BURUNDI’S TURN FOR THIRD TERM ACTION

Last week Burundi took off where South Africa left off with street protests against plans by incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza to run for another term in office.

The protestors insist his running would a breach of the constitution, which provides for a two-term presidential limit. But Nkurunziza’s supporters say the constitution was enacted during his first term, he has run for one general election since and is therefore entitled to run at least one more time.

The opposition know this.

"They in effect, are trying to deprive Nkurunziza the element of surprise if he is to attempt to amend the constitution to allow for a third term, they are trying to create a public momentum against such plans and make it a campaign issue for Nkurunziza to pronounce on during the campaigns. The presidential elections are for June 26.

Why all this hoolah balooh about term limits?

Presidential term limits as we know them have their origins in the US. In writing their constitution in the 18^th century the issue came up and the advocates for term limits argued that the notion of a republic would not stand if the president’s term limits were not predetermined.

However they did not write it into the constitution immediately, but an informal two term limit was established when the first US president George Washington stepped down after he had served two terms.

Term limits were finally written into the constitution in 1951 after Franklin D Roosevelt became the longest serving incumbent, dying during in his fourth term.

In Africa our motives for writing the presidential term limits, beyond wanting to ape the US, comes from our post-colonial history, which shows that once a leader was in place you would have to throw everything including the kitchen sink to dislodge him.

"Caught up in the dynamic of hanging on to power, governments tend to forsake a long term national vision for short term pragmatism aimed at holding on to power, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise...

Politics is about vying for power and once obtained, it’s a bout retaining power. Power, the ability to influence things, starts out not as an end in itself but as an instrument in the service of the people. Somewhere along the way the seduction of power is too much and it becomes an end in itself.

This is not unique to the African situation.

In 1972 agents broke into the Watergate office complex in Washington. This was the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Various sources have it that proof of a deal made by Richard Nixon to stall the Vietnam negotiations, which if successful would have seen Lyndon Johnson back in the White House were supposed to be in that building.

Nixon or his cronies scared the Democrats would hold this over their heads through his first term and also at the next election were keen to get their hands on the nefarious dossier.

But they went too far and the exposure of the plot and the Nixon’s denial it was involved in the break in eventually cost him his presidency.

"Term limits are a mechanical solution to the threat of a return to monarchies...

What Africa really needs is institutions that can hold everybody to accountable, unfortunately for us impatient Africans these cannot reach full maturity in a day or a decade or even a century.

The question is how do you go about building such institutions?

Writing them into law is useful but not sufficient to make them credible and effective. For us who are always lamenting Gavumenti etuyambe. I am sorry to say it starts with us.

My fellow columnist Simon Kaheru last week reported that he went to a place where lining up happens. But beyond the physical presence of a line there is the intuitive, habitual even spiritual sense that there is a line --- even if it is not physically visible.

The institutions we yearn from start at the spiritual level, at the level of our individual consciousness. How can we demand that our leaders be held accountable for their public behaviour, for monies going missing under the watch and for the careless utterances they make that make us reduce our estimation as a nation in the eyes of the world when we in pour personal fiefdoms – be they at home or in the office, behave as if we are above the law?

So back to Burundi. Nkurunzinza should stand despite misplaced call for him to disqualify himself. 

He should stand if only to ingrain the tradition of voting into the people’s psyches. People who say in the context of our countries it is useless to vote because our leaders are prone to steal the polls anyway, are the real enemies of democracy.

In fact if the anti-Nkurunzinza people are convinced he is overstepping his mandate, sue him! Exercise the judiciary!

MUKULU ‘S CAPTURE SIGN OF THE CHANGING TIMES

The capture of Jamil Mukulu signals the demise of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels, currently holed up somewhere in eastern Congo and hopefully brings to a close a sad chapter in our country’s history.

When President Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986 at the head of the rebel National Resistance Army (NRA) neighbouring states were understandably jittery.

"Regional leaders warned that the NRA would export its peculiar brand of revolution --- it was up to that point the only rebel army that had taken power on the continent through a protracted struggle...

In hindsight their fears seem to have come true with rebel movements in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan taking power. But the unintended consequence was also that the NRA came up against its own rebellions arguably spurred by their own success.

People in the NRA would take exception to these rebel movements – LRA and ADF being seen as their proteges, arguing that they have no popular ideology and have resorted to terror.

The LRA and ADF at their best have been hired guns, fighting proxy wars for Uganda’s enemies and at worst have been terror machines that have no attempt to win the people’s favour and cause disaffection towards government. This has lead people to dismiss their claims to be fighting Kampala.

