Museveni will most likely seek to disarm the competing camps in the NRM and political interests in the country, and have everyone confused.

The political scuffles inside the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) over President Yoweri Museveni’s alleged plot to install his son, Brig. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as his successor are reaching fever pitch.

While there might be signals that Museveni is positioning Muhoozi to take over from him, I don’t see any intentions on the President’s part to do so. Let me explain this; just because a man tells a woman that he loves her and buys her flowers, does not mean he intends to marry her.

First, Museveni doesn’t think in a linear way. Take his appointments for prime minister and vice president. The first man to occupy the position, Dr Samson Kisekka, basically came with the job from the bush. After Kisekka, the only thing we knew was that he was going to appoint a Catholic, but neither Dr Speciosa Kazibwe, Dr Gilbert Bukenya, or the current VP Edward Ssekandi were obvious choices before they got the jobs.

The same was true of Prime Minister. George Cosmas Adyebo, the first PM of the NRM era, was drinking at a malwa joint in Nakawa when officials from the President’s office came to collect him to go and meet Museveni. Because the north was in rebellion then, the popular story goes that he thought he was being arrested for alleged links to insurgents, and waved farewell to his drinkmates who didn’t expect to see him alive again.

After him, it was Kintu Musoke. Musoke was Museveni’s buddy dating from their days in the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM), but his appointment seemed to set a pattern. Museveni’s choice for PM was not going to be anyone who had been with him in the bush. His next choice of Prof. Apolo Nsibambi seemed to confirm that.
However, after the 2011 election, something changed. Museveni appointed Amama Mbabazi, an insider and “bush” veteran as PM. It was the most obvious appointment to the PM’s position that Museveni had made, and was totally out of character.

What had changed? It seems that with the 2011 election, Museveni lost the ability to act as freely as he used to in picking his choices for top office. There are indeed some analysts who argue that the same factor was in play when he appointed his wife, First Lady Janet Museveni, as minister. If Museveni is losing wiggle room, then he is losing power influence, and I think he would have to push back against the impression that he is no longer his own man. This is because if he doesn’t, he will become even more vulnerable and lose the ability to determine the terms of his departure.

Therefore, my sense is that right now and in the coming days, we shall see him going back to the formula that allowed him to be a strongman president – i.e. being unpredictable and keeping people guessing about his next move.

Of course, it is comical to see NRM officials and officers who for 20 years helped Museveni subvert Ugandans ability to freely choose their leaders at elections, demanding that the NRM should be allowed to democratically choose its next leader.

That is not about to happen. However, Museveni is now confronted with two choices about his political future. First, does he begin his exit procedures so that he steps down in 2016 after 30 years in power? I think he will want to stay and “prepare for succession”. The talk of a “Muhoozi project” only makes that more likely, because essentially he is saying “you can have Muhoozi if you want me to step down in 2016, or support my bid for five more years”. Many people, I suspect, would rather have five more years of Museveni.

So the “Muhoozi project” is possibly a kite. Going by the public reaction, it will be a deeply unpopular choice, and Muhoozi would have to crack down hard to remain in power. An unpopular successor would endanger a retired Museveni, so that is probably out.

Secondly, he is asking himself which is the more secure option; a successor who feels entitled to the job (say Brig. Muhoozi or PM Mbabazi) or one who will be grateful, because he is an outsider who is not in the inner circle, and therefore didn’t expect to “eat” the chieftainship?

Museveni will most likely seek to disarm the competing camps in the NRM and political interests in the country, and have everyone confused. That would leave him as the most powerful individual for a few years, even if he were retired.

I might be wrong, but for that reason, Museveni might pick a wild card candidate for successor. Being Kaguta, he will probably seek a new alliance to secure his retirement. Muhoozi or Amama can be Museveni’s successor, but they will have to fight for the job, and win.

cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com & twitter:cobbo3

Last Saturday, the Monitor published a true gem about where Chinese money in Uganda is going.
I shall break it into five areas; frivolous; human/life investment with long-term economic benefit; infrastructure category; environmental hygiene; political comfort with little or no long-term economic benefit.

•Frivolous: $16,100 donation to Uganda Olympic Committee
•Human/life Investment With Long-term Economic benefit: $133,000 aid to fight Ebola virus; $411,400 construction of malaria treatment/prevention centre; $400,000 donation of anti-malaria drugs; $134,600 Mulago Hospital donation; $750,000 construction of second school; $6.1m construction of hospital. Total: $7.929m.

