Open Letter To President Museveni; If You Want To Build A Nation, You Kill A Tribe

Open Letter To President Museveni; If You Want To Build A Nation, You Kill A Tribe

president Museveni shakes hands with prince Charles Wesley Mumbere

Mr. President, I send my sincere greetings to you I particular and the people of Ugandan in general.

I must admit that the previous month of November has been a very tense one for you and your government. But most importantly November in particular and 2016 has exposed the wrong decisions you made more than twenty years ago.

Some of the horrifying mistakes you made in the early 90s include the following.

1.       The absolute privatization of the economy leaving Ugandans to the mercy of capitalistic forces

2.       The unilateral decision to restore traditional kingdoms without the consent of Ugandans.

The first one mistake of privatizing the economy has already proved to everyone that it was a fundamental mistake. Today the economy is limping because of that mistake.

You cannot abandon all economic activities to the private sector. A revolutionary government like yours that claims to have fought for the emancipation its people should have remained in charge of some critical areas of the economy.

While the principal of privatization was good in the beginning, the execution was fundamentally flawed. You shouldn’t have done it whole sale.

You cannot privatize institutions that are responsible for service delivery and claim to serve the people.

How do you embark on service delivery when you have sold the means of doing it?

Government should have remained in charge of a common people’s bank, to deliver low interest loans to stimulate economic growth (but you sold UCB). Government should have remained as a player in the transport sector by keeping the Ugandan railway in operation (but you chose to close the Uganda railway for reasons best known to you alone.

Government should have remained firmly in charge of electricity to make it user friendly to your citizens (but6 you chose to privatize its operation making it electricity very expensive and thus costly to stimulate industrialization.

And it’s a shame that while you brag about having surplus electricity, it (the unit cost of electricity) remains the highest in the region.

As a result of some of these small economic mishaps arising from your wrong decisions you made two decades ago, the economy has now slumped to its knees. 

It’s obvious that you need to get back to the drawing board to address these economic issues. Otherwise there is general perception that you have no grand economic plan for this country.

The Fundamental Contradiction

But as a matter of fact, my intention was not to address to you issues regarding the economy because it’s a wide subject--I will certainly dwell on the economy in another blog.

Today I thought we should discuss your blunder number two which I mentioned above-your unilateral decision to restore traditional institutions without the consent of Ugandans.

Mr. President, we know that you were a very big friend and admirer of former Mozambican president Samora Machel who once said that if you are to build a nation, you kill a tribe.

The late Samora Machel had a true perspective in regard to nation building 

By this he practically meant that a powerful tribe will always undermine or contradict the state.

That’s why most leaders who embarked on successful nation building, systematically destroyed chiefdoms and kingdoms.

In Tanzania where you did your university and spent almost a full decade in exile, there were so many chiefdoms and kingdoms. We also know that you were very close friends with Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere who is known to have destroyed tribes in Tanzania for the good of a united Tanzania.

What did you learn from Mwalimu Nyerere and Samora Machel in regard to the nation of nation building, if you went ahead and did exactly what they preached against?

Building a nation is not a simple game. You need to make very hard choices. You cannot make an omelet without breaking an egg.  For your case, you want to have an omelet and at the same time keep the egg!

Kaunda, Samora and Nyerere

In France, the 1879 revolution had to deal with the difficult issue of sorting out the French monarchy.

Russia gained its super power status after making the difficult decision of dismantling the Russian monarchy in 1914.

Ghana had the mighty Asante Empire, but nobody knows where it is at the moment. Nepal had the oldest kingdom on the globe, but the people decided to disband it completely.

You cannot build a nation and at the same time glorify tribes like you are doing at the moment.

Today Uganda is more divided than it was during president Idi Amin’s reign of terror.

By the time you made a decision to restore traditional leaders, you must have done enough home work.

But you unfortunately took it upon yourself to restore them without the absolute consent of Ugandans.

There are credible rumors that some patriotic Ugandans led by Col Serwanga Lwanga opposed you and briefed you about the repercussions, but you overpowered them.

By doing this, you took Uganda 50 years backwards.  We are back to square one. uganans are gettign killed for something that had been buried fifty years ago.

Yes, President Apollo Milton Obote had resolved that issue in 1966 by doing what you did to Mumbere’s palace last week. in fact your army killed more Ugandans in Kasese than Obote during the attack on lubiri in 1966 

At the moment Uganda is headed for a very uncertain future. The tribal groups that had surrendered their sovereignty to Uganda have now developed secessionist tendencies because you encouraged and empowered them.