Sympathisers of these two groups argue that they each have political programs, but it is hard to imagine that these can have been missed by the general public.

The LRA and ADF are an offshoot of the end of the cold war, when east-west ideological difference have given way to religious fundamentalism and the outright commercialisation of war.

For both parties 9/11 meant the world changed for them with terror being identified as a global phenomenon and triggering an international response against it.

"The greater international cooperation in intelligence, data collection and processing, as well as new legislation that has given governments all around the world greater leeway to pry into the private lives of their citizens  and the massive investments in the defence industry means such freelance movements would find their operations increasingly constricted....

The ultimate prize would be Jospeh Kony but Mukulu’s arrest in Tanzania, is a sign of how the world is changing for outlaws, especially those who do not provide any geo-political advantage to major players.

No longer will they be able to oppose one government while seek succour with another, their movement in and out of their theatre of operation, unfettered and unhampered.

With a joint UN force – including Tanzanian troops, siding with Uganda and ganging up against the ADF in eastern Congo it was only a matter of time before Mukulu was isolated, exposed and arrested.

With this increasing attention the only hope for the leaders of these outfits is surrender or fall off the radar and wait out the decade-long war on terror. Mukulu run out of time.

It is likely that others will rise to take over from Mukulu, but one can expect that their tenures will be short lived and end very badly.

However Mukulu’s capture and the imminent collapse of the group he has led for two decades does not take away from the underlying grievances that were used to justify and recruit for the ADF.

Youth unemployment and general poverty are the breeding ground for much civil unrest – see South Africa and Burundi. These disgruntled youth are easy to mobilise – even if they do not believe in the cause, with promises of wealth.

After more than a decade of the war against terror we are learning that it is all very well to depose the leaders we do not like and dismantle their apparatus of tyranny, but it is another thing to then generate economic growth for the benefit of the “liberated” people.

Failure here means we may continue in a perpetual vicious cycle of violence.

MANDELA MUST HAVE SEEN THIS COMING

The latest episode of xenophobic attacks seems to be dying down in South Africa.

A few weeks ago some South Africans in protest over their having to forfeit economic opportunities to African immigrants, went on a bloody rampage that accounted for at least seven people and dozens of injuries.

Pictures and footage of the bloodied victims with deep gashes to all parts of their bodies or writhing in agony as flames consumed them or literally being stalked and stabbed to death by their persecutors, raised an international uproar.

Understandably the roots of this flare up are driven by the deep economic fissures in South African society, a legacy of almost half a century of apartheid policies, which denied Africans access to land, suppressed their wages to make mining and industry more  profitable and allowed them less than basic social services.

"The net effect of these policies continue to reverberate through society two decades after majority rule was adopted....

In negotiating this new dispensation, former President Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) were well aware of the economic divide. A divide particularly galling for the black South Africans because it was a situation that did not come about by mistake but by design.

In fact the enormity of the task to even up society must have been at the back of Mandela’s mind when he said, “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”

As it is after 20 years in power the ANC has barely dented the huge inequality they inherited from the white minority government.

According to Statistics South Africa, the unemployment rate stands at 24.3 percent with blacks bearing the brunt of these woeful statistics with nearly three in ten blacks between 15 and 64 years jobless.

In addition white capital controls 70 percent of all land in the country, a figure largely unchanged from 1994 when Pretoria embarked on a distribution policy that despite the great demand has stuttered badly missing all targets.

The idea to maintain the status quo after 1994 albeit with an official determination to redress the inequalities, was a good one but the execution has fallen way short of expectation.

The idea was, instead of dismantling the white grip on the economy, let the most developed private sector in Africa continue doing what it was doing – creating wealth, and through official and moral intervention begin a process of redistribution while not upsetting the apple cart will ensure the resources needed to finance education and other social services and develop infrastructure into the marginalised rural areas.

However the execution of this project run into two major shortfalls.

One, that the philosophy that grew this immense wealth did not go away with the ascendance to power of the ANC. Through a combination of inertia and deliberate subversion --- including co-opting a new politically connected black elite, the redistribution was slowed or even halted.

Secondly, the growing corruption among the black elite means that resources are once again being concentrated in a few hands rather than being spread out to the majority.

Education, health and infrastructure necessary to improve opportunities for the majority blacks are qualitatively poor even for newly developed projects as public officials have corrupted the procurement process and paid little heed to value for money.

The combination of a legacy of inequality, being perpetuated by an increasingly corrupt bureaucracy whose members are not averse to flouting their new found wealth around their poorer cousins was always going to be a recipe for disaster.

