NSSF: TO THE NEXT 10 YEARS

This week National Social Security Fund(NSSF) will be hosting its tenth annual members meeting, after a year which saw them pay out billions in mid-term access benefits and on the back of high praise from Kenya.

Since 2012 while contributors have doubled to 2.5 million from about a million, NSSF has grown into the biggest fund in the region, with assets under management growing more than six-fold to sh17.2trillion now from sh2.7trillion in at the end of 2011/12.

"This growth is in no small measure to the growing member contributions, which tripled to sh1.37 trillion in 2020/21 from sh472.86b in 2011/12, suggesting increased compliance by members. In the meantime, benefits paid out grew six times to sh642.32b from sh101.38b....

Impressive figures by any measure.

But even more impressive is if we were to project what will happen over the next ten years. Assuming growth rates remain constant, the fund will have assets under management of sh90trillion, members will be contributing almost sh4trillion annually, which will all be snapped up by benefits paid out in 2032.

Its an amazing story and no less a person than the new Kenyan President William Ruto a week or so ago, recognized this.

As part of his first order of business Ruto felt it necessary to rally his countrymen to save more. He pointed to our NSSF as an example. He said Uganda is a smaller economy – about a third the size of the Kenyan economy, and yet our NSSF is larger than their statutory social security fund or Tanzania’s, incidentally all called NSSF.

A cursory analysis of why our NSSF is bigger than theirs, shows that while they have more contributors – 2.6 million to our 2.1 million, our employers contribute more –10 percent of our gross pay or twice what the employee contributes, In Kenya the employer only matches the employee’s contribution of six percent of gross pay. In effect total contributions due to the Ugandan worker is 15 percent of gross pay as opposed to 12 percent of gross pay for the Kenyan worker. The laws of compounding are such that the three-percentage point difference stretched over long periods lead to significant differences...

According to the analysis Kenya’s NSSF assets under management are Kshs249b while ours are at Kshs420b as of 2020.

While the numbers maybe mind numbing, they speak volumes about what we can achieve if we have good laws in place and good management to execute those policies. As measure of the superior quality of our NSSF’s management compared to our Kenyan brothers, the cost of administration in NSSF Kenya is almost twice – 2.45 percent of income, that of our NSSF, which has kept to 1.28 percent...

Those extra percentage points saved are reinvested or paid out as interest on member savings and again over years, decades or even generations make a world of difference.

The free marketeers will argue that our NSSF’s dominance is not good for the economy but that argument is beginning to fall by the wayside, because after all our social security sector should work for us and what isn’t broken doesn’t need fixing. At least for now.

Two weeks ago, president Yoweri Museveni launched the first phase of the Lubowa housing estate. The development on 600 acres off the Entebbe Road is a higher income housing development with the units going for between $150,000 (sh570m) and $215,000(sh817m). To make it more accessible for more people owners will have the option of renting-to-own. Questions still surround the issue of why its being priced in dollars when management announced that about 70 percent of the inputs were local. A lower cost housing estate is being developed in Temangalo.

Beyond that NSSF seats squarely in the middle of efforts to ensure macroeconomic stability as the biggest off taker of government paper.

And for the workers, its attractive because all profits are distributed to the contributors. They are the fund's owners, with no other layer of beneficiaries, read other shareholders, coming between them and their money.

Over the last decade NSSF has been able to pay 10 percent and above in line with their pledge to keep member returns at least two percentage points above average inflation over the previous ten years. This year while inflation has been higher than we have been used to in a while, the ten-year average is not much higher than last year.

However, the huge outflow that came with mid-term access may dent returns, nevertheless we workers would not be amused if the figure is off last year’s 12.15 percent, by much.

NSSF, plagued by governance issues in previous eras, is showing that good management, that is strategic and corruption fee, can do a lot with “little” and put bigger players to shame.

 

 

 

THE RULES OF SUPPLY-DEMAND SHALL NOT BE MOCKED

Last week William Ruto was sworn in as the fifth President of Kenya. AS his first order of business he removed the subsidy on fuel prices arguing it had not achieved its intended purpose (help Raila Odinga win?) and was too expensive.

