WE NEED TO RECORD UGANDA'S HISTORY

 

The last week of January and the first week of February mark very important days in the NRM and Uganda’s history.

On 26^th January we commemorate the day in 1986 when the NRA marched on Kampala and overthrew the Tito Okello regime. On 6^th February we mark the day in 1981 when the first shot was fired in the bush war that led to the NRA’s eventual victory five years later.

The former is a public holiday while the latter is not, it would be hard to argue against commemorating either whatever your feelings are towards the regime of the day.

At both occasions President Yoweri Museveni as the main celebrant narrated key achievements in the last 27 years in the case of the NRM or in the case of Tarehe Sita outlined the progress the army has made, going back to the training camps in Mozambique, long before the attack on Kabamba 32 years ago.

The pageantry that was displayed at the Arua Tarehe Sita celebrations are a far cry from the motley crew that laid siege on Kabamaba or the rag tag army that captured Kampala.

It does not take much of an imagination to work out that the FRONASA/NRA/UPDF story is one worth telling.

"A young boy consumed with  revolutionary fervor determines that Uganda deserves better. He sets upon winning his friends to his vision of the future. On holiday from the university of Dar es Salaam he and his friends sneak over the border into Mozambican rebel camps to get a taste of how a rebel war is conceived and executed. He returns to Uganda but has to flee soon after the government for which he works is overthrown. He along with others foment rebellion against the Idi Amin regime suffering deadly set backs even before the struggle has gained any traction. He returns to Kampala. Eight years after falls out with the government and retreats to the bush as the head of a new rebellion...

The rest as they say is history.

And that is where the problem lies. We seem content to leave these events in the realm of oral history. The problem with oral history is that it falls into the same trap as the popular party game Chinese Whispers. In the game a line of guests is formed and a simple message is whispered into the ear of the person at the head of the line with the simple instruction to whisper the message to the next in line. As always happens by the time the message gets at the other end of the room it is so distorted as not to be recognized from the original whisper.

The UPDF is unique in its creation and its said mission.

Unlike many armies on the continent that are remnants of a colonial legacy and are detached from the citizens they are sworn to protect, the UPDF has grown out of our circumstances, does not see itself as a mercenary attack dog and is very much embedded in our daily circumstance.

And we are not talking about commissioning some connected quark who wants to make a buck, but real military historians who can write a detailed account for the military archives and then release an account of only the bare essentials for public consumption.

The reason why the western economies have been at the forefront of innovation in every sphere of life is because they have had the written word for centuries. This means that every generation of innovators does not have to reinvent the wheel but take off from where the last generation left off.

As Isaac Newton confessed, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”.

This applies for Ugandan history as well.

For example in school Ugandan history ends at independence, what we know about postcolonial history are the varied accounts according to one group’s or the others political bias.

Uganda’s history is such that even the most objective of accounts cannot take away from the colour of the last 50 years and will make for interesting reading by even the most jaundiced eye.

History is intellectual property that can be used by future generations for their benefit.

The point is, futile as it maybe, we need to fight the curse that the only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. A first step towards that is to record it, so that future generations even if they make the mistakes of their forefathers will not feign ignorance...

IS THIS THE DEMISE OF THE UGANDA CAPITAL'S PRIVATE BUS COMPANY

Last week Pioneer Easy Bus, the company that has over the last year been providing bus services in Kampala, had 98 of its buses impounded by the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA).

URA moved in order to recover sh8b in taxes it says are due to it.

Pioneer’s orange buses hit the street last year just in time to detooth a strike by the taxi operator association UTODA. At the time UTODA was protesting moves by the new incorporated city authority to collect dues owed it by the taxi operator.

The bus company came with the promise of decongesting our roads, lower fares and sparing road users the obnoxious behavior of our taxis.

They were such a relief that the public was willing to overlook the fact the new buses had not complied with all formalities.

The honeymoon is over.

No one doubts that Kampala’s transport system is in need of an urgent overhaul and that bus transport is part of the solution.

There must be money to be made and no one was surprised when the Pioneer slipped into the sector like a duck to water and started making money hand over fist.

