Uganda: A state of Censor

 State Censorship

There is an old adage that when you offer a handshake to a leper, expect a hug in subsequent encounters. This adage seems to prevail in Uganda with state censorship in our ordinary lives. The state has appropriated our inherent rights as enshrined in chapter 4 of the 1995 Uganda constitution (as amended). Our freedoms of free speech, association and, liberty are probably the most censored in the entire continent.

It is becoming harder not to infatuate with the idea that Uganda is not a full dictatorship or a neo-fascist state. Personally, I see a bleak future where Ugandans wear shackles at every aspect of their limbs and duck tapes over their mouths as this regime reinvents itself for the worse.

The plight of maverick Dr. Nyanzi of thirty-three days in a maximum prison on accusation of her social media communication is a signal. The crime (sub judice), is related to her exercise of creative speech.

The numerous attempts to obliterate the mysterious social media figure - Tom Voltaire Okwalinga accentuates Police budget. Suspected Okwalinga’s have been arbitrarily arrested and jailed. The story of Shaka, aka Maverick Blutaski conjures a memory of the intents of the state to shut us up. Incidentally, as they close one communication channel, modern communications technology keeps creating others.

Certainly, the Police spend much of its time and resources in containing public free space. That is the irony. When you have an educated population, you should expect value clash and critics when performances are below par.

Unfortunately, the state censorship and surveillance has peaked levels that prevail under totalitarian regimes. Soon, they will fly their supersonic jets and helicopters over your villages to distribute pamphlets with scripts of what to say in your daily conversations.  Their morbid desire is to police Ugandans until they develop a common language of the subdued.

Some Ugandans condemn Dr. Nyanzi, TVO, or Shaka, subjects of witch-hunt by state functionaries. However, it is our free speech and intellectual freedom that this state is after.

Even if these critics’ writings or public utterances irritate the regime, or were somehow wrong, morally objectionable, and are indifferent to the emperors, should we just destroy them or shut them up? These people convey relevant issues that concern our expectations from our government, and we should listen, attentively.

Few days ago, a letter threatening to suspend the trade license of NBS TV, dated May 11, 2017 and referenced LA/181/39 was issued by Uganda Communications Corporation, the state agency that censures our public and private dialogues, and regulates the media. Apparently, the UCC was “appalled, concerned…and took exceptions to strong language and conduct of a guest” on NBS televised show. This action demonstrates the boundless state ascendancy over our free speech.

You can imagine how much caution any Ugandan or business must exercise to survive a harsh confrontation with state apparatus. This hypersensitivity and high-handed censorship are detrimental to intellectual development and a threat to foreign investments.

Moreover, such excessive state intrusions into private spaces drive Ugandans away from active public life into self-exile within the diminishing personal spaces. Excessive censorship drives progressive views underground and engenders resistance. For instance, there is a phone tapping law whose victims are random, and then the Public Order Management law where the Inspector General of Police is the absolute authority over our rights to associate, assemble and free speech.

This state affair needs a rebuttal. We must resist excessive state censorship and halt the usurpation of our inherent freedoms. The mechanism of control begins with destruction of our social bonds, creating isolated individuals. Once isolated, no matter how legitimate your causes are, the state’s strong arms crashes your will and duck-tapes you infinitum.

The right of free speech, the freedom to assemble and associate are the fundamentals of intellectual development. When you shut those avenues down, you brood a nation of near imbeciles who are too easy to dominate.

When we concede to tyranny by passively relinquishing one or two inalienable rights, we slowly and surely forfeit all.

End.

Labour Day should make sense to workers and living conditions

LABOUR

Ugandans spend Labour Day unconsciously as simply another public holiday. Labour Day has a long treacherous history whose commemoration requires deeper and purposive reflections on labour. The debate on labour has spanned generations, and yet no one ever explains the relations of labour to capital like Marx and Engels ever did. These analyses allow us time to place appropriate value on our everyday struggle for work, income, and a better living, as humans. Irrespective of your qualification, political connections, or ethnicity, we should use Labour Day to evaluate the changing meaning of labour in this era.

