, state failure than anything else. This disgusting state of affairs after, according to an estimate by South Africa’s Brenthurst Foundation, a colossal $580 billion worth of donor money has been poured into the region since independence. Why have the Vietnamese overcome their historical setbacks and prospered while Black Africans stagnated or regressed?
Or if we may ask another question: why is it that White people prosper wherever they settle while Black people head for the opposite direction. The British crown started asserting its colonial rule over small territories on the continent of Australia in 1788, taking several decades before it brought all the areas into a unified Australian colony.
Throngs of Europeans emigrated en masse and settled there throughout the 1800s. These émigrés went ahead, starting from really little or nothing, and established one of the world’s economic and military powers that is Australia today. The history of New Zealand, the other White country in the Southern Hemisphere, is pretty much the same.
Now contrast these nations with Haiti, the only black nation outside of Africa. It gained independence in 1804. It’s near the US, the richest market on earth and Haiti has a coastline unlike other African nations whose landlocked status is blamed for their underdevelopment. And fine, it has had a fairly brutal past but nowhere near Vietnam’s horrors. But what have our Haitian brothers made of these generous natural advantages: it remains the most backward country in the Western hemisphere, bound up by privation, cyclical coups, spasms of mayhem and blood-thirsty gangs. At home and away, that’s your Black people!
In fact Haiti is perhaps just about the best that we can achieve in nation building. Ethiopia never had colonialism. It registered impressively high levels of literacy as early as 1970, a fact a friend of mine brought to my attention recently. It has a rich and widely shared cultural heritage, a common ancestry. This should have propelled Ethiopia but see the shameful portrait of hunger and disease that this country projects to the world.
And so, to go back to that question that I have been chewing over and over again of late: can Black People build prosperous societies; I firmly believe the answer is a sad NO.
The dumbfounding incompetence of President Museveni thus is not a failure of an individual. It’s a failure of a people: Black People. Museveni only rose and touched our low ceiling. The shamefully limited achievement of his “fundamental change” regime thus should be interpreted in this cruel context.
Kampala--Mr. Yoweri Museveni has a background of good education. A calm and well exposed man. Straight thinking and intelligent, his grasp of contemporary world affairs, including some quite complex stuff, is commendably firm.
For years he burned his young energies battling vile governments. Narrowly escaping death on occasions, he showed resolve, sacrifice, devotion to his people and a deep abhorrence for oppressive leadership. Sure. This man had no shortage of good qualities.
And yet, to the astonishment of history, Mr Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has still failed us. Twenty years at nation building have produced incompetence so shocking that some think a psychopathic illiterate, Idi Amin, did better work.
Uganda has been fairly stable long enough. The conditions for an economic takeoff have been there for 20 years. Mr. Museveni has enjoyed generous goodwill from nearly all the world’s rich governments. Their largesse has poured in ceaselessly and in hefty amounts.
Uganda should have taken off. We haven’t. We’re stuck. And so is Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Eritrea, Malawi, Congo Republic and pretty much all of Black Africa, excluding the region’s sole economic power, South Africa. This led me to pose a question to myself: can Black people build prosperous societies?
Just about every reason-from slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism to inequitable world trade rules-cited for the backwardness of Black African nations has been so debunked by time that it has now become necessary to look beyond the realm of such contemporary explanations. The maddening inertia of Black people and the mystical forces that keep tramping down our nations, in fact, seem to have their roots deep within us, not from without as has been argued for decades.
Just about everywhere you look, evidence abounds. Vietnam suffered a war of colonial conquest and it was eventually subdued by France in 1884. For almost a decade, it again fought a devastating independence war until France was vanquished in 1954. And then came the epic battle of 1965 to 1973 with US military and its allies, seeking to squelch the North Vietnamese communists.
When the guns fell silent with the withdrawal of US troops in 1973 and the eventual fall of Saigon in 1975, the Vietnamese [death] toll stood at a horrifying three to four million. Diplomatically isolated, its economy shredded and its population maimed and traumatized on a scale unparalleled in any Black African nation (except DR Congo), Vietnam would seem to have no chance at success.
But just two and a half decades later, Vietnam is storming the world stage as an economic powerhouse. Its exports are flooding western nations; heavy and advanced manufacturing is thriving at a rapid pace. Its GDP, $258 billion, is having an average growth rate of 8%, the second highest in Asia after China. Europe had to put curbs on the country’s shoe exports after they nearly sunk much of the continent’s manufacturers.
According to a news report in New York Times on October 25, 2006, Vietnam now sells “nine times as much to Americans as it buys from there.” Since 1990, a space of 15 short years, Vietnam has pulled off one of the most stunning economic feats: reducing absolute poverty-World Bank standard: subsisting on $1 a day-from 51 to 8% of its population.
Back home here (Uganda), the sort of wars and the scale of devastation that Uganda has suffered since independence can hardly be said to be as crippling as the cataclysm that struck Vietnam.
This is true for many of the Black African nations. But the difference is staggering. Vietnam’s economy is roaring. Sub Saharan Africa is dead stuck known more for: constant disease outbreaks, emergency food relief appeals, civil strive, genocide, chronic corruption, flimsy or nonexistent infrastructure, constitution breaches, state failure than anything else. This disgusting state of affairs after, according to an estimate by South Africa’s Brenthurst Foundation, a colossal $580 billion worth of donor money has been poured into the region since independence. Why have the Vietnamese overcome their historical setbacks and prospered while Black Africans stagnated or regressed?
Or if we may ask another question: why is it that White people prosper wherever they settle while Black people head for the opposite direction. The British crown started asserting its colonial rule over small territories on the continent of Australia in 1788, taking several decades before it brought all the areas into a unified Australian colony.
Throngs of Europeans emigrated en masse and settled there throughout the 1800s. These émigrés went ahead, starting from really little or nothing, and established one of the world’s economic and military powers that is Australia today. The history of New Zealand, the other White country in the Southern Hemisphere, is pretty much the same.
Now contrast these nations with Haiti, the only black nation outside of Africa. It gained independence in 1804. It’s near the US, the richest market on earth and Haiti has a coastline unlike other African nations whose landlocked status is blamed for their underdevelopment. And fine, it has had a fairly brutal past but nowhere near Vietnam’s horrors. But what have our Haitian brothers made of these generous natural advantages: it remains the most backward country in the Western hemisphere, bound up by privation, cyclical coups, spasms of mayhem and blood-thirsty gangs. At home and away, that’s your Black people!
In fact Haiti is perhaps just about the best that we can achieve in nation building. Ethiopia never had colonialism. It registered impressively high levels of literacy as early as 1970, a fact a friend of mine brought to my attention recently. It has a rich and widely shared cultural heritage, a common ancestry. This should have propelled Ethiopia but see the shameful portrait of hunger and disease that this country projects to the world.
And so, to go back to that question that I have been chewing over and over again of late: can Black People build prosperous societies; I firmly believe the answer is a sad NO.
The dumbfounding incompetence of President Museveni thus is not a failure of an individual. It’s a failure of a people: Black People. Museveni only rose and touched our low ceiling. The shamefully limited achievement of his “fundamental change” regime thus should be interpreted in this cruel context.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Poverty to Persist In Uganda; Even With Oil—Expert Declares.