The country is now divided into tribal cocoons. We need a nationalist to embark on a more vivid process of nation building because you seem to have failed to do it.
instead you have embarked on deliberate tribalization of the country by launching dictionaries for local languages , you even address the nation in vernacular etc etec..
This practically spells doom for the country. We expect to see more bloodleting than what happened in kasese because of your blind  tribal project.

THE WAY FORWARD

You need to get back to the drawing board by conceding that you made a unilateral decision to restore these traditional leaders.  You need to simply admit that Ugandans should participate in the continued stay of these kingdoms through a plebiscite.  

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a blogger and a passionate proponent of the THIRD FORCE

Ends

The Akena-Kanyamunyu Murder Has Exposed The Genocidal Time-bomb Ticking Among Ugandans

The Akena-Kanyamunyu Murder Has Exposed The Genocidal Time-bomb Ticking Among Ugandans 

Its now exactly a week since a one Mathew Kanyamunyu shot the fatal bullets that claimed social worker Akena Wakmot's life. By now mmost of you have read and heard so many versions about this Lugogo shooting.

But you must have noticed that one constant about the so many versions about this murder case is the triablization of the whole saga.

 

Most of the theories advanced about this Bugolobi murder case is that of highly connected Banyankole exercising impunity on weak Ugandans.  

But let’s try to do some critical thinking. Of course there is some form concealed sectarianism in the country that is making Ugandans to become very jittery about the state of affairs in the country. That is a fact that cannot eb denied by any honest person.

And this sectarianism is the reason why many people are ethnisizing and tribalizing ever single issue that happens in the country. But its better that we address issues on their own merit.

The pertinent question is; was the Lugogo murder premeditated or ethnically motivated?

The answer to that question shapes the whole debate about the Lugogo murder, the ethnic undertones notwithstanding.

The Hypothetical Version Of Events

I know that it’s wrong to make graphical comments about a case that is before case. But i find it imperative to sub-judice this case because of the impact it has had on the country so far.

Some of us learnt a lot from German detective, inspector Derrick a  who used to investigate murder cases.

If you reconstruct the whole murder scene, which has reportedly not been sealed as required by the process of crime investigations, you get the whole sense of what happened on that day.  

One thing that we need to agree with is to look at the possible reason why Mathew Kanyamunyu hastily shot Akena.

It’s a fact that Mathew and his girlfriend Cynthia Munwangari had premeditated fears for their lives prompted by the nature of the politics from her mother country of Burundi. 

Cynthia's mother Hon. Hafsa Mossi who was an MP in the East African parliament was recently gunned down in Burundi.

There are reports that Cynthia munwangari’s mother Hon. Hafsa Mossi who was an MP in the East African parliament was recently gunned down in Burundi. Obviously one can see that Cynthia had fears of her own and had to move with a person who would provide protection for her. That partly forms the reason why she moved with Mathew who had a cocked gun in the dashboard of the car, all the time. 

 

Cynthia Munwangari was in company of Kanyamunyu

I tend to think that when Akena accidentally knocked the car from the back, Cynthia might have (out of panic) told him (Mathew) that the assassins had come for her.  That Akena hastily ran to Mathew’s car, made Cynthia and Mathew more suspicious of his motives.

Mathew then had to instinctively react in fear and shot Akena in the stomach mistaking him for an assassin who had attacked Cynthia, like they had done her mother Hon Mosi.  When you look at the video you see a volley of bullets aimed directly at the deceased. 

And after the erratic shooting, you get the feeling that Mathew came to his senses and realized that Akena was not an enemy trying to assassinate his girlfriend afterall, but an unfortunate driver who knocked his car accidentally and got to his window to straighten matters with him.

So he (Mathew) endeavors to take the innocent Akena to hospital. And that is when all hell breaks loose. If Mathew had premeditated intentions to kill, he wouldn’t have taken the deceased to hospital.

He would have driven off and nobody would have known much of what transpired.  

I like to think the inspector Derrick way that it was a case of mistaken identity-where Mathew panicked and mistook Akena for an assassin.

Complication of matters 

What is disturbing is that Mathew seems to be trying to conceal the actual reasons that motivated him to shoot Akena.

Instead of talking the truth, he has gotten rid of the killer gun and is now trying to cook up new versions that will bail him out of the murder case.

I also highly doubt that Mathew shot Akena because he had scratched his car. I also doubt that Mathew, the connected Munyankole had tribal sentiments of shooting Akena, the Acholi.

There are practical possibilities that the shooting was clearly a case of mistaken identity.  

Genocidal Tendencies

Now that I have sub-judiced the case, let’s look at the national implications of this case.

As stated earlier, there is a growing concern about the rate of sectarianism in the country because of one group of people from the same region dominating everything.