According to reports, since the beginning of the year Kenya has spent $1.2b (sh4.56trillion) or about 80 percent of all its tourism earnings on keeping the pump prices down.

Whenever the issue of subsidies comes up, however flowery the language used to justify it, I know it will end in tears...

Last year the Uhuru Kenyatta government seeing that fuel prices were rising, sought to ease its citizens pain by holding the price at a predetermined level. The removal of the subsidy saw an immediate jump in fuel prices to record highs of Ksh179 (sh5650) a liter of petrol.

They say that the market can remain irrational more than you can remain liquid. When governments try out such subsidies, somewhere in their thinking is that the adverse market changes are temporary and will soon blow over. They think the market is just being irrational and will soon return to its senses.

For Kenya of course, it was an election period – called the silly season in some parts, and one can not help but think the Kenyatta administration was thinking if they can fend off the worst of the price increases their chosen one, Odinga would win and they can deal with the fall out later.

While global oil prices have been falling in recent weeks, it was probably too little too late.

Subsidies are intended to control prices in an attempt to subvert the laws of supply and demand.

The way to influence prices is to appreciate the laws of supply and demand. If prices are high increase supply and if prices are low and you want to increase them push up demand. Simple but not easy.

If you can not influence the factors of supply and demand the wise thing to do however painful is to let the market take its course and brace yourself for the impact.

"Thankfully Uganda did not catch the monkey-see-monkey-do flu. The government stayed away from subsidizing fuel prices, even if they hit the highest they have risen ever, we tightened our belts, controlled our travel and we are still here despite warnings that we would start dying like flies....

In these hard times when we are trying to get back to pre-covid levels of economic activity, we cannot afford to start throwing money to placate an irrational electorate. When people call for government interventions they speak as if no one is paying for those interventions. Taxes are used to pay, but if tax collections are not coming as they should how are governments expected to pay? The stupid ones print more money, creating inflation, which is caused by too much money chasing to few goods and then they have to put the brakes on money supply anyway to fight inflation.

That being said, the question then arises what should governments do to prevent such crises or when they are out of control to ensure the crisis does not blow up out of proportion.

It goes back to the old wisdom of making hay while the sun shines.

When the times are good, leadership should be exercised to ensure some of the surplus is stored away for just such a crisis. What happens is that when countries have good economic times, they increase spending on consumption and place little emphasis on saving and investment.

When the effects of the Covid lockdown begun to tell, Singapore announced it would use $60b from its reserves to tide it population over the worst. They could do this because they have been prudent with their expenditure and as a result have been able to build up a reserve.

However, there is a place for subsidies, when they are used to support production and not consumption...

The Ruto government announced hat it would subsidise ferterliser prices as a way to kick start agricultural production, especially among the small holder farmers. Increased production, especially of food will help manage inflationary pressures, boost agroindustry and increase revenues. While you still will be fighting the market, the redeeming quality here is that its for production and not consumption.

The long-term goal maybe to start ferterliser production in Kenya or source cheaper supplies in future and hopefully do away with the subsidy altogether. Easier said than done, because often times powerful interest groups build up around these subsidies and fight tooth and nail to prevent their removal long after they have outlived their usefulness. All the more reason to introduce susbsidies cautiously.

The overall principle should be to stay away from trying to control prices but if we must try to intervene first understand the market dynamics, so that the intervention can be the most effective.

While political expediency may push towards an attempt to control prices, the economic realities will inevitably catch up and will have bigger political costs than those the country was trying to save.

 

 

 

 

DON’T LET CWE OFF THE HOOK, THEY MUST FIX ISIMBA

Last month we had a crisis with the shutdown of the 183 MW Isimba dam which led to major blackout unseen for at least a decade.

The shutdown followed a flooding of part of the power house partly due to human error but largely due to defects that arose from the dam’s construction.

The challenges at the dam persist. Engineers – local and foreign, have looked over the dam and have reported that there are such serious defects as to threaten the very existence of the facility. In so many words, maybe out of professional courtesy, the reported the dam was shoddily built and major remedial works will be required to ensure the dam lives to the full length of its anticipated life.