On Monday Oct. 29th, 2007 I was exclusively supplied a report on Uganda's unfolding petroleum industry. I wrote a story that tried to be as accurate as possible while at the same time placing issues in perspective and bringing a measure of intelligence to bear on key points in that report. BUT because our media is full of mediocre and naïve editors (check a commentary on Uganda’s media on this blog), they messed up the original copy. Here’s an adaptation of an article published in Daily Monitor on Oct 30, 2007, page 4.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--An independent assessment of Uganda’s burgeoning petroleum industry has cast deep doubt over its economic impact, widely trumpeted by President Museveni’s government as potentially profound.
Dr. Keith Myers who conducted research this month on the viability and possible scenarios of petroleum exploitation in Uganda has suggested in a report obtained by this blogger that Uganda’s reserves could be much more modest than has been reported.
Dr Myers is a founding partner of UK-based Richmond Energy Partners which specialises in provision of research and advice to financial investors in small petroleum companies the likes of which operate in Uganda. He’s also a member of the International Monetary Fund, IMF’s panel of fiscal experts.
His incredulity about the size Uganda’s reserves stems from what he called “a huge uncertainty” on how much oil can be recovered commercially from the Albertine Graben. Although the exploration companies—Heritage Oil Corp and Tullow Oil—have already made their reserve estimates, Dr Myers said their numbers were not “supported by data or relevant analogues.”
From the three substantive oil wells drilled so far (Mputa, Waraga and Nzizi), Tullow Oil has estimated its oil reserves of recoverable oil at between 100-250 million barrels while Heritage Oil Corp which has one well has hinted that theirs is much higher although they have not provided a solid figure.
The two companies are listed in London and Toronto and “good news,” from Uganda, Dr Myers said, automatically pushes up their market value, a fact that could entice the companies to manipulate figures of their reserves in the country.
Although he didn’t point to a possible inflation of the stated reserve figures, he said the government should conduct independent surveys and verification and produce their own reserve estimates so that data provided by the companies can be cross referenced.
Mr. Reuben Kashambuzi, the Commissioner for Petroleum Exploration and Production Department in Entebbe told Daily Monitor yesterday that the government geologists have their own estimates but that they can’t release them because that would invite legal liability. “If we announce our own estimates and they contradict theirs (exploration companies) and their share price plunges, they can sue us and we would pay them enormous amounts of money,” he said.
Even then, it was highly unlikely, he said, that the companies would engage in duplicity since it could, too, result in stock crushes once the falsehoods come to light.
Dampening the euphoria that has bubbled across the country since oil was struck at Mputa in Hoima early last year, Dr. Myers suggested that Uganda still has several years before it starts earning any petrol dollars.
“Oil development will require significant cross-border investment in export infrastructure for either crude oil or refined products,” he said. “Significant oil revenues are unlikely before 2015 at the earliest.”
He offered a range of factors for his conclusion foremost of which, he said, is the frustrating remoteness of the oil fields in Western Uganda which are 1,200 Kilometres from Mombasa, the nearest seaport. Worse still, the locality of the fields (Hoima) has no functioning transportation and utilities infrastructure, and erecting them will take time and tremendous amounts of money.
The nature of Uganda’s oil, too, is a significant setback. It’s waxy and solidifies at room temperatures which imply, he said, that the export pipeline to the coast would have to be heated, a project that will require billions of dollars.
Also, the limited size of Uganda’s market renders home refinement a futile venture, a fact that necessitates immediate need of crude export infrastructure. Uganda’s daily demand is estimated at 13,650 barrels worth of oil products a day while a commercial refinery would have to have a capacity of about 100,000 barrels per day.
Dr Myers’ research reveals that the impact of the petrol dollars on the material welfare of Ugandans might in fact be negligible, contradicting popular expectation that oil will do much in ending abject poverty which afflicts 40% of the population.
According to his calculations, if exploration proves a reserve capacity of 750-1000 million barrels and an export project is agreed on, then Uganda would be able to sustain a production rate of 100-150,000 barrels per day.
Assuming a population of 27 million people and crude price of $60 a barrel, such an output would translate into 1-2 barrels per person per year. “This would mean $36-72 in oil revenues per Ugandan per year assuming a government take of 60 percent (on every barrel of crude exported),” he said.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--An independent assessment of Uganda’s burgeoning petroleum industry has cast deep doubt over its economic impact, widely trumpeted by President Museveni’s government as potentially profound.
Dr. Keith Myers who conducted research this month on the viability and possible scenarios of petroleum exploitation in Uganda has suggested in a report obtained by this blogger that Uganda’s reserves could be much more modest than has been reported.
Dr Myers is a founding partner of UK-based Richmond Energy Partners which specialises in provision of research and advice to financial investors in small petroleum companies the likes of which operate in Uganda. He’s also a member of the International Monetary Fund, IMF’s panel of fiscal experts.
His incredulity about the size Uganda’s reserves stems from what he called “a huge uncertainty” on how much oil can be recovered commercially from the Albertine Graben. Although the exploration companies—Heritage Oil Corp and Tullow Oil—have already made their reserve estimates, Dr Myers said their numbers were not “supported by data or relevant analogues.”
From the three substantive oil wells drilled so far (Mputa, Waraga and Nzizi), Tullow Oil has estimated its oil reserves of recoverable oil at between 100-250 million barrels while Heritage Oil Corp which has one well has hinted that theirs is much higher although they have not provided a solid figure.
The two companies are listed in London and Toronto and “good news,” from Uganda, Dr Myers said, automatically pushes up their market value, a fact that could entice the companies to manipulate figures of their reserves in the country.
Although he didn’t point to a possible inflation of the stated reserve figures, he said the government should conduct independent surveys and verification and produce their own reserve estimates so that data provided by the companies can be cross referenced.
Mr. Reuben Kashambuzi, the Commissioner for Petroleum Exploration and Production Department in Entebbe told Daily Monitor yesterday that the government geologists have their own estimates but that they can’t release them because that would invite legal liability. “If we announce our own estimates and they contradict theirs (exploration companies) and their share price plunges, they can sue us and we would pay them enormous amounts of money,” he said.
Even then, it was highly unlikely, he said, that the companies would engage in duplicity since it could, too, result in stock crushes once the falsehoods come to light.
Dampening the euphoria that has bubbled across the country since oil was struck at Mputa in Hoima early last year, Dr. Myers suggested that Uganda still has several years before it starts earning any petrol dollars.
“Oil development will require significant cross-border investment in export infrastructure for either crude oil or refined products,” he said. “Significant oil revenues are unlikely before 2015 at the earliest.”
He offered a range of factors for his conclusion foremost of which, he said, is the frustrating remoteness of the oil fields in Western Uganda which are 1,200 Kilometres from Mombasa, the nearest seaport. Worse still, the locality of the fields (Hoima) has no functioning transportation and utilities infrastructure, and erecting them will take time and tremendous amounts of money.
The nature of Uganda’s oil, too, is a significant setback. It’s waxy and solidifies at room temperatures which imply, he said, that the export pipeline to the coast would have to be heated, a project that will require billions of dollars.
