A personal wish for Uganda (and Africa) in 2015 By Timothy Kalyegira On Dec. 24, 2014, in his Ear to the Ground column in the Daily Monitor, Charles Onyango-Obbo mentioned to the Kampala Express as the most important and most promising intellectual idea or project to have come out of Uganda in the outgoing year 2014. It was, of course, a compliment to hear that from the respected Onyango-Obbo. I have written a response in the Sunday Monitor of Jan. 4, 2015 to Onyango-Obbo. The tone of my response is of barely-concealed frustration and even disgust at what I have had to live through for so long in this society that is called Uganda. Does Charles Onyango-Obbo understand the amount of frustration I have had to go through for years before the creation of the Kampala Express? From the way he commented about the Kampala Express, I doubt he does. Does he understand what frustration I have experienced, trying to make the most sophisticated, best-paid, most successful, most widely-traveled and most connected Ugandans understand some of the ideas I have come up with over the years and unfortunately most could not? Was Onyango-Obbo able to discern that amount of frustration? Do we know what it means for one to try and make African society see things? Without repeating here what the Sunday Monitor has, which you can read, I will pen a reflection on the last many years of intimately observing and struggling in Uganda, and the similar traits I see with Black South Africa, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya and Eritrea, the other African countries I have visited. 1. My wish for Uganda (and Africa): reading I hope and pray that Ugandans and other Black Africans start learning to read books. Not just school or university textbooks, not just what must be done to complete exam requirements, but to read as people in search of understanding. It is well-known and said often that Africans dont read. This is something we are familiar with. But it is not said often enough and emphatically enough. It is painfully obvious, just from glancing through the way we express ourselves on Facebook and Twitter, from listening in to our radio and television talk shows, the youth-oriented entertainment stations and the way we write in newspapers that urban, educated Ugandan society still has a very long way to go before it can qualify to be called educated. The same can be said of Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and several other African countries, but for the time being my concern is with Uganda. The complexity, the nuance, the layers of depth and thoroughness of knowledge and grasp of technical detail common in European and European-America society are almost entirely missing in Uganda and other African societies. This is not simply because English or French are foreign languages to us. I have listened to Luganda, Rutooro, Lusoga, Runyankore and other local radio stations since the FM broadcasting era begun in Uganda. The way we express ourselves even in our local languages and idioms is roughly the say way we express ourselves in English or French. it still reveals that lack of layering I have just referred to. Even when we are discussing or commentating on football, something most radio sports reporters are extremely passionate about, and doing so in their local languages, one senses this lack to completeness in our thought process, this lack of layers of depth and grasp. It would help if we started to cross-read outside our fields of classroom instruction. For example, a Ugandan engineer makes it a point of reading a novel, an accountant reads a music book, a medical doctor reads a photography book, a lawyer reads a medical textbook, a journalist reads a chemistry book, a political scientist reads a book on plants and geography, a marketing executive reads a book on astronomy, a business studies student reads a book on architecture. The cross-reading across wholly different areas from what we read and revised in school and college would make a difference in raising us above the world of ignorance that we demonstrate so glaringly. 2. My wish for Uganda (and Africa): listening These days, many of us aspire to or own pay television sets from DSTV, Zuku, Alam, StarTimes, GoTV and others. It is one of the signs of success and progressing in our minds. That is okay. Since we now have them, we might as well use them. Start tuning into channels beyond your usual areas of interest. Watch National Geographic, Discovery, Bloomberg, the History Channel, BBC and others that air documentaries. I wish Ugandans could listen keenly to what these documentaries say. As I have said with reading, it is so painfully and embarrassingly obvious that we do not know how to listen keenly. Once again, I pick this up from our TV, radio and parliamentary debates and social media postings. The ability to follow a complex sequence of thought through its twists and turns, to develop the ability to think in overall, big picture terms, is something also missing in Uganda and Africa. I used to listen for many years to the feedback and letters coming daily into the BBC World Service programme Network Africa before it was scrapped three years ago. The simplistic reasoning, the OLevel stage at which Africans with university degrees think and express themselves showed me that the problem is not just in Uganda. It cuts across the entire continent. If we read more complex and mentally demanding books and read many more of them, as well as listening to or watching more complex documentary radio and television channels, it might help develop that critically missing ability to think at a more advanced level and to grasp depth and complexity. These Far-right European political parties and other extremist groups might be racist and we resent that about them; but that does not mean that everything they say about Africa is wrong. Many