UGANDA DIASPORA
The ongoing debate on
the role of Ugandans in diaspora in shaping the socio-political discourses in
Uganda is a superficial one. During the election time, we were reminded always
by adversaries that those living abroad have fled the frontiers of politics and
should first return home to be counted. It is increasingly absurd that when
convenient, some Ugandans decide to put a non-existent differences between
those at home and those in the diaspora. Those at home claim that Ugandans in
diaspora are disconnected from their degradation and pitiful conditions due to
their distance.
Many cite the relative
progression of the exploiters through foreign investment as a sign of
development to be proud of. According to them, telecommunications and
entertainment industries are booming; their roads are being worked on, never
mind the shoddy and cheap work; and their UMEME is shinning bright – never mind
the load shedding. Their children are now going to private schools that have
become a supermarket for knowledge. Traditional institutions - schools and
hospitals - are facing steady decay and for them, they are no longer engrossed
with infrastructural, but moral decay. The proliferation of private clinics and
the development of the private sector under the NRM had answered all their
problems, even if affordability is an issue – never mind that they depend on
their relatives abroad. These “stead development”, they claim, have eluded
Ugandans who live abroad.
This kind of arguments
are pedestal and uninformed. First, most countries in Africa have a significant
proportion of their citizens living abroad or in neighboring countries. There
are various reasons that drive these Africans out of their countries – schools,
fleeing persecution, bad governance, economic reasons, eg work and so forth.
In the case of Uganda,
the main reasons that Ugandans flee their country are associated with the
legacy of insecurity, persecution, discrimination, and other forms of
structured injustices such as sectarianism. Moreover, each regime comes with
its own brand. Uganda has been at war since independence, and faced various
forms of sectarian, ethnic and trivial conflicts that forced many to leave. In
fact, more and more studies on brain drain show that nearly 67% of Ugandan
Nursing students express the desire to leave Uganda immediately upon
graduation. Nearly 70% of professionals, including doctors, lawyers etc
expressed their wish to seek greener pastures where their professions are
honored (77% of Liberia trained doctors work in the USA). With nearly 83% of
the youths unemployed, you find a situation where a large percentage of the
population expressing their desires to leave the country. But that alone, is
half the story.
The real reasons that
force Ugandans out is the violence of the NRM regime in all its manifestations.
By violence, we view corruption, sectarianism and inequities in jobs and
opportunities as forms of societal violence through which the regime expresses
its dominance.
As a result of this
interstitial violence that this regime wages on society, there has emerged a
narrow clique of survivors. Most of whom have stayed afloat by pandering to the
regime. The just concluded 2016 elections has exposed and isolated some of them
adequately. These are fake professionals who deal in fake goods and perpetuate
fake ideologies that are mostly self gratifying. We have a coterie of fake
lawyers dealing with fake cases manufactured by the fake state police, who are,
by composition and characteristic, the appendage of the military. There civil
Police in Uganda is dead.
In other words, those
who have managed to do well under such a circumstance have had to evolve
through a complex evolutionary process that has transformed then into believing
and honoring fake ideology. Uganda needs redemption from and for those.
The satire with this
so-called progressive Uganda is that it is not productive economically. The
real irony is that, the very victims of the regime's violence who manage to
flee for a better life abroad; and the ones the regime sells to slavery in
places like Saudi Arabia, Thailand etc, are the ones who sustain the regime and
its repressive machinery through their remittances. The remittances are the
monies that Ugandans who live abroad send back home to sustain Ugandans and
their crooked government. It has been growing in the last decade by nearly 14%
annually according to Revenue Authority estimates. In the FY2014/15 Ugandans in
diaspora remittances were in excess of US$1, 392million, accounting for 4.6% of
the GDP. We are talking of 250% increase of revenue from US$646millions in
FY2011/2012.
The UN estimates over
630,000 Ugandans to be living abroad and another 42,000 were already recruited
by licensed employment agencies to work in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Afghanistan,
Somalia etc.
The lesson learned
from those who think Ugandans in the diaspora have no role in shaping Uganda's
sociopolitical discourse and economic development is that they should rethink.
Our roles are immense and we feel increasingly as disenfranchised as Kampala
voters in being denied the opportunity to vote from our missions abroad and to
get a representation in Parliament.
This is the issue that
we must advance and it is an issue that I intend to pursue relentlessly.
Nearly two-thirds of
Districts in Uganda cannot generate local taxes to fund their own annual
budgets and yet they are represented in Parliament.
Further, this regime
has pursued foreign investment and lavished foreign investors with tax holidays
as a vote of no confidence in indigenous Ugandans. The government is no longer
investing in innovations, in schools and in those critical areas to inspire
local production.
Finally, the issue of
Ugandans living abroad, should not be about class, competition, or distance. It
should be contextualized within the global nexus of information technology,
foreign exchange (Money) and complimentarity. We now live in the global village
made very tenable by advent of social media. Nothing happens in my village in
Pajule or Dure, and never reaches me within 30 minutes. The Hansard is online
and the local media are all accessible via internet. To assume that Ugandans
who live abroad have lost touch with what is happening at home in this era,
sounds ridiculous. Such clumsy thought should be obliterated from an
industrious mind and left for the indolent.
END
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