They say revolution or upheaval does not come from poor conditions but more from unmet expectations, the bloodletting --- while unjustifiable, is an expression of this disappointment and sense of betrayal.

"Stranger things have happened but South Africa going the way of Zimbabwe is, after the recent spate of bloodletting, not too farfetched a prospect....

The forceful redistribution of land was a last gasp effort by a growingly unpopular government to stave off the pressure of opposition. Cloaked as an economic solution by gutting Zimbabwe’s industrial class Robert Mugabe brought the economy to its knees, suffering the ignominy of abandoning the hyperinflated, local currency for the US dollar in effect surrendering his country’s monetary policy.

They say nationalism is the last resort of the scoundrel. It is not unthinkable that with its waning popularity and its back against the wall the ANC may resort to such underhand methods to hang on to power.

Now that would be one more thing for Mandela to turn over his grave about.

SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF TO CURB CRIME

New York City used to be the homicide capital of the world. The incidents of murder peaked at 2245 cases in 1990 before beginning a precipitous fall to a third that number within a decade and further down to 328 recorded cases last year.

Starting in 1991 the New York Police Department (NYPD) started a crackdown on even the smallest of infringements in line with the broken windows theory. The NYPD went after petty thieves, graffiti painters, fare dodgers on the subway and other smaller crimes aggressively drawing criticism about how they were wasting valuable resources on lesser crimes when major crimes were running out of control.

General crime, not only murder begun to fall as illustrated above, though the correlation between the two events has been questioned by other observers.

The theory got its name from an article published in 1982 by Americans James Wilson and George Kelling in which they used the analogy of the building with one broken window, which if not attended to will encourage the breaking of more windows and may escalate into occupation of the building by squatters.

"The broken window theory supposedly works on the basis that smaller crimes lay the basis for larger crimes...

The critics not withstanding it would be interesting to see what would happen if they theory was applied here.

The recent murders of Muslim clerics, the deputy public prosecutor Joan Kagezi and any number of major crimes it can be argued are a result of the general disregard for rules in our society.

Not to flog the point too much but the way boda boda riders (motorcycle taxis) flaunt traffic rules – jumping traffic lights, driving on the wrong side of the road and overloading in plain sight encourages onlookers to push the boundaries, to break the law after all the bodas can get away with it.

So it then comes as no surprise that in the recent spate of murders the common denominator was the presence of a boda boda rider to enable the speedy getaway of the criminals.

Its common sense actually – they say a stitch in time saves nine, and Ugandans who lived through the harrowing 70s and 80s can attest to this . Lawlessness feeds on itself, coopting even the most upright of citizens into its vortex and before you know it what was wrong soon becomes normal behaviour, entrenches itself in our psyches and resist the best intentions to revert to the proper way of doing things.

And even the nature of boda boda crime bears this out. First they were snatching purses and other valuables from the unsuspecting public. Then they started kidnapping and raping women. Then they started killing people. They too were not spared as few dozen boda boda riders have been waylaid  by their “passengers” and robbed of life and property.

"Granted, it’s as not sexy running after boda boda riders and taxi drivers. That won’t get you much airtime in the media, but in order to contain major crimes we cannot have lawlessness run rampant on a “smaller” level and expect to make any headway with the bigger crimes...

Let us use boda bodas as a test case. Proper registration of all of them. No jumping lights or breaking any other traffic rules. Stop working after 11 pm and enforce all the other regulations they are supposed to keep.

If for nothing else our roads will be safer place to be on and the best case scenario we will have created an environment where we revert to the old normal of observing the law.

THE SILLY SEASON IS HERE, HANG ON TO YOUR INTELLIGENCE

About 12 months for now we will be deep in the throes of the election season, understandably the politicians cannot wait that long to jump into action.

To begin with there will be the primaries, where every party will choose its flag bearer in the individual constituencies and of course for the presidency.

Due to certain quirks of our history our politicians will be shoring up their popularity by appealing to our baser instincts to win our vote.

Some people who every four years are enthralled by the US presidential elections, yearn for a day when elections will be “issue based” and away from the parochial morass of our local scene. My advice to them: don’t hold your breath.

"It’s being elitist to believe that the politics of sugar and salt is not issue based. For the majority of our people that is the only issue that exercises their minds daily...

Secondly, what does it take for a society to begin to appreciate “the issues” – democracy and its freedoms, government transparency and service delivery, the economy and improving living standards?

We appreciate all these issues in our own individual way. We may not appreciate them in the neat academic compartments that our US-poll-groupies do, but we do.