But these are just symptoms of one of the worst procurement processes in living memory and full responsibility for this debacle should fall squarely on the shoulder of energy ministry officials, past and present, who were involved.

It started off in 2011 when government invited bids to build the Karuma dam in northern Uganda. The multi-billion-dollar project brought out the worst excesses of our public officials who in cohorts with private sector players fought viciously to win the deal. The

energy ministry officials at the time, ignored judicial reviews, parliamentary and cabinet resolutions to force their favourite contractor – China International Water & Electric Corp (CWE) past the finish line.

It took a meeting with President Yoweri Museveni to resolve the issue. His Solomonic wisdom at the time was to offer 600 MW Karuma dam to Chinese contractors Sino-Hydro and the 183 MW Isimba dam to CWE, which while it was irregular, made sense given the impending power shortages.

But the issue was far from over. The energy ministry then refused to relinquish control of the project to Uganda Electricity Generation Ltd (UEGCL), never mind there was an agreement to that effect, only doing so when the construction was far along. The result of this is that poor supervision of the construction has led to Ishimba’s current problems and the more than three-year delay for the commissioning of Karuma dam.

While all that is water under the bridge, it provides useful context in understanding todays shenanigans and determine what drastic steps have to be taken in the future.

According to people familiar with the situation CWE has been dragging its feet on initial remedial works on the dam. Some suspect they want the Liability Defects Period to expire and they leave Uganda holding the bag with a bad dam.

But the recent aforementioned engineers report on the dam, show that it is urgent that the major defects to the dam be repaired otherwise the dam may very well be swept away, especially if the rains raise the level of Lake Victoria.

Populations down stream as well as key infrastructure are at risk if Isimba is swept away, so the need for urgency in fixing the issue cannot be overstated.

Instead CWE is playing hide and seek and trying to wiggle themselves out of making good on their shoddy work....

According to sources familiar with the situation they dispute the scope of remedial work required, have even suggested a financial compensation instead of them fixing the defect even they acknowledge exist and dismiss any attempts to withhold monies still due to them on the original contract.

CWE only have their professional reputation to care about, which they clearly don’t think much of, but for Uganda Isimba dam’s fate has far reaching consequences for our economy. Clearly, we do not have the luxury of time.

While financial compensation for bad work is on the table, we should insist that CWE remedy the defects and hand us a dam that works as it was supposed to, rather financial compensation. Maybe we should cut our losses, hire another contractor to do the remedial work, hoping that the monies still due to CWE would be enough to sort out the problem.

But this should be a lesson to us as a country.

While we are grateful to China for coming to our rescue in building our electricity generation capacity when everybody else was looking the other way, it is bad manners, in what ever culture, to then deliver shoddy work. 

The dam is not an act of charity by China to us, in fact, we are paying commercial rates for the loan we took out with the China Exim Bank to build the dam. The China Exim Bank may want seriously consider blacklisting CWE, like the world Bank did in 2014, if they do not bring this misadventure to a mutually satisfactory conclusion...

One last thing. While we complain about the cost of the tariff due to the Bujagali dam, which was built and is being operated by Bujagali Energy Ltd, we are not tearing our hair out trying to fix or at the bare minimum Bujagali despite our complaints may end up being cheaper than the “cheaper” Isimba dam.

 

THE MAN WHO PROVED THE THEORIES RIGHT

My friend recently hit a major land mark; he is now one of the top 10 shareholders in a listed company trading on the Uganda Securities Exchange.

For my friend, let us call him Jack, that maybe a vindication of almost two decades of accumulation, but the bigger achievement is that from his investments he receives enough income to give him the option never to seek employment ever. And he is not yet 40.

I had lunch with him to celebrate this achievement and to hear his story, because though since I have known him for almost 15 years clearly, he has been moving in silence and surprised even me with his “sudden” achievement.