Ugandans are increasingly getting jittery and adopting genocidal ideas.

There is a list of top police force officials which has been published on social media platforms which shows 95% of senior positions held by people from one region of western Uganda.  and this applies to most of the government bodies around the country.

There is a general consensus that the national cake has been hijacked to benefit people from the same region. 

And this alone is making it difficult for people to analyze issues objectively. They now observe issues with tribal lenses because of the practical injustice they are enduring at the moment.

This is putting the ‘favored people’ in danger. During the kayunga riots, there was a sample of the genocidal tendencies when the rioters deliberately targeted people from western Uganda for lynching.

During the campaigns for the 2016 elections, I moved with a friend from western Uganda and encountered hostile treatment from people who thought we were the people in power.

They curtly told us that our time was about to expire.

My view is that unless the situation is contained by continued stability, there is big chance of a possible genocide in Uganda. Some overzealous Ugandans are craving for a chance to unleash revenge on the ruling tribe.

This has been the same pattern where Ugandans torment and persecute members of a tribe that has been overthrown from power. When Gen Amin was overthrown, his tribesmen had to flee to exile.

president Idi  Amin was largely surrounded by his tribesmen whop later faced the wrath of the citizens when he was overthrown

 When president Obote was overthrown, the people of northern Uganda faced a lot of direct persecution.president Museveni seems to be doing exactly what his predecessors did in regard to putting his tribesmen at the fore of everything , hence exposing them to danger. 
This is the same reason why the kanyamunyu murder had been made to look as if the people from the ruling tribe are now killing ugandans with the intention of inciting the country into a genocidal reaction. 

The government needs to address the issue of ethnic balancing in job allocation. Otherwise we are sitting on a very big genocidal bomb that will explode anytime.

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a Ugandan journalist and a blogger contact him kamwadafred@gmail.com

Donald Trump Might Be Assassinated Before He Completes His First Term

Donald Trump Might Be Assassinated Before He Completes His First Term

• Two Fundamental Reasons Why Hilary Clinton Lost

  

  Trump has ruffled so many feathers , created so many enemies

This week Donald trump staged what has been considered as the biggest political upsets when he easily defeated Hilary Clinton to become the 45^th American president.

His victory has since become a bone of contention in various political circles leading to widespread demonstrations in various American states.

By the time I authored this blog anti-Trump demonstrators had sprung up around blocking roads and brought business to a standstill around the world’s number one super power.

I don’t think there has ever been any American president who has faced immediate demonstrations after winning elections like what has happened to a DT.

Why Hilary Clinton Lost

 Many political observers around the world have dwelt so much on what made Trump snatch victory from the much favored Hilary Clinton.

But I tend to think that Hilary Rodham Clinton was faced with two immediate issues that hindered her ascendancy to the White house.

One was that she made the mistake of associating with president Hussein Barrack Obama who had widely been considered a failure by political observers around the world.

I for one wrote a blog recounting president Obama’s failures and regarded him as a disappointment for those who voted for him with a lot of expectations.

By associating with the faltering legacy of Obama, Hilary shot herself in the foot because her presidency was regarded as the continuation of the SAME  failures (like Amama Mbabazi used to refer to museveni’s re-election in the 2016 elections)

Remember Obama had performed exceedingly well with the economy but forgot that American presidents are never judged by how well they deal with the local issues but foreign policy.

President Obama lost appeal and approval ratings soured when he demonstrated naivety in his foreign policy by failing to handle conflicts like the one of Syria which has since led to mass exodus of refugees to Western Europe. The Syrian conflict then led to repercussions like the Brexit where Britain voted to leave the European Union simply because of  EU’s failure to harmonize policy on handling the migrants.

he mismanaged the middle east which ispriority number one of the US policy leading to the emergence of the  ISIS even when America had devolved a policy of non tolerance to terrorists under President Bush junior.

By playing a lame duck president, Obama provided a political incentive for Russia to intervene in Syria in the guise of fighting terror. This created an impression that America had weakened as a dominant super power.

  And that is how demagogues like Donald trump came in simply to make America great again -like his campaign motto suggested.

By and large, it was obviously a political blunder for Hilary Rodham Clinton to associate with Obama because it created an impression of continuity of the same nonsense. Yet Americans were yearning for something different that would massage their ego.

That is one of the biggest reasons why she lost, even when Trump had committed so many blunders during his political campaigns like attacking the latinos, the blacks, the Moslems, migrants etc.

HER HUSBAND BILL  

The second undoing for Hilary was the morally shaky legacy of his husband Bill Clinton.

Get me right here; am not saying that Bill was not a performer. He was actually regarded as one of the best American presidents ever to grace the white house.