Also, the limited size of Uganda’s market renders home refinement a futile venture, a fact that necessitates immediate need of crude export infrastructure. Uganda’s daily demand is estimated at 13,650 barrels worth of oil products a day while a commercial refinery would have to have a capacity of about 100,000 barrels per day.
Dr Myers’ research reveals that the impact of the petrol dollars on the material welfare of Ugandans might in fact be negligible, contradicting popular expectation that oil will do much in ending abject poverty which afflicts 40% of the population.
According to his calculations, if exploration proves a reserve capacity of 750-1000 million barrels and an export project is agreed on, then Uganda would be able to sustain a production rate of 100-150,000 barrels per day.
Assuming a population of 27 million people and crude price of $60 a barrel, such an output would translate into 1-2 barrels per person per year. “This would mean $36-72 in oil revenues per Ugandan per year assuming a government take of 60 percent (on every barrel of crude exported),” he said.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Sub-Saharan Africa: An Author Sees a Hopeless Future And He’s Unapologetic
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
KAMAPALA
Kampala—Lately, as it appears, sub-Saharan African countries seem to be on the rebound. Conflagrations have been doused in much of the sub-continent and as peace takes a firm hold, economic stability has followed, bringing opportunity and better welfare to millions across the region.
The International Monetary Fund, IMF’s regional economic outlook for sub-Saharan Africa published on October 20th showed a glowing portrait of a region in the midst of an energetic transformation. Economic growth for the region, said the IMF, will average 6 percent in 2007 and 6.75 percent in 2008, which will be a remarkable rise of about nearly 2 percentage points from 2005’s five and a half percent.
“This would extend a period of very good performance,” said the IMF. “In recent years the region has seen its strongest growth and lowest inflation in more than three decades.”
Capital flows into Africa are at their highest levels since independence. Investment is flourishing—the World Investment Report said the continent attracted $36 billion in 2006, double 2004’s figure—creating jobs and boosting incomes. Export earnings for the region, too, have soared to unprecedented levels on the back of an explosive worldwide commodity boom, particularly oil.
Through the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, MDRI, engineered by multilateral donors (WB, IMF, African Development Bank, Paris Club) and the G8, most sub-Saharan African countries have had their crushing debts cancelled and more resources are now being funnelled into long-neglected economic infrastructures.
All this has reversed decades of a downward spiral and lifted Africa onto the first rung of the ladder to economic prosperity, Right?
Not quite. At least, according to afro-pessimists.
Dr. Jacob van der Veen, an afro pessimist par excellence believes the worst is in fact yet to come. Dr. van der Veen who has travelled extensively and worked in sub-Saharan Africa sees all of the latest wave of seeming economic vitality as another of those endless episodes when Africa has suddenly become luminous, showed convincing promise and appeared ready to climb out of poverty only to for it to explode and plunge as dramatically as it had brightened.
Powered by globalisation, information and communication technological breakthroughs and mass consumption, Mr van der Veen observes in his book, What Went Wrong With Africa, that “it is clear that on average people’s lives have improved, all over the world, on every continent.”
Except Africa—to be more precise, sub-Saharan Africa. To be sure, Mr van der Veen’s book, first published in Dutch in 2002 and translated in English in 2004, brings no new compelling ideas about the tragedy of Black Africa but it’s the scale of detail he gives his diagnosis of the crisis and the shocking (almost provocative) candour of his views on the continent’s future that makes it a gripping and invigorating read.
“Even a confirmed optimist would hesitate to predict that life in Africa will get better in the years ahead.” van der Veen writes. His despair and doomsday arguments, which echo the familiar themes of Western reportage on Africa and scholarly work by several other Western authors, drew consternation and a hostile reception at a public debate in Kampala organised by Acode (a policy advocacy NGO) on Oct. 24th.
Dr. Kayunga Simba and Mr. Mwagutsya Ndebesa, from Makerere University Departments of political science and history respectively and Mr. Bernard Tabaire, Daily Monitor’s Managing Editor (Weekend Editions) accused him of regurgitating old and discredited theories that suggested that there was something peculiarly African about sub-Saharan Africa’s economic stagnation and chaotic politics.
To their pique, van der Veen, instead of seeking to clear misconceptions that may arise from his gloomy assertions, pressed forward, declaring that there was “nothing to make him optimistic about sub-Saharan Africa, not even the robust economic growth rates trumpeted by the IMF and the oil bonanza that is stirring euphoria all across the region.
A good measure of the economic dynamism that sub-Saharan Africa has picked up lately is so tenuous that even van der Veen’s critics may grudgingly admit that Africa’s perils may not be overcome as yet. Take exports, for instance. Prices for oil, metals, timber, coffee, sugar and several others are currently shooting through the roof; pouring prodigious amounts of money into the sub- Saharan African economies. But sometime, as it happens with booms, the prices will come crushing, and when that happens the same economies will start to sound distress signals, anew.
In many ways van der Veen’s book is easy to stoke indignation in Africans, particularly coming from the West which Africans generally tend to hold responsible for all their predicaments.
The litany of accusations is endless. Europe colonised us, pillaged our resources and has since continued to stymie our economic progress through economic marginalisation in the global marketplace. The West often displays astonishing ignorance on the complexities of the African society. The West does not offer much aid and while it’s ever railing against the corruption of African leaders, it’s content to keep the loot stashed in their banks by the same leaders.
Participants in the discussion pointed all this out.
And more, the thicket of hurdles that tamps down black Africa and which form the core of van der Veen’s narrative, too, are all familiar: state patronage, corruption, strong tribal loyalties, aid, decaying and ineffective institutions, violent conflict etc.
Many in the debate found it insulting—arguably for a good reason—that that a great deal of these problems had receded in many of the sub-Saharan countries, apparently signalling better times for the region. And yet van der Veen was still insisting that this was not enough to warrant any optimism.
Asked after the debate what he made of the accusations of bias and ignorance, van der Veen suggested that it was in fact such attitudes that were the greatest hindrance to the region’s development.
“I have noticed for instance that Ugandans are complacent,” he said. “They seem to say, ‘ok we were so badly off but now we’re somewhere and we’re happy with that’ which is really shocking if you really know what it takes to transform a pre-modern nation like Uganda to a modern country.”
He’s also not optimistic, he said, because he finds Ugandans and Africans generally to be too un-ambitious, complacent, slow-paced and much obsessed with blaming others for their crises instead of seizing and shaping their own destiny.
“There’s no sense of urgency among Africans. I have seen that wherever I have gone in all of sub-Saharan Africa and that will not take your countries anywhere,” he said.
KAMAPALA
Kampala—Lately, as it appears, sub-Saharan African countries seem to be on the rebound. Conflagrations have been doused in much of the sub-continent and as peace takes a firm hold, economic stability has followed, bringing opportunity and better welfare to millions across the region.
The International Monetary Fund, IMF’s regional economic outlook for sub-Saharan Africa published on October 20th showed a glowing portrait of a region in the midst of an energetic transformation. Economic growth for the region, said the IMF, will average 6 percent in 2007 and 6.75 percent in 2008, which will be a remarkable rise of about nearly 2 percentage points from 2005’s five and a half percent.
