We need to stop the posturing – carrying around thick books we don’t read – and have an honest conversation about our country and our choices.

I was pleasantly surprised to read my friend Morrison Rwakakamba’s response to this column last week. State functionaries, including ministers, often do not go beyond misspelt abusive text messages. So a counter argument, however flawed, is a welcome twitching of the toe, a sign that the patient, though wounded, lives.
If you ignore the hackneyed and predictable accusation of partisanship, he argued that numbers do not lie, throwing figures to show positive growth since 1986.
First of all numbers can lie; they are only as good as the veracity of the source. Even then, there’s no question Uganda is much better off today than it was in 1986.
However, numbers only make sense if put in context. For instance, he argued that life expectancy has risen from 43 years in 1986 to 50 currently. He did not indicate the source for the figures, as he was probably all over his library, but they seem off the mark.
World Bank data show life expectancy is actually higher, at 54. More intriguingly, they show that our life expectancy was 45 in 1965 and 51 in 1984.
This suggests that we added three years to our life expectancy every decade after independence (even with the Idi Amin mayhem) but have added three years in the three decades since 1984, perhaps due to HIV and malaria.
Apart from putting this into better context, it would support the view that investing in hospitals generally saves more lives than investing in fighter jets.
In addition Mr Rwakakamba falls into two usual traps, both to do with framing.
The first is that he follows the conventional political wisdom by benchmarking Uganda’s development to 1986 as if the country’s political-economic story started there.
By stripping himself of the partisanship he is so quick to assign, he would have seen that, for instance, while the economy has grown in the last three decades, we still produce a lot that we don’t consume and consume a lot that we do not produce. Worse, what we consume is more expensive than what we produce. This is not sustainable.
The second flaw is that, like many people, he frames the question along the lines of ‘how much growth have we seen since 1986?’
A more useful question, even if one insists on that time frame, is to ask, ‘how much growth should we have had in those 27 years?’ Such a question would look at the inputs, the environment, and crucially, at other countries and how fast (and fundamentally) they have grown in the same or similar periods. After 27 years are we on track to achieve what Singapore did in 35? Where has all the aid gone, and how come our external debt has risen four times since 1984 despite debt relief and higher domestic tax collections?
We need to stop the posturing – carrying around thick books we don’t read – and have an honest conversation about our country and our choices.
A few simple questions: Why is Kenya able to build a multi-lane Thika Highway when we can’t complete the Northern Bypass that is half the length and a third of the size?
Why was Malawi able to go from a food importer to an exporter in five years when all we can show of our NAADS flagship agricultural programme are “model farmers” parading borrowed goats?
Yes, we’ve increased power generation from 60MW to 812MW – drum rolls, please – but Ethiopia has over 2,500MW in the pipeline while rent seekers in Kampala delay the 600MW Karuma Dam over bribes and commissions.
These are not NRM or Opposition questions. These are Uganda questions.
Many of the answers to these questions lie in the absence of institutionalised allocation of resources, supervision, and renewal. The institution building necessary for this to happen is itself a question of leadership.
Three of the strategic sectors of the economy – oil, hydropower and agriculture – are currently on hold, awaiting a smoke signal from a State House consumed by regime survival.
Show me a statistic that shows how well we have done since 1986 and I will show you two that show how much better we could have done.
For how long shall we remain hostage to “since 1986”? How shall we explain to our children that countries like South Korea, which were as poor as us 50 years ago, are building ships while we eat chips?
We can use statistics like a signpost of how far we have to go, or as a destination on which to rest our bicycles. It is a long, long way to Singapore, Mr Rwakakamba, and you better get back on your bike and keep riding.

dkalinaki@ug.nationmedia.com

Any leader who stays in power for three decades or more is bound to suffer from a decreasing marginal return on political productivity and popularity but there is something more at play here.

President Museveni and the NRM government he leads this week celebrated 27 years in power.

That is a truly remarkable feat. Consider this: When they took power in 1986 the Internet, as we know it today, did not exist; Somalia was still a functioning state; Liverpool was still winning the league; and the Soviet Union was still one country.

I was not too long out of my nappies then and I remember singing along to the “revolutionary NRA songs” and watching with boyish wonder the events at Kololo Airstrip. The sleek VIP cars; the big mounted guns, their big black barrels erect with the Viagra of deadly possibility; the thin Kaunda-suited VIPs spitting revolutionary slogans, speaking of a wonderful world to come, in which no one would be left behind.

Then there was Museveni the teacher, going around the country in his Kaunda-suit with a portable blackboard and chalk, giving lectures on infant mortality rates and gross domestic product.

How could anyone not have loved that man?

Lucky were those whose districts got picked to host national events for, if you were good and disciplined in school, you got to attend the parade, march with the bands, your flimsy polyester uniform shirts a testament to the meagre but deeply satisfying egalitarian times.

Twenty-seven years later, we are grown men with children of our own but looking back into the shattered mirror of our lost childhoods.

These days, young people see no romanticism or revolutionary traits in those marching bands. Crowds often have to be bussed (and paid) to turn up; many more are happy to get a day off and stay at home, away from the fanciful façade of phantasmagoria, the rehearsed rectitude of political rhetoric.

