Let aliens take our jobs and biz as we pursue free things

Whenever and as long as you are connected to a telephone network, you are daily being told to dial this or that number so that you can get free millions, free cars, free airtime, free trips for two to England, free name it.

The culture of seeking free things is getting deeper and deeper in Uganda everyday. We have reached a stage where the key driving force behind (foreign) businessmen is their capacity to persuade Ugandans to spend the whole day pursuing something free without working for it.
Selling publicity for promoting the quest for gain without pain, as the older folk would term, appears what is keeping the mass media alive today. Even a relatively newer industry, called outdoor advertising, which is today consuming even more money than the traditional press, is also thriving on these offers of something for nothing culture.

Whenever and as long as you are connected to a telephone network, you are daily being told to dial this or that number so that you can get free millions, free cars, free airtime, free trips for two to England, free name it.

Even the most conservative institutions, the banks, are daily bombarding Ugandans with offers of free land, free houses or free money if you open an account. In short, the most frequent messages Ugandans are getting are telling them to pursue free things instead of working to get them.

It is not only money, houses and trips to Europe that Ugandans are being offered for no work. What the corporate companies cannot give you free of charge, the witchdoctors are now providing, or claiming to provide. Such as love!

There is this one who advertises incessantly on radio, reachable on phone number 0752 303030, offering to give women their dream husbands if they use his medicine before paying a coin! That you only pay after the wedding has taken place! Can you beat that?

Only in Masaka did some unkind thieves late last week mess up the work of another prominent witchdoctor who had built a powerful reputation of giving people what they have not worked for.

Many believed in his powers because he has never put a door on his house. Who needs a door when he has all the spirits to protect him? But last Sunday, he sold a cow and got Shs1.2 million, which some thieves also needed. So they walked through his door-less doorway and stabbed him, beat up his wife and took the money. His client base must have shrunk considerably, and rapidly.

The problem with promoting this culture of seeking value in exchange for no value is that people from outside who are willing to work hard for every penny are going to take over the jobs and other economically productive activities as we continue looking for free things.

We shall not name countries today, but if you look carefully you can see all these foreigners who are rolling up their sleeves and harvesting money as able-bodied Ugandans are busy begging and going to witchdoctors to get ‘free’ wealth.

Then Kampala traders associations will make noise that foreigners are doing petty trade. But you wonder how a man who doesn’t even speak Luganda manages to persuade more customers in Kampala unless his local competitors are doing something very badly, expecting buyers to just favour them without their trying hard to attract them!

If someone does not tell our people that there is no value to be reaped free of charge, society will soon degenerate into lawlessness.

Only the other day, some youths and veterans descended on ten acres of land in Mbuya and started parceling it amongst themselves. How in 2013 can anyone expect to find 10 free acres of land in a capital city of any country?!
Some months ago, someone was shot dead because people had donated a road reserve to themselves and refused to vacate after repeated notices from the authorities.

Even some educated people who criticise land grabbing by the mighty were defending the small people for grabbing public property.

Neither our cultures nor modern education promotes the quest for free things. Neither Christianity nor Islam teaches its followers to pursue wealth or pleasure without working for it.

So where has this pursuit of value in exchange for no value come from? Why are witchdoctors getting so many clients in the business community and student populations?
Why are city dwellers buying food expensively to feed village people who are sitting on acres of bushy land like they are invalids?

Several centuries ago, the early chemists proved that you cannot get something out of nothing.
So why has the Ugandan psyche moved many centuries in reverse?

buwembo@gmail.com