Netters,
Read and analyse critically on the real issues facing Uganda...........
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African man looks quite depressing by Alan Tacca
If you look, the condition of African man is truly worrying. You could be
contemplating our army of born again Christian pastors, who seem to be
incapable of distinguishing between their extravagant emotional excursions into
the mythical realm and their encounter with things that can be tested and
verified.
You could be looking at a Thabo Mbeki (of South Africa) who leaves the wrong
health minister in office and fires her deputy, apparently because the deputy
embarrassed the President by correcting his vision on HIV and Aids.
Then again, it could be a Maj. Gen. Jim Muhwezi, arguing that his prosecution
by the IGG in the Gavi Fund scandal was invalid because he believed the IGG was
not acting independently, but at the behest of the President; although the same
Muhwezi was suddenly able to see that the issue about the IGGs salary (in
another scandal) was not who the whistle blower was, but whether the
allegations were true or not.
I will not go so far as to suggest that melanin (which is good for our skin
on long hunting expeditions in the hot tropical sun) may be partnered with
another chemical that is bad for cool-headed reflection, but the African all
too often embraces patently irrational positions with surprising enthusiasm.
Are you Arsenal or Man U? A visitor to East Africa would think our second
nature was defined by European football. Ordinary (even poor) working people
pump money into telephone company coffers not to mention the tax collector
to wring their heads on FM radio stations about ball skills and the shifting
fortunes in a ruthless enterprise where they can only be losers.
And before they have recovered properly, they are required to take interest
in which primate might be evicted from the Big Brother Africa house.
Leisure? Yes, you need some leisure, although not necessarily of that kind.
Excess? Ah
the African usually waits for the European (after the Europeans
own excess!) to warn him that his feet may no longer be on the ground.
But in a world full of paradoxes, where it is easier to ban fake Chinese toys
than to blacklist despots and useless government officials, African man seems
to be willingly ceding his very claim to common sense.
If you read Nasasiras Shs 228 bn road Works headache in the August 19
Sunday Monitor, the end of the report makes you sigh with despair. Works
Minister John Nasasira had quickly dismissed the charges of incompetence
levelled against his department, and he had given several reasons why road
construction had been slow and why the costs had dramatically gone up over the
last six years or so.
The prices of bitumen, fuel, cement, steel and machinery were rightly
mentioned.
Naturally, the minister had left out the factor of corruption and the cost of
militarism and politics generally, but he had listed taxes.
Now, here is the really pathetic bit: Nasasira said that African finance
ministers had formally requested the World Bank to study the astronomical rise
in road works expenditure.
The African Development Bank had also reportedly sanctioned a parallel
investigation.
Clearly, you will soon need the Bank of Uganda to investigate why you cannot
build a decent chicken house for 100 birds for less than $300.
A few days later, the National Public Procurement Integrity Baseline Survey
(2006) report came out. It gave Shs148.5 billion as the absolute minimum that
was stolen in bribes, procurement irregularities etc in the 2004/05 financial
year, in only the 13 government agencies, 26 (out of about 80) districts and
seven municipalities that had been sampled.
With hundreds of redundant political functionaries already on the payroll,
election losers are now also shamelessly getting free money from the taxes that
Nasasira listed among the reasons for high road bills. So the taxes should go
up, along with all the other prices!
If the finance ministers who met in Mozambique lacked the honesty or
competence to do our housekeeping arithmetic, are they paid for reinforcing the
image of African man as an irrational absurdity on the planet?
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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By Coutesy of:
Michael BWambuga wa Balongo
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