I talk about 40
years now with the base year as 1974. It
is the year I entered St. Mary’s College Kisubi (SMC then, though now it is
SMACK) as a Secondary one student. That
time some of the students who had excelled at PLE were getting bursaries from
their home districts. I am one such
beneficiary who was getting shs 400 from Mubende district per year out of shs
650 we were paying per year at SMACK (without school uniform). We were eating relatively well then. We could have bans served at breakfast even
break tea, have meat more than once a week and real variety, of course with
Sugar which is a luxury now in Uganda!
Power cuts were rare at all and never called for installation of the
generators we see today. Every child
could afford to join SMACK as long as he had the brains, and the parent had some
little income. It is important to note
that even by 1974; things had started getting bad (the economy) following the
expulsion of the Asians and the eventual invasion of the Museveni led forces
from Tanzania.
The very bad
politics we are witnessing today has a big contribution following the decision Museveni
and his friends made to invade Uganda in 1972.
“Amin was preoccupied with the dissident groups that Obote had gathered
in exile in Tanzania. In late 1972, a
small rebel force crossed the border with the apparent intention of capturing
the army outpost at Masaka,
but stopped short and instead waited in expectation of a popular uprising to
overthrow Amin. The uprising did not materialize and the Obote-aligned force
was expelled by the Malire Mechanical Regiment. The event prompted Amin to task
the General Service Unit, later called the Special Research Bureau,
and the newly formed Public Safety Unit with an
intensified search for suspected subversives. Thousands of people were made to disappear. Amin retaliated by further purging the army of
Obote supporters, predominantly those from the Acholi and Lango
ethnic groups. Source: Military History of Uganda - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Uganda
A detailed account
of what transpired can be read from the article: “Remembering the aborted 1972 invasion
by Ugandan exiles,” by Augustine Ruzindana in The Monitor of Friday, September
19, 2014.
Following the aborted invasion of Uganda, President
Idi Amin (RIP) changed his colours, he started eliminating anybody suspected to
be involved with the rebels. Meanwhile
the economy deteriorated on.
Focusing on how things are today, we are convinced
that people who have seen only the bad side of Uganda are a substantial figure
given the statistics as reported below:
Uganda age structure
|
|
Age structure: 0-14 years: 48.7%
(male 8,714,354/female 8,765,900)
15-24 years: 21.2% (male 3,775,679/female 3,833,574) 25-54 years: 25.7% (male 4,618,088/female 4,615,616) 55-64 years: 2.4% (male 405,740/female 447,118) 65 years and over: 2.1% (male 327,771/female 415,075) (2014 est.) |
The
2011 UDHS reported that nearly 78% of Uganda’s population is youthful and this
presents a challenge in terms of high dependency and high consumption yet with
low productivity. Currently about 6.5
million (21.3%) Ugandans are between 18 – 30 years. The number of young people
in Uganda is projected to grow to 7.7 million by 2015. Most of Uganda’s young population
aspires for various forms of services in terms of education, employment and
family formation. This is the challenge for the country to address immediately.
Uganda has the world’s youngest
population with over 78 percent of its population below the age of 30. With
about 8 million youth aged between15 - 30, the country also has one of the highest
youth unemployment rates in Sub - Saharan Africa. Although Uganda is making
strides economically, it faces significant challenges in meeting its young
people’s needs today and their challenges tomorrow as its population continues
to grow at a rate of 3.2% annually.
Source: The State of
Uganda’s Population, 2013
Surely, may be
because of ignorance, but a number of youth and those below 40 years have read
to some level, what do they get from such reading? You see them long to be provided with free
things instead of sitting down and they get composed on how they can use their
figures to see the regime out of office.
While praises are sung by the youth, meanwhile their friends are
committing suicide, yet also many youth are looking for money to go out of
Uganda for work. Many have joined the
Born – Again Churches to see miracles happen so that they get visas to wherever
they wish to go. Yet the youth forget
that they have the key to who can be in Statehouse, but they are simply a disorganized
lot. They find it easy to go to the city
with posters requesting for work, yet they would spend such energy discovering
how they can mobilize to vote out the cause of the poor resource allocation
that is greatly responsible for the mess.
When they are called for free money, you find them shamelessly knelling
before the provider! What irony?
With determination,
even when the electoral laws are not changed, President Museveni can be voted
out through the ballot. The intimidation
really does not make a mature person fail to go and cast his/her vote later on
follow up to the closure of the exercise and witness the vote counting as well
as the signing of the declaration forms.
How far can the NRM rig when people decide to be responsible enough? Can a man however much he may be used to
cheating change all those results when there is proof of what actually
transpired? Ugandans should know that
time is out for people who do things as if there was no other force to counter
them. Decide once to vote out the big
man and he will go and a new era shall be ushered in. For how long shall we be intimidated that
President Museveni has an army? Who pays
for the army? Is it not the tax
payer? What did professionalism mean to
those in the army? Is it that they are
at liberty to destabilize our peace so that looting the country’s resources
goes on endlessly? You know, that is why
I want to reward teachers better if I get a chance to get to Statehouse. They seem to be part of the problem in that
they are failing to teach students life skills and these end up blown by air.
Youth are
committing suicide as their friends sale air to them (the likes of Nakabale). Workers House suicide
woman was job-frustrated. The young woman who plunged to her horrific end from the Workers House
building Friday morning was frustrated by futile job applications, her family
has revealed.
Justine Nalugya, aged 26 was a 2007-graduate of Makerere University and spent her final five years (after leaving university) looking for employment, but with no success. There is impression that her frustration must have had the better of her and she decided to end her own life. Her relatives suspect she was ‘disgusted with life’, which might have inspired her desperate suicide mission.
Nalugya dipped to her demise from the 14th floor of one of Kampala’s tallest buildings at about 11.15am and died instantly. Gloom instantly engulfed the area with workers and visitors within the building helplessly looking on as Nalugya’s lifeless body lay on the floor, head, torso and brain shattered.
Woman
falls to her death at Workers House - A woman has died after falling from 14th
Floor of Workers House in Kampala. Business
at Workers’ House was suspended for several hours this morning following the
death of a woman who reportedly jumped to her death. The police cordoned off
the building for over 7 hours investigating what could have led to Annet
Ashaba’s fall from the 14th floor of the building. According to police spokesperson, Fred
Enanga, the young woman apparently committed suicide after she returned from
Dubai to find that the savings she had been sending home had been squandered by
her relatives.
Source: http://ntv.co.ug/news/local/25/oct/2014/woman-falls-her-death-workers-house#sthash.bfkv588T.dpbs
Experts
warn that the frustration of the youth can contribute to militancy, impatience
and risk-taking, since they can be easily exploited by people with sinister
motives. “The Government needs to find
solutions for the youthful majority of growing larger, poorer, more discontent
and occasionally, more militant,” the report further recommends.
I
witnessed the suffering of the people of Uganda in the 1979 war. I was at Kajjansi and together with people
from as far as Kibuye went to Nakawuka before Kampala fell. I was at Jinja when Lutwa overthrew Obote II (RIP)
and shortly after, Museveni captured power.
In all these, much property and people’s lives were lost. The youth of Uganda need to get to their
senses and get to scheme for a change that will get this country back on course. The crocodile tears cannot help any more, and
Museveni may never have all the cash that can gainfully have the youth employed
given his other agendas that are cleaning the treasury like the military
adventures in South Sudan to mention one.
No comments:
Post a Comment