HIV/AIDS: how have we measured up!

HIV/AIDS has ravaged Uganda since the 1980s when it was referred to as a strange disease!

In the 1990s Uganda shone among countries in the world with a head-on approach to deal with the epidemic; sustained efforts led to decline, Uganda was hailed and became a model.

At its peak and glory, numerous prevention programs had achieved a great deal, particularly the ABC approach, which won a lot for a country that had almost lost hope of even the slightest chance of recompense. HIV/AIDs was billed in no uncertain terms save for being referred to as a disease for infidels and those found immoral–all hogwash!

Initial challenges existed but the country audaciously ran numerous programs that culminated into public disclosure and the need to treat those found with the disease humanely. Uganda shone out of many and was said to have the best approach in the world.

But like any good things coming to an end, Uganda experienced a surge starting in 2004 that stunned policymakers and observers.

Arguments explaining the surge vary but most prominent ones claim that since 2004 Ugandans generally became complacent due to provision of free antiretroviral drugs—that offered new lease of life to infected persons to live longer—and that shifting from a comprehensive ABC campaign strategy as a perfect preventive approach, to more emphasis placed on abstinence based responses killed the plot. Uganda had placed a lot of emphasis on condom (C) use if people found it hard to abstain (A) or even being faithful (B).

Reports also suggest that infection rates became common among married couples especially those that were said to be maintaining sexual networks—a situation where a person maintained numerous sexual partners besides his or her married spouse. Sexual networks caused lapses in condom use as one of the best preventive methods against infections.

Be that as it may, Uganda is vast with elaborate sexual practices—from numerous cultural groups—that would be frustrated if condoms were used. South Africans always put it aptly and simply—you can’t eat sweets with its wrappings!

Cultural demands and cultural inclinations didn’t do much to lessen the incidence. Today, Uganda is creeping back to an HIV runaway situation, which if not abated will reach unprecedented levels.

In northern Uganda for example, after so many years of war that lent a torrent of suffering, HIV/AIDS has become a reality. Due to hardships, people in this part of the country willingly test to establish status for appropriate attention just in case but that notwithstanding need a lot of support.

Like it is elsewhere, HIV/AIDS is clearly a health problem threatening human welfare, socio-economic advancement, productivity, social cohesion, and even national security and as a matter of fact, concerted effort needs to be made towards its eradication.

Uganda Cranes flies closer to Africa Nations Cup final

Uganda is a country full of contradictions; only a few months ago political temperatures reached boiling point! From polls in February, to discrediting results there on, to opposition led walk-to-work protests in April until chaotic scenes of swearing in of the president in May, government was made to look like they were about to lose grip anytime.

Suffice to note that for over 20 years since President Museveni came to power in 1986, Kampala had never known cruelty of such scale meted out by police and red top military to quell demonstrations sparked off by unwarranted increase of fuel and commodity prices that have made cost of living seem improbable.

If it’s a country united in grief a few weeks ago after grandiose mistreatment of protesters, Ugandans seem to have buried their hatchets. They march to Nambole Stadium (June 4) to demonstrate support for the national football team—The Uganda Cranes—in their encounter against Guinea Bissau.

Besides other factors, heavy mobilization can be explained by momentum set a few months ago in the first away encounter in Bissau in which Uganda Cranes won by 1-0. If a good turn deserved another, Uganda Cranes needed to win again to make their chances of qualifying for Africa Nations Cup possible.

Surprisingly, on regional level, in the Confederation of East and Central African Football Cup (CECAFA), no other country surpasses Uganda on the number of times they’ve won the cup. Conversely, the Cranes last appeared at continental level in the 1978 Africa Nations Cup final in Ghana where they lost to hosts, Black Stars, by 2-0. From then on, Uganda has been struggling to regain her footballing glory of the 1970s when General Idd Amin Dada was president.

If this is the significance making stakes high in Kampala, FM radios, TV stations and print media also join in the clarion call for show of patriotism for the second leg. As expected, turn up at Nambole National Stadium is incredible! In equal measure the Cranes play their hearts out with a deserved 2-0 victory over the visitors—Guinea-Bissau! Victory means Uganda Cranes need one point in her last encounters; home against neighbours Kenya and away against Angola in Luanda.

This victory has been a hard one after months of political uncertainty and upheaval. Present at the match is Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi and Vice President Edward Sekandi, whose grand appearance is greeted with commendable applause.  In spite of that, patriotism in a country that needs it most is still in doubt! Debate has always been why people from northern Uganda embrace the national flag while those from other regions especially central care less.

