If Western aid money returns, steal it

Today, when Western ambassadors and visiting cabinet ministers and US Assistant Secretaries of State for African Affairs meet Museveni, they sit humbly in his presence as he lectures them about their double standards, with the diplomats taking notes like schoolchildren.

The West is truly on its way down. Most residents of Kampala now sense this and across the “social” media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and in the mainstream print and broadcast media is a cynical opinion among Ugandans that the Western donors are not serious people; they will cut off their aid for a few months but by March 2013 we shall hear of a new round of funding once again.

The equally cynical NRM government has also read the Western nations well. They will bid their time, knowing that it won’t be long before the government of Ireland, Britain, the World Bank, the German, Danish and other governments come back offering aid. Then we shall go back to square one.

In Europe, meanwhile, Spanish and Greek citizens have been reduced to scavenging for food in restaurant dust bins, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced this week that due to the severe economic crisis, the British government expects the current austerity budgetary measures until at least 2018.

Somehow, though, their governments seem more interested in seeing their own citizens sleeping on the streets of Europe and starting to get their meals from soup kitchens and wear second-hand clothes than see Africans go without Western aid. So, we can be sure that it won’t be long before we hear of Western aid now restored.

More luxury
As soon as the donor aid comes in, it will be back to buying luxury cars for Ugandan ministers, taking their wives and mistresses on shopping sprees to the West and building more arcades in Kampala.

Then when the Western embassies in Kampala and their Development ministries in Europe discover that another $200 million has gone missing, once again in disbelief and protest, the donors will announce in dramatic fashion that they are suspending aid --- and six months later will restore that aid.

The level of stupidity and loss of resolve that the Western world, full of otherwise very intelligent and well-educated people, has sunk to over the last 10 years suggests what superstitious or religious people might term a “curse”.

This time, if the Western donor nations restore their aid to Uganda, I will urge the government officials to do the needful --- run off with it all and do not spare a single euro or dollar.
Treat that as the West’s generous Marshall Plan for Uganda. It is money intended for us to enjoy life. Go on, buy the Prime Minister a helicopter. Give some to the Minister of Karamoja to buy the Harrods department store in London.

As for the millions of unemployed young Europeans whose taxes are collected and handed to Ugandan officials to buy luxury apartments in Miami and Los Angeles, well, let them eat cake (or food from dust bins).

timothy_kalyegira@yahoo.com