SA XENOPHOBIC BACKLASH CAN HAPPEN ANYWHERE

It has been traumatic watching, even from afar, the latest flare up in xenophobic violence in South Africa this week.

In one video, a group of youth set upon a helpless lady, pummeling her with punches and kicks, buffeting her from side to side in a corridor of torture. The 25 second clip spared the end – they had already started stripping her of her clothing.

I couldn’t begin to watch the one of the young man set ablaze, staggering about in agony as people looked on in morbid fascination.

"The madness is a culmination of the apartheid policy, which dispossessed the local communities and actively worked to prevent them from rising above their imposed poverty and a corrupt African
National Congress (ANC) government, which has failed to deliver on promises to improve social services and infrastructure in black communities, the badly needed rungs needed for the majority to climb up the social ladder....

There really is no sugar coating apartheid, it was an evil, criminal system that not only materially deprived the majority but also traumatized several generations ingraining complexes that have found full expression in an irrational xenophobia.

Sadder even is that politicians in South Africa have rose to prominence on the back of, maybe not xenophobia, but a variation of the hate agenda, tapping into the anger of a younger generation.

It is a messy business. Resolving it will take much pain, selfless leadership and foresight.

But we should be careful not see it as something that is happening over there and not likely to happen here.

It has been suggested that ethnic tensions are unlikely to be as vicious in Uganda as in other places, the thinking being that there are too many tribes in Uganda and there is no duopoly as the one found in Rwanda or Burundi that could trigger widespread bloodletting. Thank God.

"In Uganda the combination of economic growth not equitably distributed and one of the most youthful populations in the world, means a flare up of social unrest along the lines of the haves and have nots is more likely...

Bad politics leads to bad economics. In countries where income and wealth disparities are widening, the main culprit is the government. It either means government has failed to stimulate economic growth or If they have, they have failed to spread the love around equitably so everyone has a better than good chance of climbing the social ladder.

In Uganda we know how to grow the economy. We can do it in our sleep. We have enjoyed the longest period of sustained economic growth in the history of this country over the last 33 years – the last time the economy contracted was in 1985. As a result the economy has grown more than six fold during the period while the population has tripled.

Of course it can be argued that we were coming from a very low base, so paving a few kilometers of road or adding 100MW power to the grid or adding $100m to our export receipts would show up as significant in growth figures, but then why then don’t smaller economies show the same sustained growth?

The challenge then is to ensure every Ugandan feels these quantitative improvements on a macro level in their own incomes and standard of living.

First off despite the progress made on the macro level we really are still far behind where we need to be. The government plans to spend sh40trillion this financial year or about a million shillings per Ugandan. On health government plans to spend sh65,000 per Ugandan for the whole year.

You don’t have to do any deep analysis to realise that there is a shortage of resources to begin with.

Government finds itself between a rock and hard place. Does it provide quality services to less of the population or do as it is trying to do now, provide less than adequate services to a larger population?

From a purely mathematical angle it would make sense to offer quality services to a few people in the population. These few will be more productive and increase the resources – through taxation, that government can spend on more and more people.

But politics dictates that you have a mass product no matter the quality of the service. In this scenario you have a near universal feeling that government services don’t work, defeating the political argument for mass service delivery.

Corruption affects service delivery through theft of resources, diversion of resources, absenteeism and any number of dodges that cause government service to fall short in the context of resource constraints.

"If service delivery is not adequate you have fewer people climbing out of poverty, increased disenchantment with the political elite, which may very well lead to easy mobilization of disgruntled groups against those seen to be benefitting from the status quo...

They say never underestimate the stupidity of the people in large numbers. The analysis doesn’t have to be true of who the beneficiaries of the system are, to rile the mobs and cause mayhem as South Africa is showing now.

South Africans are not stupid, they are lashing out at the unfairness of their lot, which has its origins in a historical injustice and perpetuated by a corrupt political elite today. But they don’t know it.