But problems begun to creep in, understandably so as Pioneer’s business plan did not call for such an early entrance into the sector.

At the end of last year the bus company’s management in explaining their decision to hike prices said KCCA had not lived up to its obligations of among other things providing bus lanes. Bus lanes the company argued would make it possible for their buses to make more round trips and therefore justify the low prices.

There were reports of drivers striking over pay, changes in top management and talk of negotiations with authorities to provide concessions that would make the company’s business model more viable all of which may have been brushed off as teething pains.

That being said they say that deals are not bad it is the people handling the deals.

Think about it you were going to have 100 buses, the majority of which will be plying the various routes in and out of the city almost simultaneously, there would be logistical challenges – fuelling, maintenance and even meals, human resource issues – this is a startup that was going to hit the ground with easily a 100 drivers and conductors, not to mention backroom and other support staff. Then of course there were financing issues to consider – how do you not only get the startup capital but also the operating capital to tide you over the steep early learning curve.

The record of startups the world over is very dismal with nine in ten new companies not seeing their fifth birthday. And just because you start big does not mean the risk goes away if anything these are magnified.

Business is about managing risk. Risk is a function of knowledge. The more knowledge you have the better you can mitigate against risk.

You pay no particular attention to driving to work. Through years of experience, the accumulated knowledge will allow you to cater for any risks along the way to work. So the risk of you not getting to work is minimized. But if you give your car keys to your ten year old son to drive the same car, at the same time on the same route  to work, the risk is  suddenly life threatening. 

Similarly in the wide scope of things a bus company with a fleet to 100 buses is nothing to write home about. Across the border in Kenya, KBS which has been servicing Nairobi has been doing so for decades with a fleet which dwarfs Pioneer’s.

Management knowhow and experience more than money is the key mitigant of risk.

Thankfully the travelling public will not penalize Pioneer for this hiccup in operations if they get back on the road.

One hopes that Pioneer can bounce back, -- if only so we do not return to the chaos of a taxi dominated industry, but one hopes too that whether they do or they don’t, that this experience will provide key lessons for anybody going into the business.

A GOOD AFRICAN STORY: HOW A SMALL COMPANY BUILT A GLOBAL COFFEE BRAND

Africa is the most naturally endowed continent on the planet, but it is also the home of the most down trodden of the earth.

Why the contradiction?

In a nut shell, we sell our natural resources, be they cash crops, minerals or even labour for a pittance. These are then processed abroad and onsold at multiples of their original cost.

The logic is simple, to raise the continent out of poverty we need to capture more of this value for ourselves. But just because what is needed is simple to grasp does not mean it is easy to execute.

This thesis is at the center of businessman Andrew Rugasira’s book “A Good African Story: How a small company built a global coffee brand” that has only just hit the bookshops.

The book is an autobiographical account of the company, Good African Coffee, which has pooled farmers in the Kasese region, improved their coffee husbandry practices, processed the coffee for the pallets of western consumers and in the process not only won Uganda pride of place in South Africa, UK and the US but also raised incomes in the coffee growing hills of Kasese.

What you see is the finished product or at least a very far cry from the early days of trudging up hills in Bugisu and Kasese to win over skeptical farmers. Farmers who had seen many city types come talk a good game and once they got what they want either not live up to the bargain or leave them high and dry altogether.

The UK educated Rugasira is an unlikely champion of the rural farmer, born into privilege in Uganda’s post-independence middle class, he probably never spent a day with hoe and panga, but his studies in political economy and his father’s entrepreneurial experience, raised questions that demanded answers.

In a nutshell, why is Africa poor?

He took over his father’s chalk factory, made forays into the world of event management and media buying, but the question continued to nudge at his soul.

It is a tale of how, he gets his eureka moment, bets everything including his reputation, tries to sell coffee to the queen, hobnobs with the masters of the universe, battles his own self-doubt and fights to win the most cynical over to his cause.

It is an inspiring account  of what it means to dream big and pay the price.

And the price has been steep, from outright derision at his efforts, confidence sapping rejection, nauseating patronizing by the potential buyers of his coffee and the many days and nights when all the company had to keep it going was a hope and a prayer.