But let us say this elitist appreciation of issues is the ideal we should strive for, how do enough of us get there so as to swing the tone of our campaigns in that direction?

Before electoral politics western societies first grouped themselves into bigger groupings under one central authority for security and economic reasons. The monarchs however begun to lose their grip on the people with the increase in literacy and the creation of new economic players, who were not beholden to the ruling landlord elite but wanted a say in how their countries were governed.

This was important because if the land owners were the only ones making the rules, the industrialists would not have their interests reflected in new laws.

So they insisted that beyond leadership being bestowed by God, the people to be led must have a say hence the slogan, “the voice of the people is the voice of God” of course the monarchs and the landed gentry fought these changes, I mean who wanted to be pressing the flesh with unwashed masses in search for votes when it was already agreed that one was the ruler and his sons will continue after him without question?

The more obstinate ones paid the ultimate price like in France and Russia, but the rest were forced to compromise and survived that gruesome end.

So the elite of the various sectors of the economy then continued to sell their respective message to the public. It is a fallacy to believe that the average voter in the west is a better quality individual who understands the “issues”, it’s too much work educating them so the political elite even there appeal to their baser instincts -- bread and butter issues, to get themselves elected...

The difference is that the political elite in the west are better organised around recognised economic interests.

So back to our own primitive background. What is the dominant economic grouping in our countries? 

The peasant, the poor small subsistence farmer. Easily four in five Ugandans can be described as this. 

And even if their contribution to the economy continues to fall with the rise of construction, manufacturing and services, they are the overwhelming majority and politics is about numbers.

“The issues” do not drop from heaven. They are derived from the situation of the people. You may like it or not but that is the way things are.

So clearly for better politics there has to be transformation of these “peasants”. You do that by providing universal education, affordable health services, better infrastructure and of course general security. The hope is that as the population gets educated, remains healthy and employ the infrastructure to take advantage of the opportunities around, the quality of their lives will improve and their needs and demands on the government will improve too.

Some transformation is already under way. Every year thousands break away from their dependence on the land to join the workforce, the manufacturing and service industry. Going by history however the transformation takes time.

The smart politician takes advantage of the situation as it is and not as they wish it to be.

So if you in your air conditioned seating room, flipping between international news channels and surfing the net on your tablet want to see the change you want in your life time,you might want to start lobbying for better social service delivery, better infrastructure and national stability instead of heckling at your local bar.

I wish I had better news for you but that is as it is.

UNLOCKING OUR WEALTH, UMEME SHOWS US THE WAY

Why is it that despite our reported abundance of resources – the most arable land, most surface water area, favourable climates, mineral wealth, the wide variety of our flora and fauna, we are among the poorest people in the world?

It is because we cannot unlock or activate the wealth that surrounds us.

The question is how do you do this?

Power distributor Umeme may give some useful pointers.

When Umeme Holdings Ltd took over the concession to run the distribution arm of Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) in 2005, they found a company operating way below its potential – servicing only 292,000 clients, collecting eight in ten shillings that they billed and losing another 40 percent of power they distributed through commercial and technical losses. As a result the old managers were collecting less than sh200b in revenue annually.

"Today Umeme services more than 600, 000 customers, collect up to 100 percent of all billings and have cut losses by half to about 20 percent, as a result revenue has risen more than five times topping out at about sh1,000b in 2013...

Of course Umeme has benefited from the coming on line of power from the 250 megawatt Bujagali power dam, but  it doesn’t take away from the fact that they are able to collect almost all the money that is due to them.

So they set about turning around the organisation by, revamping the derelict network, reducing technical losses and making sure consumers paid for the power they used, reorganising their manpower – cleaning out the dead weight and bringing in fresh blood in many instances and focusing their efforts on customer service.

Essentially they had an asset, albeit a badly tarnished one and they went about polishing it by making investments where they would most get an impact. They invested in, revamping the network rather than sink money in a building plush new office buildings, improving staff response times rather than buy management flashy cars and improved their credit rating rather than rest on their laurels with all the money they were collecting.

Clearly the leadership or management has to be capable and focussed on the right things.

Actis, the original owners of the concession, a private equity firm is focussed on Return On Investment (ROI). They had a 20 year contract during which they would invest in the system, run it and hope to get back all the money they had ploughed in and more in a finite period.

"To get an optimal return or result one has to focus on three broad areas the quality of human resource, making operations increasingly efficient and having an effective strategic processes....

In our personal lives, in our societies and country failure on one of these three fronts and it guaranteed that you may have all the assets in the world but you will be unable of unlocking their full potential.