Here is what I learnt from him

1.       SPEND LESS THAN YOU EARN, INVEST THE BALANCE

To get to where he is now my friend Jack has always been frugal. This has been necessary because only weeks after he left university he was sacked from his job. Let us just say he and his employer had ethical differences. Without a job he bought a stake – with all of sh450,000, in a small fish trading operation.  A degree holder, he studied procurement, even his family thought he had lost his marbles, banishing him to the boy’s quarters of the family residence. He pulled out some equity from the fish trading operation, to buy a stake in an established private company.

2.       BE RICH, NOT LOOK RICH

Dazzled by his initial dividend from the company, which deals in construction materials, he had set his eye on a piece of land in the suburbs, just like all his contemporaries.  Fortunately for him he consulted with an older man whose main counsel was “The trick is to be rich and not to appear rich.” The older man advised him that spending all his net worth on a piece of land was foolish and would leave him poor. Comparing it with his own experience as a young man he advised Jack to buy land further out from Kampala, “The city will come to you don’t worry”. He also told him that no one should live in a house that is more than 15 percent of their net worth, it’s a sure remedy for poverty. Jack took his advise, went further out of town and bought a plot that cost about 15 percent of the dividend. The rest of the money he sunk into shares in companies on the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE).

3.       OPPORTUNITY IS FOUND OFF THE BEATEN TRACK, FOCUS ON THE LONG TERM

Over the last 15 years he has been accumulating positions in listed companies on the USE. He has found that the best performing shares are not those of the prominent companies, which everyone wants a piece of but of smaller companies that are financially disciplined and willing to share more of their earning with their shareholders. While it makes for good conversation in the bar that you own shares in this or that big company. 

The majority shareholders eventually bought out his minority stake in the building construction company. But it did not come easy. A six-year court process preceded his payout, which exponentially increased his working capital, allowing him more gun powder for his share buying business.

4.       ZIG WHEN OTHERS ARE ZAGGING

In most societies the greatest wealth is concentrated among the top five percent of the population. On further scrutiny the wealthy think differently from the majority of the population that’s why they own all they do. Because the rest are not switched on to their way of the thinking, the rest think the rich are crooks. And frankly the wealthy are too busy making money to stop and explain their ways to the masses, so the myth is perpetuated.

Jack’s fish trade him made him a contrarian when. His Old Boys during school reunions would make fun of his occupation, “What is that fishy smell?” they would wonder when he joined them for conversation. They stayed in their cushy jobs, which they were trained all their lives for, while Jack went off on his own way. He stopped going for reunions. His friends are still climbing the corporate ladder, Jack now runs his own schedule.

He is a contrarian; he does not just follow the crowd and is secure enough in himself to follow his convictions if logic tells him tradition is wrong. He thinks different from the rest.

 

5.       NARROW THE GAP BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION

It is true what they say, when you see some one who is an overnight success just know he has not been sleeping. Jack has invested a lot of his time in understanding how the stock exchange works, how companies create value and when to jump in or out of share. A lot of this is not taught in business school. But he has however used information that is in the public domain. In theory anyone who reads the newspapers could have taken advantage of the opportunities that have come his way.

During lunch he kept saying that with most people there is a big gap between the knowledge they possess and taking action on that knowledge.

His friends have recently learnt of his recent good fortune, which has been 15 years in the making, complained that he did not tell them what he was doing. But he says he tells anyone who is willing to listen what he is up to but either they do not see the possibilities or are not willing to take the leap of faith despite the logic being clear.

 

6.       WEALTH IS QUIET, RICHES ARE LOUD

And finally, while my friend’s income has increased over the years, we calculated that from his dividends he earns about sh336,000 a day, including weekends, you wouldn’t know it from the way he dresses – never in a suit and tie, living in a two roomed house and getting around on a car that is no more than three percent of his asset base.

What’s the point, I asked, “Freedom,” he replied.  “I want to do what I want without a fear of biting the hand that feeds me.”  Unlike most of us he does not have to report to work or to a business daily, he can do what he chooses. With steady reinvestment he wants to see his daily income rise to sh500,000, a million and then who knows.

And he is not yet 40.