“This would extend a period of very good performance,” said the IMF. “In recent years the region has seen its strongest growth and lowest inflation in more than three decades.”
Capital flows into Africa are at their highest levels since independence. Investment is flourishing—the World Investment Report said the continent attracted $36 billion in 2006, double 2004’s figure—creating jobs and boosting incomes. Export earnings for the region, too, have soared to unprecedented levels on the back of an explosive worldwide commodity boom, particularly oil.
Through the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, MDRI, engineered by multilateral donors (WB, IMF, African Development Bank, Paris Club) and the G8, most sub-Saharan African countries have had their crushing debts cancelled and more resources are now being funnelled into long-neglected economic infrastructures.
All this has reversed decades of a downward spiral and lifted Africa onto the first rung of the ladder to economic prosperity, Right?
Not quite. At least, according to afro-pessimists.
Dr. Jacob van der Veen, an afro pessimist par excellence believes the worst is in fact yet to come. Dr. van der Veen who has travelled extensively and worked in sub-Saharan Africa sees all of the latest wave of seeming economic vitality as another of those endless episodes when Africa has suddenly become luminous, showed convincing promise and appeared ready to climb out of poverty only to for it to explode and plunge as dramatically as it had brightened.
Powered by globalisation, information and communication technological breakthroughs and mass consumption, Mr van der Veen observes in his book, What Went Wrong With Africa, that “it is clear that on average people’s lives have improved, all over the world, on every continent.”
Except Africa—to be more precise, sub-Saharan Africa. To be sure, Mr van der Veen’s book, first published in Dutch in 2002 and translated in English in 2004, brings no new compelling ideas about the tragedy of Black Africa but it’s the scale of detail he gives his diagnosis of the crisis and the shocking (almost provocative) candour of his views on the continent’s future that makes it a gripping and invigorating read.
“Even a confirmed optimist would hesitate to predict that life in Africa will get better in the years ahead.” van der Veen writes. His despair and doomsday arguments, which echo the familiar themes of Western reportage on Africa and scholarly work by several other Western authors, drew consternation and a hostile reception at a public debate in Kampala organised by Acode (a policy advocacy NGO) on Oct. 24th.
Dr. Kayunga Simba and Mr. Mwagutsya Ndebesa, from Makerere University Departments of political science and history respectively and Mr. Bernard Tabaire, Daily Monitor’s Managing Editor (Weekend Editions) accused him of regurgitating old and discredited theories that suggested that there was something peculiarly African about sub-Saharan Africa’s economic stagnation and chaotic politics.
To their pique, van der Veen, instead of seeking to clear misconceptions that may arise from his gloomy assertions, pressed forward, declaring that there was “nothing to make him optimistic about sub-Saharan Africa, not even the robust economic growth rates trumpeted by the IMF and the oil bonanza that is stirring euphoria all across the region.
A good measure of the economic dynamism that sub-Saharan Africa has picked up lately is so tenuous that even van der Veen’s critics may grudgingly admit that Africa’s perils may not be overcome as yet. Take exports, for instance. Prices for oil, metals, timber, coffee, sugar and several others are currently shooting through the roof; pouring prodigious amounts of money into the sub- Saharan African economies. But sometime, as it happens with booms, the prices will come crushing, and when that happens the same economies will start to sound distress signals, anew.
In many ways van der Veen’s book is easy to stoke indignation in Africans, particularly coming from the West which Africans generally tend to hold responsible for all their predicaments.
The litany of accusations is endless. Europe colonised us, pillaged our resources and has since continued to stymie our economic progress through economic marginalisation in the global marketplace. The West often displays astonishing ignorance on the complexities of the African society. The West does not offer much aid and while it’s ever railing against the corruption of African leaders, it’s content to keep the loot stashed in their banks by the same leaders.
Participants in the discussion pointed all this out.
And more, the thicket of hurdles that tamps down black Africa and which form the core of van der Veen’s narrative, too, are all familiar: state patronage, corruption, strong tribal loyalties, aid, decaying and ineffective institutions, violent conflict etc.
Many in the debate found it insulting—arguably for a good reason—that that a great deal of these problems had receded in many of the sub-Saharan countries, apparently signalling better times for the region. And yet van der Veen was still insisting that this was not enough to warrant any optimism.
Asked after the debate what he made of the accusations of bias and ignorance, van der Veen suggested that it was in fact such attitudes that were the greatest hindrance to the region’s development.
“I have noticed for instance that Ugandans are complacent,” he said. “They seem to say, ‘ok we were so badly off but now we’re somewhere and we’re happy with that’ which is really shocking if you really know what it takes to transform a pre-modern nation like Uganda to a modern country.”
He’s also not optimistic, he said, because he finds Ugandans and Africans generally to be too un-ambitious, complacent, slow-paced and much obsessed with blaming others for their crises instead of seizing and shaping their own destiny.
“There’s no sense of urgency among Africans. I have seen that wherever I have gone in all of sub-Saharan Africa and that will not take your countries anywhere,” he said.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Oil: The Americans Are Coming, And With Them, Trouble Galore
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala—In December 2000, the National Intelligence Council, a think-tank within United States’ CIA declared in a report that sub-Saharan Africa, “will play an increasing role in global energy markets,” according to John Ghazvinian in his 2007 book, Untapped, The Scramble For Africa’s Oil.
That observation set off a train of broad commercial and diplomatic maneuvering that has seen the US move decisively to counter China’s tightening grip on Africa’s energy resources.
The latest in this effort is a covert scheme designed to entrench US interests in Uganda’s burgeoning petroleum industry.
On 22nd Oct, the United States Trade and Development Agency, USTDA, announced that it had procured a U.S. consultant, RKR Enterprises, to begin exploring Uganda’s emerging petroleum and gas industry and advise on where the US may, “grant assistance.”
Often, the language used in such press statements, in keeping with the subtlety and complexity of Western diplomacy, is innocent enough.
“Potential actions that could result from the mission (the project),” said USTDA’s statement, “include technical assistance programs, feasibility studies, training activities, and/or orientation visits.”
Fair enough, you thought!
Not quite.
Implicit in the “technical assistance,” “capacity building,” “training activities,” and similar other phrases is a simple and urgent goal of guaranteeing a constant flow of resources (oil, minerals etc) from the aid recipient to the donor nation in question.
All the discoveries combined, Uganda now can (tentatively, because it’s at an exploratory level) produce about 32,000 barrels of oil per day, bopd. Exploration is continuing and the two frontline companies—Tullow Oil of UK and Heritage Corp of Canada—have hinted they will strike far greater reserves toward the northern tip of Lake Albert in Western in Uganda. Expectation is soaring, too, over the exploratory fields stretching far out toward West Nile.
Taken together thus, these developments illuminate the US’s real intentions in the sudden offer of “technical assistance,” to Uganda’s petroleum sector even before anyone has asked.
Its move is consonant with a recent wave of diplomatic overtures extended by China, India and other Asian nations all eager to carve out their share of the unfolding petroleum bounty.
