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Dear Tingasiga:
Yesterday’s Sunday Monitor reported that the Ugandan presidential helicopter had been flown to Belarus for major repairs at a cost of more than $5 million (Shs 8.7 billion).
The Lizard, the Monitor’s cartoon correctly reacted with a suggestion that “we need to put Sebutinde on standby.”
You can be certain that by the time the semi-repaired chopper returns to Entebbe, someone in the Kampala regime will have “eaten” a fair chunk of that money.
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| SLEEK: The presidential jet sitting on the tarmac at Entebbe International Airport. It is expensive to maintain. |
The story reminded me, once again, of statements made exactly nineteen years ago by one of my great heroes.
Shortly after being sworn in as President of Uganda on January 29, 1986, Yoweri Museveni said: "We want our people to be able to afford shoes. The honourable Excellency who is going to the United Nations in executive jets, but has a population at home of 90 percent walking barefoot, is nothing but a pathetic spectacle. Yet this Excellency may be busy trying to compete with [US President Ronald] Reagan and [USSR President Mikhail] Gorbachev to show them that he, too, is an Excellency."
Two months later, he took his message to Acholi, where he told elders at the Acholi Inn on March 12, 1986: "We fought to end murder in Uganda, to end corruption in government, and to end backwardness in the economy. We have had all these Excellencies: Obote, Amin, Okello and now Museveni! While 90 per cent of the people they represent have no shoes, a certain Excellency like Tito is buying furniture worth 500,000 pound sterling, for one house."
Oh! The dizzying joy the president’s words brought many of us! And how very easy it was for us to believe him!
Was he not drinking from a TUMPECO mug? Was he not walking around dressed in simple military fatigues? Was he not allergic to publicly-funded luxury cars in a land of sinful poverty?
A new dawn was upon our country, Tingasiga. The elite’s addiction to the good life at the expense of the impoverished masses was about to be expunged from the land. And the president himself would lead by example.
The dream was nice while it lasted.
Nineteen years later, I find myself not shocked by news of a potential $5million bill for “repairing” the Ugandan president’s chopper; of my hero constantly flying around the world in a $40 million private jet; of a presidential complaint that the well-appointed Presidential Residence at Nakasero is very uncomfortable, certainly inferior to his palace at Rwakitura.
The argument could be made that such opulent tastes are a just reward for one whose work is done, one who has converted the basket case into one of Africa’s most vibrant economies.
After all, the visitor who was last in Uganda 19 years ago would be greatly impressed by the changes that have occurred in the intervening years.
The traffic jams on the roads and on the airwaves, on the boda-boda paths and on the dance floors of trendy night clubs, in the shopping malls, at the UPE school gates and in dozens of new colleges and universities, are visible evidence of the good that the regime has enabled.
To be sure, the hundreds of thousands of new houses, including million dollar mansions that dot the landscape of Kampala and other cities and towns, is an achievement worthy of great praise for the owners and for the president under whose watch the bricks and blocks have mushroomed on empty lots and former slums.
Yet this sense of satisfaction would not have sat well with my hero of 19 years back. He would have reminded us that these marvellous achievements for which we are justly proud, have yet to address the majority population that lives in poverty.
Oh yes, some of the wealth in the hands of a select elite has trickled down to the rural folk and the urban peasants. But not even the most creative sycophant can claim that Uganda’s economic prosperity has reached a level that justifies this presidential lifestyle fit for a French King.
The biting poverty under which millions of Ugandans live is morally and fiscally incompatible with the spendthrift culture that obtains at the Presidential palace.
President Museveni himself has had occasion to make this observation. “Some people are living a profligate life and even an extravagant life, while others are living in poverty,” Museveni was quoted in The Monitor of May 28, 2004.
It was a correct observation by one who knows, though of course his words do not match his actions.
As you continue to sing the song of success, Tingasiga, spare a moment to reflect on the president’s observation and on the following questions:
How long will the poor folks sit and watch in passive silence Tingasiga, as you and your cohorts feed off the carcass of a country they also call home?
Do those under-paid and over-worked house servants, butlers, drivers, gardeners and security guards who keep your mansions and lifestyles in excellent shape, share your satisfaction with the bounty that has come your way? Are they blind to the profligate and extravagant life that Museveni talked about?
Where do their kids go to school? Where do your kids go to school? What do their kids do after they finish their brief formal education under UPE? What opportunities do your kids enjoy after they finish their education in the Ivy League schools in Africa, Europe and North America that have become the choice destination of the offspring of the well-heeled and well-connected?
When their relative dies, who buries him in their humble villages? When your relative dies, how many publicly funded SUVs and limousines wind their way to your home to give the deceased an opulent send off?
Where do you fly to when you are sick? South Africa this time or will it be Europe again? If you are too broke or too scared to fly, will you go to Mulago or will it be one of Kampala’s upscale private hospitals and clinics where you enjoy excellent care – for a hefty fee that could easily run a dispensary in Nakapiripirit for a couple of months?
If you must suffer the indignity of going to Mulago Hospital, will you join your fellow citizens in the Casualty Department or will you first call your doctor friend to meet you in the private wings of the hospital, far away from the smells of the really dead and the living dead?
And will you be treated the same way as your security guard or will it be what Ugandans call VIP treatment, as if your disease is any different from that afflicting another Ugandan on Ward 4A?
If my hero of 19 years ago returned from captivity, he would tell Ugandans: "We fought to end murder in Uganda, to end corruption in government, and to end backwardness in the economy. We have had all these Excellencies: Obote, Amin, Okello and now the New Museveni! While 90 per cent of the people they represent have no shoes or basic health care, a certain Excellency is spending $5 million to repair a helicopter to fly him around a very tiny country that can be completely criss-crossed by road in less than a week."
The Old Museveni might even remind us that the colonial governors and Milton Obote in his first reign, were able to govern the same country without private choppers and jets. And that was before the invention of cell phones, satellite phones, fax machines, fast cars and numerous RDCs, ministers, and presidential assistants and advisors whose job is to help the President govern the small country.
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