 

TRIBUTE: SERENA WILLIAMS ONCE IN A GENERATION LEGEND

I was too young to see Pele or Muhammad Ali or Bjorn Borg in their prime. But if one lives long enough another legend invariably comes along. I saw Diego Maradona, Mike Tyson and Roger Federer, all legends enough that the questions have been asked whether their respective achievements would stand up to the legends of yesteryear.

"At the end of August Serena Williams played what may be her last professional tennis match in the third round of the US Open, bringing to a close a professional career that started 27 years ago. To put that number into perspective, the current world number ones in both men’s and women’s tennis – Danii Medvedev and Iga Swiatek were not born when Serena, 40, turned professional in 1995...

That is a major part of her legend, that she could sustain her presence at the highest level of the game for so long.

And what a career it has been.  The highlight is that she has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, winning these major tournaments is the objective measure of achievement in tennis. She is only second – man or women, to Australian Margaret Court in major titles won, but experts point out that Court won 13 of her 24 titles during the amateur era, which means she was not necessarily the best female player during that time.

In trying to tie Court’s record, Serena came one match short in four events after 2017.  2017 is significant because it’s the year she gave birth to her daughter. Her last two grand slam finals losses were to Naomi Osaka and Bianca Andreescu, who were not born by the time she turned professional.

 The 2020 lockdown due to Covid, arguably blunted her last charge for immortality. After Covid she was never really the same and at this year’s US Open was ranked 605 in the world.

Her record also includes four Olympic Gold medals – one in singles and three in doubles, where in all instances she partnered her sister, Venus.

As if we need any more convincing, Serena won 85 percent of the 849 matches she played over the course of her career and is the highest earning female tennis player. At $96m, she has earned more than double the second highest earner, her sister, Venus, who took home $42m. And these were only on court earning she probably more than doubled that figure in product endorsements over the span of her career.

Technically she was sound in all departments. Her serve won her many free points, its power and precision digging her out of many a hole.

The purists will frown at her double backhand, but that is now accepted form, given how early kids are now taking up the game. While she played mostly from the baseline, with power off both wings and a relatively flatter ball than her rivals. One shudders to think what Serena would have achieved if she had made more frequent forays to the net, to cut off the high looping groundstrokes her contemporaries have often served up over her career.

At her prime she was mentally as strong as, if not stronger than any female athlete before including Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova or Steffi Graff the other legends before her.

For other mortals these achievements – her longevity at the highest level and unassailable winning record on court, alone would be enough to cement her place in tennis history.

But there is more.

The legend of Serena begins before her birth. Her father, Richard had a light bulb moment in 1978 when Romanian Virginia Ruzici picked up a $40,000 check for winning the French Open that year. The way the story is told, he then convinced wife, Oracene, to have two more children, preferably girls, through whom he would channel his ambition to get a piece of that money.

Owner of a small security company and quite well off, well off enough to have a house in Long Beach, California, he moved his family to Compton, a neighbourhood immortalised in rap music for its gang related crime and violence.

Richard did this because he figured that for his daughters to break into the lily-white world of tennis, they needed to get toughened up, something living in Long Beach would not do for them.

The experiment could have gone badly wrong. Richard at one time confronted a gang member who was making passes at Venus and was badly beaten for his trouble, in front of his young daughters...

Richard taught himself how to play tennis and then set upon imparting his homemade knowhow on his daughters.

They did not have a normal upbringing, spending hours on the public courts of Compton while the contemporaries were out looking for trouble.

He upset the playbook on how to raise talented tennis players – avoiding the junior tournament circuit, reluctantly releasing them to outside coaching long after their contemporaries had joined full time academies and rejecting the early endorsement deals that would have eased the financial burden on his effort to develop world beaters.

Thanks to Richard’s tenacity, marketing savvy and invariably, Venus and Serena’s superlative talent, by the time they were 14 they had each turned professional.

Funnily in Richard’s plans the girls were supposed to go to college and get degrees and only then would they become professional tennis players. They were ahead of schedule by almost 10 years...