Our dear beloved leader still makes some valid arguments when he speaks (such as the need for infrastructure and value-addition) but it increasingly sounds rehashed and insipid, like the leftover bits from a hearty dinner.

The passion is gone, replaced by politically partisan arguments that seek to put the NRM and its adherents ahead of Uganda and all its citizens.

The blackboard and chalk are also gone, replaced by bullion vans and brown envelopes for those whose political ulcers need to be treated with a large, urgent dose of legal tender.

Any leader who stays in power for three decades or more is bound to suffer from a decreasing marginal return on political productivity and popularity but there is something more at play here.

It is as if the wider Museveni has cast his influence the smaller his presidency has become.

This year’s NRM day celebrations were postponed so that the President could attend the AU Summit in Addis Ababa.
There he was in fine form; the deal-maker helping resolve conflicts, from DR Congo to South Sudan, Burundi to Somalia.

In the enforced absence of the likes of Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali and Muammar Gaddafi, and the reluctance (and low intellectual bandwidth) of the likes of Eduardo Dos Santos and Teodoro Nguema Obiang, Museveni casts a larger-than-life shadow on the continent, ensuring that his relevance abroad continues to make him indispensable at home.

This story proves the effect of patronage but it does not show what causes it or how to end it.

Two ministers were recently taken ill; deputy Prime Minister Eriya Kategaya, who is also minister in charge of East African affairs, and Hilary Onek, who is in charge of Internal Affairs.

As often happens, the two were promptly flown abroad for treatment. Eng. Onek is an old friend from the days before he became a big chief and I hope they both recover fully.

Your columnist has argued here before that the government has a subterranean interest in the patronage of health care.
Let’s take the case of Mr Kategaya. A childhood friend of the President, Mr Kategaya famously opposed the amendment of the Constitution to remove presidential term limits that would have sent Mr Museveni into retirement in 2006.

Kategaya was promptly fired from Cabinet and soon found himself down at the heel. Struggling to stay above the water, he ate humble pie and meekly returned to the fold. He’s not said a word since.
That decision to return to the kraal and graze quietly is, in present times, and for lack of a better expression, is a matter of life and death for Mr Kategaya.

If he had kept true to his word and stayed out of government, he would have been much respected but might have been done in by a week or so in the decrepit Mulago Hospital. In effect, he traded his credibility for his life, choosing to be a live, purring cat over a dead manly lion.

This story proves the effect of patronage but it does not show what causes it or how to end it.

At a government retreat last year ministers heard that the government spends about Shs375 billion every year treating its loyal officials and cronies abroad.

That is almost half of the total annual health budget and more than 10 times the amount of money that the government spends on Mulago, the country’s largest and once-best hospital. It is also 63 times more than the government spends on all district hospitals.

Cabinet recognises this as a problem; that is why it was discussed at the retreat in the first place. Why, then, is it unable to deal with it?
The obvious answer is that the ministers are beneficiaries of this patronage and self-interest dictates that they maintain the status quo.
However, the ministers cannot be blind to the criticism or the political dividend that effective service delivery offers.

There can be two alternative explanations. The first is that a government that has thrived on patronage and inefficiency cannot, however well intentioned its efforts may be, suddenly become efficient and equitable.

Positive change, when it happens, is slow and often against all odds.
The other possibility is that patronage offers a higher political return than investing in efficient service delivery.

Initially, citizens complain about the poor state of services. Then, when their cries go unheard, they begin to ‘privatise’ the state. They hire private guards (security), buy generators (power), storage tanks (water), take their children to private schools (education) and go to private hospitals (health).

Some citizens are wealthy enough to afford to pay for all of these and more, including private treatment abroad.
Many others opt to pay for it by privatising public resources through theft or receiving pay-outs from those who push the political pork barrel of patronage through the village paths.

At this stage moral outrage is replaced by selfish cunning. Instead of questioning why a minister gets to fly abroad to have their bottom pricked while 16 mothers die every day while giving birth, citizens start schemes to either become ministers or steal whatever they can.

Like grasshoppers in a glass jar, citizens then turn against one another; maids steal from masters, employees from employers, even spouses from one another.

It is in that catch-22 situation that we now find ourselves. The government is unable to clean up a lot of the rot and even if it tried we would receive those efforts with cynicism.

A friend recently took me to see his farm 30 kilometres to the north of Kampala. It is a small, modest farm with crossbreed goats, free-range chicken and rabbits.

After the farm we went to another of his initiatives; a small-scale whisky plant set up in a converted house. Again, nothing fancy but although my friend has big dreams, he likes to start small.

On the way back I asked my friend what inspired him to start looking beyond employment (hint! hint!), beyond trade (he has done business in Kikuubo and continues to do so) into manufacturing.

He told me the usual stories of how trade margins in Kikuubo were under pressure from taxes, competition, et cetera, but also said something that astounded me.

Petty Asian traders, he told me, were slowly taking over the import trade in downtown Kampala and other commercial areas. Many of them, from China, India and Pakistan, were able to bring in goods on credit and undercut the market, making more money on volume sales.

