THE EAST AFRICAN-NAIROBI-KENYA
Opinion
Uganda Should Become
the White Man's Grave
First, India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announces that selected Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) living abroad will be allowed to hold dual citizenship. He didn't say it, but clearly the dual citizenship will benefit mostly the rich Indians from among the about 20 million living abroad.
Vajpayee is rightly going for their money, not the sentimental and emotional stuff that doesn't actually put food on the table. There are enough poor Indians, why add on more by throwing open the dual citizenship?
As the Indian story played out, Spain passed a law opening the door to one million people of Spanish descent to apply for citizenship. Obviously the professionals and people with some money in their bank accounts will be taken in more easily than the needy ones.
Dual citizenship is allowed in a few African countries, but luring rich entrepreneurs and professionals with citizenship the way the US does, for example, is not fashionable on this fair continent. In fact, there is hostility toward the idea, because most African governments, and citizens, fear that rich white and brown men and women will come, take over the economy, buy up their land, and eventually take over their country the way the colonialists did.
In all probability, if rich Europeans, Asians, or Americans were allowed to buy African citizenship, they would take over most of the continent. If you are an African peasant, that is a frightening prospect. If you are a successful lawyer or doctor, you are likely to be less bothered. Between the American, Indian, and traditional approach to dual citizenship, there are other models that Africans might want to look into.
If we fear energetic young foreigners coming in and taking over our countries, let us bring in the rich old ones who don't have the energy to colonise us. Because people in the West are living twice, and even thrice, as long as Africans, the helpless aged now form a large proportion of the population. And the West and Japan don't know what to do with them, apart from locking them away in dreadful old people's homes to await their death.
Australia wised up to the possibilities of making money off rich pensioners by selling barren land to the Japanese to settle their old people on. They reclaim the land, bask in the sun, and have all the open air they need, and end their lives happily.
Africa is even better suited. The weather is warm and pleasant. There are green forests, birds, butterflies, chameleons, name it, all over the place. We are also experts at treating old people well. A country like Uganda could set aside some land for elderly American and Japanese millionaires to live happily on in their last years.
These people could pay schoolteachers three times their present salaries just for wheeling them around their gardens. And they would pay them on time, unlike the government, which delays their salaries for months.
A whole industry would grow up around tending rich pensioners from the West and Japan. When they pass away, there is a lot of land to bury them. With time, there will be annual pilgrimages of Europeans and Japanese coming to visit the burial grounds of their grandparents.
These visitors would bring in as much or more money than the tourists coming to see mountain gorillas, baboons, and the diminishing herd of elephants in the parks. And it would be a more stable business. In many countries, poachers have finished off the buffalo, rhinos, and nearly everything else in the park for game meat, trophies, and to be exported to the Far East as cures for impotence and infertility.
But the graves will go nowhere and can survive Africa's unending wars. And once the first grave robbers have raided them for the dead people's golden teeth, bracelets, and rings, they will not return to disturb the peace of the cemeteries.
Comments\Views about this article
Charles Onyango-Obbo is managing editor in charge of convergence at the Nation Media Group.
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