One thing about football is that no one can equal it in unifying masses in spite of visible undercurrents especially in Uganda today. Before and after kickoff unprecedented armies of Vuvuzela wielding supporters paint Kampala yellow—official colour of the national side. As they trek to Nambole, they can be heard from distances blowing their trumpets. This is to continue throughout the night in extended victory parties as Ugandans feel it’s their time to go!

Is Uganda headed for French Revolution style of civil disobedience?

When the madness of an entire nation disturbs a solitary mind, it is not enough to say the man is mad! These words reverberate but are words proclaimed by a popular Kenyan playwright, Francis Imbuga, in his play—Betrayal in the City—in which he tells a scintillating account of a dictatorial regime ‘hell-bent’ to protect its corrupt ways by any means possible!

Roles attributed to different characters in Francis Imbuga’s play may represent different social cleavages but in so many ways seem reminiscent to what is happening in Uganda today. If a system starts falling and its leaders become detached from the reality, any positive criticism or call it advice is usually ignored like a passing fad.

Like many countries in Africa, Uganda is facing economic downturn with high unemployment, soaring fuel and commodity prices that have lent a torrent of suffering to many, thus leading to a group of mainly opposition-led politicians to orchestrate a march to express discontent not by guns, sticks or stones; but by mouths to talk and legs to walk in what has come to be known as—‘walk to work’ demonstrations!

These occurrences are not a repeat of history but a new phenomenon of civil disobedience, which those in power are failing to understand. Like the story of meeting soul force with physical force, those on the march have been beaten, forced into retreat and many, like in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., paying the price of creative suffering.

Casualties range from grueling images of an unfortunate woman whose intestines are flashed out to children wailing after canisters of teargas are fired into their compound to opposition leaders roughed up and many sustaining injuries in the process.

If this is the madness Uganda is experiencing, it is really unfortunate at a time when the country has just emerged out of the February 18 polls. The script being written is a script for every one to recapitulate where Uganda is headed to after years of self-actualization.

Question that should be pondered on is why a country that has been building democracy can’t allow freedom of expression and freedom of association? Answers may be many although most overriding is the paranoia after mass protests changed regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.

Years ago, in similar circumstances in 1789, France burst into flames over the arrogance of King Louis XVI, and his profligate wife, Queen Marie Antoinette. Their failure to listen to advisors about the plight of the people caused stringent economic situations that downgraded livelihoods and unsavory treatment of peasants by feudal lords and landlords.

Of course this is not in reference to any of our leaders but this is to draw comparisons of how a simple solvable situation can escalate into mass hysteria to an extent of threatening national security.

Historian argue that although no single factor is directly responsible for sparking the French Revolution, King Louis’s failure to judge the mood and aspirations of the common people could be the reason why France erupted.

Today Uganda is at the brink of disorder as images emerging out of it tell a story!

Did we vote wisely to spend wisely!

Recovering from election fever feels like a new lease of life; while many are overly happy and others disgruntled and in all measure reeling with rage, current changes are affecting everybody whichever way they voted or did not vote!

We’ve seen this happen everywhere and every time; discussed and wondered why election fever comes and goes, and when we get back to normal, realize how zealous we’ve been about things we thought mattered yet in actual sense didn’t matter!

We lend in every effort, scrutinize tomes of posters, flyers and manifestos; and reach conclusion—at least in our hearts and minds—that since those we like would deliver on their part when elected to positions of responsibility, we vote for them!

During election time, shutting up about anything is almost and usually impossible. Every nook and cranny becomes abuzz with one legendary concern—entrust those with demonstrable will and power to fight for the change we deserve. This call usually amounts to nothing but–‘voting wisely’!

This electoral cliché or supposedly so, circulates everywhere although it isn’t easy to ascertain or even discern what ‘voting wisely’ really means. Instead, political hysteria is poured and even those you wouldn’t assume to be heretical about anything vow to fight or die for those they believed in!

But once presidential, parliamentary and local council elections are held and results are announced, grueling ways only return in earnest. In Uganda for example, Fuel prices as well as those of other commodities have instead soared. It is now that people begin to imagine whether the way they voted has anything to do with what is happening, as those that failed in their bid remind you–we told you so and those voted into power begin their usual lies of shifting blame.

Indeed, in a space of time the world has changed! Both Tunisian and Egyptian presidents are gone; Libya’s Gaddafi is under enormous pressure from western bombardment, as the whirlwind also continues to Arab Middle East.