To Marx, Labour, is a commodity in the market. He averred that capitalism separates the person from his labour, and allows the person to sell his or her labor in the open market to a bidder. In the capitalist organization of labour, man is alienated from the product of his own labour – that is, through differentiation and specialization, either one is hired to make parts of a whole with no idea of the whole, or are paid very little that they hardly afford the product of their labour (simplified).

With the hegemony of neoliberalism, many anti-statist policies such as restructuring and deregulation have created havens for exploitative corporatists in the private sector that bring impress upon us a lifestyle transitions and diseases. The state has retracted from its public obligations - in funding social services provision, while maintaining some juridical powers. Unlike in the past where government was the main employer, in the aegis of neoliberalism, it has relegated these roles to corporations/private sector.

Uganda is a captive of neoliberal policies allowing for limited jobs in government, which are tightly controlled and distributed on sectarian basis. The bureaucracy, political patronage, and corruption conspire to sabotage rapid growth in the private sector to absorb the abundant labour.

The Museveni regime adopted structural adjustment program in the early 1990s and have since created an economy in which the state, and not government, maintains partial control over certain sectors – such as banking, education, health, while allowing greater role for private investors in every aspects of life. Unfortunately, the over dependence on foreign investors have not yielded much to the needs of the ever growing pool of labour. This has led to a huge gap in services (decline in quality of education, and near collapse of healthcare system), and a huge labour pool. 

Recent employment statistics demonstrates over 80% youth unemployment, and over 90% unemployment rates among university and college graduates. Moreover, those employed are likely to be under employment, in precarious employment - part time, occasional employment with no job security, benefits, and/or unsafe and stressful working conditions. Our working conditions have a direct bearing on our living conditions, which inadvertently affects our overall health. Capitalism produces mental health crises in its zeal for expropriating profits wherever it is entrenched.

In its response to the sluggish private sector growth, the Ugandan state has shifted its employment policy from contracting social service providers to lavishing politics. The wage bill for elected and appointed politicians surpasses the state investment in career public servants. This should worry the left leaning labour unionists.

The relation of labour to freedom is in the control over land. Ugandans are losing their land and control over productivity, even for subsistence. When the regime expropriates all the land from the people, then everybody will start to rent land they once owned for a fixed period as proposed in Buganda recently. If you have no income to service your tenancy, you are rendered homeless – dehumanized. Without ownership of land, everyone becomes a tenant. That is the essence of powerlessness and loss of freedom. The way this economy is organized and operationalized will appropriate your land and place it in the hands of a few landowners.

A Labour Day reflection like this allows for a conscious reflection on the meaning of labour, and a better understanding of the economy and emerging changes in societal structures of power and class. Independent workers Unions should emerge from every profession and field of service besides professional associations. Evidences show that in capitalist societies, a high union density remediates unfair labour expropriation.

The END

A Meaningful Museveni-Besigye Talks could re-set the country

POLITICAL DIALOGUE

The looming prospect of talks between FDC leaders and the NRM dictatorship is kind of assuring. “Uncle” Muniini Mulera’s “Letter to Tingasinga” in the DM of April 4, 2014 (Refer: Museveni-Besigye talks: a necessary prelude to national dialogue) captures this national sentiment succinctly. However, in this article, Dr. Muniini nearly inundated me with an overdose of optimism in the tone of the text.

Optimism (Latin: optimum) is like fodder for endurance. When nothing seems to work, we tend to project the best possible outcomes. Optimism is medicinal, just like resilience; they help us to endure or bounce back from adversity through several pathways. One such pathway is by painting a colorful utopia, using some of the best literal devices in our possession.

Uganda is at crossroads at a point of adverse economic hardship, and saturated to the threshold with the Museveni hegemony. The prospect of additional Museveni rule, even a minute of it, conjures up the imagination of the claws he has dug into the flesh of this nation.

The viciousness of his henchmen, now turned mafias fed by a well-oiled machinery of the corrupted and greedy tribal cabal, and sustained through sectarianism is more than what Ugandans fathom. This group will sabotage any prospect that threatens their mafia networks, and even cause a coup, or assassinations to subvert talks.