•Infrastructure related: $5.4m donation of road maintenance vehicles; $5.1m loan for security communications system. Total: $10.5m

•Environmental hygiene: $2.4m donation of garbage trucks; $13.5m grant for refuse collection. Total: $15.9m

•Political comfort with little or no long-term economic benefit: $17.6m expansion of parliamentary chambers; $14.2m construction of building for Foreign Affairs ministry offices; $7.5m construction of State House; $36.3m construction of President’s Office. Total: 75.6m
This is not to criticise anyone. Rather it is merely to examine the mindset of Ugandan officialdom, what it thinks is important, and to get a glimpse of what the Chinese think is acceptable and prudent in their engagement with Africa.

I think it is telling that the three most expensive items in the China goodies bag are $14.2m for the construction of Ministry of Foreign Affairs offices, followed by $17.6m for the parliamentary chambers and; $36.3m for the construction of President’s Office. President’s Office, notably, took a bigger bite out of Chinese largesse the human/life investment with long-term economic benefit, infrastructure, and environmental hygiene combined.

Of course these buildings will remain for years to come. Parliamentarians will not take the expanded chambers home with them, nor will President Museveni carry the President’s Office with him to Rwakitura when he retires or is retired. Therefore, the important thing is that they tell us that our leaders think investing Chinese money in political real estate for their comfort, is more important than sinking it into education, health, and building roads.
There is really nothing new – or indeed surprising – there. The only different thing here is that we have data, bwino (ink) that demonstrates that old fact.

So, the behaviour of the African client (beggar) has not changed despite the arrival of a new patron, China. What about China’s? Is it different from that of the Western patrons who have fallen on hard times, and whom it is replacing in Africa?

Many African politicians and officials say the Chinese are “better”. They don’t impose too many unreasonable conditions on their aid and loans. That they are not too hang up on human rights issues, and don’t meddle in recipient/beggar countries’ politics and so on.
True? One might think that because China has invested most in the Political Comfort market in Uganda, that it is buying the goodwill of politicians.

That would be a wrong conclusion. When they build a President’s Office, or refurbish parliament, they are not investing in President Museveni or directly buying the MPs. They are actually investing in the buildings, because they form part of the signposts that shape the story about China in Africa. This is what new powers do when they go into a country and want to replace a legacy power.

The Americans did the same when they came to Uganda at the start of the 1960s and found the Europeans entrenched. They flooded the country with Peace Corps, so that in the end they were perhaps more than European missionaries and British teachers in the country. Then they built, starting more famously with Tororo Girls School.

The Italians cornered the Uganda construction market early, so a whole generation of Ugandans grew up thinking only Italians could build roads. Owen Falls was for electricity to drive British colonial industrial interest, but it worked its way into popular language as a mark of British engineering genius and work ethic.

The idea of exacting “British time” as opposed to undisciplined “Black Man’s Time” was cemented by the clock towers the British built in their empire, derived partly from the Big Ben time showpiece in London.

In 15 years after we have forgotten the cost, the narrative in Uganda will be that if you want to build something serious and finish it on time, China is the place to deliver them. It is that conversation, the top-of-mind awareness by the wananchi in the market and bars that the Chinese are buying, because ultimately our relationship with China in future will be based on who and what we think they are.

The British, Italians, and Americans all did that by building things. So, it turns out, as the new African benefactor that China is playing by the same old well-tested rules too.
cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com

So what would happen if a charter school system were created? First, Kitante would be so rich, you can be sure that the headmaster and all the 50 or so teachers and their wives would vote for an NRM presidential candidate anytime...

So I read in Daily Monitor that the Big Man has given away two more acres of Kitante Primary School land. In 2007, he gave away five acres.

Daily Monitor notes that the hospital that was supposed to be built on the land six years ago is still a myth, and the only activity happening on the land is some brick making.
That should not be surprising. The investor, apparently a one Dr Tamale Sali, who got the land, is better off not building a hospital on it. You see, if in 2007 the land was worth Shs1.5 billion, today it is probably worth Shs10 billion.

There is no hospital, even if it were offering some specialist surgery that elongates rulers’ lives by 10 years, that Dr Sali would build on that land and get that kind of return. Such are the mysteries of the market and capitalism that the good man stands to make more money doing nothing with the land, than sinking money in a hospital hoping to recoup his cost in five or six years. Now, all he has been investing is air, and he could be a billionaire.

However, there is a bigger story in the give away. I am a great believer in the open and free market, so I think that, first, there needs to be public consultation about whether such land should be given away. Secondly, if the agreement is that it should be given away, then it should be bidded for openly, not allocated arbitrary by a big man.

Thirdly, Kitante school, which has been the custodian, should get a cut of such land sales – say 35 per cent, which should go into an endowment fund for the school. This means there is a need for a new law to allow all public schools that have large chunks of land to sell some to the highest bidders.