In Uganda, not so many can survive beyond one dollar a day.  But one thing, if miracles really do happen, is how local Ugandans survive everyday and none of them is ready to grace streets, protesting the soaring commodity prices changing almost at every blink of an eye!

We’re talking about austerity times perhaps, where commodity prices can spark a revolution like it happened in Egypt and possibly Tunisia, but Ugandans can protest against anything else but not soaring food prices.

Yes, fuel for example that escalates prices of every other thing including sex, has had its price increase everyday with little chance of abating. Our trade unions that are supposed to check such economic excesses seem to have been pocketed by government because lately, they’re not taking a rant on any economic anomaly! Even when government wields a lot of power, since the levy on petroleum is very high, they can’t intervene to stabilise the situation to make ‘voters’ happy. Instead every occurrence is blamed on something else—credit crunch, pirates and now precarious situation in the Arab world!

What is interesting is that if blaming everything on the US dollar is not good enough, it is always tied with something else to keep fuel prices going because that is where government draws most of her revenue. Even when the US dollar declines against the local currency fuel prices can never go down, why?! Austerity times indeed!

 

Is Kakira a place yearning for change?!

An influx of indentured labourers, of Asian descent—mainly Indians, are ferried into East Africa to engage in construction work of what comes to be commonly known as the Uganda Railway.

This railway is one of the most ambitious projects in British history, envisaged to link hinterlands of Kenya and Uganda to the coastal port of Mombasa, to transport raw materials for shipment to Britain and finished goods in reverse order. At this time, East Africa is at the dawn of colonialism, heavily opening up to vicissitudes of lopsided international system characterized by plunder and colonial rule over numerous cleavages of local authorities.

From 1896 in Mombasa, the railway takes 35 years to reach Kampala. During its construction, many lives due to disease, hostile encounters between construction workers on one hand and local ‘tribes’ and wild animals on the other are lost. In addition to hefty financial costs, these occurrences spark debate in the British Parliament. Opposition legislators wonder whether this is not an ambitious project meant to waste taxpayers’ money while maintaining it should be equated to nothing but a Lunatic Express.

These setbacks do not derail progress. In Winston Churchill’s words, “The British art of ‘muddling through,’ was here seen in one of its finest expositions. Through everything – through the forests, through the ravines, through troops of marauding lions, through famine, through war, through five years of excoriating Parliamentary debate, muddled and marched the railway.” Indeed, in 1931 the ‘metallic snake’, as Africans knew it reaches Kampala, although British opposition from start to end has been referring to it as “gigantic folly”.

Although the story of then is a story for the future, a horde of indentured labourers that choose to stay among African people against the backdrop of poor pay, dangers likely to accrue as a result of settling in foreign land, the initial immigrants were the real harbingers of many Indians to follow.

If this story serves as a background to the settlement of Asians, it also runs concurrently with another of a young man 19, still of Indian descent, following on after his uncles, travels to Uganda in 1908 in search of what Ugandans usually refer to as ‘greener pastures’.

Like any other ordinary person would, this young man starts out as an aide to his uncles’ retail businesses spread in Iganga and later Kaliro both in Busoga. With his business acumen, the young man is so impressive that his uncles advise him to settle in Jinja to open up another shop. Like Ugandans would term it, it’s here that he ‘collides’ with good luck thus becoming one of the biggest entrepreneurs this country has had.

Of luscious concern, before digressing into colonial history, is how this 19 year old who comes to be known as Muljibhai Madhvani, negotiates a deal with one of the local authorities in Busoga to acquire 800 acres of land. On this piece of land he’s to establish a sugar factory that would and other businesses of his, contribute enormously to Uganda’s economy.

Madhvani acquired over 800 acres of land in Busogo

Although writers have written about Madhvani’s fortunes as a vivid fulfillment of a dream in a country he only came as an apprentice, his vision to having his labour force taken good care of through healthcare, free education and housing, hasn’t been fully achieved!

Today, the place where Madhvani laid the foundation for his factory has grown into a metropolitan place referred to as Kakira Town Council. Besides serving its labour force, the town equally serves a horde of dwellers and petty businessmen from neighbouring villages.

One of the families in the staff quarters

Immigrant labour still exists, but as one would imagine, continues to be the niche for cheap labour and constant exploitation. One resident, whose name will not be divulged due to sensitivity of the matter says that workers in Kakira Sugar Factory are the least paid, with many earning as little as 40,000/= (equivalent $21) a month.

“If government came up with an investment code to protect investors, why not come up with regulation to protect local workers?” He dares; although this is a question we don’t have to answer but in all honesty is well deserved.