Definitely, those on top or somewhere in the upper middle rungs of the food chain refuse to acknowledge this mess in the country. As long as their plate remains full and their tables have steady supply of “fodder”, the rest of us can whine and rant all we want.

Therefore, for those outside the ruling class strata, it is natural to cling on such “baits” for meaningful “talks”. In psychology, we refer to it as dispositional optimism - a loose set of beliefs that after all, the future will hold-up Ok. This is unlikely in Uganda with Mr. Museveni in the tow!

However, dependence on optimism alone is like self-inundation that numbs one of their current predicaments, and erases the gruesome memories of past events - the series of events that have brought us to this very abysmal point.

Life is full of paradoxical because even then, dwelling on the past has its special effect of immobilizing societies. Our own history and past experiences have the potency to militate against the fundamentals of “moving forward” or “bouncing back” from adversity.

It is with such consciousness that we ought to discuss and contextualize any dealings with Mr. Museveni. First, from purely a historical perspective, Mr. Museveni generally scores very badly on agreements, talks, respect for the opponents, and compromises. You can do the search and conclude for yourself. What has changed fundamentally with Mr. Museveni or his circumstances that makes us trust that any meaningful talks are possible? Is it because Sweden has offered to mediate? Would there be a difference if an Angel from Heavens had offered to mediate?

Pundits have variedly observed that this “talks” talk is a ploy to reinvent his legitimacy after the embarrassment of the 2016 Presidential elections. His allies have started seeing Mr. Museveni as a liability.

Dr. Besigye on the other hand, has gained substantial command of empathy from governments and legitimate pro-democracy authorities worldwide. Mr. Museveni has continued to benefit from a thin veil of support from rogue capitalists whose economic and security interests Mr. Museveni galvanizes at home and in the region. At home, Mr. Museveni has lost substantial legitimacy, thus the use of apartheid-era instruments of oppression to subdue.

Given the increasing influence of his family in plundering the country and the standardized decay in public services, Ugandans have become suspicious, fearful, and indifferent towards this regime.

There is a volcano of discontent welling up in the inside of Ugandans. An urgent and genuine re-set of this country through a broad and meaningful dialogue would help to diffuse this from exploding. 

END

Power of Uganda's economy lies in rural communities

RURAL ECONOMIES

The paradox of our generation is the “strongman” malaise that has undermined socio-political development in Africa in the last three and a half decades. Strongmen are old-fashioned residual posturing of Leninist/Maoist fascism, a derision drawn out of misinterpretation of Marxism. Every non-progressive African country has a strongman ruling a divided country with urban and rural economies separated. This strongman foreboding needs proper theorising if Africa is to become truly productive.  

 Uganda is a country of well-travelled, highly educated folks, and tortured souls - people who have endured a long history of trauma, tribalism, civil wars, sectarianism etc. This profile of a society would command national solidarity, and inspire resistance to repeat adversities. Unfortunately, we acquired opposite reaction tendencies - compliance, submissiveness, and reproducing our predicaments.

Mr. Museveni’s makes it worse by his colonial type social experiments that alienate the economies of the rural from that of urban Uganda. When you see the ever-widening gap between the Museveni urbanite plutocrats and their subdued miserable rural subjects, you confirm it by a confrontation with lapses in all aspects of public institutions. There is a deep flaw with the NRM liberation ideology beyond its deceptions. The gaps in social services between rural and urban settings reveal a major contradiction, or a limitation of that brand of ideology. These contradictions make it harder to manage a modern economy peacefully, where the supposed liberators are now the oppressors.

A modern capitalist society constructed under the aegis of neoliberalism needs to conform to neoliberal ideologies with uncompromising democracy as part of the deal. The regime is averse to democracy and alienates rural communities from such discourses. The near collapse of social services is another example of the regime’s inability to curb the vagaries of the liberal market, or develop a sustainable balance between public and private enterprises to extend to the rural economy.

