Also, most of our investments are never professionally managed. When the owner of the wealth passes on, so do the secrets of how the wealth is managed.

I bumped into a gentleman whose father did so well in the 1960s through to the 1990s. He farmed a lot of land, herded animals, invested in transport and put up several buildings.

When the old man passed on he left a lot of wealth for his children. These children had been put through good schools. In Ugandan speak; the old man had done everything to ‘plan for his children’.

Now this gentleman, the heir, literally lives on alms. When the old man passed on, he ‘fell into things’. But farming proved too tedious and sweaty for this university graduate, so he delegated and tried to till the land on phone from Kampala. The animals and crops soon slowly died and the land became idle.

He borrowed money to revive the farm. The houses in Kampala were taken over by banks and money lenders. He sold part of the farm land and tried to invest in things that bring ‘quick money’ so that he would strengthen his cash flow. He ended up with a fleet of taxis, boda bodas, a bar with several pool tables, etc. Accidents, thefts and dishonest drivers crashed his dream.

He turned to God and a pastor tricked him into ‘sowing’ part of the estate in order to reap the gigantic fruits of the Kingdom of Heaven. That was the last he saw of his money yet he needed it more than ever now that he had acquired great tests in wine and women.

He fathered a couple of children with different women who moved on when they saw no more of the money, some leaving behind young children. Sadly he also contracted HIV.

This is a very ubiquitous Ugandan story that has seen the failure of sustaining family businesses. It is very rare to find families owning and growing old money, property and other forms of wealth, then passing it on to the next generation.

One of our major pitfalls is summarised in the words of Epictetus, a Greek sage and philosopher who cautions thus, “be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.”

Most of our children know absolutely nothing about the wealth they inherit, how it was acquired, how to protect and grow it. They are simply handed everything on a silver platter.

But also parents, besides sending children to a good school, never find it worthwhile to impart important life skills like attentiveness, gratefulness, generosity, forgiveness, integrity, frugality, hard work, diligence, faithfulness, humility, patience and hope, among others.

The other problem we have is that most of our wealth is in the form of tangible ‘solid’ property - houses, cars and farm animals - which helps us ‘prove’ that we have money. Trouble is that these are vulnerable to physical destruction and easily abused or sold.

Yet, if our children are seriously trained and equipped with what are regarded as ‘menial’ trades like carpentry, painting, building, etc., they can utilise these skills for a lifetime.

Also, most of our investments are never professionally managed. When the owner of the wealth passes on, so do the secrets of how the wealth is managed.

The culture of induction, apprenticeship and on the job training is not practiced to take a future owner of the wealth through the paces in order to understand his responsibility in the future.

It is even worse if the sources of the wealth are illegitimate. The string of corruption may break with the demise of the owner of the wealth and cut supply to the growth of the wealth.

Then because of the way the family is structured in most African societies, the wealth is likely to be divided among the family other than keeping it as a unit. It weakens the original owner’s plan for the children since each share becomes financially smaller to make a sensible business investment.

But we cannot ignore the fact that to a great extent, the fortunes of an individual depend a lot on the general health of the economy in which they operate. Uganda’s economy, despite the glorious growth figure, has had serious challenges detrimental for anyone who intends to run a genuine business and see their assets grow.

“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done,” is a famous quotation that is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson. This man was one of America’s founding fathers, Principle authors of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and later the third President of the US. No wonder the US went on to become the nation that it is today
In all of the history of the US, there has been an endeavour to do things differently and this is attested by the great number of innovations and patents that come out of that country.

At 50, Uganda’s biggest problem has been stagnation at the national philosophical level. We seem to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. We have tried so many things at the political level with all of them aimed at one thing, the perpetuation of selfish leaders.
From dictatorship, to all watered down versions of democracy; no party, one party, multi party, etc. The net result has been failure and frustration for the majority of our citizens who are left to the vagaries of empty hospitals, poor schools, bad roads and poverty. It is obvious that we have been very diligent while doing the wrong thing which has given us the same end result –futility.
One of the greatest mistakes that we have made is to overlook the fact that nation building is all about people more than anything else. The quality of the people when put together is the type of nation you get.