Bill Clinton's infidelity damaged his good name

Bill Clinton had overseen the recovery of the American economy. He almost brokered a peace deal between the Palestinians and the Israel when he brought Yasser Arafat and Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin to shake hands (make peace) at Camp David

But Bill also suffered a damaged reputation with his relationship with women, most famously the howler with Monica Lewinsky.

Much as Hilary was clever enough not to move with her husband Bill at the campaign trail, her practical marital association with him was already a damaging factor.

Ad by the way, i must admit that Hilary was so over qualified for the job that even Trump believed that he had no chance.

Almost all the former presidents endorsed Hilary and advised Americans that Trump was not fit to run the white house.

Trump had resorted to self damaging statements because he never expected to win. DT even prepared himself for defeat when he hinted of possible rigging of the elections!

  But instead the radical statements had a bulldozing effect on the electorate and they voted massively for him.

WHY DT WILL BE ASSASSINATED

Now since we all agree that Hilary was more qualified for the job, how Trump will manage to sustain himself in power for the next five years?

Obviously, the trends point at one direction; the inevitability of D T’s assassination!

Trump has rattled and ruffled so many feathers during his campaigns. He has threatened almost all the minority groups in the country.

Do you think they will let him unleash his intolerance on them? I Don’t think so.

Let’s look at the history of assassinated American presidents.
 I have googled and found that four sitting presidents have been killed, all of them by gunshot: Abraham Lincoln (the 16th President), James A. Garfield (the 20th President), William McKinley (the 25th President) and John F. Kennedy (the 35th President).

Then there were unsuccessful assassination attempts at presidents Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

if a man like JF Kennedy who was adored by all Americans was killed what about Trump who is a hate figure?

On a lighter note , and Am not being superstitious here, but when you critically look at the four cases of assassinated presidents you will find that the majority of them had been 25^th (in the case of James Garfield) and 35^th (in the case of john Kennedy) respectively.

Donald Trump being the 45^th president puts him in the line of fire!.

But seriously speaking, most of the previous assassinated presidents were killed because they allegedly tried to tamper with the banking system especially the technicality of whether to use the gold standard or not. 

But trump's campaign message shows that he will tamper with everything 

American Culture Of Violence

 And the reason why I fear for Trump is because the American culture is built around violence. So when some moron feels they are not getting their way in matters governmental, they resort to the gun.

If DT for instance tries to embark on schemes to deport some refugees, like he has promised to do, one of them will opt to shoot him. Remember Mexico is one of the gun corridors of the world. It has so many people migrating to America.

And Trump promises to deal with the rapists, drug addicts and thieves from Mexico by, among other things, building a wall around the Mexican border.

Even my small cat knows that theses drug dealing mafias from Mexico and Moslem will not allow DT to TRUMP his xenophobia on them. They will certainly shoot him in the eyes. Unless he tones down on his radical stance, I don’t see Trump doIng more than four years in the white house.

Please get me right;, I have been one of the biggest supporters of Donald Trump, and I was in jubilant mood when he won. But I see dark clouds surrounding his presidency unless he treads very cautiously and most importantly abandons the threats he hawked during the campaigns. In the end he might not have the guts to do any of the radical things he promised to do during the campaigns.

Thanks for reading this far

The author, Fred Daka Kamwada is a Ugandan journalist and a blogger..get him at kamwadafred@gmail.com

ENDS

The Mobile Money Revolution Is The One Killing The Banking Sector

The Mobile Money Revolution Is The One Killing The Banking Sector

The Banking Sector Is Getting Killed by the Phone in the Same Way Newspapers Are Being Destroyed By Social Media Or The Way The Email Killed Post Office

The proprietor of crane bank Sudhir Ruparelia shakes hands with president Museveni

A lot has already been written and said about the sudden insolvent state that crane banks finds itself after being taken over by bank of Uganda.

Most of Uganda’s celebrated economists have attributed the collapse of crane bank to non performing loans (NPL).

This normally happens when the citizens borrow money from the banks and fail to service or pay back the loans, the banks seize their assets.

Ordinarily, the banks are supposed to sell off the seized assets to recapitalize its financial base of the depositors.

In the case of crane bank, assets from the loan defaulters were seized but not sold. Instead the bank transformed those seized assets into alternative business ventures hence hurting the capital base of the bank.

This is what the Americans referred to as credit crunch.

In America People borrowed money and invested it into real estate but they did not yield the intended profits. The banks ended up seizing the mortgaged assets but also got stuck with them because there were no buyers.

So can you can safely say that Uganda is currently enduring a credit crunch of its own.