Underwriting Mr. Museveni’s ability to comprehend such a dichotomy of the economy is suicidal, thus the reproach. Our gist is that Mr. Museveni’s arrows have simply run-out of his quiver. Some Christians say, “where human ability ends, God’s begin”. Mr. Museveni ought to do the biblical Moses thing. When you see the end, accept, hand over to the younger generation; have faith that they will lead the flock to the Promised Land. This stretch of the economy belongs to the younger crop of economists and entrepreneurs who understand globalisation, neo-liberalism and the liberal market trick-books. We should allow them to transition and integrate these economies to a unified engine for driving prosperity like Chinese government achieved in the last two decades.

Mr.  Museveni’s tries to politically re-invent himself by experimental approaches – he moots ideas to modernise agriculture, and promotes the use of hand hoes, slashers and menial irrigation; promises wealth for all, while his cows and crops are infertile or auto-suicidal. Too many contradictions demonstrate a blurred vision. They are retarding Uganda’s economic potential.

A good example of a failed experimentation is that private health services are not expanding fast enough to compensate for restructuring of the healthcare system. Uganda’s fragile economy would respond by ring fencing certain critical aspects of the market by instituting universal social policies. Critical areas in health, education, early child development, social security, Infrastructure, Water, and Agriculture, with strict regulations on environmental protection, would suffice. Ugandans wouldn’t mind paying a little more in taxes to finance a robust social policy that works for them, to build skills, prevent premature deaths; leverages opportunity for productivity and mobility, and offer social security and fair market competition.

To make even the least sense of Mr. Museveni’s experiments, the wealth creation program should be de-politicised and de-militarised. Social and economic programs should avoid liberation mentalities and politicking of Mr. Museveni. Such programs should put the people of Uganda first.

Lastly, by linking wealth creation to health, we support the idea that when people have income, they tend to have better health and afford health resources. Health and Agriculture are inextricably linked in a country were over 78% of our population still survive and reside in rural communities. The power of Uganda’s economy remains untapped in these rural communities.

END

Mr. Rwaboogo and the NRM ideological confusions

NRM IDEOLOGY

The attempt are reinventing the NRM ideology that is raging within the NRM need not get extinguished in haste by the state operators. The statehouse political architect and ideologue, Mr. David Mafabi demonstrates this typical trait of intolerance by slumming the door on Odrek’s thirst for a meaningful debate on ideological resurgence. Such intolerance, we must admit, is what keeps the heads of most dictators (aka Strongmen of Africa) hidden in the sand.

The first son, Mr. Odrek Rwaboogo has been the lone proponent in calling for debate on NRM’s future. Now it seems he is even debating with himself, and soon he will be distanced from his likes, in the manner of Mbabazi and others. Already, Mr. Rwaboogo is accused of generating ideological confusion, confusing biology with ideology, and undermining the works of the NRM Party Chairman, the strongman himself.

The fire of discontent is burning silently underneath the NRM and Mr. Rwaboogo maybe the first black smoke sprout out of the Conclave. The young Turks, bred in the ideological perplexity of the NRM have come of age. Their demand for change of direction is appears legitimate for them to find space and place to exert their own influence. Yet, the old Turks within the system still hold tight on the grip of power, privileges and influence. It is their carcass, they must chomp at it until infinitum.

In a sense, we are seeing the emergence of the progressive forces from within the NRM led on the one hand by Mr. Rwaboogo, and yet, his lone voice does not seem to represent a corpus of progression. One would expect that virulently ambitious young Turks like Morrison Rwakakamba, Frank Tumwebaze, Agaba Rugaba and others of that generational breed would join forces with Mr. Rwabogo. Instead, they have sold their loyalty to the traditional forces. They are even hostile to the smallest suggestion of an ideological debate within the NRM. Odrek may be the lone voice for now - maybe his timing is wrong, but at least, he is not driven by impulses of a disgruntled man. Odrek has also been in the NRM’s inner circles longer than many of the young people that litter the statehouse corridors and alleyway today to oppose him. Rwaboogo could have taken a path that will either destroy him, or win him support from the inner NRM politburo retrospectively.