Many have told the people only half the story. That they are entitled to various indelible rights which is the easier part. They have cleverly hidden the harder part which is laying emphasis on the responsibility of the individual in a democracy.
If Uganda is going to amount to anything in the next 50 years and beyond, we have to get down to teaching and demanding from the individual the fulfillment of their responsibility to the State and building a viable democracy.

Leaders are sensitive to the people who finance their governments. That is why for most of the last 50 years in Uganda, donors and of late investors, have been revered by those that run the country.

If individuals do not work and pay their taxes, but demand services from the government, which services are financed by donors, then Uganda at 100 will be no different from Uganda at 50.
Secondly, Uganda needs empathetic people. If you want to live in a clean city, you must be clean to begin with. If you desire an environment that is characterised by law and order, you must be law abiding. Charity begins at home and it all starts with you.

The individual must know and implement their responsibility to others. If you do not respect domestic house help or are violent towards those who are in a weaker position than yourself, asking the governors of the State to respect human rights becomes a tall order.
But then for the individual to be a significant actor of use to the State, there is a need to have considerable levels of awareness.

This means intellectual nourishment and development must be taken seriously. People should take being informed on both global and local issues.
One of the reasons why we have had low quality citizens is that the scope of many of us is so limited. Many know very little about the world and are therefore amazed and grateful for the tokens that come out of mediocre leadership.

A poorly done road or bridge will definitely seem like heaven to those who have not seen construction of greater magnitude in countries and cities beyond their village. People, who do not read, write and yearn to know more will always be limited in what they know and want. Thus such people will never demand better.

We shall waste more time and resources in the next 50 years if this aspect of having quality citizens is not taken seriously. After all, democracy is about people. Poor quality people will definitely lead to a poor quality democracy and that is the stuff Banana Republics and failed States are made of.

Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues. nicholassengoba@yahoo.com

He has expressed fear that there is a plot to eliminate top Military officers including himself and other prominent political figures.

When the late Brig. Nobel Mayombo died in May 2007, there was raging debate and condemnation regarding the vicious activities of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence CMI; during the time Mayombo headed it.

There was concern that Mayombo had with impunity overseen the gross abuse of human rights which led to the death of the late Patrick Owomugisha Mamenero among several others.

Enter the Coordinator of Intelligence organisations, Gen. David Tinyefuza. Tinye, as he is popularly known, defended Mayombo by saying that “there are no two ways about it. Nation building is about coercion and in the military it is hard to build a nation democratically without coercion!”

Now Tinye is again in the spotlight. He has expressed fear that there is a plot to eliminate top Military officers including himself and other prominent political figures. The motive in his understanding is to clear the deck of those who might stand in the way of the President’s wish to have his son Brig. Muhoozi Keinerugaba succeed him.

What an irony. Tinye’s words have come back to haunt him. If at all such a scheme of purging exists, then it falls well within Tinye’s theory on nation building and that should be understandable to him.

Trouble is that like all of us,Tinye loves his life and would not want to serve as a log to stalk the fires that burn the bricks that build a strong nation. That has been the dilemma of many who hold public office. In their bid to please those that personalise the State the way it has happened in most of Uganda’s history, they do and say things that endanger their lives and the lives of others.

In the 60s when Obote was the State and the State was Obote, some of his ministers came up with the detention without trial laws to rein in his opponents. When things changed some of them including Godfrey Lukongwa Binaisa were incarcerated using this very law.
The politics of Uganda is mainly about convenience for survival and not conviction for service. The question of principle is rare or non-existent.