One wonders about mother Oracene. She has a been a constant presence at her daughters’ tournaments on whichever parts of the world her daughters are doing battle. She has never spoken out of turn during the last two decades, mainly because she allowed her now divorced husband represent and let her daughters’ tennis do the talking. Her unvarnished account of what it takes to deal with a manic husband and raise super talented daughters is guaranteed to be a best seller.

There are many facets to the Serena legend and Venus plays a major part of it. Venus taller, leaner and the more talented of the two when they were younger, not only laid the path for Serena   but they, must have offered useful support to each other a largely white tennis community, which initially saw the girls as circus attractions, before they started dominating the sport.

Venus has accumulated her own impressive numbers – seven Grand Slam titles, winning 75 percent of all her matches and five Olympic medals – four gold and one silver. And at 42 has not yet thrown in the towel on her professional career.

The legend of Serena is only part of the larger legend of the Williams.

The sisters have been successful for so long they have made it look ordinary. They have inspired a host of ladies of colour during their illustrious career, but it is hard to imagine another accomplished pair of sisters or even one other tennis player who has so captured the public imagination, come along soon.

Since the Covid lockdown, Serena’s mortality has begun to show. Where she would stare down an opponent and intimidate them into submission, everyone seems to think they have a chance against her; Where she was quick enough to get to the furthest ball and conjure a winning shot out of nothing, she has lately been barely reaching shots, leave alone muster a credible response...

But for us who have watched this legend grow and win, nothing can diminish her and we are glad to let her go off to do other things.

The Cubans have a saying “You cannot cover the sun with your thumb”. They may have been talking about the Williams.

 

 

 

 

 

ROOFINGS AND THE LESSONS FOR UGANDAN BUSINESS

Last week it was reported in the Business Vision that Roofings ltd is advanced stages of processing steel from iron ore mined in Kabale.

According to the report Roofings has earmarked a billion dollars (sh3.8trillion) to develop the mine and another $20m to build the processing plant that would produce 25 tons of iron sheets for local and regional markets.

These were just numbers until you realise that the market value of Uganda’s biggest company, telecom company, MTN is just about a billion dollars currently.

All Ugandan business men should interest themselves in this project, if only because they need to learn what it takes to raise such sums of money.

For starters you can not raise a billion dollars in Uganda...

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Aga Sekalala Jr about his businesses but more specifically about keeping his companies in a state of financial readiness.

The way he explained it or how I understood it is that they, he was speaking about Ugachick have structured themselves in such a way that a moment’s notice they can borrow money from the banks or attract investors.

This goes beyond having clean books of accounts to having certifiable process and adopting best-in-class systems across the company. This takes time, is arduous and the immediate benefits to staff and management when you are doing it are not apparent but it pays off in the long term.

In the interview Sekalala said this is necessary because you never know when the need for more funds arises. Banks promising you the funds in 48 hours is just a sales pitch, it rarely if ever happens like that and it takes longer if you are not ready.

My favourite American Warren Buffett has gained some notoriety for investing millions of dollars buying companies he has never visited, but just on the strength of their financial records. Buffett who turned 92 last week has been looking over financial statements since he was 11 so probably can see things the rest of us mere mortals can not, just by looking at a balance sheet...

Back to Roofings ltd. For them to be able to raise a billion dollars and from foreign funders, speaks to their financial readiness. In the bigger picture of international finance raising a billion dollars is the atom in the drop in the ocean. But to be good for that kind of funding must have taken years of building trust and demonstrating integrity.

I remember in 2002 looking to buy iron sheets from roofing and then, 20 years ago, they had a waiting list a mile long, not for lack of materials but because the demand was overwhelming and not only locally. I remember seeing a man, they told me was Burundian pacing up and down the premise as his two trucks were being loaded, with an order he had made a few weeks previously.

You do not come it to such money without being organised, organised to the point that a financier looking in on the business can determine whether he will get his investment back, with an acceptable return.

The fact that our business struggle to survive to their tenth year, leave alone transition from generation to generation is more a function of how they are structured, or not, than that they lack funding. In fact, the better organized business never lacks for funding, be it from internal or external sources. Even in these harsh economic times.

