For Speaker of Parliament Kadaga, power seems to be doing things to her. Her suspension of two Observer reporters from covering Parliament just because they wrote two stories she says were incorrect is total overreach. It is unnecessary.

Two of the more popular politicians in the Daily Monitor newsroom in the mid-to-late 1990s were Ms Rebecca Kadaga and Mr Amama Mbabazi. They returned reporters’ phone calls. That means a great deal to journalists.

Both politicians have since gone on to bigger things. They can now only be reached, if at all, through a battery of aides. They are shielded, even from reporters. The results are not good.
For Speaker of Parliament Kadaga, power seems to be doing things to her. Her suspension of two Observer reporters from covering Parliament just because they wrote two stories she says were incorrect is total overreach. It is unnecessary.

What enlightened public officials do in the circumstances is write the newspaper to correct any falsehoods or misreporting. Or better still complain to the statutory Media Council or the Independent Media Council of Uganda. In this case the Speaker could also have brought in the association that unites parliamentary reporters.

It is not helpful, as The Observer noted in a statement, for the Speaker to complain, decide the case and execute the punishment. The irony must surely not be lost on her as the leader of the third arm of the State who also as a lawyer knows something about separation of powers, rule of law, and all that due process stuff.

It appears Ms Kadaga has bought into the widespread but exaggerated praises of her stewardship of Parliament. She has not done anything extraordinary. It is just that her fairness – a basic quality a Speaker of a divided legislature should possess – in conducting parliamentary business stands out because she took over from an ineffectual predecessor who was widely viewed to be under the thumb of the Executive.

The ends to which the Speaker is putting her sense of self-importance have sometimes raised eyebrows, the suspension of the journalists being only the latest. She offered a powerful riposte last October to the smug Canadian foreign minister when he chose to lecture Uganda on the rights of sexual minorities at a meeting of world parliamentarians in Quebec.

Then she gets back home, is received as a heroine at the airport by a bunch of homophobes and proceeds to announce that she was going to drive through Parliament the Anti-Homosexuality Bill as a Christmas gift to Ugandans. One wonders who asked her to give Ugandans such a poisoned gift. Even if she were just posturing as a way to stick it to the Canadians some more, the very fact of the threat was decidedly not statesmanlike.

I have written here before noting that it was rich that the Speaker, the number three person in national hierarchy, would stand before the charged funeral of MP Cerinah Nebanda and trash the government’s report on probable cause of death. The cheap populism she exhibited was beneath the person of the Speaker.

In the present case of the reporters, something else seems afoot. In the letter of suspension to The Observer, according to the newspaper, it is noted that the motives of the two articles are “questionable and unfortunate”.

As is the case with tenuous charges, the questionable motives and who is behind them are not stated. Somehow we should take it on trust that there are indeed dark motives, someone sinister is behind those motives, and that someone is using The Observer reporters. Well, that frees us to speculate.

There is no question the Speaker has had fights with some politicians from her backyard of Busoga. There is also no question that since becoming Speaker she has had a touchy relationship with Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi. Who of these may have “used” the journalists, we do not know. But like some wise soul observed, just because you are paranoid does not mean you have no enemies out to get you.

In any event, all free speech and free press advocates, including MPs, must stand up to the Speaker’s bullying of The Observer and demand an immediate and unconditional lifting of the suspension of the newspaper’s two reporters. This, of course, does not stop Ms Kadaga from pointing out exactly the inaccuracies in the two stories and, if she pleases, proceeding with action in civil court against the newspaper. Her draconian handling of the situation, however, cannot, and must not, be tolerated.

Mr Tabaire is a media consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence. bentab@hotmail.com

Poverty numbers have come down from the highs of the 1980s when the majority of Ugandans were dirt poor. Today it is about one in four. That still makes it nine million Ugandans living in the sort of poverty that is unacceptable. Who are these people?

At 27 years in power, President Museveni is still powering ahead. To where? To what end? To transform Uganda into a middle-income country as soon as yesterday, he would say as he always has.

Tremendous change has indeed occurred since 1986. But that change would still have happened even without Mr Museveni because it is in the fundamental nature of systems to self-correct once they have veered dangerously to one end as Uganda had by collapsing as a viable country. There is no doubting, however, that Mr Museveni’s force of personality and leadership quickened the arrival of the change we have seen.

In fact, the public argument in Uganda today is not about how to revive the country, make it secure and stable for individuals and businesses to plan, to dream and act on those plans and dreams. The public argument is about how to make the security and stability work for the largest possible number of Ugandans. How do we make the national cake bigger, juicier and then share it more equitably?
Poverty numbers have come down from the highs of the 1980s when the majority of Ugandans were dirt poor.