An immigrant himself, who has moved through ranks of being born there, growing up in squalor, and dropping out of school, his experience offers so many lessons to learn from. His honesty to change the very place that beguiled his parents to come to, can be termed as the highest watermark of what true leadership should be and should look like.

“Children in this place have degenerated. They’ve dropped out of school to earn utmost 2000/= (less than $1) per day by offering cheap labour to cut sugarcane, they’ve resorted to drinking and also playing bait games to earn a living. This needs to change!”

The situation is more despicable than one might imagine. A polytechnic was established for the youths to earn skills in engineering, but none of them wants anything to do with school.  Besides, the numerous primary schools that exist have never been put under UPE—Universal Primary Education yet Kakira has one of the highest number of school going children. We’re told the current management works in a situation akin to colonial setting. Even when labourers earn little money, their children must be paid for. It is like receiving money in one hand and giving it out in another.

Child labour is rampant--children like these may end up cutting sugarcane instead of going to school

Redundancy—the worst evil—has turned the youths into enemies of the community. Their avid desire to earn a living leads them to wayward activities including waylaying unsuspecting residents. A new form of vandalism has emerged; stealing metal in many forms—scrap metal, signposts, billboards, underground pipes etc.

In the plantation terrain children as young as seven struggle to carry scrap metal heavier than their weights while trailing their mothers who are also carrying bundles of firewood.

In its own right as a semi-autonomous sub-county, Kakira is in its own league. Some members I travel with, who were born and bred here narrate the enticements and odds their parents have endured but come to dread over the years.

“Madhvani will give you free housing, free electricity and water. You’ll feel comfortable but you’ll never develop,” one of them observes.
Another tells a story of her father who originally comes from Gulu but has rendered his service to the sugar factory for over 30 years. Her father has raised his family against a backdrop of all odds. When we visit him—at some quarters whose name I can’t recall—he is relaxed in the comfort of his grandchildren.

“I’ve seen them grow (referring to his children and grandchildren), but possibly end of April this year, I’ll be retiring,” he discloses with a lot of emotional undertone.

In Kakira there is a common belief that Madhvani’s money can never make anybody rich. Those that have come to this ‘hallowed’ place end up being entangled while those they left behind in the respective homelands usually surpass them. Sad situation!

Our trip also pays homage to the outgrowers’ schemes in Kabembe and other surrounding areas. Outgrowers’ is a farming practice where privately owned land is given in—for a fee or not—to the factory to grow more sugarcane to supplement supply. But those that practice it have been exploited with impunity. For every ton of sugarcane they produce they’re paid a pitiable 38,000/= ($19) but very few farmers can raise 100 tons. Sugarcane takes 18 months to mature, which in essence leaves farmers waiting for two years to be paid if their harvest is good anyway.

Surrendering land to grow sugarcane rather than cultivating food crops has led to famine. Food is expensive and livelihoods have deteriorated. Although government came up with the NAADS (National Agricultural Advisory services) Project, it has not been explained to people very well and as a result it has ended up as a mess.

Atim (middle back row) is one of the model farmers of NAADS!

One lady whose anonymity should be respected confers that those at the helm of the project have benefited themselves and totally messed up what would otherwise have been a good project.

“They’ve taken livestock and seeds that are meant for us while our area MP and other local leaders are looking,” she adds.

The scale of misery in these areas can be curbed with a new sense of direction crafted. Constant sensitisation about food security could be the lure from bad agricultural practices. If that is the challenge that lies ahead of us, we have an uphill struggle of changing practices that have hitherto turned into customs.

As we’ve already stated, the story of Kakira Sugar Factory is a story of domination on one side and exploitation on the other. Working relations between the Indian bosses and local labours are always at their lowest. If Madhvani was here, he would probably overrule every odd like he did in 1900s to the change the situation. But as things stand, the situation is slowly getting infinitely worse!

Kakira Visit

It is one of the most anticipated trip to a township found in the Busoga region characterised by a community of indentured labourers to one of the biggest sugar factories in the country called Kakira Sugar Works.

The population in this area can be said to be cosmopolitan and in most cases referred to to as a microcosm of the macrocosm.

For so many years people from across the country have lent their labour here, working on the sugarcane plantation and in the sugar factory itself.

The story about this Sugar Factory, is a story of domination and exploitation of one race over the other and a possibility of ethnic rivalry and intrigue!

 

Fuming Kakira Sugar Factory

 

The factory has stood the test of time with people in this area akin to peculiar conditions. Could it be the working conditions or living conditions?