Thankfully there were also instances of divine providence, touching support and tear jerking saved-from-the-cliff moments when the vision almost died before it got started.

But all these things are embedded in a context.

Rugasira explores the Uganda’s colonial legacy to explain why things are the way they, describes the bureaucratic impediments to development, the sabotage of well-meaning actors and even has some thoughts on what has to be done to redress the situation so the continent can live up to its full potential.

Rugasira says the story is not nearly over, the ten-year old company still has many more mountains to surmount before it can be a true celebration of African resilience. The story needed to be told up to this point he says, if only to inspire others to make the journey.

The major shortcoming of the book is that it is a book about a company with little detail about what drives the man and sets him apart.

A potential academic yawner has been turned into an engaging read, the heavy theory peppered with jaw dropping, often times hilarious but always thought provoking, accounts of Rugasira’s struggle to get onto the supermarket shelves of the western world.

Written as a story it is a must read for anyone who wants to understand why Africa is the way it is, what it is going to take to pull us out of the morass, but it is also a simple book to inspire the soul and strengthen the spirit.

*The book is available in all major bookshops around Kampala

UGANDA CAN NOT REST ON ITS LAURELS

In last year’s NRM day message President Yoweri Museveni reported that the economy had grown to sh39 trillion from the measly sh3.4 trillion in 1986. This was nearly a 12-fold increase in 26 years.

This means that on average the economy grew by about 9.8% annually, a prodigious figure by any measure.

But the truth is we have only just dug ourselves out of the hole we put ourselves in with the economy’s mismanagement starting in the 1970s.

We have restored peace and security, rehabilitated our infrastructure and added some new capacity, we have educated more and more people and created new industries to absorb some of them.

Anyone who was around in 1986 knows we have come a long way. But there is still a long way to go.

Per capita GDP now stands at about $350, which is far below the $1000 required to be qualified as a lower middle income country. To qualify we have to at least triple the economy’s size.

But given that our population growth stands at 3.6% it would take another 16 years to triple the economy. But that is premised on an annual economic growth of 9.8% a rate we have not achieved in the last ten years.

Forget the mathematics. The point is whereas we are grateful to the NRM – at least the urban elite, for facilitating the improvements our standard of leaving this is not time to rest on our laurels.

I have various officials lament that we are not as grateful as we should be to the NRM for lifting us out of our morass but they should know that to him who much is given much is expected.

And similarly when you give a man an inch he wants a mile. That is the reality of the human condition, if they cannot face it they can pack up and go.

Looking forward the government is already on the right track. They have embarked on the most ambitious infrastructure development in more than road rehabilitation works of the 1980s. Plans are there to lay out thousands of kilometers of road, boost power generation fivefold, reactivate the railway and water transport on lake Victoria.

Infrastructure is the lifeblood of any economy and cannot be underestimated. American investor Jim Rogers toured the world on his motor bike in 1980 and saw first hand the huge investments in infrastructure China was making at the time in roads, rail, sea ports and predicted at the time that the world’s most populous nation was gearing up to become a major player in the world.

Since the Chinese economy has grown more than twenty fold and is snapping at the heels of the US economy, which it is projected to overtake in size by 2030.

But to borrow from China’s meteoric rise, the country invested heavily in human capital. It is graduating as many if not more PhDs in science as the US – they stopped talking about literacy levels as a measure of education there, and there health systems while challenged by the scale of the population, many of the western economies in the procedures they can carryout and in research and innovation. You can have all the infrastructure in the world but if you do not have the manpower to exploit it they may as well be white elephants.

The liberalization of the economy has unlocked private initiative. But the market place while it’s the most effective mechanism for wealth creation is not the best placed to distribute the booty.

If wealth disparities are beginning to widen unsustainably blame it on the government whose role it is to distribute the economic gains of the last three decades. And we are not talking about handouts to Ugandans but the effective and efficient delivery of public goods – security, social services and national strategy, which would give every Ugandan a chance to climb the social ladder.

