‘NRM Enterprise’ has started bearing fruit
Yoweri Museveni in the bush in Luwero with his combatants in the 1980s
--People are mad that Museveni is showing no signs of leaving power
By Seezi Cheeye
While growing up in the peasantry Banyarwanda cattle-keeping community in the bushes of Luwero, we were taught that a man was expected to be very tough. Real boys were taught to walk with a stick in hand. It was regarded effeminate to walk without a stick.
As a man grew older he was expected to be wiser and happier too. According to TIME magazine of January 17, people between the age of 65 and 74 are a lot happier than those between 20 and 24. So, why is Mzee Francis Gureme, 80, lamenting, cursing and freaking out? The answer is to be found in a wise Kiganda warning : “eyawukana kumugendo efuka kaasa”— a red ant which isolates itself from the rest, gets lost and becomes wild. It is not difficult to see why people like Gureme are falling by the wayside of the ruling movement.
After making my case, readers will appreciate, how people like Gureme eventually become hostile, like the kaasa. To start with, the NRM Government is a precious and highly profitable enterprise. And that is it as it should be. President Yoweri Museveni then only 38, with his fellow 26 young men, took the highest risk on February 6, 1981, and invested in a political economic venture called ‘NRM enterprise’. Subsequently as it was expected, after five years of hard work and real risk taking, Museveni and his group of investors, succeeded, and he as the chief executive of the enterprise, is now harvesting prime dividends. In economics, the greater the risk of investments, the higher the returns of equity.
NRM Enterprise, whose core advantage business is the preservation and maximisation of Ugandan’s life, has achieved amazing results. For example, under the NRM, the Uganda population has more than doubled the population covering the previous 30 years of colonial and post-colonial mismanagement (1948-1980).
While the population grew at a snail’s pace from five million in 1948 to 12.6 million in 1980, under the NRM Enterprise, the population ballooned to 24.7 million (2002). In terms of percentage, Uganda’s population growth crept from 1.5 percent to 3.1 percent between 1959 and 1980, while under the NRM, the population growth skyrocketed from 4 percent (1986) to 8 percent (2002). What this means is that Ugandans are having a good time more than ever before. That is why the population doubled in only 16 years of NRM administration, yet it took a whole of 32 years (1948-1980) of mismanagement for the population to more than double.
There is a scientific relationship between population growth and political stability. Between 1500 and 1900, the growth of African population was hampered by slave trade and as a result grew from 47 million in 1500 to 129 million by 1900, while the population of the rest of the world excluding Africa, grew from 500 million to 2 billion in the same period. African population was 8.6% of the world population before the woes of slave trade and colonisation (1500) but dropped to only 6.1% in 1900 after the woes of slave trade and colonisation. However, since 1900 to-date, African population is once again climbing and now comprises of 13.3% percent of the world’s population (ie 800million people out of the world’s six billion people). In the USA, in a period of only 40 years (1889-1929) the population jumped from only 4 million to 120 million, which was an increase of 2,900%. Since 1929 the USA population has increased to about 300 million today which is an increase of 150%. What this means is that when there is harmony between politics and economics in a country, the invisible hand of free markets persuade the population to multiply.
It baffles me how Gureme has in his sunset days instantly woken up, and self-styled himself into one of the leading political commentators. Where was he in all his prime years before the NRM came and liberated the media? Why did he not write in the Uganda Times or the Voice of Uganda under Idi Amin, at a time when I believe there were more pressing political and economic woes, and he, the burning spear?
How did he perform as minister of Tourism, at a time when most tourists avoided Uganda under the brutal dictatorship of Idi Amin? Gureme went to good schools and mastered classics and became a wonderful whiteman in black skin. After university he was converted into the docility of colonialism and neo-colonialism. In his prime, he invested in soft life, eating sausages, and cat-walking the glittering corridors of Kampala Conference Centre.
From the econometric angle, Gureme invested his prime years in risk-freeoptions, which yield low equity. But that is not the end of the story. People like him are jealously mad that President Museveni, who has been the principal occupant of State House for the last 18 years is not showing signs of leaving. In my view, the CEO is right to hold on to his NRM enterprise, now at maturity level.
The return on heavy investment made, are beginning to flow in. It is the time for him to ensure that the NRM enterprise succeeds.
The founding CEOs of the historical companies, which were built, and have lasted for more than 100 years, managed their enterprise for 30 years and more in the initial built-up period. In order to justify the sea of blood of the more than one million Ugandans killed under the successive savage regimes of Milton Obote, Idi Amin and Obote Two, Museveni’s enterprise must earn returns which are far above that heavy investment hurdle rate (sacrifices).
Gureme is so frustrated that he even has the audacity to politicise the fallen comrades, which is a taboo in most self- respecting people. He believes that it is (sic) good that some comrades died!
According to him, if these comrades had not died they would be in the FDC. This is madness. Brigadier Matayo Kyaligonza and many of the originals are still working with Museveni. Why does Gureme believe that if the fallen comrades were still alive, they would not be working with him?
One last point: Gureme has painted Museveni as an ungrateful man, yet Gureme is himself one such person. Just before his marriage, Gureme came to my office for fundraising. I gave him sh200,000.
Interestingly the man who claims to be prudent, did not invite me to take even a soda at his wedding!
The writer is is a director of Economic Affairs in the President’s Office (ISO)
Gook
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