Uganda’s national despair

Since the general election, Uganda has lost more than one year bogged down in civil unrest and all kinds of redundancies. The Executive Director of Kampala City, Jennifer Ssemakula Musisi, has tried heroically to restore order to Uganda’s dysfunctional capital but simply running rough shod over numerous groups with vested interests in the chaos in the city.

Several lines of street lights have started to appear. Garbage bins are in many parts of the central business district. Luwum, William, Market Street and Wilson Road no longer seem as congested as they were a year ago.

There is still much dispute between Musisi and the Lord Mayor of the city, Erias Lukwago, over who takes what role and who reports to whom. Lukwago, convinced that he is being sabotaged by the NRM government, has been forced to remain in a campaign mode, appealing to the general public for sympathy.

In the last two months, several potholes and deep craters have been repaired such as those overlooking the Old Taxi Park and the road above the Shoprite Supermarket near the Clock Tower. Both Lukwago and Musisi, although they continue to bicker, can rightly claim credit for these signs that Kampala can be rescued.

Of course the two main taxi parks are the image of total chaos and plain ugliness. The taxi and bus parks in Kamuli, Masaka and Mbarara towns are so much better than the Kampala parks. Much of Kampala is a huge shabby slum, but Musisi and Lukwago showed that with just a little effort, even this effort can yield some results.

Most of these efforts, however, have been drowned by the wider abuse of power traceable to the government. Government hospitals are in a state of disrepair. Businessmen are encouraged to continue developing property either on wetlands or land that was once public space.
Electricity remains irregular and business conditions make profit for most businesses next to impossible.

Widespread anti-government mood
The Afrobarometer survey indicated that 74 per cent of Ugandans were dissatisfied with the direction the country is taking. When NTV conducts a poll during the news broadcast, the result is roughly 80 per cent discontent. The morning after Attorney General Peter Nyombi issued his pronouncement on A4C being an illegal entity, about 80 per cent of the callers to every radio station on the FM dial denounced this action.

Sit in a taxi chosen at random and overhear a discussion on politics in Uganda and 85 per cent will sound anti-government. In terms of traffic, since 2010, the Daily Monitor - viewed by many as either anti-government or skeptical in its reporting - has overtaken the New Vision as the most visited Ugandan website of any kind and the gap in traffic keeps widening.

During NBS TV’s Morning Breeze breakfast show, eight out of 10 viewers who call or send their sms feedback are invariably angry or sound anti-government. On the social micro-blogging website Twitter, almost every time someone makes the mistake of uttering anything that sounds like supporting President Museveni, he or she is bombarded by sarcastic or relentless angry comments.
In the last one month, as the public mood continues to sour, the name A4C has become so dominant that it is even gaining more traction than the brand name FDC which, between 2005 and 2011 was the best-known opposition name.

A4C is viewed as more radical than the FDC, and that which is radical is now more appealing to the public than that which is moderate.

Critical mass?
This widespread public discontent now constitutes what in marketing would be termed a critical mass. It is the kind of critical mass that translates into every day consumer habits and eventually starts forcing advertisers and corporations to respond to this changing tide.

Major companies, especially the foreign ones, are caught in a dilemma. To survive in the Ugandan market, they all carry out political intelligence. They have studied the kind of government Uganda has, who really calls the shots and how much control the government has over the economy.

They therefore must play safe and not appear to be anti-government or side with or support opposition parties, newspapers, politicians and NGOs. Yet at the same time, they also get enough information to indicate that the public is now firmly in a “twakoowa” mood of discontentment.
What does a major telecom, supermarket, airline, hotel or manufacturing company do? Lean toward government to protect its investments or lean toward the public’s angry mood?

Many in the business community are watching these developing trends. Because security of property and market are non-negotiable to businesses, one can expect that in the coming months some of the shrewder businessmen will start making discreet contacts or sending quiet messages that they are open to working with the opposition.

Nobody wants to get caught up, like Egypt’s largest newspaper Al-Ahram, in supporting President Hosni Mubarak’s crumbling regime right up to the last day, only for the government to fall and find itself shunned by the reading public and advertisers.

The crisis of youth unemployment
Second to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Uganda has the world’s highest percentage of its population under the age of 18. Even the most ardent NRM government supporters admit the national tragedy of hundreds of thousands of young people who simply cannot find a job.

The most poignant instance of this was the tragedy weeks ago of the girl with a Masters degree who, having failed to find a job after five years of desperately searching, simply snapped mentally and threw herself to her death from the 14th floor of the Workers’ House in Kampala.
Last week I did some research into the most common terms entered into the Google search engine by Internet users in Uganda.

There were the expected popular searches such as the top clubs in the English Premier League, the American socialite and TV personality Kim Kardiashian, Facebook login, and Uganda’s main newspapers.

What Ugandans search for
But I also noted the high number of searches on Google.co.ug for “UN jobs”, “Best Uganda jobs”, “How to get rich”, “Jobs in Kampala”, “Jobs in Uganda 2012”, “Jobs in southern Sudan”, “Qatar Airways vacancies”, and “UN jobs in Uganda”.

In fact, the only topic that has more searches by Ugandans than jobs is anything related to the English Premier League. Something else caught my eye: the rising number of searches for sports betting and betting of any kind. When taken together with the frantic search for jobs, it reflects the desperation of Uganda’s young people.

The main betting search terms in Uganda for April 3, 2012, for example, were “Gaming International”, “Zulubet”, “Golden bet”, “Windrawwin”, “Sports Betting Africa”, “Vitibet”, “Royal sports betting” and “Predictz”,

If you can’t find a job, perhaps you could strike some money by placing bets on football results as can be seen by the constantly crowded premises of various sports betting firms in Kampala.
It is a sign of a nation in crisis when its most vigorous and productive citizens, those between 18 and 50 spend most of their time placing sports bets and watching English Premier League matches hoping their bets pay off and all the time are also desperately searching online for jobs.

All this cocktail of economic desperation and social tensions explains why the Afrobarometer poll produced 74 per cent national discontent and why the print and electronic media are dominated by angry public feedback. Conditions in Uganda are more conducive than in any other Black African nation for an “African Spring”. The government knows that, which is why heavy police and military deployment has turned Kampala into a garrison town.

A4C (or the pressure group formerly known as A4C) know this too, which is what gives them the boldness to keep on pestering the government. They know they have overwhelming public discontent behind them.

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