Currently, competition is intensifying among the world’s major powers (US, China, India and EU) for the dwindling world petroleum resources. China has particularly upset the world’s energy balance as its demand for oil to fuel its industrial juggernaut has grown at a terrifying speed. Lately it has scrambled to redirect more of the flow of Africa’s oil towards itself, prompting a swift EU and American response in form of sweetened deals for greater economic cooperation and a boost in direct aid.
So what’s the upshot of all this and what really should concern an average Ugandan?
Well, start to get worried when the US gets entwined in Uganda’s unfolding oil politics. Eager to extract as much oil supply as possible, the US will basically leave Museveni to rule Ugandans as he pleases, as long as he doesn’t interfere with its petroleum interests.
With US diplomatic largess to underwrite his grip on power, a beefy treasury to purchase loyalty and purchase arms to brutalize opponents, Ugandans can expect to suffer under Museveni’s insanity for the next decade.
Kampala—In December 2000, the National Intelligence Council, a think-tank within United States’ CIA declared in a report that sub-Saharan Africa, “will play an increasing role in global energy markets,” according to John Ghazvinian in his 2007 book, Untapped, The Scramble For Africa’s Oil.
That observation set off a train of broad commercial and diplomatic maneuvering that has seen the US move decisively to counter China’s tightening grip on Africa’s energy resources.
The latest in this effort is a covert scheme designed to entrench US interests in Uganda’s burgeoning petroleum industry.
On 22nd Oct, the United States Trade and Development Agency, USTDA, announced that it had procured a U.S. consultant, RKR Enterprises, to begin exploring Uganda’s emerging petroleum and gas industry and advise on where the US may, “grant assistance.”
Often, the language used in such press statements, in keeping with the subtlety and complexity of Western diplomacy, is innocent enough.
“Potential actions that could result from the mission (the project),” said USTDA’s statement, “include technical assistance programs, feasibility studies, training activities, and/or orientation visits.”
Fair enough, you thought!
Not quite.
Implicit in the “technical assistance,” “capacity building,” “training activities,” and similar other phrases is a simple and urgent goal of guaranteeing a constant flow of resources (oil, minerals etc) from the aid recipient to the donor nation in question.
All the discoveries combined, Uganda now can (tentatively, because it’s at an exploratory level) produce about 32,000 barrels of oil per day, bopd. Exploration is continuing and the two frontline companies—Tullow Oil of UK and Heritage Corp of Canada—have hinted they will strike far greater reserves toward the northern tip of Lake Albert in Western in Uganda. Expectation is soaring, too, over the exploratory fields stretching far out toward West Nile.
Taken together thus, these developments illuminate the US’s real intentions in the sudden offer of “technical assistance,” to Uganda’s petroleum sector even before anyone has asked.
Its move is consonant with a recent wave of diplomatic overtures extended by China, India and other Asian nations all eager to carve out their share of the unfolding petroleum bounty.
Currently, competition is intensifying among the world’s major powers (US, China, India and EU) for the dwindling world petroleum resources. China has particularly upset the world’s energy balance as its demand for oil to fuel its industrial juggernaut has grown at a terrifying speed. Lately it has scrambled to redirect more of the flow of Africa’s oil towards itself, prompting a swift EU and American response in form of sweetened deals for greater economic cooperation and a boost in direct aid.
So what’s the upshot of all this and what really should concern an average Ugandan?
Well, start to get worried when the US gets entwined in Uganda’s unfolding oil politics. Eager to extract as much oil supply as possible, the US will basically leave Museveni to rule Ugandans as he pleases, as long as he doesn’t interfere with its petroleum interests.
With US diplomatic largess to underwrite his grip on power, a beefy treasury to purchase loyalty and purchase arms to brutalize opponents, Ugandans can expect to suffer under Museveni’s insanity for the next decade.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Jamwa & NSSF: Lots of Haze.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--On October 4th, NSSF’s new management, flanked by the Board held a press briefing to apprise Ugandans on what has been going on since they assumed office and to lay out their vision for the Fund in the next five years.
It was a timely opportunity that the new Managing Director, Mr David Chandi Jamwa could have exploited to regain the trust and confidence of Ugandan workers and assure them that the brazen waste and mismanagement of their little savings had stopped.
But nothing of the sort transpired.
Instead, Mr. Jamwa, gruff-voiced and menacingly muscular, fired off to a false start, launching into a venomous and overreaching assault on all of NSSF’s critics and commentators. Then he got wild and insulted those who have suggested lowering of the age at which a person can legally access his/her savings to 40 from the current 55 years: describing them as, “verging on lunacy.”
Such a combative and arrogant approach is unwise and unhelpful for a leadership that is seeking to turn around the image and operations of an organisation as prone to scandal as NSSF. Mr. Jamwa doesn’t have a monopoly of ideas on how NSSF should be run. And he must be liberal enough to accommodate and benefit from the on going feisty public debate on how Uganda’s pensions sector can be cleaned up and graduated to a higher level of efficiency.
At the conference, NSSF announced that it would increase the rate of return on workers’ savings from the current 7% (which is below Uganda’s average inflation) to 12 percent over a period of five years. This was, NSSF said, “to stop the destruction and loss of value” of workers’ savings that has been the hallmark of the Fund for the last decade or so. In that sense Mr. Jamwa was in effect agreeing with NSSF’s critics who have advised that the nation’s pensions sector be opened up to competition so that workers can earn a market rate on their savings.
A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Even if NSSF paid its members a 12% interest, a monopoly by any another name is a monopoly and it is bad. There’s no way workers can know whether they’re receiving the best benefits from NSSF: only the market can determine that. In any case, if NSSF is now intelligently run and efficient as Mr. Jamwa is declaring why then is he frightened by the idea of an open and competitive marketplace?
Something else, too, about Mr. Jamwa appeared to provide an unsettling clue into his leadership. When a hack inquired into the persisting mystery surrounding the Shs. 8 billion sunk into the infamous Nsimbe Housing Estate, Mr Jamwa declared that there was, “now value lost in Nsimbe.”
Throughout 2004 and 2005, it was reported widely that NSSF had purchased a chunk of land at Shs.8 billion, which was double the prevailing market price.
As the scam’s full breadth came to light, the then NSSF’s MD, Mr. Leonard Mpuma and the entire Board chaired by Mr. Onegi Obel were suspended. Both of them are currently undergoing trial for that fraud.
Now, in addition to the colossal loss ( estimated at Shs 4 billion) that NSSF incurred in the bloated cost of land; the Shs. 8 billion has been at best underutilised and at worst lying idle in the last two years—something of a no-brainer, I thought.
Yet here was Mr. Jamwa, unblinking, straight-faced, telling journalists and Ugandans that NSSF had not lost a coin in Nsimbe! There was little to conclude from this episode other than it being a pointer to the level of honesty and transparency that we should expect from the new powers at Workers House.
A good measure of the cynicism from workers and media directed at NSSF would seem justified.
Sometime in 2005, NSSF, in endless press statements told us that they had installed some new and costly software with an amazing range of abilities. It was developed by South Africa’s Face Technologies. Once fully functional, we were told, the software was supposed to end many of the deficiencies and delays in handling members’ data and processing of claims. Foremost among the benefits was that members were supposed to track their balances online and that a typical claim would now be processed in a maximum of two weeks, instead of months as was the case.