He told me of a story of a young female trader who arrived from China and was granted “investor” status, allowing her preferential terms and a five-year tax holiday. Within those five years she had become one of the largest electronics traders, with some of the healthiest margins.

Then the five years ran out. So she returned to China, returned with her father who acquired “investor” status, set up a new company, which then acquired the older business, in effect renewing the tax exemption for another five years.

So, I asked my friend, what incentives has the government given you? None, he said. He pays full tax on the liquor he produces and the money he invests in both businesses (which he saves from his day job) is not tax deductible.

As I read the platitudes and condolence messages for James Mulwana, my mind kept drifting back to my friend and the millions of Ugandans who are trying to emulate his industry and write their own rags-to-riches stories.

Mulwana grew up in a Uganda where colonial political-economic policy was designed to favour the European rulers and the Asian trading and manufacturing class over the indigenous class, whose role was to grow the raw materials (cotton, coffee, sugarcane, etc.) that fed the industries at home and abroad.

It was understandable but not justifiable and it took violent riots and the onset of the Independence movement to deal with some of the more extreme discriminatory policies.

Fifty years after Independence, my friend and others like him, you and me live in a society of political independence without economic liberation. We remain prisoners of predatory policies and parasitic poverty.

If my friend, who already employs close to 30 people with his modest enterprises, were able to somehow become a “foreign investor” he would probably get a tax break, some free land, and political support from the government.

But because he is Ugandan and not politically connected, he soldiers on, trying to cut corners where he can or simply leaving things to fate.

Uganda must be the only country in the world where citizens, other than the passports that they have to pay for, and discounted entry prices to game parks, hardly enjoy any benefits that visitors do not.

Lwemiyaga MP Theodore Ssekikubo was driving home on Monday night when plain clothed men who claimed to be police officers surrounded him and said they had instructions for his arrest.

After a brief standoff, the men were joined by uniformed police officers who forcefully arrested the MP and dumped him at a police station. His colleagues and associates say he was assaulted during the arrest. There is, as yet, no independent corroboration of the alleged assault.

On the day after Ssekikubo’s arrest news emerged that the police had delivered to Parliament a formal request to interrogate the MP and others accused of allegedly inciting violence and hatred towards the state.

According to the police letter, the MPs were required to appear on Friday, yet Ssekikubo was arrested and maybe assaulted four days earlier. So why was there a rush to arrest the Lwemiyaga MP?
To understand the context of that question, one needs to go back to the earlier arrest, on Christmas Eve, of MPs Chris Baryomunsi and Mohammed Nsereko.

Nsereko, in particular, was arrested after a stand-off with the police at his home. After Christmas and three days in jail, plans were made to bring him to court. A little bird whispered to us that morning that not only would Nsereko be charged in Tororo, where the offence allegedly took place, but he would also spend the weekend in prison.

That is exactly what happened. A government source our people spoke to that day said it was “important to teach Nsereko a lesson” by keeping him in jail for as long as possible, and try to humiliate him in any way for his persistent attacks on the government.

Incidentally, the Observer newspaper reported yesterday that one of the police officers that arrested Ssekikubo allegedly told the lawmaker: “You, we are going to deal with you. Why are you fighting the state?”

So it does not really matter whether the MPs committed a crime or not; if the government agents are to be believed – and there is little reason to doubt them – the most important thing is to teach pesky MPs a lesson.

That lesson is one that many journalists learnt a long time. There was a time, not too long ago, when it was almost impossible to find a newspaper editor in their offices on a Friday.
They tended to disappear on Thursday evening and reappear on Friday evening or later. Being arrested on a Friday, regardless of why and when the problematic story had been published, often meant spending the weekend in jail.

The police officers had perfected the art of manipulating the process such that you appeared in court very close to closing time – and after the banks, which closed at 4pm those days – had long battened their hatches.
With banks staying open longer and more forms of payment available, these days there is a variant to this trick.

Sometimes, as almost happened when a colleague and I were charged, a police officer will try to steal a key document from the file, or have a defective charge sheet to ensure that you are kept overnight – or longer – until your file is sorted and you can be charged ‘properly’.

Depending on how long you have been “disturbing” the state, you might suddenly find all your old sins being thrown at you when you are finally cornered. Bank loans might be called in, traffic offences dusted off.

Another little bird, for instance, says Ssekikubo has over a dozen pending charges – most of them election related – in Rakai and Sembabule. Nsereko also has unresolved issues with a financial transaction gone wrong at one of the local banks in town.
How long before those are dusted off? More importantly, how long before the state adopts more violent means to teach critics a lesson?

MPs have been suitably aghast at the treatment of their colleagues in recent weeks. They would have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing if in standing up for their fellow MPs they remained silent for the thousands of no-bodies currently learning lessons from the state.

Some might say we need not cry for the likes of Sekikubo, with their close ties to the state (remember his UC car license plates) and their own misdemeanours (remember his pistol whipping incident at a polling station). I disagree. When a head teacher decides to punish his teachers the pupils had better be at their best behaviour!