Think of Manchester United after the departure of long time manager Sir Alex Ferguson they may have had an abundance of talent but because their operations came unstuck and their strategy was clearly wanting they floundered badly in the last two seasons.

Last week we heard that telecommunications company UTL maybe technically insolvent. They may have good people and even a credible strategic process but for lack of funds their operations are hobbled and therefore cannot live up to its full potential.

And of course if you have bad people your operations will stink and your strategy will be non-existent, I am sure there are many companies or organisations like that but one did not jump immediately to mind.

There is such a thing as being asset rich and cash poor, in such a situation is all very good bragging at the bar that you have acres of land somewhere in the village when you are tapping every other person for a beer.

There is one thing Umeme has done over the last six years that it would be worth emulating for the rest of us – they have made a conscious effort to improve their credit rating with the financiers. By cleaning up their accounts and strengthening their balance sheet they have become a more bankable proposition. Meaning among other things they are increasingly able to borrow cheaper for longer durations of time.

It has a nice ring to it when a businessman says he has built his enterprise up without taking out a coin of debt. But what it also says is that with judicious use of outside financing the same business would have been much bigger or more successful.

In a world of increasing competition businessmen cannot be complacent, they need to grow their businesses as fast as possible, first, as a survival mechanism – there is no standing still in business you either expand or contract and secondly, so they can raise the barrier to entry for other firms entering the market and by employing economies of scale be better able to compete against existing players.

And that is at the heart of Umeme’s success up to this point – the ability to improve their credibility with their clients, their suppliers, their financiers and their investors.

Building trust is a key component in unlocking the value of your assets.

THE MARKET DOESN'T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS

One doesn't have to come to the US to come to the conclusion that while the market might be the best creator of wealth known to man, it cannot claim the same premier position in distributing it.

In fact left to its own devices the market -- the combination of actors going about their own business in search of profit (never mind what they claim), the market tends to concentrate wealth rather than distribute it. 

We talk about China today, but the original winning development model belonged to the US. In the 20th century the average family income more than tripled. The US economy has grown to the point that it's is about equal to the sum of the next three leading economies -- China, Japan and Germany, combined.

A combination of stable internal politics that anchored strong property rights and attracted immigrants from all over the world, fueled this economic miracle which, for better or worse is the US we know today.

While this is true, the US is unfortunately the most unequal society in the developed world. Countries ranked according to the Ginii coefficient, a measure for income distributions, puts the world's leading economy at number 28, behind countries like Greece, Israel and the Czech Republic.

And it's not difficult to see why this is so.

The founding fathers of America, being businessmen, were committed to private sector led growth. It was a messy process but that commitment ensured that the sanctity of private property is indisputable -- never mind that this once included slaves, their innovations in finance have left everyone else in the dust -- even if this happened literally and figuratively, during the recent global financial crisis and finally created an environment for the the greatest minds in all endeavors to flourish and make their contribution to this economic experiment.

The results are their for all to see. 

From the huge amounts of money required to sustain the political class in Washington and around the country, to the huge outlays of capital it took to build the concrete jungles of New York and any number of major urban centers around the country and to the fantastic innovations being thought up in hundreds of universities, universities of such quality as to leave any other pretenders far in their wake.

In this same free market where it is understood that everyone has a chance, but also that not every one will make it, for those that do the rewards have been abundant. However every one is not made equal and in any human endeavor only a small minority can excel, leaving the rest to their own fate is not only inhumane, but makes the whole system unsustainable.

One can safely say that the majority of Americans recognize this. Unfortunately the minority who have the resources to maneuver though the US' political system -- a system designed specifically to guard against the concentration of power, sees a more equitable distribution of wealth detrimental to their own business interests.

"The US has an advanced system of internal conflict resolution and its unlikely that it will succumb to coups or nationwide instability, we however do not have that luxury...

The rest of us may think this is America's problems and if they want to go on blundering down that road they will reap the fruits of their own folly, but the reality is that when America gets a cold the rest of us can get Ebola.

However all is not lost. A strong push from the myriad civil society organizations is beginning to make an impression. The Internet and its offspring, social media is beginning to chip away at the influence of the powerful Interest groups at the helm so change is coming. It's inevitable and the momentum is irreversible.

For the rest of us while we allow the markets to direct economic growth, we should not abrogate our responsibility to ensure the spoils are distributed equitably by beefing up our social services, infrastructure and political processes. This cannot happen by accident.

The US may have an advanced system of internal conflict resolution and its unlikely that it will succumb to coups or nationwide instability, we however do not have that luxury.