The software was also to help in cleaning up and better tracking of records and so reduce bogus or under valuing of savings.
We duly reported all this to Ugandans.
Two years down the road, that software, it appears, has not solved any of the woes besetting NSSF. The only beneficiary is FT which earned a premium on that bogus project.
Through all this, the sum picture emerging from Mr. Jamwa’s few months of leadership at NSSF, is not one of great hope. Nevertheless, he still has a chance to steer this behemoth to a better direction and leave behind a better record.
Kampala--On October 4th, NSSF’s new management, flanked by the Board held a press briefing to apprise Ugandans on what has been going on since they assumed office and to lay out their vision for the Fund in the next five years.
It was a timely opportunity that the new Managing Director, Mr David Chandi Jamwa could have exploited to regain the trust and confidence of Ugandan workers and assure them that the brazen waste and mismanagement of their little savings had stopped.
But nothing of the sort transpired.
Instead, Mr. Jamwa, gruff-voiced and menacingly muscular, fired off to a false start, launching into a venomous and overreaching assault on all of NSSF’s critics and commentators. Then he got wild and insulted those who have suggested lowering of the age at which a person can legally access his/her savings to 40 from the current 55 years: describing them as, “verging on lunacy.”
Such a combative and arrogant approach is unwise and unhelpful for a leadership that is seeking to turn around the image and operations of an organisation as prone to scandal as NSSF. Mr. Jamwa doesn’t have a monopoly of ideas on how NSSF should be run. And he must be liberal enough to accommodate and benefit from the on going feisty public debate on how Uganda’s pensions sector can be cleaned up and graduated to a higher level of efficiency.
At the conference, NSSF announced that it would increase the rate of return on workers’ savings from the current 7% (which is below Uganda’s average inflation) to 12 percent over a period of five years. This was, NSSF said, “to stop the destruction and loss of value” of workers’ savings that has been the hallmark of the Fund for the last decade or so. In that sense Mr. Jamwa was in effect agreeing with NSSF’s critics who have advised that the nation’s pensions sector be opened up to competition so that workers can earn a market rate on their savings.
A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Even if NSSF paid its members a 12% interest, a monopoly by any another name is a monopoly and it is bad. There’s no way workers can know whether they’re receiving the best benefits from NSSF: only the market can determine that. In any case, if NSSF is now intelligently run and efficient as Mr. Jamwa is declaring why then is he frightened by the idea of an open and competitive marketplace?
Something else, too, about Mr. Jamwa appeared to provide an unsettling clue into his leadership. When a hack inquired into the persisting mystery surrounding the Shs. 8 billion sunk into the infamous Nsimbe Housing Estate, Mr Jamwa declared that there was, “now value lost in Nsimbe.”
Throughout 2004 and 2005, it was reported widely that NSSF had purchased a chunk of land at Shs.8 billion, which was double the prevailing market price.
As the scam’s full breadth came to light, the then NSSF’s MD, Mr. Leonard Mpuma and the entire Board chaired by Mr. Onegi Obel were suspended. Both of them are currently undergoing trial for that fraud.
Now, in addition to the colossal loss ( estimated at Shs 4 billion) that NSSF incurred in the bloated cost of land; the Shs. 8 billion has been at best underutilised and at worst lying idle in the last two years—something of a no-brainer, I thought.
Yet here was Mr. Jamwa, unblinking, straight-faced, telling journalists and Ugandans that NSSF had not lost a coin in Nsimbe! There was little to conclude from this episode other than it being a pointer to the level of honesty and transparency that we should expect from the new powers at Workers House.
A good measure of the cynicism from workers and media directed at NSSF would seem justified.
Sometime in 2005, NSSF, in endless press statements told us that they had installed some new and costly software with an amazing range of abilities. It was developed by South Africa’s Face Technologies. Once fully functional, we were told, the software was supposed to end many of the deficiencies and delays in handling members’ data and processing of claims. Foremost among the benefits was that members were supposed to track their balances online and that a typical claim would now be processed in a maximum of two weeks, instead of months as was the case.
The software was also to help in cleaning up and better tracking of records and so reduce bogus or under valuing of savings.
We duly reported all this to Ugandans.
Two years down the road, that software, it appears, has not solved any of the woes besetting NSSF. The only beneficiary is FT which earned a premium on that bogus project.
Through all this, the sum picture emerging from Mr. Jamwa’s few months of leadership at NSSF, is not one of great hope. Nevertheless, he still has a chance to steer this behemoth to a better direction and leave behind a better record.
Ugandans Are Zombies: Look What’s In The Newspapers!
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--A question is often asked: why are Ugandans a passive people? Endless embezzlement scandals. Endless headlines, all that is swallowed up and life goes on. Not a finger raised. Gruesome torture by state agents is exposed, human rights are trampled, peaceful democracy rallies brutally broken up: Ugandans are unruffled.
History zooms past us. We watch it. We look the other way.
What is it about us that tethers us to our stations, makes us docile and disables our spirit to protest injustice and squarer up to our adversaries?
The answer to that question is in the sort of newspapers that we consume daily. The media is supposed to report on the world around us, place us in a firmer understanding of it and urge us to work to make it better, right? Well, if that’s the case then Uganda’s newspapers have misfired all along and are way off the mark!
Working in the media, I am supplied a free copy of a daily newspaper. However on weekends, I, without fail, buy myself copies of Daily Monitor and other papers when my budget can allow.
If I had a thousand shillings in my pocket for the day and I was presented with a stark choice of a lunch meal and a newspaper, I am not sure I would not agree to starve and feed my mind instead. That’s how deep I love newspapers: I live and depend on them, they nourish and keep me going. And that has nothing to do with my media work, were I a doctor, I would still be just as fanatical about stuff of news. Every day when I wake up I yearn and seek to have a tighter grasp of my world and how it shapes my destiny and what I can do to influence the course of things for a better future both for me and mankind.
This is pretty much the routine of every average citizen. Every day people wake up, curious, yearning, and eager to know what happened yesterday and what to make of it, how it will affect their lives and their world. Every sunrise should bring new knowledge, by sunset every one aspires to know more than he did when pulled out of his bed.
Newspapers have a duty to satisfy a big part of this human yearning.
And yet it has become almost impossible to find any insightful news or intelligent commentary in our newspapers these days.
The result: a placid, malleable society.
Don’t blame Ugandans for letting President Museveni do whatever he wishes with this nation. Blame the wimpy newsmen and our mediocre elite who spew out incoherent and spineless commentary on our OP-ED pages which, instead of enlightening, leaves readers confused and foolish.
Everyday, you pick up a copy of Daily Monitor, New Vision or Weekly Observer, pore over page upon page, cover to cover, and feel an astonishing emptiness about these papers.
Important news is never given any clear meaning or perspective that goes beyond the echo-chamber-style reproduction of what subjects tell reporters. That humdrum and mindless way of reporting news has completely buried useful journalism in this country and with it, society.
Annoyed and disappointed, you rifle past newspages and race on to the OP-ED space where you expect to stumble upon a decent and well reasoned commentary and what meets your eyes: poorly written opinions with clumsy arguments on uninspiring subjects.