Today it is about one in four. That still makes it nine million Ugandans living in the sort of poverty that is unacceptable. Who are these people? Where can they be found? What interventions can be made to break the cycle of poverty they find themselves in? Those are questions for Mr Museveni and his technocrats to answer.

Answer those questions they must. For inequality, especially economic, is the single most critical issue Uganda must deal with in the years ahead.

While Mr Museveni, as the man still in power, must answer the questions posed, it would appear he has lost time so much so that even if he tried, he would still not deliver.
In allowing public sector corruption to blossom as a form of patronage, Mr Museveni has lost the initiative. Corruption long took on a life of its own. It is undermining all public sector projects meant to reduce poverty faster, deeply.

Because of two decades of war, northern Uganda weighed down national development indices. To help the region recover quickly once peace returned, billions of shillings were allocated. And billions were stolen by Mr Museveni’s own civil servants.

Just one example is enough to illustrate how much President Museveni’s government can no longer function at levels required to move things forward significantly. That is the total failure to award multimillion-dollar government contracts in a clean way.

Even once the kickback-induced kavuyo of contracts is settled, other silly problems emerge. We were recently told the government has no money to compensate people whose land and related property will be destroyed to make way for the construction of the new Entebbe-Kampala highway. Who plans these projects? This is utter nonsense. Even for a project such as the present one where there was no bidding because the Chinese who are providing most of the money chose which company would do the job, we cannot meet our part of the bargain.

I also know, by the way, that a number of technocrats were unhappy over the lack of bidding. They couched their disappointment in concern over lack of openness, chiding the Chinese for their shady ways. Their concern, actually, was that the lack of tendering denied them a chance to eat a layer or two of this road in kickbacks.

Yet amidst all this self-inflicted chaos, there is so much individual initiative that the government could be falling over itself to support. Somewhere in Nyamitanga on the outskirts of Mbarara is Kazeire Health Products, an agro-processing factory that bottles water and 100 per cent organic juice.

Mr Edward Kazeire, the 33-year-old owner, buys green tea leaves, lemon and honey from locals to use as key ingredients in his health-giving drinks. He employs more than 120 people and is expanding. I will tell Mr Kazeire’s story in a future column, but what I saw and heard on December 3 last year was so inspiring. It pointed to the future – where we need to create things instead of just consuming them.

This being Uganda under Mr Museveni, Mr Kazeire – all burning passion and ingenuity – has thus far not got any government support beyond not paying VAT on his equipment. You would think such a young Ugandan entrepreneur deserves more support than all these foreign mall-builders in Kampala.

Happy NRM Day, anyway!

Mr Tabaire is a media consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence. bentab@hotmail.com

There are names one grows up hearing repeatedly. In the beginning, one is never aware what those names actually signify. Names like Mulwana. Of course, James Mulwana was a powerful businessman.
Whatever his shortcomings, the overall public sentiment is one of respect and loss. His business empire and wealth grew but a visible sense of humility about him stayed. He must have been disciplined as well in more ways than keeping an eye on the money. He did not have that stupid belly that men of much more modest means tend to acquire in this land.

The headache for all Uganda, especially its self-proclaimed star political leaders, is generating and implementing policies that can create more Mulwanas.
He may have sought a favour here or there as in his ’80s request to President Museveni to ban importation of used car batteries so that his Uganda Batteries could stabilise and charge forward. But that is no crime. Businesses routinely seek assistance from their governments as long as they can demonstrate they will create value in the economy. Not to forget that these days Uganda is full of business people, both local and international, who routinely run to State House for favours only to deliver air. Some are mere crooks and criminals. It says good things about Mulwana’s integrity that he was invited to sit on boards of several companies.

And now from farming to agro-processing to manufacturing, his businesses pass on to the next generation. The empire should continue to thrive. I have read somewhere that on the whole the switch to the second generation is not a challenge for family business empires. It is the changeover to the third where things tend to fall apart. You overcome that then the family business will run on for generations, presumably because there would be enough institutional memory and genetic material in the family as to how to do the right thing to make money. May we read about the Mulwanas well into the sixth, seventh, whatever generation. I suspect that would quietly please him out there somewhere.

Speaking of transitions, the one MP Barnabas Tinkasimiire broached at the retreat of NRM parliamentarians in Kyankwanzi this past week caused a stir – even if it was not a new subject as such.