To my mind what Roofings Ltd and Ugachick show us is that one, business can grow and thrive in this country and secondly that raising funds starts with the business. Or businessmen may get rejected because they fail tick a few boxes, but those are the rules the financiers have set, you either play by the rules or go elsewhere.

It has been said many times in this column that our poverty is down to our inability or willingness to aggregate our resources. And as such someone else comes along, looks beyond our moaning and groaning, and turns this pig’s ear of an economy into gold....

But it goes beyond failure to aggregate resources. What does it take to aggregate our resources? Leadership. Our failure to do so points to a lack of leadership. The knee jerk reaction for us, is to look at politics but even at our own individual levels we are unable to aggregate our land, capital or human resource capacities.

What that means is that people who have hacked that challenge come here and literally drive us out of “our” town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GENERAL TUMWINE AND THE MAKING OF TOUGH TIMES

General Elly Tumwine was laid to rest on Tuesday after succumbing to cancer last week.

Tumwine was the army commander of the National Resistance Army (NRA) when they took over Kampala in 1986. He remained a high ranking official of the government and even when dropped as security minister in 2021, was still seen as a leading light of the NRM.

But whenever the origins of the NRA are revisited the fact that he shot the first shot that started the bush war in February 6, 1981 is trotted out. This made him a huge symbolic figure in the Movement’s history.

One wouldn’t fail to note the timing of Tumwine’s demise at the beginning of a week during which 48 Generals, him among them, many of them bushwar veterans, retired from the army.

Clearly a passing of an era is underway that would be interesting to put in perspective.

When the story is told of the beginnings of the bushwar we gloss over the fact that Tumwine and many of his contemporaries, many university graduates, were the crème de la crème of their generation.

When I went to university much later in 1992 it was impressed upon me that of all the kids I started primary school with only 2,000 or about 0.1 percent of us had made it to University. At that time there were only two universities, Makerere and Mbarara University of Science & Technology (MUST). If that was true for us imagine how much truer this was for the Tumwine’s?

The Amin administration by the time Tumwine graduated, had decimated the economy, but earlier generation’s reported that before they had finished their final exams they already had job offers from government and the top corporate companies.

"That these princes could have forsaken their place at the high table of society to become outlaws suggests two things; either they were mentally unstable or the times were so desperate they could not see any hope for the future, despite their high qualifications....

People who know these ladies and gentlemen more intimately, report that they are as sound of mind as the next man.

When you came out of university you were hopeful for the future and ready to take on the world, this clearly was not the case in 1981, at least for Tumwine and his contemporaries.

Despite their larger-than-life personas today and their influence on society over the last three decades, these renegades were the minority in a population, which had resigned itself to the leadership of the day.

It can be argued that they lost their idealism as soon as they assumed the reins of power. The dynamics of running a state means they have had to face up to the realities of what it takes to hang on to power. It is often a messy business and forces men and women to do things they never dreamed they would do.

 Uganda nor the NRM is no different.

Power gives one the ability to influence events, without power your vision for the future remains a pipe dream. How you exercise that power is down to the wielder of that power and what society is willing to allow you to get away with.

Its for this reason, if you want to be remembered as a hero or saint, die young or do not wield power. That is why we venerate people like Jesus, Che Gueverra, Thomas Sankara and John F Kennedy on one hand and Mahtma Ghandi, Mother Theresa and even Nelson Mandela on the other.  Exercising power Is not for the faint hearted and rarely leaves those in power with unsoiled hands.

So it should come as no surprise that a section of society feel hard done by Tumwine and his contemporaries on one hand, while the generals maintain the conviction of their cause, shown by the way some of them closed ranks behind Tumwine.

One image that emerged from events surrounding the General’s farewell was the a 28-second video clip of dozens of 4WDs leaving Kololo Ceremonial Grounds after Tumwine’s state funeral. Most of these were official government cars, an indication of how much richer government is than it was when the young Tumwines threw their fate at the mercy of the gods.

This event brought to mind the saying, “Tough times create strong men; Strong men create good times; Good times create weak men; Weak men create tough times”