people argue that the IQ tests that consistently show Blacks in America and Europe lagging behind Whites in their scores are skewed in favour of Whites. I dont know about that but from my personal experience and observation over many years of Africans, I think the mental gap between Whites and Blacks is even wider than the standard IQ tests show. We get too emotional over racist slights, get worked up about the exploitation of Africa by the West and so on, to stand back and see certain facts for that they are. When an African expresses critical views of Africa or Blacks, we then angrily accuse that African of being filled with self-hate or being brainwashed. The inability to view matters before us with impartiality, without emotion and with an interest in the cold facts, is another of our weaknesses. The fact of the matter is that we are the least productive people in the world. Productive in the sense of advanced research, design, processing, efficiency and adherence to standards. I can tell just by one look that a certain website was designed by a White European and another by a Black African. Even in African countries such as Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Botswana, where there is no life presidency and some modicum of democracy has started to take route, there is still little difference in terms of the calibre of quality and finesse of design and production skill from Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, Gabon, Togo or any of the other life presidency countries. Botswana, one of the better-run African countries, is only marginally better than Uganda, but it is still not Switzerland. 3. My wish for Uganda (and Africa): ambition My third wish for Uganda and Africa in 2015 is for us to start maturing as people, to start aiming for more weighty, more long-term, more abstract goals as a definition of who we are and what success is all about. Car. House. Furniture. Plot of land. This is the sum total of the African ambition. It is no crime, no shame to wish to own a car, a house, land or nice furniture. It is a universally recognised need in most parts of the world. But where we are different in Africa is that we dont usually go beyond that. This is the part that puzzles me about the successful Africans. Most of us struggle just to get by. But by whatever method used, some do eventually get money, a lot of money beyond the basics. Then I start to watch those who have money and what they do with it. Not very much beyond the above goals. Car. House. Land. Furniture. Home appliances. When I look at our radio stations, television stations, law firms, newspapers, import-export businesses, private medical practice, hotels, and other businesses we are engaged in, I am always left speechless. What do these people and companies do with all that money and profit? How can their businesses remain so ordinary, so average even after making so much money over years and decades? Our TV and radio stations do not sound like the profit they make. Our newspapers, in their quality and content, do not reflect the huge revenues they make from advertising. Our successful lawyers do not show much sign of their success beyond the aforementioned car, house, furniture, children in good schools, wife delivering her baby in Johannesburg or London. The wealthy, frequent-flying, successful African is not too different from the urban slum dweller in his or her sense of ultimate ambition. It is still the same basic, simple consumption. In other words, even if we did not have corrupt, dictatorial governments, and all our taxes were accounted for and wisely invested, we would still be the simple-minded, simple ambition Africans we are: car, house, TV, furniture, land, second car, second house, second plot of land, third car, third house, third plot of land. Europeans who earn $2,500 a month live much richer, more charming, more engaging lives than Africans who earn $10,000 a month. When I listen to people like President Yoweri Museveni, who was a guest once again on the Capital FM talk show the “Capital Gang” this morning, Jan. 3, 2015, I am left wondering. How can one hold so much power, have all the resources of state at one’s disposal and have so much personal wealth and money, but still be unable to go beyond those simple political goals of his, those simple examples, those simple projects? If I were to be given just one day’s allowances that President Museveni gets, I would achieve so much more than he. If I were to get just one day’s tax and rent collection by KCCA, I would start a second capital city. If I were to be given just one day’s advertising revenue earned by the New Vision or the Daily Monitor, I would start a new newspaper that would outmatch these two in quality. Why those without a clue are constantly given the money and the means and those who know what to do are always unable to get money, is the one tragic mismatch I am still trying to understand about Africa. I wish, in 2015, that the African rises beyond his simple ambition, simple consumerism, simple goals and starts to live for something more consequential than flashy clothes, flashy cars, flashy houses, flashy furniture. This is the sum of the years I have spent observing our society, where there is no fundamental difference between PhD and peasant, Harvard-educated and UPE-educated, urban or village dweller. Now, before you rush with your love for instant social media comments, usually written without much thought, give it a little time before sending in any response. Wait for an hour or even a day before responding. Listen, reflect, weigh what youve read, and try and go beyond the impulsive, defensive response that is typical of us when we feel we are being criticised or humiliated. ENDS
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 12:49:35 +0000
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