The man from Buyaga wants Mzee Museveni to pack up and leave. With the next elections up in 2016, one would think that the MP’s proposal is irrelevant, that any leader who has been in power more than a generation would, indeed, pack up. Not in Uganda. With no term limits, which the MP demanded be reinstated, an incumbent can keep running and “winning” endlessly.

In many words, President Museveni has said his continued stay in power is not just a sacrifice on his part, it is establishing the country on the course to fast-tracked greatness.
Africa has a sizeable number of countries that had leaders who hang around for ages. However they left, these leaders bequeathed a mixed to worse future.

The Ivorians are still sorting out the mess whose seeds Félix Houphouët Boigny sowed – ethnic politics and even militarised politics. DR Congo had its Mobutu. Kenya, its Moi. Oh, Somalia and its Siad Barre! Depending on your definition of Africa, you may count in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
Okay, there are some exceptions. Benin, Togo, Gabon are holding up fairly well. And Zambia, Tanzania and Malawi seem to have turned a corner.

A look at several other countries presently under the thumb of their leaders is not encouraging. Equatorial Guinea and Angola, both oil producers with poor citizens, yet their strong men, old as they maybe, are still not shipping out.

President Museveni praised Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang Nguema for proper management of oil revenue. I want to think our man had been briefed that Equatorial Guinea has very good oil contracts, yes, only that all proceeds end up in the bank vaults of the President and his son and a few hangers-on.
As for Mugabe, he is just bad news. Yet Mr Museveni likes the old revolutionary very much. The fallout over DR Congo is history. No leader outside the EAC is as readily available to hop into Kampala as Uncle Bob. So President Museveni praises Nguema and chills out with Mugabe. With that sort of company, the Tinkasimiires will need to work harder.

While Mulwana left clear instructions about his transition into the other world, President Museveni refuses to show his hand. Regardless, there will be a transition. Fiery or smooth, Mr Museveni will have everything to do with it like. And the nature of that transition will mean so much for Uganda for decades.

Mr Tabaire is a media consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence. bentab@hotmail.com

No one seems willing to tampdown the rhetoric. The NRM is now threatening to expel its small but intrepid squad of loudly critical members. Rebels, they are popularly called.

One of the rebels, MP Muhammad Nsereko of Kampala Central, has fired back declaring he will not support President Museveni in 2016. That in itself is interesting. For Mr Nsereko, it is a given Mr Museveni will run again, and again. Could that partly be the source of frustration amongst the rebels – having one man at the top, hogging all the power with no end in sight?

One senses, though, a whiff of contempt for The Boss in the MP’s declaration. It has come to that.
National politics today is full of mistrust and excitement. Mistrust is fuelling the excitement. I like the promise of the rebels because, God knows, NRM could do with some heavy internal debate to nudge it along the path of meaningful reform. The party is presiding over generalised bureaucratic incompetence and mind-bending levels of theft of public money. If the rebels are going to be true Young Turks – as they obviously would like to be regarded –they will have to recalibrate. Acting cartoonish by, for example, naming a “backbench Cabinet” as rebel Theodore Ssekikubo did in July is not the way to do it.

Neither is their habit of lurching from this issue to that issue.Today it is money for striking teachers, the other day it is holding up the budget over money for health workers, then bribery in the oil sector, on to disrupting the plenary over the main oil bill. And, of course, there is the Nebanda death. Running from issue to issue would not be a problem – after all populism is politics. It is a problem only because of the incoherence and obstinacy of the actors. The Executive has been both incoherent and obstinate in its positions on oil and power. The louder elements in Parliament – the ruling party rebels and the entire opposition MPs – have been even more incoherent and obstinate. The result is the mistrust we see.

MP Nebanda’s sudden death brought all the ugliness to the fore. Of course, the police did not help anything when very early on it attributed her death to narcotics consumption. Without even reflecting on it, the MPs asserted the government “had a hand” in the death. Nothing, apparently, will change that view. Assertions are, however, just that: Assertions. Just because you loudly and repeatedly assert something – with feigned seriousness, I must add – does not make it factual.

The mood is catching on even at the highest levels of Parliament. It was extremely rich for the Speaker, the number three citizen in the country no less, to proclaim she was “not content” with the government report on the MP’s death. In this wild and excited movement back and forth, it is difficult for an observer to discern a credible rebel strategy, if one exists. It is excellent that the ruling party rebels, all 10 or so of them, are working with the opposition. They need to do more, however.