There was a particularly ridiculous piece in one of our dailies on Oct 18th by a PhD academic at Makerere University, Mr. Augustus Nuwagaba. Good governance, he laboured, is essential for poverty eradication!
An average primary seven pupil would tell you that.
It was the most thoughtless and prosaic assertion I have read in recent years. I sensed he wanted to show how Museveni’s disastrous government was nudging Ugandans into destitution. But because he couldn’t summon enough courage to say what he really meant, his piece ended up a dull and derisive read.
Upon reading it you got an exact sense of the sort of arguments and opinions that should clearly never be entertained in Ugandan newspapers’ precious OP-ED space. There’s absolutely nothing
new to learn from there, no fresh ideas to invigorate any one’s mind.
The other problem that ails Kampala’s newsmen and commentators is the sheer cowardice that infects everything that they serve us every morning. Newspapers exist to report the truth and help people understand that truth. For that to happen, news must be reported in clearest, boldest, the most point black and candid language possible. But with Kampala papers’ zealousness to please and be polite to everybody, no one ever gets a grasp of what’s right and what’s wrong and no paper has seemed willing to help. The same grovelling and politically-correct language shows up in all the opinions printed daily.
So, if we may ask again: why are Ugandans an indifferent lot? It is because of the newspapers they buy and read every morning.
Kampala--A question is often asked: why are Ugandans a passive people? Endless embezzlement scandals. Endless headlines, all that is swallowed up and life goes on. Not a finger raised. Gruesome torture by state agents is exposed, human rights are trampled, peaceful democracy rallies brutally broken up: Ugandans are unruffled.
History zooms past us. We watch it. We look the other way.
What is it about us that tethers us to our stations, makes us docile and disables our spirit to protest injustice and squarer up to our adversaries?
The answer to that question is in the sort of newspapers that we consume daily. The media is supposed to report on the world around us, place us in a firmer understanding of it and urge us to work to make it better, right? Well, if that’s the case then Uganda’s newspapers have misfired all along and are way off the mark!
Working in the media, I am supplied a free copy of a daily newspaper. However on weekends, I, without fail, buy myself copies of Daily Monitor and other papers when my budget can allow.
If I had a thousand shillings in my pocket for the day and I was presented with a stark choice of a lunch meal and a newspaper, I am not sure I would not agree to starve and feed my mind instead. That’s how deep I love newspapers: I live and depend on them, they nourish and keep me going. And that has nothing to do with my media work, were I a doctor, I would still be just as fanatical about stuff of news. Every day when I wake up I yearn and seek to have a tighter grasp of my world and how it shapes my destiny and what I can do to influence the course of things for a better future both for me and mankind.
This is pretty much the routine of every average citizen. Every day people wake up, curious, yearning, and eager to know what happened yesterday and what to make of it, how it will affect their lives and their world. Every sunrise should bring new knowledge, by sunset every one aspires to know more than he did when pulled out of his bed.
Newspapers have a duty to satisfy a big part of this human yearning.
And yet it has become almost impossible to find any insightful news or intelligent commentary in our newspapers these days.
The result: a placid, malleable society.
Don’t blame Ugandans for letting President Museveni do whatever he wishes with this nation. Blame the wimpy newsmen and our mediocre elite who spew out incoherent and spineless commentary on our OP-ED pages which, instead of enlightening, leaves readers confused and foolish.
Everyday, you pick up a copy of Daily Monitor, New Vision or Weekly Observer, pore over page upon page, cover to cover, and feel an astonishing emptiness about these papers.
Important news is never given any clear meaning or perspective that goes beyond the echo-chamber-style reproduction of what subjects tell reporters. That humdrum and mindless way of reporting news has completely buried useful journalism in this country and with it, society.
Annoyed and disappointed, you rifle past newspages and race on to the OP-ED space where you expect to stumble upon a decent and well reasoned commentary and what meets your eyes: poorly written opinions with clumsy arguments on uninspiring subjects.
There was a particularly ridiculous piece in one of our dailies on Oct 18th by a PhD academic at Makerere University, Mr. Augustus Nuwagaba. Good governance, he laboured, is essential for poverty eradication!
An average primary seven pupil would tell you that.
It was the most thoughtless and prosaic assertion I have read in recent years. I sensed he wanted to show how Museveni’s disastrous government was nudging Ugandans into destitution. But because he couldn’t summon enough courage to say what he really meant, his piece ended up a dull and derisive read.
Upon reading it you got an exact sense of the sort of arguments and opinions that should clearly never be entertained in Ugandan newspapers’ precious OP-ED space. There’s absolutely nothing
new to learn from there, no fresh ideas to invigorate any one’s mind.
The other problem that ails Kampala’s newsmen and commentators is the sheer cowardice that infects everything that they serve us every morning. Newspapers exist to report the truth and help people understand that truth. For that to happen, news must be reported in clearest, boldest, the most point black and candid language possible. But with Kampala papers’ zealousness to please and be polite to everybody, no one ever gets a grasp of what’s right and what’s wrong and no paper has seemed willing to help. The same grovelling and politically-correct language shows up in all the opinions printed daily.
So, if we may ask again: why are Ugandans an indifferent lot? It is because of the newspapers they buy and read every morning.
In South Africa: A Tribute To Apartheid Architects
In South Africa: A Tribute To Apartheid Architects.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Grahamstown.
On 21st March 1960, a brutal clash erupted in South Africa’s Black township of Sharpeville between a crowd of about 5000 Blacks protesting arbitrary pass laws and the apartheid Police hell-bent on snuffing out native agitation.
69 protesters were murdered by the police before the unrest was quelled: a massacre that stunned the world and became the defining face of the Anglo-Dutch White supremacist regime in South Africa.
From then on, the resentment that had been bubbling across Africa and the world at large toward Whites for their repression and segregation of Black people took on a new grim intensity. Whites, as viewed through the Sharpeville bloodbath, became to the world a face of; evil, horror, extremism, savagery, monstrosity, inhumanity, vile, cruelty etc.
In the three South African novels I encountered in my early life—In The Fog of The Seasons’ End (Alex La Guma), Mine Boy (Peter Abrahams) and Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)—this is the standard theme, the quintessential face of White South African rulers.
In classroom lessons, endless books, songs, drama, media, speeches about Apartheid all across Africa and beyond we were drenched in this grotesque image of Whites as a merciless and greedy bunch that fled the discomfiting temperate climes and impoverished lives in Europe to come, subjugate and brutalise Blacks so they can revel in Africa’s subtropical paradise.
As I knew then and know now, all of this is true. True to the last bit.
But something else, too, is true, in fact much truer than all the foregoing.
And when it dawned on me it immediately started to influence my entire perception of the generations of White people than run South Africa for nearly a century before Blacks assumed power after the collapse of apartheid in 1994.
On the night of September 9th this year, I landed at Oliver Thambo International Airport in Johannesburg en route to Grahamstown, a tiny city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
Almost instantly thousands questions started to puzzle my mind. Oliver Thambo—super-sophisticated, monstrously vast, hyperactive—is just about any of Europe’s flagship airports: Schiphol in Amsterdam, Brussels, Heathrow etc. In otherwords as soon as you land at Oliver Thambo, what is the image that immediately strikes one: a clean, advanced, efficient republic that is clearly incongruous with that that we know about Africa and Africans—a basic inability to build firm and modern nations.