Lets Apply Some Logic

But could it amount to this under capitalization of the bank?

I don’t think so because non performing loans alone cannot account for the under capitalization of the bank because the bank doesn’t just lend anyhow. The bank cannot just go on giving loans without looking at its capital base.  They do it systematically such that money borrowed from one group of borrowers must first be recovered before they give others.

For the last eight years I have been receiving my salary from crane bank but I applied for a salary loan and they declined.  Yet a salary loan is the easiest to service.

And in any case, the assets from these NPLs have not evaporated in thin air. This means that crane bank could have asked for more time to recapitalize itself by selling off those assets.

  

This was the same argument that was raised during the issue of bailouts.  President Museveni requested these banks to give the indebted Ugandans more time to pay their loans instead of seizing their assets.

This was the same favor crane bank required to stay afloat.

But the fact that bank of Uganda moved faster to take over tells a different story which shows that there was more to this TAKEOVER than what we are being told.

Irrational Conspiracy Theory

 There is an irrational conspiracy theory that has been cooked up attributing the whole crane bank saga to former Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, as the root cause. one peddlers of that theory if former press secretary to the Ugandan president Tamale Mirundi.

AN exited Tamale Mirundi shakes hands with Amama

Tamale and his theorists claim that Amama Mbabazi and a clique of prominent Bakiga was one of the majority shareholders of the defunct national bank of commerce that was easily dissolved and taken over by crane bank. tamale therefore claims that these Bakiga effectively managed to revenge by bankrupting crane bank .

That these prominent Bakiga worked hard to undermine crane bank by sponsoring negative stories about crane bank in the media until they managed to bring it down.

We agree that the banking sector operates on trust and customer confidence to an extent that once someone hatches a series of negative stories about a given bank in the national media, it affects the confidence of the customers and they either stop depositing or withdraw their funds.

But we also know that customers also operate on evidence not hearsay.  

I have not seen any bank that has ever been brought down by simply publishing negative stories in the media.

Secondly, nobody has endeavored to explain a clear method that these prominent Bakiga used to bankrupt crane bank.

Of course someone said that Kiiza Besigye withdrew his dime four days before the bank went into receivership.

 Was crane bank operating on Kiiza Besigye’s money?

Critical Reasoning

So am trying to tell you that conspiracy theory that implicates prominent Bakiga for having brought down crane bank in revenge for consuming their NBC bank is irrational and doesnt make sense because there is no empirical evidence to prove it other than hearsay and assumption.

The second one about non performing loans is also a false because it could be rectified by granting time for defaulters to pay back.

In any case if it was non performing loans that brought down crane bank then centenary bank which gives out more loans than any other bank in the country could have been the first to close. But centenary bank is growing from strength to strength even when it’s giving out loans to so many Ugandans.

So what other factor can we attribute the fall of crane bank?

The Real Issues

One; the management of crane bank embarked on a massive expansion drive that stretched and drained its resource envelope.

In a space of just two years, Crane bank opened massive branches in Ntinda, Kawempe, Kalerwe, Fort portal and other parts of the country.

It’s obvious that it couldn’t sustain the operation of those branches without bleeding financially.

The Phenomenon Of Mobile Money Banking

but the fundamental factor why crane bank bled can be attributed to the emergence of the phenomenon of mobile money transactions that obviously affected the traffic of account holders in the banking sector as most Ugandans opted to conveniently keep their money on their phone accounts.

Today, there are more Ugandans with a mobile money accounts than with a bank account.

This means that while crane bank has been opening branches all over the country, it has not got the clients to bank with it.

This phenomenon of mobile money obviously spells doom for the banking sector.

In the next five years, the number of Ugandans with a bank account will shrink to considerably negative numbers in comparison to the increasing number of Ugandans with mobile money accounts.

I can predict with utmost confidence that the banking sector will only thrive on salary accounts and loan services.

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Banks that don’t have agencies paying salaries with them and granting loan services will perish completely.

Centenary bank might survive this mobile money revolution because it has managed to deal with those two aforementioned exigencies.

The mobile money revolution is going to have the similar effect to what the email did to post office (which made it redundant to write letters with postage stamps since you could easily email the same to the intended target), similar to what phones did to watches (it’s pointless to buy a watch since you can easily refer to the one on the phone.

This phenomenon is also similar to the effect that social media has had on print media. Today the social media breaks stories before they are printed in the papers making the papers completely redundant.

In fact I can predict that in future newspapers will become cheaper and cheaper and even go for free.

It’s the same way that machines replaced human power.

Thanks for reading this far. 

Fred Daka Kamwada is a journalist and a blogger you can connect with him on kamwadafred@gmail.com