At the heart of this inefficiency is corruption, which further concentrates finite government resources in a few pudgy hands. Corruption has to be rooted out, least of all because its networks are capable of  hijacking state institutions and even overthrowing governments.

Development is a function of politics. And political borders are important. That is why the people in Kisoro may have a better standard of living than their cousins in eastern Congo but may not live as well as their counterparts across the border in Rwanda.

Going into the next 50 years a certain consensus has to be reached within the political class to a bare minimum agenda. So that even if parties seat across the floor there should be an understanding that with issues like the economy we have to pull together. The constant bickering and heckling serves no purpose other than to embarrass the honourable ladies and gentlemen.

Past results do not guarantee future performance, they counsel but given our recent past there is probably less cause for despondence as there was on 27^th January 1986.

UGANDA HEADING DOWN A SLIPPERY SLOPE WITH COUP TALK

Last week Defence minister Dr Crispus Kiyonga sounded a warning to the NRM legislators at their retreat in Kyankwanzi.

Kiyonga warned that MPs should guard against actions that undermine the public’s confidence in parliament as such actions can make the army intervene and take over the government.

“Even soldiers, just like all Ugandans, are watching. We should not take their discipline for granted. If the military feels the country is in the hands of wrong politicians, some officers might be forced to intervene in the name of refocusing the country’s future,” Kiyonga said.

Kiyonga’s comments seems were said in the specific context of events at the end of last year in parliament when MPs shouted down the speaker and caused an adjournment during debate on the oil bill.

Days later commenting on the defence minister’s comments the General Aronda Nyakairima, the chief of defence forces while agreeing with his bosses was reported to have said,

“Stand advised that should you not change course, other things will take place.”

The remarks by the gentlemen were startling in themselves but what was even more remarkable was the deafening silence from the public.

Maybe we were befuddled, “How can they overthrow themselves?” For the vast majority of us the line between the NRM and the UPDF is only on paper.

Once we had got over that initial confusion, we probably then asked, “Are these people allowed to say such things?” a hangover from an era when for contemplating let alone voicing such mental meanderings, one would be slapped with a charge of treason. Clearly things have changed or have they?

And then we went on and wondered, “But would it be so wrong if they took over and set this whole place straight?”, these thought of course informed by the log jams we see created by our political processes contrasted with how things can work once we have sidelined the politicians – read the recent improvements in Kampala city.

Politicians should be under no illusions. As citizens and consumers of the government services we really don’t care who is in charge as long as service delivery is effective. We hold no allegiance to any one person or group of people for any other reason than they can properly answer the question “What have you done for me lately?”

Truth be told

"we do not hold our MPs in high esteem, we think they are overpaid, self-aggrandizing, hecklers only good for milking during the campaign period and always eager to increase their already heavy paychecks...

An Afrobarometer survey of almost a decade ago put MPs at the bottom of a list of our leaders ranked in terms of respectability. Our honourable members have done little since then to improve our perception of them.

See how the public did not bat an eyelid when the President called them fools and idiots.

That being said, parliament – warts and all, is an important institution of the democracy we want to build. If it is not working well the solution is not to abolish it but to find a way to make it work better.

As it is now the house with nearly 300 members is too unwieldly to do much good.

A house a third that size will not only be significantly cheaper but also easier to manage. But to reduce the house number would require a vote by the same house and it is unrealistic to expect the monkeys to vote objectively on the fate of the forest.

The next best thing is for the house whips to be more forceful in keeping party members in line. A lot of the chaos in the house is largely because of uncoordinated troop movements with in parties and particularly the ruling NRM, slowing down progress and the bogging down proceedings.

The many corruption scandals within the civil service do not endear the government to the people.

Bottom line is the government and all its arms has to work for the benefit of the tax payer or its relevance will be in doubt.

"That the defence minister and then the army commander can voice such opinion in public should be worrying, never mind how unlikely it seems. Giving the army ideas is rarely a good idea...

Frustration at the way our political class is conducting its affairs is palpable. With our representatives complicit in the mismanaging of the country’s affairs how ironic it is that it is the army that has come to voice our disgust.