They need to grow their numbers within their own caucus, which is so large no serious reforms can happen in government, and indeed the country, without more NRM MPs seeing the light. Signing of the petition to recall Parliament from recess for a special sitting over Nebanda’s death has exposed rebel weaknesses. Only a handful of ruling party MPs signed on.

It is the independents and the opposition that provided all those signatures. That there are even accusations that some signatures were forged shows up Parliament further as a house that is leaking, despite what some of us initially thought was a marvellous structure.

Mr Tabaire is a media consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence. bentab@hotmail.com

As lord mayor (of protests) and executive director (the two positions rolled into one for this purpose), I will fight to keep Kampala’s streets unlit and its glorious potholes intact

This past year, as would be expected, had its sensible share of national dramas petty and grand. Part of the playacting, especially amongst our increasingly feckless politicians, has spilled over into 2013. If in doubt, see the matter of Cerinah Nebanda.
Despite the public corruption and unimaginable incompetence, plus growing mistrust within the political class, some good things happened, and are still happening, in our land.

I like what I am seeing on energy. The policy to encourage investors to build small hydropower stations – 2MW here, 18MW there – has quickly yielded 300MW of light and heat. Private people are making money while the country is improving its electricity supply. Of course, Bujagali came on stream big time in 2012. And, there is the 600MW Karuma – if we can overcome our perennial failure to competently “design, cost and implement” projects that large.
With plans to generate more electricity from gas, heavy fuels, geothermal energy (and someday wind, the sun and uranium), the future can only be brighter. Local manufacturing needs to be fired up.

Did anyone notice that President Museveni was busy last year, if not launching hydropower stations, he was cutting the ribbon for the (re)construction of several highways? Some new ferries also started plying the waters of our rivers and lakes, easing travel for pleasure and business for many communities.

At the African Centre for Media Excellence, a non-profit organisation with which I am affiliated, heart-warming things happened. After two years of working with 21 Ugandan reporters and 24 reporters from a highly regarded West African country to share knowledge and tips on covering the burgeoning petroleum sector, the results came in following a rigorous international evaluation of the two-year project. The Ugandan journalists, all competitively selected, outperformed their West African counterparts on every score. That was stunning, given that our journalism still requires a lot of work – and even more prayers – to get it to a minimally decent level.

Following in the footsteps of the impressive Kiira EV crew, Makerere kids “invented a hand-held pregnancy scan-like machine called WinSenga … to scan a pregnant woman’s womb or detect problems such as ectopic pregnancy or abnormal foetal heart beats ...The pinnard horn part of the machine while connected to a smart phone is pressed against the abdomen of the pregnant woman. The smart phone screen then displays data on the location and condition of the foetus.” Why does this matter? “The invention of this technology comes in handy as statistics has it that about 16 Ugandan women die as a result of pregnancy complications,” reported the Ventures Africa website.

Teen prodigy Phiona Mutesi – straight out of a single-parent household in the slums of Katwe – made her exquisite chessboard moves on the international chess circuit. A new book, The Queen of Katwe, is out about her. A Disney movie is in the works. And she is just getting started.

Mr Stephen Kiprotich rocked. So did The Hostel TV series, achieving cross-border appeal. The creative and decidedly smart gang around WAZO/Talking Arts may just take Ugandan arts to a higher and higher place.

There is also that guy who slid into my “local joint” one quiet evening a few months ago, and is now a regular. Turns out he is a transportation engineer who happens to be a whiz in micro-simulation (modelling) of transportation systems. He has all the answers to Kampala’s traffic jams caused by kamunyes, boda bodas, buses, etc, if only KCCA could pay him and act on his geeky findings. For now, he is happy working on various international projects from his balcony in Kampala.

So, how about a light-hearted take on things in the form of resolutions for 2013?

* Because I work for OPM and Ministry of Public Service, I will steal a few more bucketfuls of Ugandan taxpayer shillings and donor dollars. The hell of it!
* As VP, I will support those well-connected types building car showrooms on Kampala’s road reserves if only to curry favour.
* As an honourable MP and political leader, I will speak (read heckle) first, then think later.
* As lord mayor (of protests) and executive director (the two positions rolled into one for this purpose), I will fight to keep Kampala’s streets unlit and its glorious potholes intact.
* I will make a few more babies just because my richer relatives will provide for them – well, I will hassle them to, make them feel guilty for being better off while at the same time manufacturing fewer children.
* From Bad Black to Good Black (there is a good reason some countries refer to prisons as correctional facilities). I intend to remain Good, until some loaded but hapless mzunguman shows up.
Happy 2013.

Mr Tabaire is a media consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence. bentab@hotmail.com