Of course, corrupt school headmasters and headmistresses will steal the money, and the country could have a “civil war” as the politicians fight to appoint their cronies to schools that are land-rich. So I would suggest that the law establishes a “School Trust Fund”, fashioned along the lines of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) that would receive all the money and invest it. Schools like Kitante would receive a dividend cheque of about Shs1 billion a year. Surely, that is enough to build labs, buy books, pay teachers performances bonuses, and leave enough for the headmaster to line his pockets.

Oh, yes, I forget. All such schools should be reclassified as “charter” schools, and receive only a minimal grant from the Ministry of Education. That would free up more money to be spent on land-poor schools to also raise their standards.

Of course this won’t happen. Not because the proposal is too insane or overly disruptive for a traditional government education bureaucracy to accept, but because the Big Man is not thinking about tomorrow.
For the question a wise ruler would ask is; if the State House and leaders of today give away all public land, and dine on all the groceries, what will the Movement cadres of tomorrow feed on?

What patronage will the NRM leader who succeeds Museveni dole out to buy loyalty? Which public lands or forests will he (or she) give away if the Big Man hands out everything today? What will attract the army of self-serving Ugandans, who are usually very good political mobilisers, to the NRM of tomorrow if even all the markets will have been given away?

So my totally unsolicited advice is that the Big Man rethinks his approach to handing out public property. Giving nine acres of land to Dr Sali benefits mostly him and his family. It probably gets the Big Man two votes from Mr and Mrs Sali.

That is terribly inefficient. Such prime land is worth 20,000 votes and more. So the trick is to give it away in such a manner that it benefits the NRM.
So what would happen if a charter school system were created? First, Kitante would be so rich, you can be sure that the headmaster and all the 50 or so teachers and their wives would vote for an NRM presidential candidate anytime in future to protect the system. That is more than 100 votes already higher the current two.

Now imagine the School Trust Fund is sitting on Shs2 trillion. That would give the president who appoints its managing director a lot of power. The School Trust Fund could be directed to put money into a small business fund, from which more than 1,000 companies borrow—all those are thousands of votes for the future NRM leader.
So the real tragedy of the Kitante school land grab is the selfishness of the Big Man and his lack of consideration for what his successors will eat.

cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com & twitter@cobbo3

He also spoke of a good chap in Kapchorwa who is growing so much barley, he’s run out land. He alone supplies a beer company with 80 per cent of its barley!

The response to the first part of this column last week, “A Revolution Museveni Didn’t Plot Is Happening In Uganda’s Bushes” caught me totally by surprise.

It received the kind of excited responses usually provoked by a controversial political or social column. The first article reported that rich Ugandans are running with their money and opening maize, matooke (banana) and other food farms bigger than the ones for sugarcane and tea.

And, as a result, there are showrooms selling new tractors and implements propping up all over the place – very “unUgandan” things.
In a Twitter post, Denis wrote (rendered here in regular English): “If you ever drive to Arua, you will be amazed by the number of tractors you will see on the roadside just after Karuma before Pakwach.”

From Ronald: “Speaking of tractors, in Amuru a client who needed to sell off five old ones had 10 bids for each tractor. Pleasant things happening.”

The Independent chief Andrew Mwenda called to reveal that a mutual buddy of ours, who used to be a worthy journalist at The Monitor, moved to work with DFiD, before ending up as a fellow at Harvard University, returned and headed straight to the fields in Nakasongola where he is now a designer farmer.

He also spoke of a good chap in Kapchorwa who is growing so much barley, he’s run out land. He alone supplies a beer company with 80 per cent of its barley!

What the hell is going on? I think we are seeing the fruits of the 1988 dismantling of the State produce marketing boards that was overseen by James Wapakhabulo, when he was minister of Cooperatives, and the near-crazy liberalisation of the agricultural commodity market in Uganda.

It was painful, and even devastating to groups in places like Ankole, where the Banyankore Kweterana Cooperative was an economic powerhouse, and Masaka. For President Yoweri Museveni, there was the additional benefit that the demise of the cooperatives scattered the power barons associated with it, allowing the young ruling NRM to supplant them and impose its domination.

That said, the death of the cooperatives also allowed new infrastructure to be built away from the old “traditional crop” (coffee, cotton, tea) supply routes, and fresh players in agricultural machinery not tethered to corrupting State subsidies to emerge. They are coming into full bloom now.

The other critical factor was the passing of the Land Act (1998). That law did two things, which has had unexpected outcomes. First, it recognised communally-owned land and made it possible to title it. Secondly, it provided that if one had lived on registered land unchallenged for 12 years or more, then it was theirs.

President Museveni’s vote-driven orders of recent years for squatters not to be evicted draws its inspiration partly from this latter provision. Mwenda’s view of this is that Museveni’s interventions were potentially harmful to the growth of the commercial agriculture I have described, because it introduces uncertainty.