After all, the survival of any system is judged from its dynamism - adaptability to changing times. Moreover, the NRM  has remained on course for reasons other than ideology. For instance, its very existence is buttressed within the institution of the army, built around a personality cult of an African “strongman”. The test of its survival outside of these composites remains a bigger question that only Mr. Rwaboogo makes sense in his advocacy for ideological re-orientation. Messiahs have always appeared confusing, disturbing and condescending to an establishment, for which they have endured execution for reward.

Set that aside, if I were Odrek, I could consult with this man, Mr. Asuman Bisiika, the journalist I prefer to describe as “Prophetic”. Mr. Bisiika correctly pointed to an important aspect of this debate in an article in the Daily Monitor of August 15, 2015, (See: Odrek Rwaboogo and NRM ideological re-orientation), which could help guide Mr. Rwaboogo enormous. Mr. Bissika affirms that the NRM is least inclined on matters of ideology at this phase in which it finds itself. It considers ideological matters a sole enterprise of the Party Chairman. In that sense, NRM is an ideological captive of its strongman.

Further, the contradictions seen between the NRM ideology and economic progress in Uganda, suggests that the NRM no longer has controls over its ideology, as such, its ideology is not driving social and economic transformation of Uganda. In this sense the frontiers of contestation is what Mr. Bisiika correctly points out – the lack of a policy generation. The archaic ideas of ideology and revolution are intangible to the majority of the young people – the carpetbaggers of the NRM. The NRM ideology itself is more confusing and therefore it is even hard to accuse Mr. Rwaboogo of spewing ideological confusion when those accusing him are also ideologically confused.

The END.

Uganda: Youth Unemployment is a national security issue.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Over the weekend, I struck a rather interesting conversation with some young people on my Facebook chat. These chats started with usual pleasantries and then developed into inquiries about how Canada is and how a young person could migrate to Canada. Two of the youths had graduated from University five years ago and had never secured formal employment.

They felt a deep sense of dejection – that, their country has let them down. One youth had completed undergrad and was summing up a masters in Business Administration, a program that many young people are enlisting. He, too, like the others, had lost any hope for a job after wrecking up his relative’s pockets for fees and scholastic support.

These stories are regular and rampant. Many young people are graduating from colleges and Universities and have simply no start-up capital to invest, little skills and no proper supervision to translate classroom knowledge into a resource for earning a living. At over 83% youth unemployment, we should worry excessively that youth unemployment is of a major security concern.

Certainly, the government is aware of this problem and must be worried about it more than anyone else. However, few aspects of our economy need streamlining. First, we must continuously challenge the people who design our school curricula to tailor curriculum development towards the rapidly liberalising economy. Curriculum should focus on business models, apprenticeships, research, critical thinking, and innovation. Education system should produce curricula that respond to the economy by building skills and competent labour force.

Second, the tradition of graduates hoping to get employment with government or established business needs challenging right from the classroom. With high degree of sectarianism in government, coupled with a slow private sector expansion, the economy is unable to absorb the extra-labour produced annually. Government, on its side, is now behaving like an ethnic enclave where favouritism and tribalism pervades every department. Job opportunities with government are no longer on merit. Somehow, one must have a Godfather or Matriarch to access employment. Blotted bureaucracy, corruption, and ineptitude also stifle the flow and absorption of funds at local governments.

Third, and most important, is for the government to enlighten the population about the operationalisation of the economy. Government today is chocking with an extremely high cost of public administration. The cost of politics and sustaining politicians have diverted critical funding from youth entrepreneurial development and development of infrastructure such as resource centres, recreation centres and centres for social innovations where youths could channel their ideas, energies and synergies.

Fourth, we have to analyse the culture of investment, attitudes towards private venturing, and co-operatives. Young people need mentoring into saving, investing, partnerships, loan servicing, and translation of knowledge. Youths have the energy and ability to learn fast, given the advent of technology that offers them unfettered opportunity to make good of their time and energy to earn a living. Government should strive to make computer skills and internet access, universal and a fundamental right of every youth.

Another challenge we have in Uganda now is the crisis of trust. I recall a young man I met in Ntinda in 2010 who recorded a music album. He was hopeful that his product would generate for him some money. However, he insisted that releasing his album without the videos for each song would be suicidal because he feared that established artists would plagiarise his songs. At that time, he estimated that the cost for a good music video for a beginner was between UGShs1- 2million. This youngster failed to secure the money for the videos. He never surfaced in the industry as a star of his dream.