And this applies to the leaders as well as the led. The history of Uganda is full of leaders who have received a hero’s welcome simply because they have stood up to an unpopular leader. People rally behind them only to suffer more disappointment. It happened in 1971 when Obote fell. Then in 1979 when Amin was ousted.

Obote to some was a relief from the commotion of the short lived UNLF governments of 1979-1982. The Okellos in 1985 where looked at as saviours from the menace of Obote. Then Museveni in 1986 became the long awaited messiah.

Today after about 28 years in power, there are many who believe Museveni has outlived his welcome and uncritically view whoever threatens his hold onto power as a likely redeemer.
Many do not care about the history and character of people like Tinyefuza who has a questionable record not only for his utterances but also for his alleged vicious conduct during Operation North and other operations that have seen the suppression of opposition figures.

I have heard many express their reservations about Tinye but say if he took on Museveni it would be a welcome idea because they are simply tired of Museveni.

That is why we should worry. If Ugandans are so desperate to get rid of Museveni, they may choose whoever rises up to take the mantle. We may end up with a change that is no change. Museveni like Tinye in his own words in not a pacifist. He loves to quote the Kiganda adage that ‘ensi egula mirambo’ (dead bodies are the foundation of nations.) This is in line with Tinyes theories on coercion. Tinye taking on Museveni and vice versa is akin to a case of wolves devouring each other. It is smarter to stand aside and watch without taking sides because their interests may bring them together at some point in time and endanger those who took sides.
In the mean time let General David Ssejusa aka Tinyefuza carry every gram of his cross as he rides the tiger that he fed. If he ends up inside it, he will take the heroes accolades for offering himself to nation building.

Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues

nicholassengoba@yahoo.com

We have become like children. We spoil the toy we have knowing that mummy or auntie will buy us another.

As we approached the headquarters of the once vibrant Uganda Railways, a nostalgic old man gave me some tales of what the railway was at its peak. He travelled in clean cabins with leather seats to most parts of the country and to Kenya as an inspector. It kept time and was a reliable mode of transport that made many proud.
The story is now different. After years of abuse, the railway is mainly a goods train. The few times it does passenger service it makes news with short, carefully planned trips to Namboole Stadium or to Mukono to defeat the purposes of striking taxi drivers.
Most of the lines and the slippers have been vandalised and sold as scrap to steel mills. The fate of the railway is the same suffered by many of the things we inherited from the colonialist.

Factories, schools, hospitals, museums, stadia, bridges, hotels, our foreign missions, etc. Most of the infrastructure has been run down and is dilapidated due to lack of periodic maintenance.

The tragedy of our times is that though many have had formal education, we have failed to divorce ourselves from the habits of our forefathers.

The (wo)men of old had the fortune of living large in the midst of what Mother Nature provided free of charge. To feed the family you simply walked into the forest with your spear, looking for wild prey.

If you were a lousy, lazy, loafer who did not fare well as a hunter, you had the option of gathering nutritious wild fruit and vegetables (dodo, nakati, jyobyo, ntula etc.) The forests were so large for the relatively small populations and provide energy in the form of firewood free of charge.

Like is said of the Basoga, when reprimanded for chopping down trees with reckless abandon, their answer was dhjhameera dhjyenne (the trees grew on their own).

Our forefathers adopted an extractive culture to live and survive. You just took from your surrounding without necessarily giving back or replenishing. Even for the cattle keeping communities, the nomadic practices meant that they just moved on to the places that had water and grass and left the ones that had been depleted.

In these communities, good roads were very rare. Such people would never appreciate the need to build and maintain good roads for they served no purpose.

This background did not teach us the importance of being frugal in the way we used what came into our possession or preserving and maintaining anything. It was all about use and move on to the next opportunity.

These practices have lived with us as we move on to towns and into the modern sphere. And it is not only about misusing and failing to maintain infrastructure. The same applies to the way we deal with the human resources.