The trip will pay more attention to these and many more issues. One thing for sure, we’ll not come back empty-handed. More to follow.

Is it undemocratic democratization or democratic undemocratization of Uganda!

Democracy like many other political concepts is abstract. Mountains can be moved, wars fought and revolutions won in a bid to establish and maintain generally agreed-upon standards to allow for observance of law and order, freedom and peace, human rights, respect, peaceful transition of power, balance of power etc.

In Europe, democratic waves were characterized by revolutions after so many years of repression by those that possessed power—especially kings and despots. Wars were fought, lives lost in quest for a peaceful political environment. Erich Leistner confirms, “Over centuries, Europeans had to fight for freedom from feudal and clerical bonds, superstitions, ignorance, poverty and illiteracy.”

Although Europeans built political institutions that allowed for co-existence, they suffered a serious blot when their superstructures exploited immigrant labour, underpaid raw materials, swindled mineral and natural resources elsewhere, especially in Africa! But without doubt, great inventions and innovations were products of well sought and thought political standards. Democracy became a necessary ingredient for development and was on this anvil that Europe progressed to become what it is today.

Africa on the other hand, for as long as we’ve known, has been referred to as a ‘dark’ continent that has up to this century lagged and almost proved difficult to initiate democratic institutions that could stand the test of time. In lending a hand, Erich Leistner observes that the ‘African Predicament’ which is also the title to his book is “affected by conflicting demands of traditional African worldview and culture”! His advice is that some tendencies need to be given up if the continent is to make progress.

In the same way Europe progressed, Africa should tread cautiously although the two continents are diametrically different! African leaders who were the embodiment of culture as well as political direction were themselves despotic, especially in centralized traditional establishments. In decentralized traditional settings, consensus prevailed and one can aptly say democracy to a certain level existed although this is not to say they were better!

Europe’s ascendance to peace, law and order, and the will to defend such democratic institutions culminated into Europeans regarding themselves and being regarded as a ‘superior’ people. They traversed the world and sought to impose their values elsewhere, in societies and communities deemed primitive.

Thus far, volumes have been written in justification of colonial establishments. Some European scholars callously say the colonial advent was a ‘white man’s burden’ or ‘civilizing mission’ that came to rid Africa of unfathomable ills, while those opposed argue that Europeans were motivated by other reasons rather than the need to bring civilization to ‘primitive’ societies.

Arguments and counter-arguments abound! Imposing very despicable colonial policies elsewhere and more so in Africa is the biggest blot. The do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do was in itself a democratic contradiction that also awakened African leaders at the time to fight for their rights. It is these political imbalances that culminated into insurrection, sometimes violent or peaceful to create modern Africa states.

If such is the trajectory, the quest for democracy in Uganda is unstoppable. The assertion that democracy was indigenous or alien, or that colonial values uprooted or altered socio-political order, or that political upheavals since independence to date were part or one leap towards democratization need to be re-examined. Whether these trends, democratic or undemocratic managed to establish democratic or undemocratic political institutions in Uganda, there is serious need for contemplation.

Based on the current happenings, Uganda is a country full of drama that since time immemorial, save when dismantling colonial establishments in 1962, always chose a war path to change oppressive governments! This path to unconventional methods has always been articulated as a case of undemocratic democratization of Uganda!

Those in power have often used force or unconventional methods to chart a political path for the country. But whoever has been an architect in this, has always been a victim of his own making. In 1971 when a series of political maneuverings took place, President Milton Obote, at the height of tension with his own military, was ousted by General Id Amin Dada, himself a dictator, who was in turn in 1979 toppled by a joint force of Tanzania People’s Defense Force and Ugandan exiles!

Milton Obote, president for the second time after presumably rigged elections in 1980, was ousted by his own military in 1985. But this military junta didn’t last when in 1986 Yoweri Museveni overturned them after protracted guerilla warfare that had started way back in 1980, as a result of contested general elections.

In power for 25 years since 1986, President Yoweri Museveni is at crossroads. If he deserves credit, he is the single most president in Uganda who has introduced participatory grassroots democracy. During his reign some freedoms have been granted, until recently political parties freed.

Since he came to power, the four times elections have been held (1996, 2001, 2006 and 2011), they’ve been described as a farce; marred by irregularities, with opposition in most cases calling for results to be overturned!

In the advent of Facebook, volumes have been posted calling for insurrections especially by opposition supporters. Reasoning is that Uganda’s democratic credentials have been abused and constantly mutilated.

I write this not to insight an insurrection but seek opinion on what Uganda needs to do!