Well, the answer to that contradiction, like the observation itself, is basically simple and well known: South Africa, Africa’s richest republic was built by those same people that were portrayed all around the world as extremist thugs and savages.
This pretty much is known.
But then comes the riddle that is still unsolved in my mind: how did these extremist Whites—operating in a hostile continental political environment; harassed and sabotaged by a determined Black liberation struggle; hated and economically isolated by the world—build an awesome and advanced nation that is South Africa?
How can it be possible? How did these crazy and maniacal racists still manage to overcome this maelstrom of odds and successfully transplant a European civilisation onto to a continent that has to this day stupefied all mankind?
This is the riddle that every African should attempt to crack.
We all consider apartheid to be one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity, black humanity. And those who perpetuated it in South Africa will forever remain in the world’s Hall of the Infamous, characters and regimes better forgotten by mankind.
That much is deserved.
But then we Africans and the world should be counter accused of having committed the gravest crime ever to a people (Anglo-Dutch supremacists): a failure to acknowledge them as the architects and builders of Black Africa’s greatest republic ever. In retrospect, I think it is equally criminal for all those teachers, singers, writers, dramatists, speechwriters and the media to have deliberately omitted telling us that those same White racists had given to our continent that that everyone of us had never achieved (and never could)—a great nation.
To me this is what is important and what should have been stressed in class. This is what my teacher should have asked me to find out: how come Kenya’s Jomo Kenyata and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere could not transform their nations even though both have seacoasts, and have never witnessed military upheaval or any of the crises that beset White South Africa for decades?
We’re routinely told that corruption is the single evil responsible for Africa’s underdevelopment. But socialist and modest Nyerere has a wide reputation of a honest and fairly clean government. And yet years of dogged attempts at nation building left a cripple of a nation that is Tanzania today while besieged and isolated Whites down south rapidly turned around an impoverished settlement into a howling, wealthy nation.
How could my teacher miss to tell me this?
Besides their indignation at the horrors suffered under White rule: Black South Africans should eternally be grateful to their Anglo-Dutch conquerors for having bequeathed them the greatest and proudest heritage ever to Black mankind—a modern nation.
Had South Africa, with its vast mineral endowment, had a similar colonial history to that of many African nations where European colonialists suddenly succumbed to naïve nationalist forces and abandoned power, there’s a high likelihood that it would have turned out a D.R. Congo, Mali or Malawi—a backwater trapped at the bottom of human civilisation.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Grahamstown.
On 21st March 1960, a brutal clash erupted in South Africa’s Black township of Sharpeville between a crowd of about 5000 Blacks protesting arbitrary pass laws and the apartheid Police hell-bent on snuffing out native agitation.
69 protesters were murdered by the police before the unrest was quelled: a massacre that stunned the world and became the defining face of the Anglo-Dutch White supremacist regime in South Africa.
From then on, the resentment that had been bubbling across Africa and the world at large toward Whites for their repression and segregation of Black people took on a new grim intensity. Whites, as viewed through the Sharpeville bloodbath, became to the world a face of; evil, horror, extremism, savagery, monstrosity, inhumanity, vile, cruelty etc.
In the three South African novels I encountered in my early life—In The Fog of The Seasons’ End (Alex La Guma), Mine Boy (Peter Abrahams) and Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)—this is the standard theme, the quintessential face of White South African rulers.
In classroom lessons, endless books, songs, drama, media, speeches about Apartheid all across Africa and beyond we were drenched in this grotesque image of Whites as a merciless and greedy bunch that fled the discomfiting temperate climes and impoverished lives in Europe to come, subjugate and brutalise Blacks so they can revel in Africa’s subtropical paradise.
As I knew then and know now, all of this is true. True to the last bit.
But something else, too, is true, in fact much truer than all the foregoing.
And when it dawned on me it immediately started to influence my entire perception of the generations of White people than run South Africa for nearly a century before Blacks assumed power after the collapse of apartheid in 1994.
On the night of September 9th this year, I landed at Oliver Thambo International Airport in Johannesburg en route to Grahamstown, a tiny city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
Almost instantly thousands questions started to puzzle my mind. Oliver Thambo—super-sophisticated, monstrously vast, hyperactive—is just about any of Europe’s flagship airports: Schiphol in Amsterdam, Brussels, Heathrow etc. In otherwords as soon as you land at Oliver Thambo, what is the image that immediately strikes one: a clean, advanced, efficient republic that is clearly incongruous with that that we know about Africa and Africans—a basic inability to build firm and modern nations.
Well, the answer to that contradiction, like the observation itself, is basically simple and well known: South Africa, Africa’s richest republic was built by those same people that were portrayed all around the world as extremist thugs and savages.
This pretty much is known.
But then comes the riddle that is still unsolved in my mind: how did these extremist Whites—operating in a hostile continental political environment; harassed and sabotaged by a determined Black liberation struggle; hated and economically isolated by the world—build an awesome and advanced nation that is South Africa?
How can it be possible? How did these crazy and maniacal racists still manage to overcome this maelstrom of odds and successfully transplant a European civilisation onto to a continent that has to this day stupefied all mankind?
This is the riddle that every African should attempt to crack.
We all consider apartheid to be one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity, black humanity. And those who perpetuated it in South Africa will forever remain in the world’s Hall of the Infamous, characters and regimes better forgotten by mankind.
That much is deserved.
But then we Africans and the world should be counter accused of having committed the gravest crime ever to a people (Anglo-Dutch supremacists): a failure to acknowledge them as the architects and builders of Black Africa’s greatest republic ever. In retrospect, I think it is equally criminal for all those teachers, singers, writers, dramatists, speechwriters and the media to have deliberately omitted telling us that those same White racists had given to our continent that that everyone of us had never achieved (and never could)—a great nation.
To me this is what is important and what should have been stressed in class. This is what my teacher should have asked me to find out: how come Kenya’s Jomo Kenyata and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere could not transform their nations even though both have seacoasts, and have never witnessed military upheaval or any of the crises that beset White South Africa for decades?
We’re routinely told that corruption is the single evil responsible for Africa’s underdevelopment. But socialist and modest Nyerere has a wide reputation of a honest and fairly clean government. And yet years of dogged attempts at nation building left a cripple of a nation that is Tanzania today while besieged and isolated Whites down south rapidly turned around an impoverished settlement into a howling, wealthy nation.
How could my teacher miss to tell me this?
Besides their indignation at the horrors suffered under White rule: Black South Africans should eternally be grateful to their Anglo-Dutch conquerors for having bequeathed them the greatest and proudest heritage ever to Black mankind—a modern nation.
Had South Africa, with its vast mineral endowment, had a similar colonial history to that of many African nations where European colonialists suddenly succumbed to naïve nationalist forces and abandoned power, there’s a high likelihood that it would have turned out a D.R. Congo, Mali or Malawi—a backwater trapped at the bottom of human civilisation.
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