If one has an option, many would prefer to work for white people and not their Ugandan kinsmen because Africans do not pay well or would not be ashamed to cheat their workers. It all comes from the habit of taking; this time human sweat without giving back.

What else has exacerbated this problem is the ever present donors. This newspaper some months ago did a picture news story depicting several abandoned ambulances in different states of disrepair. Most were donated and were brand new but lacked a small spare here and there.

Donations have not encouraged the thinking process for those who benefit from them. We have become like children. We spoil the toy we have knowing that mummy or auntie will buy us another. We do not think hard about the source or what it takes to get the toy.

The sum total of societies that lack a maintenance culture is that they are extractive and destructive but rarely creative. They are parasitic consumers and not inventors. They have no worries that induce them to think long and hard about what they have or what they need to do to acquire more. They simply relax and wait for what comes their way, misuse it and wait for the next. The hunter and gatherer is still alive.

Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues.
nicholassengoba@yahoo.com

The same politicians preach hard work but know that people with dependable sources of income of their own are not easy to manipulate.

So in a populist bid to ‘deliver as promised,’ a few days ago President Museveni went to Busoga sub region and doled out a sack containing Shs250 million to a youth group. This maverick move made it to the news menu of several international news outlets and dominated debate in the local media.

Busoga was once the home of Uganda’s industry and prospered as a result of it being in the proximity of the Owen Falls (now Nalubale) Dam. In the last 27 years, it has turned into the land of ridicule for poverty, jigger infestation and Basoga being the makers and sellers of chapatis the country over.

With his sack, Museveni achieved on many fronts. He managed to uphold the agenda of keeping Ugandans preoccupied with their favorite pass time; talking and raving mad without taking actions injurious to his stay in power. Thereafter, Ugandans will move to the next talking point as may be supplied by Museveni’s constant supply of theatrics and curious statements.

His greatest advantage is that the media never gets to look back at what he did or said in the past to access his seriousness. Now all the cheer leaders are telling the world that this is the greatest move in as far as service delivery is concerned.

One wonders if going forward the President is going to move with trucks of medicine, school books and food to ‘deliver as promised.’

Secondly, in the mold of an African chief whose role as giver, he made a point to the unemployed youth and the large armies of people in need of money.

As the sole controller with the capacity to casually deliver state resources, Museveni is bigger and more powerful than any institution in this country. And by the way, he has presided over the collapse and weakening of many of these institutions which he has replaced with himself and his sacks of money.

Now with him, you do not need to work, open a bank account, have a guarantor, sign here and there, etc. to access money. He makes those around him look impotent, incapable and lacking in integrity to deliver. He remains the only shining star in the sky.

If you are ‘compliant’ you shall be rewarded. If you have not been rewarded yet you still have time. These things define the power relation that has kept Museveni going for many years and have many beholden unto him.

To his advantage, Museveni operates in an environment where there is a dominant mindset that expects free things without breaking sweat. Over the years, people have been driven in this direction by those who want to perpetuate themselves in power.

The same spirit drives many elements in the laws governing ownership of land. It is now a habit for people to encroach on land and pretend to be ‘bonafide occupants’ without paying a cent for it. They then take shelter under the pronouncements and protection of politicians who claim to protect the interest of peasants for patronage.

People have been given money like the Entadikwa ‘loan scheme’ and have never paid back. This culture of free money is a disincentive to hard work. The droves of energetic young people in urban and rural areas idling around waiting for the ‘big (wo)men in town to bring them money is part of a detrimental norm that is growing with the silent encouragement of politicians.

The same politicians preach hard work but know that people with dependable sources of income of their own are not easy to manipulate. So they take advantage of this habit of loafing by crying out hypocritically that the government has not helped their people.

The saddest part of this mentality is that it has become entrenched. Our vocabulary is now strewn with terms like kagwirawo (instant cash), bifuuna kilalu (inexplicably gainful), kyabiise (its explosive) kiwedde, (it’s done), etc.