The intellectual property rights and small innovation fund are crucial for young people to become relevant producers in the economy instead of consuming alien cultural garbage for entertainment. There must be guarantees and safeguards that innovations are encouraged, valued, and protected in this economy. When we leave our youths without guidance and nurturance, we breed insecurity. The apathy among young people now, towards the establishment, is a time bomb about to explode.

End.

The fallacy of Global Poverty Reduction Strategies

POVERTY

My friend Ojotre and his fiancée have travelled through many countries in Africa. They have marveled at the sight of expensive government guzzlers – four-wheel drives - emblazoned with big inscriptions such as “Poverty ‘Eradication’ or ‘Alleviation’ Programs”, and yet everywhere they have visited, unusual forms of poverty confronted them. This couple has wondered as to why African governments extol publicly an onerous task upon which they have no control.

Poverty alleviation is a hoax. Poverty eradication is a myth. One obsession of governments and international donors is this patronage and ruse that they intend to eradicate or alleviate absolute poverty.  Many of these people use that phrase to mean many different things at different levels depending on their role and the powers they hold. Poverty alleviation/eradication could mean exploitation, underdevelopment, political capital, power over (patronage), and imperialism (neoliberal - emerging markets). There is a whole industry and market out there where poverty is a commodity.

What constitute poverty is highly perceptional, relative, and political. As a political object, poverty is framed to justify a mobilizing ideology; as an international development issue, it is framed to conjure a sense of benevolence and sympathy. Incidentally, every effort at eradicating poverty only exacerbates it. Every poverty alleviation/eradication attempt has provided temporary fix and perpetuated worse outcomes for the long term, including producing disease and further helplessness/dependency.

To understand poverty, we have to understand what it is not – wealth, abundance, access, equitable society, power, social class privileges, and the manner in which societies and economies are organized and operationalized. Once we appreciate fully the structural systems that produce, reproduce, and transmit power globally and locally, we then can courageously grapple with poverty as the function of societal inequality resulting from that power relations and its controls production.

Thence, to alleviate poverty one has to focus on the pervasive inequalities in society that deprive people of resources and opportunities. The antithesis of poverty therefore is providing equal opportunity for production and distribution of resources. People can get out of poverty if they have ownership over their means of production and the products of their labor. When people have control over their environment and control over the requisite tools to harness and take sway over their environment, then they can emerge out of poverty. However, in all these poor countries, the glaring lack of infrastructure to support wealth creation and distribution, as well as the unequal rules of global trades and transnational movements, inextricably bind disadvantaged people to absolute loss of control over production, labor, capital, and environment. Poverty therefore is systemic and structural such that “alleviation” or “eradication” are obscurantist strategies.

There is a common observation that if 10 of the world’s richest were to share half of their wealth with the rest of the world, nearly 3.5 billion people, or half the world’s population would emerge out of absolute poverty. This formula applies in every society where enormous amount of wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small percentage of individuals.  

For a meaningful progress in improving life conditions, social and historically entrenched inequalities in this world should be the target of discussion. It is not coincidental that the countries usually designated as endemically poor also share a history of profound repeat abuse – slavery, colonialism, and now corporate imperialism. For societies where poverty is endemic, you find a history of colonialism, disease, corporate exploitation, ethnic clashes, dictatorships, and environmental degradation. Poverty therefore is the product of all these entrenched inequalities that we never debate. Poverty has nothing to do with what we invest our time, money, and resources on such as MDGs or SDGs.

We must often revise the nearly prophetic works by Nina Munk, Dambisa Moyo and many other thinkers before and after them who have countered dominant discourses about global anti-poverty strategies. They called upon the world to recognize the inherent historical factors that subverts real development, address structural bottlenecks - unfair global trading rules, and the destructive economic policies such as structural adjustment that have further underdeveloped states in the southern hemisphere. Structural adjustment policies are never going to eliminate poverty, but produce it!

End.