I agree with him about the uncertainty, but take a different view on its effect. The title of my column last week, “A Revolution Museveni Didn’t Plot Is Happening In Uganda’s Bushes” was imprecise, I must concede. Museveni has played a key role in the current rush of money into agriculture; just that it was not the way he intended.

Both the 12-year-squatter-takes-it provision of the 1998 Land Act, and Museveni’s recent incitements of land encroachers to stay put, actually created a positive disruption.

Absentee landlords and owners of large tracts became afraid that they would lose their land. That all squatters had to do was go and live there, and Museveni would fight for them to stay put. This forced Ugandan landowners, largely a conservative lot, to do something unthinkable – lease their land to other people to farm or raise cattle.

The delayed effect of the 1998 Land Act, and Museveni’s populist anti-capitalist pro-squatters orders, had the effect of a land tax – something that, ironically, his government has resisted. It finally freed investors in land from the burden on ownership.

A friend, a successful businessman, has gone on “rampage” and is farming over 10 square kilometres...

Recently in Kenya there was a statistic that the local media ignored, and was only covered by the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

It said that Kenyans were, finally, again buying more new shoes than second-hand (mitumba) imported ones. The bigness of that news was in its smallness. The second-hand car, spare parts, etc., market is of course still going strong, but in a continent where until the crackdown of recent years, in some countries there were endless markets selling even mitumba socks, bras, and underwear (and they were outselling new ones), when new stuff outsells mitumba, then something significant has happened.

One, it could mean new Chinese products (including shoes) are now cheaper than mitumba, a remarkable phenomenon that only clever economists like Bank of Uganda Deputy Governor Dr Louis Kasekende can explain to us civilians.
Secondly, and more optimistically, that incomes have risen enough that previous buyers of mitumba shoes can now afford new ones.

Thirdly, that all other economic factors haven’t changed, and the only thing that has shifted is a resurgence of African pride and attitude. That we are simply refusing to buy third and second-hand shoes.
Whatever the reality, something dramatic is beginning to happen to our societies whose full nature will emerge more clearly in two or so years.

Indeed in Uganda a few days ago, I was struck by something regular travellers on the Kampala-Jinja Road wouldn’t think twice about. After enduring the sea of second-hand cars in the Banda area, after a short drive toward Jinja you begin to encounter your first new vehicle “showrooms” in Bweyogerere. They are not selling cars, but tractors and their accessories - ploughs, and sprinklers.

Later in a drive through the Industrial Area, I also saw several new tractors and ploughs on sale. I tried to make sense of these eye-pleasing sights. It is perhaps well to mention that a Ugandan of my age grew up at a time when every tractor that came into the country was brought on some – eventually disastrous – government backed “agriculture mechanisation/modernisation” scheme.

Ordinary business people did not invest in tractors, in part because Ugandans (excluding the tea and sugarcane plantations) didn’t farm on a scale that required many tractors. I have become aware that things have changed, and the market for new tractors is now “coming alive” hence the new ones on sale. Now tractors are one of those things where a new one is always cheaper, in terms of cost of ownership, than a mitumba one. But I have also learnt, on good authority, of some very “unUgandan” things that are happening in agriculture. While government programmes like Naads continue to flounder and strangled by corruption, Ugandans with money are breaking ground in interesting ways.

A good pastor, whom I shall not name, has opened so much land in Bunyoro growing rice, maize and other food, he has more than 40 tractors, trailers, and ploughs on the farm. Recently, he harvested more than eight square kilometres of maize.

A friend, a successful businessman, has gone on “rampage” and is farming over 10 square kilometres, and buying up or renting every equipment he can find.

A relative recently travelled on some business to Ibanda, and returned suitably impressed by a chap in the region who had grown matooke (bananas) over an area of over 12 square kilometres! Madness. Ehhh, how shall I put it? Black, or let us say, indigenous, Ugandans never farmed on that level —even rich ones. Cattle, yes, we keep on some scale – and our own President Yoweri Museveni likes to project himself as the country’s First Cattle Keeper. In fact, even in Kenya, many large-scale farms have their history as British colonial settler affairs, or are mostly owned by multinational companies.

Secondly, for Ugandan men to make money, buy huge chunks to farm rather than building a house to keep a second or third wife there safely away from the angry first one, is a truly remarkable change. Me thinks this suggests that a sea change is happening in our country. Though these things are happening today, we shall argue next week that they have their roots in two events in Uganda – one that happened in 1988, and the other in 1998.

At the same time, the change is also coming at an opportune time for Uganda, with the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president in Kenya, and William Ruto as his deputy. These two otherwise unrelated events (in the farms in Uganda and in State House in Kenya), that we shall also examine in this column, could combine to have the most far-reaching effect on Uganda’s economy and Kenya’s politics.
Stay tuned.

cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com