All the sports betting and pyramid schemes plus the outright con men who rob people by making them believe that they can invest millions of shillings in a chemical to be sold to some factory for which they will make a profit 20 times over, are a result of this mentality that there is such a thing as free or easy money.

You can hardly tell what people think or their convictions on public matters. No one wants to be caught on the wrong side because they risk either being killed or have their rights violated. It is smarter to keep quiet.

Thirty four years ago, euphoria greeted the downfall of Field Marshall Idi Amin whose reign from January 25, 1971 to April 11, 1979 was described as a ‘reign of terror’ characterised by mysterious deaths and disappearances. In central Uganda among the Baganda, there was talk of the end of ‘Kijjambiya’ -the big panga- in reference to the killings of the Amin era.

The same Baganda had welcomed Amin in 1971 when he overthrew Obote in coup. Obote’s reign from 1962 had its fair share of mysterious killings and State-inspired violence against its opponents. The Nakulabye massacres, the death of Brig. Okoya and his wife and the storming of the Lubiri in Mengo during the 1966 crisis are some of the most quoted.

The elation after the departure of Amin was to be short-lived. This was captured in the words of former Makerere University Vice Chancellor Prof Ssenteza Kajubi (RIP). Speaking to journalist David Lamb, author of the book The Africans, during the chaotic post-Amin era, Prof. Kajubi, made a cryptic remark to the effect that Uganda had been greatly affected by Iddi Amin and what happened ‘afterwards.’ He added that Uganda had sunk so low that he did not know what it would take for us to rise again.

What happened ‘afterwards’ during the UNLF era was that mysterious deaths most prominent being the deaths in West Nile against what were described as ‘Amin’s people;’ of Muslims in Bushenyi and doctors Bagenda, Obache and many other public servants continued unabated.

When Obote ‘won’ the disputed 1980 elections prompting Yoweri Museveni and his bunch of revolutionaries to take to the tall grasses of Luweero, the killing of Ugandans became a regular occurrence. The skulls of Luweero are testimony to that.

After the fall of Obote the uncertainty and chaos of the short-lived Okello junta of 1985 to 1986 gave Uganda a serious number of dead bodies to count. Then the Museveni era moved the centre of deaths to northern and north eastern Uganda. Mukura and Bulchoro have been recorded. Many others have been dispatched as the killings of northerners by their own son Kony.

It is clear from just this random sampling of our history that killings in Uganda have been a continuous process from our Independence and have not been the monopoly of a particular individual or regime.
The only difference is that the writers of our history take it upon themselves to explain them away by heaping the blame on others. This has led to one of the most enduring and controversial episodes in the Ugandan discourse.

Of great concern, however, is the effect the history of killings and disappearances has had on the psychology and behaviour of the Ugandan. Because most killings have gone unexplained and unpunished, the trust in the State has vanished. The State through its organs, especially the police and courts of law, are looked at with suspicion. Instead we have to align ourselves to powerful individuals who have taken over the role of the State which is not sustainable.

The mess in the justice law and order sector finds its source here. You hardly have witnesses coming forward to testify in court even when they have good evidence. No civilisation can endure in an atmosphere where people do not have faith in the law.

Secondly, Ugandans have become very timid people. The risk one faces for killing another is not very high. There are many people who are known for killing who walk about the streets without fear. Likewise, there are many examples of people who have been killed and life has gone on as if nothing happened.

Thirdly, this sad side of our history has created very opaque characters. You can hardly tell what people think or their convictions on public matters. No one wants to be caught on the wrong side because they risk either being killed or have their rights violated. It is smarter to keep quiet.

This has created very deceptive characters who say one thing and practice another. They keep many secrets about their lives and what they own and this affects their potential. The antidote to all this is building a real State with institutions and functions that work basing on truth, equity and justice. That is Uganda’s challenge going forward.

Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues.
nicholassengoba@yahoo.com